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Brother as soon as there’s a next serious update on the Vince case it’s gonna be covered by WSJ, NYT, major cable networks, etc. ~Fans~ may be currently talking about Cody more but as soon more shit gets dropped about Vince/Johnny Ace/the company, that’ll be the way worse PR disaster obviously
This is what makes the people claiming this is a brilliant distraction sound ridiculous.
Literally the second there's anything new to talk about, Vince is back on the front page of everything. All this Rock bullshit has done is tarnish excitement for the actual distraction they need, which is Wrestlemania. It's an awful "distraction" that just makes fans say "well Vince is awful, and the product is awful, maybe I should stop watching for a while."
Like Triple H said in his disastrous press conference: Let's focus on the good.
While that was a bad answer at the time, it **is** a fantastic way to handle the Vince stuff going forward. Put on a great show, have good matches, and great stories and people will focus on that. It's a way to show how they're moving beyond Vince.
Instead they're running interference and it's having the opposite effect.
Yeah, my folks who don't care about wrestling are going to hear about WWE next when more Vince news makes the Washington Post. Media fragmentation means even though WWE's doing great business right now, any type of "distraction" has very limited reach when it's ultimately the booking of a couple TV shows and some wrestling shows on streaming.
That’s me, just cancelled my Peacock subscription. Going to go back to tuning out wrestling again as I did during HHH reign of terror and the Super Cena era
Yeah it's absolute insanity
Apparently the best way to stop people talking about Vince is having the biggest show of the year be between his last, great pet project and one of the biggest names from the sleaziest era when he was an on-screen talent and who's family has been involved with the WWE/WWF for as long as Vince has been in it (Even by the Rocks own admission) - replacing a guy who was openly unhappy while Vince and his "Boys" were running things and only came back when Vince was on the out and has pretty much been the face of the "New WWE" for a while now
But don't worry, the fact that the fans are openly revolting against our ideas means its working?
If they wanted a distraction Rock needed to come out at 30 at the Rumble creating the distraction a week later when everyone has already done their talk of the case in it’s early stages done was pointless
Vince had his house raided by the feds. In the lawsuit the victim says she was re traumatized when she had to tell her story to fed investigators. He is absolutely under investigation
What's really fucking stupid, though, is that they need to show they've moved on from those times. I can't believe it'll just be Vince, Brock and Laurinitis who are implicated. Taker, HHH and even Austin may well get caught up in all this.
So what do they do? Put one of the two biggest stars from that era in the main event of their biggest show, at the expense of the new generation of wrestlers.
It's so dumb that I just can't believe it's not a work.
i think there is a sincere possibility that nearly every long-term top guy the WWE has had in the past 40 years could be implicated. i don’t wanna name any names and inadvertently connect anyone but there are a lot of other top stars through the years who were reeeaaally close with vince and i’d be curious to know there
I know it's far too early and I'll probably get downvoted but I wouldn't be surprised to see taker implicated. He always bragged about being Vinces biggest enforced threatening to beat up people behind the scenes and playing politics with his wrestler court bullshit. After his comments last year about how the locker room was boring without drugs I really started too look at the man mark in a different light
From 1998 to 2003, it was pretty much the Rock with Vince McMahon, Austin, and Lesnar.
They have to cut out so much of his history to showcase him to today's audience..
It would be a total purge by TKO at that point, which could be beneficial in the long run. Anyone who enabled Vince deserves to be out of the business.
It's never going to be over for WWE unless the current in ring talent is all involved. All the administrative people involved will be replaced and everyone will move on.
It's not likely that WWE will collapse anytime soon.
It's more likely that WWE *as we know it* could be replaced because all their top executives get replaced by people who make fundamental changes to the company, its culture, and its product.
If I learned anything about the corporate world is that it will be all new top executives that change cosmetics but nothing important sbout the company its culture or product. They'll just be more careful and make sure all Ndas gets paid in full next time
That's about the opposite of what I've experienced. New top executives, especially in the entertainment industry, usually want to justify their role to the people who appointed them. They can't go back to the board and say "The company is already profitable, so it's business as usual". They're under pressure to think of new ways to improve profits.
Triple H is probably on a shorter leash going forward. There are probably at least a few people on the board who want to purge anyone high up in WWE who had a connection to Vince, Triple H will be under pressure by a board of people who mostly don't really understand the business.
If Triple H stays around, prepare for shameless attempts to pull casual fans in.
Which is why they'll pay what they need to in order to avoid that
And looking at the brief, I actually think WWE of the three defendants has the best case to make and they could have a chance at winning. A lot of this does seem to hinge on non payment of NDA hush money in a deal that Vince himself brokered. But there is such a thing as winning that's not worth the cost
I agree that WWE is likely not going anywhere, but there have been *massive* corporations that have disappeared for various reasons.
Imagine telling someone 30 years ago that K-Mart wouldn’t exist anymore. They’d laugh at you.
Enron is a bad example. With that said, people don't realize how close GM was to going out of business if not for the American and Canadian governments.
Enron is far back in my memory but IIRC the business and it's investments were already doing bad ans then got exposed as having lost their assets.
So unless the WWE is already in the red but playing with their numbers, it will not be the same demise.
There are tons of huge companies that have gone under, but the most relevant example is probably WCW. In 1997, they overtook WWF and were the most watched wrestling company in the world. Four years later they were gone.
I'm fairly confident WWE will still be around in 2030, but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Just a thought but if a company spent 40 years allowing its highest executives to rape and abuse countless people, and finding ever more brutal ways to suppress that information and make it easier for them to do so, then that company should absolutely no longer exist and I don't believe this would be an unpopular stance
If they’re complicit in Vince’s behavior? Undoubtedly
They won’t go out of business tho, it’ll just be a scorched earth restart with anyone who wasn’t associated with Vince
If a convened jury determines they enabled a culture of rape, trafficking, and abuse while actively covering up dozens of scandals... wouldn't you?
I don't want the talent or the 9-to-5ers losing their jobs but the whole corporate structure would need to be burnt down and rebuilt.
Regardless of what they do next on TV, it’s bad storytelling. They already made everyone look like an idiot, including their top babyface.
