Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[sek69]

5 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

The silence from Cena, Dwayne, HHH, Undertaker and the rest, is, as they say, deafening.

Not a single word of outrage or disgust.

Adding to what @C.S. said,  it's a no win situation for them or anyone really in the company. The last thing they want is to spend Rumble weekend talking about Vince's scat fetish.

[MoS]

It's not just Vince though, is it. As multiple people have pointed out, this is a systemic rot going to the very top of an evil company. Can't just stop at Vince. 

[El-P]

I was gonna be out of the loop for some time as to not spoil myself and be able to watch the stuff I can't watch now later. Then I'm reading news on Liberation, like and do everyday and this :

https://www.liberation.fr/international/amerique/etats-unis-accuse-dagressions-sexuelles-le-boss-du-catch-demissionne-20240127_J3CP43QT7FBZ7C7AGUBU3SD6QI/

When you've got an article on Libé (and really, it's on every major news outlet, Le Monde, L'Equipe), you not under the radar anymore. I wonder if the fact it became TKO actually made it more visible. In which case, oh, the irony.

Fucking finally.

I have not red the details yet, and from reading the thread's reaction I'm not sure I want to, as I don't deal very well this stuff like this.

9 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

The silence from Cena, Dwayne, HHH, Undertaker and the rest, is, as they say, deafening.

Guilty by way of silence. The guys closest to Vince can't say they did not know about who he was. It's the same as Gérard Depardieu in France. The French cinema industry knew. But "Oh, it's Gérard !"...

1 hour ago, MoS said:

It's not just Vince though, is it. As multiple people have pointed out, this is a systemic rot going to the very top of an evil company. Can't just stop at Vince. 

This.

There need to be a clean up. A real, deep one.

There probably won't be.

[El-P]

On 1/26/2024 at 3:44 AM, Coffey said:

Combine this with other awful stories we've heard, like what happened with Ashley Massaro.

Thats' the worst. Because let's not delude ourself that poor woman was the only one. Hell, the numbers of NDA last year don't lie. Yeah, it's a systemic issue. How many women were abused in Titan Towers over the last 40 years ? 

This should be an Harvey Weinstein level shitstorm. The entire archives of WWE are unwatchable now too. You want to revisit the amazing hours of the Attitude Era after reading THIS (and I've only red a little bit, and I feel sick) ? 

Are people gonna speak now ? I don't fucking care, I want the entire thing to be blown off, and by the entire thing I mean the business. I don't care if it's WWE, AEW, TNA, whatever. Blow the fucking wall of silence off. 

(and yeah, Brock Lesnar, people are gonna surprised about him ? When it was right there on Dark Side of the Ring, Terri Runnels telling the story of him exposing his dick to her. Which got zero traction back then)

Ya think Gabe Stevenson is gonna debut at the Rumble ? That's be quite something, uh ?

[NintendoLogic]

The WWE board voted unanimously to remove Vince as chairman, so they clearly had some idea. However, the lawsuit alleges that they declined to interview this woman during their internal investigation. That would indicate that if they didn't know the full extent, it was because they didn't want to know. By the way, Vince's longtime predilection for stiffing people on money he owes them being the tragic flaw that leads to his downfall is almost Shakespearean.

[El-P]

7 hours ago, sek69 said:

What's going to be a bigger issue for the company is when people start piecing together who all the Unnamed WWE Corporate Employees are who are named in the lawsuit. It probably won't be too hard for the internet to do its thing and sleuth it out, as it will most likely reveal just how baked in all this sleaze is in the company.

Nick Khan, Kevin Dunn, Bruce Prichard. You can't tell me that *at the very least*, they did not know about it. You can't be so close to Vince and not know about it, especially the later two, who have been around for almost 40 years. 

