Vince McMahon “Is Not Coming Back To The Company”, TKO And Endeavor Exec Mark Shapiro Affirms After Former WWE Boss Sells Another $412M In Stock

Dade Hayes
·2 min read
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Vince McMahon, the ex-WWE impresario who abruptly left parent TKO Group Holdings’ board in the wake of a graphic sexual abuse lawsuit “is not coming back to the company,” TKO President Mark Shapiro affirmed Wednesday.

Speaking at a conference in San Francisco hosted by Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley, Shapiro said TKO “did not participate in the recent sale of Vince McMahon’s load that he dropped off.” He was referring to McMahon’s decision, revealed Monday in an SEC filing, to sell $412 million in TKO stock. The company was formed last fall as a holding entity for the WWE and UFC, controlled by Endeavor.

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Shapiro said the most recent stock sale cut McMahon’s holdings to 15 million shares. He had sold an even bigger tranche several weeks ago and his position in the company is down from an initial level of 28 million shares, Shapiro said, giving him 8.5% of all shares.

Reiterating the sentiment he expressed on TKO’s fourth quarter earnings call, Shapiro said, “We’re not in conversations with” McMahon. “We don’t know his motives, his plans or his timeline. … He doesn’t work for the company, doesn’t come into the office and he’s not coming back to the company. And that’s where we sit.”

McMahon exited as executive chairman of TKO in the same week he had appeared alongside Shapiro, Ari Emanuel and Dwayne Johnson at a New York Stock Exchange bell-ringing ceremony. Also that week, TKO and Netflix revealed a $5 billion rights deal for the WWE’s Raw franchise.

After taking over the WWE from his father in the 1980s, McMahon transformed it from a regional attraction to a global media enterprise, becoming a billionaire in the process. In recent years, however, he has admitted to paying multiple women hush money in order to suppress sexual harassment and misconduct claims. The most explosive case became public earlier this year, when former employee Janel Grant accused McMahon of hiring her at the pro wrestling outfit in exchange for sex. Sometimes collaborating with at least one wrestler and company executive, Grant alleges, McMahon trafficked her and sexually abused her for years.

Now 78, McMahon has called Grant’s lawsuit “a vindictive distortion of the truth” and maintained he intends to fight the suit.

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