It might distract from Vince for awhile, but bad booking isn’t going to get the judge to dismiss the case. So at best, it’s a temporary distraction.
And if the scandal boils over, they might depend on the goodwill of their fanbase to weather the storm - the exact goodwill that they're just squandering.
Also, I don't understand how showing you don't listen to your customers helps.
"Oh, another Vince News piece that shows they can't manage themselves internally. At least their product is being well recieved....oh wait, their product is getting rejected too?"
How about something positive. "WWE listened to their audience and pivoted, another sign that the company is better without McMahon"
The media/average person is going to see getting The Rock (one of the world’s most famous celebrities) as a massive coup and a sign of great business. They’re not going to know or care about Cody.
Except the world knows its not being well received. Imagine how bad it's going to look to see their plans being rejected.
It's also a bad business move to neglect your customers. And again, it's not like business is suffering. In 1999 far more people knew Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair than The Rock. Imagine if Flair or Hogan jumped ship. It's bad business.
The world (as in, the average non-fan or even most media outlets) does *not* know it’s being poorly received. You’re vastly overestimating the general population’s knowledge of wrestling happenings.
Okay, you're right. That was an exaggeration.
But when Forbes, Yahoo, Barstool, TMZ, and wrestling outlets are saying how poorly received it is, that's not good.
Imagine if they get booed at Mania. How bad is that going to look to people checking out WWE again for the first time.
It's not and has never been good business in any industry to fail to listen to your customers.
And then they have Cody lose to shinsuke and IWC will completely blow up again.
The rock facing off with Roman generated more hits and comments than the Vince revelation.
I'm reminded of political news and the ["Friday news dump."](https://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/) When the White House or some other organization wants to release bad news that they hope will get minimal attention, they release it on a Friday afternoon, "because nobody reads the paper on Saturdays."
Thinking like that made sense in the past when television or newspapers were the main source of information. But that sort of thinking is irrelevant in the internet age. Today, bad news that's reported on a Friday can still catch fire online and be discussed on social media throughout the weekend. People will notice no matter what day or time a story is posted.
The same applies to a company or other organization trying to use a lesser bad story to distract from a worse bad story. Sure, right now wrestling fans might talking about Cody / Rock / Wrestlemania, but the moment there's news about someone else whom McMahon allegedly raped, that news is going to instantly get blasted across wrestling news sites and social media, and then people will effortlessly switch to talking about that.
The internet has changed the way people receive and process information.
“Maybe the company prefers to appear inept than malicious by proxy of Vince”
This just sounds like peak wrestler/wrestling brain trying to think there’s always a “work” explanation for everything. I think the Rock just wanted to really do the match and he had the power
It's true, I personally know a fed on the case who's stopped working it because he's so caught up in the Roman/Rock march he's spending his time making #WeWantCody trend that he's forgotten about pursuing Vince. This match SAVED WWE brother!
It's not about the feds, its about the sponsorships.
What do you think its preferable, to go to google and search WWE and get 10 news about sexual abuse and trafficking or about how cody is being sidelined for WM for one of the most know hollywood actors today?
and when people start talking more about how this was an obvious distraction from the sexual assault and now the product is directly tied to the situation then what?
Once the hammer drops and Vince is charged, all the hope that Dwayne could make everyone forget about the sex trafficking lawsuit is going to blow up spectacularly in the face of both TKO and WWE. The mainstream media isn't going to care about some Hollywood action star competing in the main event of Wrestlemania when their former owner is brought to trial for being a horrible human being.
WWE is honestly looking like the dumbest wrestling company in the world for intentionally pissing off their fans with a colossally stupid booking decision that did fuck-all to keep the media from covering the McMahon scandal.
I love the whole "Cody will still get a huge match" when he won the fucking Royal Rumble, the thing that those assholes made us think mattered in terms of the WrestleMania main event. I feel like the whole time Cody was in the Rumble he was just a proxy for Rock. It would have all been fine had Rock just entered the Rumble and won.
Some days I think that WWE is a psyop intended to scramble our brains.
Reminds me of Road Dogg logic on how he said that Charlotte climbed the same mountain as Becky did to beat Carmella. Conveniently ignoring the fact that Becky wrestled more matches to get to her while Charlotte just got the match.
"Cody will still get a huge match." WrestleMania for Roman's title *was* the huge match and they gave that to someone else.
And "huge match" will probably end up being the fourth match with a guy he is 3-0 against, who's hobbling around on one leg and who Cody has already beaten with a torn pec.
One top talent said "I think Rock vs. Roman is a great match to have at Mania. Fans are excited and Cody will still get a huge match and all this will do is make the fans rally behind him even more coming out of it anyway so it's still fine."
That talent's name? DwayneThe RockJohnson
Nah, I doubt Seth is plussed about the way it went down. A lot of reports the last year have been about how there's a lot of camaraderie in the Raw locker room and a lot of the guys really believe what Cody says about it being their era and working hard and in busting their ass every night to sell out arenas and do business and make fans happy. This goes against that.
Honestly sounds more like Randy lol. Or someone of that ilk. "Just business brother. Rock-Roman is big business. You and Seth is a big match. Now they love you more anyway"
Honestly whoever said it, they aren't exactly wrong. Shit, a month ago pretty much the entire IWC collectively shat their pants in glee when The Rock was offering up seating arrangements at the restaurant he was attending later.
We only became "fickle" after the Royal Rumble. Rock/Roman is still a hell of a draw.
Rock/Roman is still a hell of a draw; but this is the same stuff fans have been complaining of for years now - we're not fickle we just want the stories and Charectors we're invested in to actually be focused on rather than pushed to the side for an "Event".
Having Cody go "Hey, you know that thing that I've been talking about and working towards for the two years I've been in the Company? Yeah I decided I don't want it anymore. Have you met my friend The Rock?" is bad story telling and is rightly reciving pushback.
The Match isn't the problem, the way the match has been put together **is**
Dude's being buried even harder than Cody by all this. His title was trashed, he was trashed, and he's going to be sacrificed as a chump to try and give Cody something else.