5 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

The WWE board voted unanimously to remove Vince as chairman, so they clearly had some idea. However, the lawsuit alleges that they declined to interview this woman during their internal investigation. That would indicate that if they didn't know the full extent, it was because they didn't want to know. By the way, Vince's longtime predilection for stiffing people on money he owes them being the tragic flaw that leads to his downfall is almost Shakespearean.

It's amazing. These people think they can do everything and get away with it. They can abuse people in every way possible and nothing will ever catch up to them. 

The fact they did not interview the woman is so crazy. "Yeah, let's not hear what the alleged victim has to say". Fuck. Internal investigation my ass.

[Jmare007]

7 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

The WWE board voted unanimously to remove Vince as chairman, so they clearly had some idea. However, the lawsuit alleges that they declined to interview this woman during their internal investigation. That would indicate that if they didn't know the full extent, it was because they didn't want to know. By the way, Vince's longtime predilection for stiffing people on money he owes them being the tragic flaw that leads to his downfall is almost Shakespearean.

Is there any posible repercussion from that investigation being a sham, as Grant claims it was?

[MoS]

It's a civil lawsuit, so any repercussions would be from TKO trying to cover its own ass. Certainly not repercussions that this case deserves. Anyone who thinks things changed for powerful men after the #MeToo movement (especially for white boomers like Vince) is sadly and unfortunately mistaken. 

[Jmare007]

1 hour ago, MoS said:

It's a civil lawsuit, so any repercussions would be from TKO trying to cover its own ass. Certainly not repercussions that this case deserves. Anyone who thinks things changed for powerful men after the #MeToo movement (especially for white boomers like Vince) is sadly and unfortunately mistaken. 

Oh, I know. Just wondering if shareholders could hold them accountable  for running a fake investigation if they wanted to and if anything could come out from that. Or if it's just one of those cases were there's nothing anyone can do about it.

[Embrodak]

15 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

I would submit that others in the company knowing and approving of Vince's rapist tendencies vs. the victim being gaslighted into thinking they are is mostly an academic distinction in terms of impact on the victim. And yeah, all the public evidence points to Linda being almost as devoid of redeeming qualities as her husband. At least Vince never tried to overturn an election. And it's my understanding that they've been living apart for quite some time.

Effect on the victim, yes. Potential implications for the rest of the company? Different ball game.

[NintendoLogic]

36 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

Oh, I know. Just wondering if shareholders could hold them accountable  for running a fake investigation if they wanted to and if anything could come out from that. Or if it's just one of those cases were there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Maybe not shareholders, but corporate sponsors certainly could. Slim Jim pulling sponsorship of the Rumble is what ended up being the last straw for Vince.

[Stiva]

I don’t have much to add other than agreeing with the choir on how deplorable this whole affair is but you get the sense that if people start digging and you see more women feeling comfortable enough to come forward themselves with their own stories, this could just be the start.

[Dav'oh]

Silence Kills. Silence led us here, silence will keep us here.

[strobogo]

9 hours ago, Sweet Brown Koko said:

Had Vince not sold the company, I wonder if people would have filed these lawsuits? It seems like although Vince got the cash, he inadvertently put himself in a position to finally be held accountable for his past behavior.

I think it's the other way around. All this stuff about investigations was starting to get out in 2022, Vince steps down, Stephanie takes his place, he forces himself back at the start of 2023, various corporate high ups leave (including Stephanie), company is suddenly on the market and a deal is made in an unusually short negotiation period. Sure seems like he was setting up his exit plan knowing there had to be a lot more stuff going to come out about him soon enough.

[El-P]

They knew. Vince steps down because of it. And then this happened :

And they knew.

This company is rotten to the core.

[Embrodak]

4 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

The WWE board voted unanimously to remove Vince as chairman, so they clearly had some idea. However, the lawsuit alleges that they declined to interview this woman during their internal investigation. That would indicate that if they didn't know the full extent, it was because they didn't want to know. By the way, Vince's longtime predilection for stiffing people on money he owes them being the tragic flaw that leads to his downfall is almost Shakespearean.

