Bengaluru, Februray 4: Is the biggest ship in the pro-wrestling world on the verge of sinking? Well, by wrestling context, there’s no way that it is going to hit a block but on the corporate side, WWE has never been in such a loosened state, as seen in the past few days.

Shocking the wrestling as well as the corporate world, WWE announced the sudden departure of Co-Presidents George Barrios and Michelle Wilson from the Board of Directors role. For those who don’t know, these two were considered as the #2 and #3 in the WWE just after Vince McMahon. Their role has been pretty big in creating WWE the way we know it today.

According to PWInsider.com, Vince McMahon solely took the decision to fire Barrios and Wilson, without consulting the COO or CBO, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, respectively. WWE are presently in search for a permanent Chief Financial Officer and Chief Revenue Officer after the firing, but have named Frank A. Riddick III as the co-president post on a temporary basis.

The source also added that McMahon was having conflicts of opinion with the two former co-presidents which led to the exit,

“An internal announcement released by the company to its employees was even more direct, alluding to irreconcilable differences in the company’s strategic priorities. Barrios and Wilson had one vision and Vince McMahon had another. Vince’s vision will always win. He’s Vince McMahon. The end.”

Both the top executives sold a high percentage of their stocks in the company leading to a huge downfall of WWE stocks in the share market. Bloomberg is reporting that WWE has lost over $1 billion in market value. The stock fell 28% and Loop Capital’s Alan Gould reports that WWE now has “diminished confidence”.

According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, WWE does not have a backup plan for life after Vince McMahon. The primary belief was that if something happened to the company then Barrios and Wilson were there to handle the corporate duties. But that option has gone now resulting in the stocks going down.

The source also added that Triple H & Stephanie McMahon can’t run WWE as Wall Street won’t be accepting them in that role. They might be good as creative members to oversee the wrestling side of things but the corporate world still wont trust them.



The incoming flow of revenue will save the company for a certain period but still, it’s high time that WWE hires trustworthy names as co-presidents and start climbing through the stock market, again. Here’s more on that from veteran journalist, Meltzer,

"The company is still safe for 5 years no matter what even if something happens to Vince and there’s chaos you still have that revenue coming in.

"At that point, it would make things really strange because again, we don’t know who’s gonna be running the company. We have no idea.

"It’s not gonna be Paul Levesque (Triple H) — it’s not gonna be Stephanie (McMahon).

"I mean, Paul Levesque will run the wrestling end, but he’s not gonna be CEO or anything like that — the President of the company because Wall Street won’t accept him in that role because he doesn’t have that background.

"So, it’s going to be…they’ll accept Vince and they would have certainly accepted George Barrios and Michelle Wilson so, you know, but everyone who works for Vince has a shelf-life…that’s the reality.”