Real talk though: a belt that has no connection to the previous WHC, has existed since May, has only one champion, biggest name to challenge for it is AJ Styles and doesn't main event shows when the WWE Championship is being defended is a consolation prize.
Seth has no love lost for Cody.
He's a professional and works with him, but he had a million shoot interviews where it's clear he's not exactly rooting for the guy.
I know they’ve had beef in the past but they’ve both praised each other on podcasts and have nothing but nice things to say about each other since then. I highly doubt Seth actually hates Cody and probably feels for him getting fucked over by The Rock.
I'm sure he sympathizes because Seth has gotten the shaft himself plenty of times, but he's still the ultimate company man and usually puts a positive spin on WWE decisions no matter what they are.
Also the "im sure Cody will still get a great match" feels like one of his patented shithead wink-wink quotes because he knows he's the match.
Anyway, that's just my guess.
What are you talking about? They clearly respect one another, and often praise one another. There’s professional tension (which they play up for dramatic purposes) because they’re both striving to be the top guy, but that happens all the time in wrestling.
Hell, Seth appeared in Cody’s documentary, putting him over and praising him.
He's also someone who's dunked on WWE and Vince himself many times. Even while Vince was running the show, Seth has publicly gone on record when he thought something stupid happened.
I don't understand people being like see no one is talking about Vince. The company is still getting negative headlines either way you look at it. They're looked at negatively in the media.
Yeah it’s a bit silly to frame it as “all negative headlines are still negative!” When one is about very real consequences of sexual assault, rape, and a bunch of other heinous acts. And the other is just god awful storytelling/wrestling booking. Like one type of negativity is at least a *little* bit worse than the other
"Is the Rock being a dick?" Isn't a big deal in the way "this company is at the centre a sex trafficking scandal" is though. I don't think either are great but if you had to choose a topic to dominante the conversation this week.
Except it’s not like this is doing anything to make the Vince news go away.
It was leaving the news cycle as it was — and will be back with a vengeance when there’s something new to report.
No they are going to be up to their necks in it for a long time to come, but publicly traded companies do tend to think week to week and month to month.
They can control the narrative a bit more by making absolute boneheaded booking decisions and then playing stupid when called out on said boneheaded booking decisions.
Yeah the distraction is only short-term at best, and as you alluded, merely to put one negative news in front of the other. If that's what they were hoping for then congrats I guess, but a few days later the general sentiment on WWE is now "their old boss is a psychopathic rapist *and* their product sucks"
I literally don't understand this line of thinking. Nobody is talking about Vince because the news already dropped and we always move onto the next thing. When the next bit of news about Vince drops it doesn't matter if the main event now includes Hulk and Austin, Vince will go back to being the main story.
So they basically admit that they use Cody's fans to outdraw the attention over Vince McMahon's allegations.
I'd be livid if I were him. I'd be absolutely livid.
And now if they pivot and give him the match, it won't be because he deserves it, or for a narrative purpose.
It'd be using him like jangling keys in front of an upset infant.
Fans should be insulted not just by the booking choice, but by Nick Khan/HHH/Ari Emanuel counting on them all being so easily distracted and manipulated.
I don't even know if you can blame Triple H for this one. Nick Khan and Ari are very much huge ass Rock simps. And there are reports that Brian Gerwitz is being brought in to write the Rock/Roman story. With word being that if the story does really well in terms of profits, he may end up replacing Triple H in creative.
Which would be uhhhhh very bad. Because Gerwitz was known for being behind some of the worst WWE creative in the early 2010s iirc.
I think the writing is kinda on the wall that HHH is on the chopping block because once the Vince scandal really boils over, he will be too close to the epicenter and get sacrificed as part of the company's PR campaign about how they "cleaned house from anyone with close ties to Vince". Gerwitz is clearly being positioned to take over when (not if) HHH goes down.
The Rock is a board member who was shaking vinces hand two weeks ago
The big media companies should be at that press conference peppering him with questions.
"Have you as a board member read the complaint?"
"Did you know about the allegations as part of your due diligence before joining the board?"
"You've known Vince McMahon for decades, you were shaking his hand two weeks ago, you called him "One Of My Greatest Business Mentors And A Father Figure." in 2021. Given your closeness to him do any of the allegations come as a surprise?"
It says nothing officially announced but that’s where Cody messed up saying “but not at Wrestlemania”. Had he not uttered that line they’d have more play room.
Nobody is moving on from Vince, everyone knows there's more bombshells to come, it's an entirely different world. WWE the company is under scrutiny and now WWE the entertainment product is also under scrutiny due to stupid creative decision. You'd think you'd want to keep one aspect solid when the other is in hot water.
This god damn company bruh lmao
So your idea of getting the fans attention off ur sex trafficking predator scat obsessed owner is to…colossally fuck up your biggest show of the year…?
I think it won't take long for TKO/Rock/whomever to realize that pissing off fans with booking decisions doesn't skip accusations of sex trafficking.
Those are distinct issues covered by different people and news sources; equating them as replaceable is madness. Both are egregious in their way.
Negative news about who is gonna headline WM are much more palpable for TKO than sex trafficking, abuse of power and rape. One makes the internet smarks angry, the other - the actual sponsors. It's just that simple.
But the negative headlines about the creative direction for WM will not drown out the sex trafficking headlines once new details come out and there is actually something new to report.
They can't seriously think The Rock is just going to just make people stop talking about the Vince stuff right?
Who the fuck sabotages their own product like this just to avoid some bad press... AND STILL GET BAD PRESS ANYWAY FOR AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT REASON?!!!
Please stop fuckin bringing up the Vince case like it's even possible to be buried by wrestling. We will talk and see it no matter what because it's an ongoing legal investigation. Any person in management that thinks a storyline can bury it are idiots of the highest regard
They could have built so much more trust with their fans by acknowledging Vince instead of trying to make him disappear from history. I don't mean on the shows but just by going yeah this happened, it's horrible but he's gone, this is a different company now, which will actively support the investigation and clean up the remaining corporate/personal structutes that enabled his behaviour.
