FanPost

Downfall of a Titan: Vince McMahon's 40 Year Reign Ends in Disgrace

After 40 years of iron-fisted control of the company he bought from his father and turned into a publicly traded monolith, Vince McMahon announced his retirement on Friday, unable to dodge the effects of a still unfolding sex scandal. McMahon joins the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, powerful men brought down by their own lascivious behavior. The difference between them is that while McMahon hasn’t been charged with a crime his downfall was far more precipitous, only taking just over a month.

For decades McMahon seemed teflon dodging everything from allegations of covering up a murder committed by one of his stars to a federal indictment on steroid distribution charges. Ultimately it wasn’t federal prosecutors that brought him down, it was three reporters from the Wall Street Journal. On June 15th the Journal reported that he was being investigated for paying a former WWE corporate employee $3 million in alleged hush money to cover up an affair. Twelve days later Rita Chatterton, the first woman to accuse McMahon of raping her in 1992 (the alleged incident took place in 1986) restated her claim in an interview with New York Magazine and was backed up by a new witness. On July 8 the Journal published a second report expanding on the details of the first and revealing more NDA agreements for increasingly worse alleged sexual misconduct. Now, fourteen days later, he’s gone, having saved the board from being forced to take action against him. That’s a quick capitulation for a man so notorious for ignoring self-inflicted scandal and barreling through with business that most people didn’t take seriously him "stepping back" from his role as CEO and chairman two days after the first report dropped. It lends credence to the idea that there’s at least one more story yet to drop

His exit in disgrace brings to an end a controversial career that saw him go from comically bad commentator to onscreen heel authority supervillain all as he became a real-life supervillain and the most powerful man in wrestling. After pillaging and plundering the territories and ultimately wiping them out of existence, he outlasted the poorly run WCW before buying his rival in 2001. His success in the late 90s allowed him to take his private company public, making him an even wealthier man. He spent the next two decades ruling over WWE like an authoritarian dictator as he worked to make his dream of WWE being a company respected in mainstream entertainment and Wall Street circles a reality. This was principally at the expense of the onscreen product which steadily declined in quality. In the last two years McMahon looked to finally be realizing his life’s dream. At the beginning of 2020 McMahon relieved his previous co-presidents George Barrios and Michelle Wilson, the two chief architects of WWE’s major corporatization, of their duties. After dodging several pandemic related controversies, he hired Nick Khan, the man who brokered the billion-dollar TV rights deal in 2019, as president. Khan brokered another billion-dollar deal, this time to sell the underperforming WWE Network to Peacock, and then set about using his quickly amassed cache to reshape the company in his image. He replaced corporate employees with his own people. He slashed the talent roster. Most notably, he took advantage of Vince’s displeasure with the failure of NXT to stifle the growth of All Elite Wrestling, supplanting Triple H and spearheading the complete transformation of the brand while Hunter was out fighting for his life with a serious heart condition. In May, Stephanie McMahon announced her leave of absence, out of nowhere, seemingly giving Khan a quick road to eventually succeeding McMahon. Just a few weeks after Stephanie’s sudden departure, the skeletons started falling out of Vince’s closet. Now in the wake of his unceremonious exit, it’s Stephanie who’s been appointed co-CEO alongside Khan. Earlier Friday it was announced that Triple H had returned to his previous position of EVP of Talent Relations, taking over for the much maligned (and rightfully so) John Laurinaitis who was also brought down in Vince’s sex scandal. During NXT’s black and gold heyday, many fans dreamt of Triple H taking over WWE creative. It appears that day may have finally arrived.

It seems all too unsurprising that man who referred to himself as the "genetic jackhammer", bragged about the size of his "grapefruits", and booked himself into an onscreen affair with Trish Stratus, would be brought down by his own lust. Vince McMahon has been called a lot of things in his long, complicated career. A visionary, a shark, a genius, an out of touch old man. Now as it’s come to a close by tweet, those names and whatever legacy he might’ve had in the wrestling business are all gone, replaced by another name: accused sexual predator. As WWE transitions into this new era, Vince, forever tarnished by his own reprehensible actions, will fade into the ash heap of history, with any luck never to be heard from again.


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