The excuse right now is the investigation was conducted by a third party, but I gotta say, if I’m the board and I get a report where the NDA signer was not interviewed, I maybe send them back in the trenches before I accept it.

Edit: This thing is such a shit show that I’m genuinely not comfortable assuming anything about who knew what and when until some actual investigative journalism and/or corporate insider leaks happen. Stephanie McMahon leaving the company reads as extremely sinister in retrospect in light of all this, but there was a whole lot of other creepy and abusive sexual misconduct that Vince was accused of that would have been more than enough to precipitate such a falling out, remember. The stuff described in this suit is illegal and heinous to a degree far beyond anything else Vince has ever been accused of, I would have to imagine that even exhibitionist, power-tripping douches like Vince and Johnny Ace would have kept certain aspects of it close to the chest out of sheer self-preservation instinct. Idk, just a terrible mess, I hope this woman gets the recompense she deserves.

[NintendoLogic]

Looks like we can rule out Ronda as a surprise Rumble entrant.

[El-P]

When Ronda Rousey is the voice of reason, you know things are fucked up.

And yeah. Good ol' Brucie. Been around for almost Vince's entire tenure. It's eIther two (or three) things.

1 : he's the dumbest motherfucker alive for not having seen what was happening.

2 : he knew and covered it.

And yeah, the third one I don't even want to think about it considering the hours of his podcast I listened.

But yeah. This isn't over. It's not just Vince, Laurinaitis and Lesnar. There are those unnamed corporate people. And you know they are at the top of the food chain.

Clean this fucking mess and then we'll have a talk.

[Embrodak]

So actually reading through the complaint from start to finish, the case against Vince, Laurinaitis, and Brock is likely airtight, but I would need to know more about the relevant laws to determine the complicity of the remainder of the WWE. Based on what is alleged and included, it can be reasonably surmised that the executives knew that Vince had a sexual relationship with this woman and that he was getting her bullshit jobs in the company on that basis, the legality of which I know nothing about and which may be wildly illegal and categorized as a form of sex trafficking all on its own (again, not a lawyer), but there is nothing included that substantiates the claim that they knew that any aspect of this relationship was involuntary on her part, or systematically exploitative and abusive on Vince’s part. The point that they probably should have known or suspected due to this being a recurrent pattern in Vince’s life certainly holds some weight, but sugar babies are a thing, *especially* in circles where that much power and that much money are commonplace (I had a friend that tried getting into that, there are a lot of wealthy executive types with stupid amounts of disposable cash that get off on having someone in their life that is understood as purely transactionally connected to them), and depending on what people said in texts, emails, etc (which would come out in discovery, if the case moves that far), it seems like WWE could mount a plausible defense that there was no basis for anyone in a position of authority to suspect the darker and more fucked-up aspects of this (gang rapes, scat threesomes, trafficking her) were a part of this arrangement. That said, it would be entirely *unsurprising* to discover that the heinous shit was something of an open secret, but the lawsuit filing doesn’t really substantively demonstrate that the way it demonstrates and suggests possession of incontrovertible evidence proving that Vince, Laurinaitis, and Brock are sick, sick puppies.

[El-P]

And really now. Paul Levesque. Working so closely with his father in law for more than 20 years. What did he know ?

This is a debacle.

[Tetsujin]

Burn this company to the ground and throw salt in its ruins so it never comes back.