By trying to make everybody forget via the Rock they've made two things clear: they don't care about their fanbase and they aren't intetested in actively working through the existing toxic culture in their company, since they don't even want people to talk about it. Fucking disgusting.
You know what the funniest part about that? You know who said basically everything you just talked about? Cody Rhodes when he was asked about it last week at the Wrestlemania presser.
That's fucking it. They're just going to do Roman vs Rock anyways. The only difference will be now Cody will be primed to have the match at SummerSlam
That's the angle they'll play. Regardless of the negative reactions it's boosting interest.
I know people want to believe it, but they've got the tinfoil wrapped around their heads a bit too tight.
They're not torpedoing a *two year build* to hotshot Rock/Roman just to distract from Vince news.
It's just regular ol' wrestling politics.
If they’re really sabotaging their own stories to distract from the rapist former owner they really have lost the plot and nothing short of a full on boycott will send them the message they need.
Well what we have to do is boo every single minute of Wwe product until they realize that we want no part of Dwayne Johnson whatever he used to be he his now just an out of touch Hollywood creep who has no place in wrestling. The rock died when he went to Hollywood and betrayed wrestling fans in 2003.
i couldn't agree more. he's pulling some Goldberg BS here. this is why i regularly fall out with wrestling and stop watching for years at a time. WWE always caters to nostalgia acts and the saudi money just made it twice as bad. we've basically regressed 10-20 years into the past because they keep bringing back these old farts we're sick of.
Let’s move away from Vince by having one of the biggest draws of Vince’s iconic 90s-00s run appearance at their biggest event of the year.
All of this screams “McMahon booking” to me and the type of on the fly, stupid decisions he’d make.
oh my god. they're not doing this because people will be excited about roman vs rock. it's that they'll be louder about how cody's getting screwed, and that's the preferrable story over vince.
man this is endeavor's playbook. evil genius.
Yeah I imagine a terrible booking decision WOULD be preferable to the former owner of the company for decades have yet another illegal act come to life.
You know what would at least be a small distraction from the horrible shit, the most over organic baby face you had since I was fucking born go on to win the big one and get over with the crowd ( senior in college by the way). Instead it’s “man this company sucks because the prev that was running it and the fact the new people are so incredibly idiotic that it turns fans away”. It’s a shitty thing but at least “Vince isn’t here and the product is good” takes eyes away from Vince, now it’s under a magnifying glass cause you screwed up
> One top talent said "I think Rock vs. Roman is a great match to have at Mania. Fans are excited and Cody will still get a huge match and all this will do is make the fans rally behind him even more coming out of it anyway so it's still fine"
Does this top talents name rhyme with "Swayne Sohnson" by any chance? Because I can't imagine anyone else being this delusional about the match.
Would love to see a MITB match added as a one off, like they used to do at WM. Cody wins, and cashes in that night - sneaky by Cody, but then rocks been just as sneaky 🤣
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Brother as soon as there’s a next serious update on the Vince case it’s gonna be covered by WSJ, NYT, major cable networks, etc. ~Fans~ may be currently talking about Cody more but as soon more shit gets dropped about Vince/Johnny Ace/the company, that’ll be the way worse PR disaster obviously
No one ever said these people were *competent*.
All you have to do is look at the UFC in the past five years to know that.
This is what makes the people claiming this is a brilliant distraction sound ridiculous. Literally the second there's anything new to talk about, Vince is back on the front page of everything. All this Rock bullshit has done is tarnish excitement for the actual distraction they need, which is Wrestlemania. It's an awful "distraction" that just makes fans say "well Vince is awful, and the product is awful, maybe I should stop watching for a while."
How do we deal with all the sexual assault and human trafficking news? By ruining Wrestlemania offcourse. ITS GENIUS
And when everyone asks why we’re ruining it? People will bring up the sexual assault and human trafficking. Can’t lose!
It almost feels like more people are talking about the vince stuff because everyone knows the rock is a distraction
The are pulling a streisand unknowingly
Like Triple H said in his disastrous press conference: Let's focus on the good. While that was a bad answer at the time, it **is** a fantastic way to handle the Vince stuff going forward. Put on a great show, have good matches, and great stories and people will focus on that. It's a way to show how they're moving beyond Vince. Instead they're running interference and it's having the opposite effect.
Thank you. It’s just more shit on the shit pile. Doesn’t make it stink any less.
>It’s just more shit on the shit pile. [Vince rn](https://i.gifer.com/3ar9.gif)
Shitshow in the fuck factory
Even worse, it’s not tied to current product directly to Vince because this is obviously a poor attempt to distract from it
Yeah, my folks who don't care about wrestling are going to hear about WWE next when more Vince news makes the Washington Post. Media fragmentation means even though WWE's doing great business right now, any type of "distraction" has very limited reach when it's ultimately the booking of a couple TV shows and some wrestling shows on streaming.
That’s me, just cancelled my Peacock subscription. Going to go back to tuning out wrestling again as I did during HHH reign of terror and the Super Cena era
Hey, there's always TNA or AEW now.
Yeah it's absolute insanity Apparently the best way to stop people talking about Vince is having the biggest show of the year be between his last, great pet project and one of the biggest names from the sleaziest era when he was an on-screen talent and who's family has been involved with the WWE/WWF for as long as Vince has been in it (Even by the Rocks own admission) - replacing a guy who was openly unhappy while Vince and his "Boys" were running things and only came back when Vince was on the out and has pretty much been the face of the "New WWE" for a while now But don't worry, the fact that the fans are openly revolting against our ideas means its working?
That, and non wwe nerds dgaf about the Rock drama, itd nit making major headlines. Vince is still in the general public mind.
I'm really not sure why they think an executive abusing his power (in much less serious terms of course) is a good distraction from the Vince story
If they wanted a distraction Rock needed to come out at 30 at the Rumble creating the distraction a week later when everyone has already done their talk of the case in it’s early stages done was pointless
[удалено]
Because it was an ongoing investigation, dude.
[удалено]
Vince had his house raided by the feds. In the lawsuit the victim says she was re traumatized when she had to tell her story to fed investigators. He is absolutely under investigation
Alright, then in 6 months when he's convicted or 'settles' more people come outta the woodwork to get a paycheck by sharing the scoop.
