Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: Bruce Prichard, John Laurinaitis, Vince McMahon, wrestling, wwe

McMahon on WWE Raw; Laurinaitis on Administrative Leave & More

Published Tue, 21 Jun 2022 06:44:11 -0500

Last updated Tue, 21 Jun 2022 06:47:04 -0500

Okay, so let's get you up to speed on where things stand. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the WWE board was investigating Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon regarding a $3M money settlement McMahon paid a female paralegal over an alleged affair. In addition, several nondisclosure pacts connected to misconduct claims from other women who worked for the company involving McMahon & WWE talent executive John Laurinaitis were also discovered during the investigation. That brought us to last Friday morning when the WWE released a statement stating that McMahon had "voluntarily stepped back" from his corporate responsibilities (but not the creative side, as you're about to see) with the corporate board's special committee appointing Stephanie McMahon as interim CEO and Chairwoman. Now, most folks expected Vince to lay low- but those people apparently don't know Vince because he appeared as "Mr. McMahon" to open up FOX's WWE SmackDown that very night in what many believed was meant to be a show of defiance as well as a chance to win over the WWE crowd.

Well, the public relations campaign continued on WWE Monday Night Raw while the fallout from the investigation took a turn behind the scenes not long after the USA Network show went off the air. First, Vince appeared on Raw in what can best be described as another effort to keep a positive image in the public eye, coming out to announce that John Cena would be on next week's edition. What many found odd about the reason for Vince being there was that Cena's return had not only already been announced but the WWE had been actively promoting it for some time heading into tonight's Raw. And then Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com tweeted that they were able to confirm that Laurinaitis "was placed on administrative leave" and "that talent were informed" that Bruce Prichard would now be interim Head of Talent Relations."