[Jmare007]

2 hours ago, Embrodak said:

So actually reading through the complaint from start to finish, the case against Vince, Laurinaitis, and Brock is likely airtight, but I would need to know more about the relevant laws to determine the complicity of the remainder of the WWE. Based on what is alleged and included, it can be reasonably surmised that the executives knew that Vince had a sexual relationship with this woman and that he was getting her bullshit jobs in the company on that basis, the legality of which I know nothing about and which may be wildly illegal and categorized as a form of sex trafficking all on its own (again, not a lawyer), but there is nothing included that substantiates the claim that they knew that any aspect of this relationship was involuntary on her part, or systematically exploitative and abusive on Vince’s part. The point that they probably should have known or suspected due to this being a recurrent pattern in Vince’s life certainly holds some weight, but sugar babies are a thing, *especially* in circles where that much power and that much money are commonplace (I had a friend that tried getting into that, there are a lot of wealthy executive types with stupid amounts of disposable cash that get off on having someone in their life that is understood as purely transactionally connected to them), and depending on what people said in texts, emails, etc (which would come out in discovery, if the case moves that far), it seems like WWE could mount a plausible defense that there was no basis for anyone in a position of authority to suspect the darker and more fucked-up aspects of this (gang rapes, scat threesomes, trafficking her) were a part of this arrangement. That said, it would be entirely *unsurprising* to discover that the heinous shit was something of an open secret, but the lawsuit filing doesn’t really substantively demonstrate that the way it demonstrates and suggests possession of incontrovertible evidence proving that Vince, Laurinaitis, and Brock are sick, sick puppies.

I think you are making this case something it's not. I didn't read the whole thing, but from what I understand, Grant doesn't want to uncover all the fucked up shit that happened (happens?) in WWE under Vince. She wants reparations over that senile fucker not paying her what he signed for in the NDA after all the fucked up shit he did to her. She's not trying to prove other people knew exactly what McMahon was doing. WWE is not going to trial and doesn't have to prove anything in this case.

If WWE is ever involved in a case regarding these abuses, it more than likely will have more than 1 victim that takes them to court and it's gonna be a slew of more evidence, so who knows how viable a defense they could mount.

All I know is that Vince has a history of fucked up behavior, and the amount of NDA's he made women sign just in the last few years tells you he was unhinged, and who knows for how long. At least from my experience investigating this type of stuff (albeit from a different country), the tight knit circle of the abuser always knows. At best they know very little because they don't wanna know the details and convince themselves "that's just who (the abuser) is, it can't be THAT bad", but they know.

[sek69]

8 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

I think you are making this case something it's not. I didn't read the whole thing, but from what I understand, Grant doesn't want to uncover all the fucked up shit that happened (happens?) in WWE under Vince. She wants reparations over that senile fucker not paying her what he signed for in the NDA after all the fucked up shit he did to her. She's not trying to prove other people knew exactly what McMahon was doing. WWE is not going to trial and doesn't have to prove anything in this case.

Her lawyer released a statement basically hoping this lawsuit opens the door for others who went through that type of treatment from Vince.

[El-P]

Indeed. It opened a window of opportunity so that the details go public. Which is the important part in the grand scheme of things. "Sexual misconduct" is a bullshit euphemism that means nothing. Now the details are out. It's rape, mental and physical torture, sexual trafficking. And now it's out of the box and you can consider what happened to all those women who have been paid off in exchange for their silence. Without even thinking about all the others, who did not (because let's be real, this a systemic pattern).

The silence of the pro-wrestling community has indeed been deafening thus far, apart from generic corporate "let's move forward" bullshit. This is an embarrassment for everyone involved. 

[sek69]

14 minutes ago, El-P said:

The silence of the pro-wrestling community has indeed been deafening thus far, apart from generic corporate "let's move forward" bullshit. This is an embarrassment for everyone involved. 

You're not wrong, but at the same time what are they supposed to say? I'm sure everyone in WWE has been told to stfu because they don't want this to be the main topic of discussion on the weekend of their #2 show of the year, even though it absolutely is. Natalya made the closest thing to a statement by saying she read what everyone else did and while it ended with the usual "keep moving forward" nonsense, having someone who is held in high regard by a lot of the women acknowledge it makes it seem like the women's locker room is paying attention to this.

If I'm AEW or any other company right now you don't need to say a thing, just sit back and let the story speak for itself. The last thing you want to do is be seen like you're using this as another talking point in a tribal war between fanbases.