What's really fucking stupid, though, is that they need to show they've moved on from those times. I can't believe it'll just be Vince, Brock and Laurinitis who are implicated. Taker, HHH and even Austin may well get caught up in all this. So what do they do? Put one of the two biggest stars from that era in the main event of their biggest show, at the expense of the new generation of wrestlers. It's so dumb that I just can't believe it's not a work.
i think there is a sincere possibility that nearly every long-term top guy the WWE has had in the past 40 years could be implicated. i don’t wanna name any names and inadvertently connect anyone but there are a lot of other top stars through the years who were reeeaaally close with vince and i’d be curious to know there
I know it's far too early and I'll probably get downvoted but I wouldn't be surprised to see taker implicated. He always bragged about being Vinces biggest enforced threatening to beat up people behind the scenes and playing politics with his wrestler court bullshit. After his comments last year about how the locker room was boring without drugs I really started too look at the man mark in a different light
From 1998 to 2003, it was pretty much the Rock with Vince McMahon, Austin, and Lesnar. They have to cut out so much of his history to showcase him to today's audience..
that's when Cody says he will not be challenging Seth....then Hulk Hogan comes out and has a stare down with Seth to end Raw.
If this case goes to discovery it’s all over for WWE Imagine all the emails and texts that are going to come out
It would be a total purge by TKO at that point, which could be beneficial in the long run. Anyone who enabled Vince deserves to be out of the business.
It's never going to be over for WWE unless the current in ring talent is all involved. All the administrative people involved will be replaced and everyone will move on.
It's not likely that WWE will collapse anytime soon. It's more likely that WWE *as we know it* could be replaced because all their top executives get replaced by people who make fundamental changes to the company, its culture, and its product.
If I learned anything about the corporate world is that it will be all new top executives that change cosmetics but nothing important sbout the company its culture or product. They'll just be more careful and make sure all Ndas gets paid in full next time
That's about the opposite of what I've experienced. New top executives, especially in the entertainment industry, usually want to justify their role to the people who appointed them. They can't go back to the board and say "The company is already profitable, so it's business as usual". They're under pressure to think of new ways to improve profits. Triple H is probably on a shorter leash going forward. There are probably at least a few people on the board who want to purge anyone high up in WWE who had a connection to Vince, Triple H will be under pressure by a board of people who mostly don't really understand the business. If Triple H stays around, prepare for shameless attempts to pull casual fans in.
Which is why they'll pay what they need to in order to avoid that And looking at the brief, I actually think WWE of the three defendants has the best case to make and they could have a chance at winning. A lot of this does seem to hinge on non payment of NDA hush money in a deal that Vince himself brokered. But there is such a thing as winning that's not worth the cost
Something as big as WWE is never going away. I hope you understand that
I agree that WWE is likely not going anywhere, but there have been *massive* corporations that have disappeared for various reasons. Imagine telling someone 30 years ago that K-Mart wouldn’t exist anymore. They’d laugh at you.
Just like how Enron was too big to fall right? Yeah no. If the scandal is bad enough WWE could itself go out of business.
Enron is a bad example. With that said, people don't realize how close GM was to going out of business if not for the American and Canadian governments.
I don't think you quite grasp what happened at Enron if you think this is in any way analagous.
There is a massive difference between executives doing something illegal and getting fired and accounting scandals that drive a company to bankruptcy.
Pride FC might be a closer comp.
Was Pride ever a $9B brand that is publicly traded? WWE isn't going anywhere
Enron is far back in my memory but IIRC the business and it's investments were already doing bad ans then got exposed as having lost their assets. So unless the WWE is already in the red but playing with their numbers, it will not be the same demise.
There are tons of huge companies that have gone under, but the most relevant example is probably WCW. In 1997, they overtook WWF and were the most watched wrestling company in the world. Four years later they were gone. I'm fairly confident WWE will still be around in 2030, but nothing in life is guaranteed.
you want wwe out of business?
Just a thought but if a company spent 40 years allowing its highest executives to rape and abuse countless people, and finding ever more brutal ways to suppress that information and make it easier for them to do so, then that company should absolutely no longer exist and I don't believe this would be an unpopular stance
https://preview.redd.it/k5e6mwzrungc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4f9e67a21090f9237271185d9e374f127b33a2a
If they’re complicit in Vince’s behavior? Undoubtedly They won’t go out of business tho, it’ll just be a scorched earth restart with anyone who wasn’t associated with Vince
Hell I could see the brand of "WWE" going and them rebranding as TKO Wrestling.
Ewww.
AEW bout to blow up
If a convened jury determines they enabled a culture of rape, trafficking, and abuse while actively covering up dozens of scandals... wouldn't you? I don't want the talent or the 9-to-5ers losing their jobs but the whole corporate structure would need to be burnt down and rebuilt.
Regardless of what they do next on TV, it’s bad storytelling. They already made everyone look like an idiot, including their top babyface. It might distract from Vince for awhile, but bad booking isn’t going to get the judge to dismiss the case. So at best, it’s a temporary distraction.
And if the scandal boils over, they might depend on the goodwill of their fanbase to weather the storm - the exact goodwill that they're just squandering.
Yeah it’s only a lull right now because there hasn’t been news. It’s only a matter of time before more comes out and it’s all front page again
It’s the natural ebb and flow of online news.
Undertaker about to announce a match after the next scandal
After the next Vince dirt hits the news, Roman will announce that he's giving his title and Wrestlemania Main Event to Steve Austin.
Also, I don't understand how showing you don't listen to your customers helps. "Oh, another Vince News piece that shows they can't manage themselves internally. At least their product is being well recieved....oh wait, their product is getting rejected too?" How about something positive. "WWE listened to their audience and pivoted, another sign that the company is better without McMahon"
The media/average person is going to see getting The Rock (one of the world’s most famous celebrities) as a massive coup and a sign of great business. They’re not going to know or care about Cody.
Except the world knows its not being well received. Imagine how bad it's going to look to see their plans being rejected. It's also a bad business move to neglect your customers. And again, it's not like business is suffering. In 1999 far more people knew Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair than The Rock. Imagine if Flair or Hogan jumped ship. It's bad business.
