WWE Reportedly Wanted FOX to Buy Them Prior to WWE SmackDown Moving to FOX Network
There's been plenty of speculation over the past couple of years that WWE is trying to position itself to where it can be sold to a major media conglomerate in the near future. WWE officials have always dismissed those rumors, but on the latest Wrestling with Freddie podcast from iHeart Media's My Cultura Network former WWE creative team member Freddie Prinze Jr. revealed that WWE tried to sell itself to FOX prior to Friday Night SmackDown's move to the FOX network.
"I haven't said this before, but I'll say it now because it has been long enough," Prinze Jr. said (h/t Wrestling Inc.). "I was talking to a dude who was interviewing to be their COO, or they wanted to interview. They ended up going with Nick Khan, he had passed but he wanted to talk to me about the company. So we were just talking about the brand and all this, and he goes 'yeah, they wanted us to buy the whole product.' He's an exec at FOX. He goes 'they wanted us to buy the whole brand but the number they wanted wasn't a number we were going to pay, so we licensed SmackDown instead.'"
Prinze made waves last month when, during an interview with Ariel Helwani, he revealed he has started to consider running his own wrestling promotion following the 80+ wrestler releases made in 2021.
"It makes me want to start a wrestling brand," Prinze said. "Everybody sees that and they get sad. I see that and I get hungry. I was in Karrion Kross' DMs the day it happened. I was like, 'Hey man, I didn't go back to work for fun. I went back to work to invest in things.' So imagine having Keith Lee and Karrion Kross on the same roster and making people wait to watch them fight and having their stories connected but separate. Even if it was just indie shows, which is what it would have to be, I'm not trying to go put fifty million dollars on something, but there's so much talent out there now but I think people would love to watch."
Do you think WWE is going to be sold in the next few years? Let us know in the comments below!