World Wrestling Entertainment has been turned upside down in the past three months. 2023 kicked off with Vince McMahon ending his six-month retirement, returning to the WWE Board of Directors in an effort to assist with the sale of the company. McMahon had emphasized that his comeback would be strictly business and that he would not interfere with the creative process of WWE’s televised storylines. McMahon’s primary objective was completed on Monday, as WWE successfully sold itself to Endeavor and will merge with UFC as one giant publicly traded company. With the sale now in the rear view, there are questions as to what McMahon will be doing within WWE moving forward.
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Appearing on CNBC, McMahon said that there will be some aspects of creative that he will be involved with, but he will not return to the nitty gritty.
“Yes and no. On a higher level, yes,” McMahon said. “In the weeds, which I always loved to get in the weeds in the past, no. Can’t do that.”
It’s worth noting that “in the weeds” is the same terminology that McMahon used during a 2019 Q2 earnings call after he appointed Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff as executive directors of Monday Night Raw and WWE SmackDown. He had given Heyman and Bischoff those roles so that he could “look at longer range story arcs and work on character development, versus being in the weeds.” Heyman was fired from his executive director position after one year, while Bischoff only remained in his role for four months.
POST Wrestling‘s John Pollock reported that an internal email within WWE has stated that “Paul Levesque will remain WWE’s chief content executive.”
As for why McMahon is still in WWE at all, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel revealed that he personally convinced McMahon to remain part of the company.
“I would have bodyslammed him if he thought he thought he was going to leave,” Emanuel said. “Here’s a man who has seen around the corner at every beat over the last 40 years of this business and has a vision of this business way before a lot of people see it. Him now being able to utilize what we’ve built in our flywheel, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I have Vince McMahon, a visionary that sees around the corner, I have Dana White and what we’ve built. That’s pretty unstoppable.”
Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for updates on WWE’s future with Endeavor.