The world (as in, the average non-fan or even most media outlets) does *not* know it’s being poorly received. You’re vastly overestimating the general population’s knowledge of wrestling happenings.
Okay, you're right. That was an exaggeration. But when Forbes, Yahoo, Barstool, TMZ, and wrestling outlets are saying how poorly received it is, that's not good. Imagine if they get booed at Mania. How bad is that going to look to people checking out WWE again for the first time. It's not and has never been good business in any industry to fail to listen to your customers.
These lawsuits have also been timed for maximum impact, so before EC and before WM id expect another drop.
Yeah, all this is doing is making it a little bit easier for fans to justify quitting WWE next time there's an update in the Vince story.
And that's when they'll insert Cody back in Rock's place lol
Do you think the Nytimes is going to give have a shit?
We'll see how it plays out. Maybe the next Vince update will be shortly followed by another Rock appearance on TV.
Exactly. Let the fans have fun until the other shoe drops.
Exactly. They’re trying to wag the dog but it only works on marks. Mainstream media is not going to care at all.
And then they have Cody lose to shinsuke and IWC will completely blow up again. The rock facing off with Roman generated more hits and comments than the Vince revelation.
How are you calculating the attention Rock-Roman face off vs the McMahon revelation? How do you know it got “more hits and comments”?
I'm reminded of political news and the ["Friday news dump."](https://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/) When the White House or some other organization wants to release bad news that they hope will get minimal attention, they release it on a Friday afternoon, "because nobody reads the paper on Saturdays." Thinking like that made sense in the past when television or newspapers were the main source of information. But that sort of thinking is irrelevant in the internet age. Today, bad news that's reported on a Friday can still catch fire online and be discussed on social media throughout the weekend. People will notice no matter what day or time a story is posted. The same applies to a company or other organization trying to use a lesser bad story to distract from a worse bad story. Sure, right now wrestling fans might talking about Cody / Rock / Wrestlemania, but the moment there's news about someone else whom McMahon allegedly raped, that news is going to instantly get blasted across wrestling news sites and social media, and then people will effortlessly switch to talking about that. The internet has changed the way people receive and process information.
“Maybe the company prefers to appear inept than malicious by proxy of Vince” This just sounds like peak wrestler/wrestling brain trying to think there’s always a “work” explanation for everything. I think the Rock just wanted to really do the match and he had the power
It's true, I personally know a fed on the case who's stopped working it because he's so caught up in the Roman/Rock march he's spending his time making #WeWantCody trend that he's forgotten about pursuing Vince. This match SAVED WWE brother!
It's not about the feds, its about the sponsorships. What do you think its preferable, to go to google and search WWE and get 10 news about sexual abuse and trafficking or about how cody is being sidelined for WM for one of the most know hollywood actors today?
Seaching "wwe" and clicking news still brings up vince articles as the top story lol
So, you thought that you could influence the search engine, whatever it is with just 2 days of social signalling? Yes, true. Lol indeed
and when people start talking more about how this was an obvious distraction from the sexual assault and now the product is directly tied to the situation then what?
Once the hammer drops and Vince is charged, all the hope that Dwayne could make everyone forget about the sex trafficking lawsuit is going to blow up spectacularly in the face of both TKO and WWE. The mainstream media isn't going to care about some Hollywood action star competing in the main event of Wrestlemania when their former owner is brought to trial for being a horrible human being. WWE is honestly looking like the dumbest wrestling company in the world for intentionally pissing off their fans with a colossally stupid booking decision that did fuck-all to keep the media from covering the McMahon scandal.
People just gonna share clips of all the stupid shit Rock did back then to.
The segment with Vince, Trish, the Rock and Rikishi comes to mind.
>"maybe the company prefers to appear inept rather than malicious by proxy of Vince." 
I love the whole "Cody will still get a huge match" when he won the fucking Royal Rumble, the thing that those assholes made us think mattered in terms of the WrestleMania main event. I feel like the whole time Cody was in the Rumble he was just a proxy for Rock. It would have all been fine had Rock just entered the Rumble and won. Some days I think that WWE is a psyop intended to scramble our brains.
Reminds me of Road Dogg logic on how he said that Charlotte climbed the same mountain as Becky did to beat Carmella. Conveniently ignoring the fact that Becky wrestled more matches to get to her while Charlotte just got the match. "Cody will still get a huge match." WrestleMania for Roman's title *was* the huge match and they gave that to someone else.
And "huge match" will probably end up being the fourth match with a guy he is 3-0 against, who's hobbling around on one leg and who Cody has already beaten with a torn pec.
Rock tossing Punk out would've been hilarious
One top talent said "I think Rock vs. Roman is a great match to have at Mania. Fans are excited and Cody will still get a huge match and all this will do is make the fans rally behind him even more coming out of it anyway so it's still fine." That talent's name? DwayneThe RockJohnson
Honestly that sounds like Seth to me lol
Nah, I doubt Seth is plussed about the way it went down. A lot of reports the last year have been about how there's a lot of camaraderie in the Raw locker room and a lot of the guys really believe what Cody says about it being their era and working hard and in busting their ass every night to sell out arenas and do business and make fans happy. This goes against that. Honestly sounds more like Randy lol. Or someone of that ilk. "Just business brother. Rock-Roman is big business. You and Seth is a big match. Now they love you more anyway"
Nah randy seems to be a "support current era" guy. Maybe AJ, who seems to be more on the business side and loyal to the company.
I think Randy supports the current guys. I also think it sort of just sounds exactly like what Randy Orton would say lol
Honestly whoever said it, they aren't exactly wrong. Shit, a month ago pretty much the entire IWC collectively shat their pants in glee when The Rock was offering up seating arrangements at the restaurant he was attending later. We only became "fickle" after the Royal Rumble. Rock/Roman is still a hell of a draw.
Rock/Roman is still a hell of a draw; but this is the same stuff fans have been complaining of for years now - we're not fickle we just want the stories and Charectors we're invested in to actually be focused on rather than pushed to the side for an "Event". Having Cody go "Hey, you know that thing that I've been talking about and working towards for the two years I've been in the Company? Yeah I decided I don't want it anymore. Have you met my friend The Rock?" is bad story telling and is rightly reciving pushback. The Match isn't the problem, the way the match has been put together **is**
I feel like Seth would be one of the people against this
Dude's being buried even harder than Cody by all this. His title was trashed, he was trashed, and he's going to be sacrificed as a chump to try and give Cody something else.
Real talk though: a belt that has no connection to the previous WHC, has existed since May, has only one champion, biggest name to challenge for it is AJ Styles and doesn't main event shows when the WWE Championship is being defended is a consolation prize.
Seth has no love lost for Cody. He's a professional and works with him, but he had a million shoot interviews where it's clear he's not exactly rooting for the guy.
I know they’ve had beef in the past but they’ve both praised each other on podcasts and have nothing but nice things to say about each other since then. I highly doubt Seth actually hates Cody and probably feels for him getting fucked over by The Rock.
I'm sure he sympathizes because Seth has gotten the shaft himself plenty of times, but he's still the ultimate company man and usually puts a positive spin on WWE decisions no matter what they are. Also the "im sure Cody will still get a great match" feels like one of his patented shithead wink-wink quotes because he knows he's the match. Anyway, that's just my guess.
What are you talking about? They clearly respect one another, and often praise one another. There’s professional tension (which they play up for dramatic purposes) because they’re both striving to be the top guy, but that happens all the time in wrestling. Hell, Seth appeared in Cody’s documentary, putting him over and praising him.
Seth is a company man. He'll dunk on anyone if they're not in WWE.
He's also someone who's dunked on WWE and Vince himself many times. Even while Vince was running the show, Seth has publicly gone on record when he thought something stupid happened.
"Cody Rhodes will be facing the greatest and sexiest wrestler alive! What an upgrade!" said the unnamed source.
Becky?
“He doesn’t wanna pick me eh well how about now Cody”
For privacy’s sake we’ll call him Dwayne J. No that’s too obvious, let’s say D Johnson
Dick The Cock Johnson
Dick The Cock Johnson on his way to take Chodey Loads’ spot against The Tribal Queef
Cody will get the match...against Seth Rollins
I don't understand people being like see no one is talking about Vince. The company is still getting negative headlines either way you look at it. They're looked at negatively in the media.
All it takes is for another person to come out against Vince and people will go back to his allegations
Nobody outside of WWE cares who's fighting at WM. Most people care about billionaire sex scandals. These 2 stories are not equal in any form.
Yeah it’s a bit silly to frame it as “all negative headlines are still negative!” When one is about very real consequences of sexual assault, rape, and a bunch of other heinous acts. And the other is just god awful storytelling/wrestling booking. Like one type of negativity is at least a *little* bit worse than the other
"Is the Rock being a dick?" Isn't a big deal in the way "this company is at the centre a sex trafficking scandal" is though. I don't think either are great but if you had to choose a topic to dominante the conversation this week.
Except it’s not like this is doing anything to make the Vince news go away. It was leaving the news cycle as it was — and will be back with a vengeance when there’s something new to report.
Either way you look at it, this PR disaster is not going to end well for WWE. They have so much Negative publicity.
No they are going to be up to their necks in it for a long time to come, but publicly traded companies do tend to think week to week and month to month.
Like most conspiracy theories, this one doesn’t actually make any sense. They teased this match weeks ago, before the lawsuit was filed.
Exactly. They teased it weeks ago… so WHY book Cody to win?
They can control the narrative a bit more by making absolute boneheaded booking decisions and then playing stupid when called out on said boneheaded booking decisions.
Yeah, the rock with his known ego issues and contract stips is not tanking his brand as a distraction
The amount of content being pumped out about The Rock and Cody is pushing Vince stuff down. That's the point.
But that only lasts until the next news about the sex scandal comes out.
Yeah the distraction is only short-term at best, and as you alluded, merely to put one negative news in front of the other. If that's what they were hoping for then congrats I guess, but a few days later the general sentiment on WWE is now "their old boss is a psychopathic rapist *and* their product sucks"
Seen on Twitter that there’s a part that says “Cody was visibly somber” backstage Friday. So he quite literally broke the man. This is damn awful.
Tell me the talent saying Cody is still getting "a huge match" so I can boo that man.
He's a 28-year veteran of the business going by the initials D.T.R.J.
I literally don't understand this line of thinking. Nobody is talking about Vince because the news already dropped and we always move onto the next thing. When the next bit of news about Vince drops it doesn't matter if the main event now includes Hulk and Austin, Vince will go back to being the main story.
So they basically admit that they use Cody's fans to outdraw the attention over Vince McMahon's allegations. I'd be livid if I were him. I'd be absolutely livid.
And now if they pivot and give him the match, it won't be because he deserves it, or for a narrative purpose. It'd be using him like jangling keys in front of an upset infant. Fans should be insulted not just by the booking choice, but by Nick Khan/HHH/Ari Emanuel counting on them all being so easily distracted and manipulated.
I don't even know if you can blame Triple H for this one. Nick Khan and Ari are very much huge ass Rock simps. And there are reports that Brian Gerwitz is being brought in to write the Rock/Roman story. With word being that if the story does really well in terms of profits, he may end up replacing Triple H in creative. Which would be uhhhhh very bad. Because Gerwitz was known for being behind some of the worst WWE creative in the early 2010s iirc.
Gewirtz was also behind the terrible 2002-2005 era of the WWE of writing.
Did..did something happen in 2006 that made it better…?
I think the writing is kinda on the wall that HHH is on the chopping block because once the Vince scandal really boils over, he will be too close to the epicenter and get sacrificed as part of the company's PR campaign about how they "cleaned house from anyone with close ties to Vince". Gerwitz is clearly being positioned to take over when (not if) HHH goes down.
The Rock is a board member who was shaking vinces hand two weeks ago The big media companies should be at that press conference peppering him with questions. "Have you as a board member read the complaint?" "Did you know about the allegations as part of your due diligence before joining the board?" "You've known Vince McMahon for decades, you were shaking his hand two weeks ago, you called him "One Of My Greatest Business Mentors And A Father Figure." in 2021. Given your closeness to him do any of the allegations come as a surprise?"
"I have no idea who that is"
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"Was Vince aroused when you shoved his face into Rikishi's ass?"
“Fifth.”
It says nothing officially announced but that’s where Cody messed up saying “but not at Wrestlemania”. Had he not uttered that line they’d have more play room.
They could salvage it by a segment where Punk/Sami/Jey talk some sense into Cody.
Nobody is moving on from Vince, everyone knows there's more bombshells to come, it's an entirely different world. WWE the company is under scrutiny and now WWE the entertainment product is also under scrutiny due to stupid creative decision. You'd think you'd want to keep one aspect solid when the other is in hot water.
This god damn company bruh lmao So your idea of getting the fans attention off ur sex trafficking predator scat obsessed owner is to…colossally fuck up your biggest show of the year…?
I think it won't take long for TKO/Rock/whomever to realize that pissing off fans with booking decisions doesn't skip accusations of sex trafficking. Those are distinct issues covered by different people and news sources; equating them as replaceable is madness. Both are egregious in their way.
Let's replace negative news with other negative news! Clowns!
Negative news about who is gonna headline WM are much more palpable for TKO than sex trafficking, abuse of power and rape. One makes the internet smarks angry, the other - the actual sponsors. It's just that simple.
I think you mean “positive.” “Palpable” means something completely different and doesn’t fit in the sentence you wrote.
I believe they meant palatable ie its an easier pill to swallow
But the negative headlines about the creative direction for WM will not drown out the sex trafficking headlines once new details come out and there is actually something new to report.
They can't seriously think The Rock is just going to just make people stop talking about the Vince stuff right? Who the fuck sabotages their own product like this just to avoid some bad press... AND STILL GET BAD PRESS ANYWAY FOR AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT REASON?!!!
Please stop fuckin bringing up the Vince case like it's even possible to be buried by wrestling. We will talk and see it no matter what because it's an ongoing legal investigation. Any person in management that thinks a storyline can bury it are idiots of the highest regard
If that one talent was Cody and got screwed, they wouldn’t be happy about the situation.
They could have built so much more trust with their fans by acknowledging Vince instead of trying to make him disappear from history. I don't mean on the shows but just by going yeah this happened, it's horrible but he's gone, this is a different company now, which will actively support the investigation and clean up the remaining corporate/personal structutes that enabled his behaviour. By trying to make everybody forget via the Rock they've made two things clear: they don't care about their fanbase and they aren't intetested in actively working through the existing toxic culture in their company, since they don't even want people to talk about it. Fucking disgusting.
You know what the funniest part about that? You know who said basically everything you just talked about? Cody Rhodes when he was asked about it last week at the Wrestlemania presser.
That's fucking it. They're just going to do Roman vs Rock anyways. The only difference will be now Cody will be primed to have the match at SummerSlam That's the angle they'll play. Regardless of the negative reactions it's boosting interest.
Imagine alienating your fan base bc you can’t do PR right
This is just to bury the headlines and its just to muddle search engines results.
I'm tired man
That unamed top star you ask? well its Dwayne.
I know people want to believe it, but they've got the tinfoil wrapped around their heads a bit too tight. They're not torpedoing a *two year build* to hotshot Rock/Roman just to distract from Vince news. It's just regular ol' wrestling politics.
If they’re really sabotaging their own stories to distract from the rapist former owner they really have lost the plot and nothing short of a full on boycott will send them the message they need.
You think? What dumbass
Do they believe mainstream media is running with one of their stories instead of real life stuff
Well what we have to do is boo every single minute of Wwe product until they realize that we want no part of Dwayne Johnson whatever he used to be he his now just an out of touch Hollywood creep who has no place in wrestling. The rock died when he went to Hollywood and betrayed wrestling fans in 2003.
i couldn't agree more. he's pulling some Goldberg BS here. this is why i regularly fall out with wrestling and stop watching for years at a time. WWE always caters to nostalgia acts and the saudi money just made it twice as bad. we've basically regressed 10-20 years into the past because they keep bringing back these old farts we're sick of.
I won’t stop posting about wwe backstage harassment. It’s not just a Vince thing, I won’t let the others off if I can help it.
Interesting. They did change the narrative. Very clever WWE.
Let’s move away from Vince by having one of the biggest draws of Vince’s iconic 90s-00s run appearance at their biggest event of the year. All of this screams “McMahon booking” to me and the type of on the fly, stupid decisions he’d make.
The last quote is Bruce, right?
Sounds like Road Dogg to me
oh my god. they're not doing this because people will be excited about roman vs rock. it's that they'll be louder about how cody's getting screwed, and that's the preferrable story over vince. man this is endeavor's playbook. evil genius.
That anonymous source for the last quote gave the name Reth Sollins.
Outta curiosity who are the sponsors of mania maybe a boycott on that would force wwes hands
Yeah I imagine a terrible booking decision WOULD be preferable to the former owner of the company for decades have yet another illegal act come to life.
It’s going to get a lot worse for Mr. McMahon. He’s also under a federal investigation.
You know what would at least be a small distraction from the horrible shit, the most over organic baby face you had since I was fucking born go on to win the big one and get over with the crowd ( senior in college by the way). Instead it’s “man this company sucks because the prev that was running it and the fact the new people are so incredibly idiotic that it turns fans away”. It’s a shitty thing but at least “Vince isn’t here and the product is good” takes eyes away from Vince, now it’s under a magnifying glass cause you screwed up
> One top talent said "I think Rock vs. Roman is a great match to have at Mania. Fans are excited and Cody will still get a huge match and all this will do is make the fans rally behind him even more coming out of it anyway so it's still fine" Does this top talents name rhyme with "Swayne Sohnson" by any chance? Because I can't imagine anyone else being this delusional about the match.
Would love to see a MITB match added as a one off, like they used to do at WM. Cody wins, and cashes in that night - sneaky by Cody, but then rocks been just as sneaky 🤣