The Daily Beast Podcast - Two Reasons Vince McMahon Would Sell WWE to the Saudis

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

Abraham Riesman, author of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, finds it totally bonkers that reinstated WWE board member Vince McMahon is so well connected that his business was arguably a national security risk, yet here we are. In this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Riesman walks show co-host, and wrestling newbie, Andy Levy, through some historical context for WWE and McMahon, along with a look back at his relationship with Trump, his own daughter Stephanie, and what can be said regarding a potential deal to sell the business to Saudi Arabia. Plus! Andy and co-host Danielle Moodie listen to clips of more Republicans and right-wingers talking themselves in circles, including Tucker Carlson on his favorite topic: sexy M&Ms. And this time, one might be a (*whispers*) lesbian. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an amazing show with Abraham Josephine Reisman, the author of a highly anticipated new biography of Vince McMahon entitled Ringmaster, Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. And they're going to talk to us about the most insane story I've heard in a while, the potential sale the WWE to the Saudis. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Yes. Yes. Clips. All right. So, I'm glad we're back for the new year doing this. To start off, there's a new Congress. We have some backbencher Republican named Tim Burchard.

He's got some thoughts on abortion and why it's a priority for America. Madam Speaker, babies deserve a chance to live. They deserve a chance at life. No matter their age or their circumstances. The Constitution says that people, have a right to life. The science says babies are people. The Democrats have been pushing, trust the science, follow the science, follow the science for the last two years. Yet we are denying the science, Madam Speaker. When I was a little boy, I was asking my mama, we were talking about abortion, we were talking about babies being born, maybe that were disabled or had some other anomaly. And she said to me, she said, I said, Mama, what would we do if one of those babies was born

if I was the father, one of those little babies, and she said, honey, we just love that baby just a little more. Madam Speaker, we need to love those babies a little more and not murder them. Yeah. I think he's going to be a backbencher for a while. Also, babies, regardless of their age, after a certain age, they're not fucking babies. Right? Like, so there's that.

Wow. We're trusting the science there on age now. Yeah. Trusting the science. Science tells us that fetus. and collections of cells are not babies, right? That's what we're told. We're also told that their lies that they use

about heartbeat bills are also not science, right? It's just their theories. And so any time that I hear Republicans, particularly like this, say, like I want to believe that he was having a conversation about abortion with his mama when he was little, come on. Look, if you want to get technical about it,

babies aren't being murdered. So we can start with that. Stop starting with facts, Andy. I know. I know. Look, I'm trusting the science, or however it was, he said it over and over again. It's just, I always get a kick out of these people who say liberals keep saying trust the science. Well, we have to trust the science on this. But you don't trust the science ever. So stop pretending you do here because you are actually being consistent and you're not trusting the science here either. So just shut up. I hate being the guy who says, shut up men, because it just sounds so ally-ish and annoying. But shut the fuck up, men. I don't know what else to say.

Like, I'm so tired. Like, it's bad enough hearing women talk about wanting to take rights away from other women. But when I hear men doing it, just shut up. Like, I don't know what else to say at this point. Just adding, I will say that if you're not going to vote for legislation that actually helps parents, that actually helps families, you vote against child care protections, you vote against tax credits for families, you vote against all of the thing,

the wraparound services, you vote against healthcare, but yet you want to be in the right to forcibly take away bodily autonomy from people that you have no plans on supporting any which way. Just shut the fuck up all the way around. Thank you. You know what?

He needs to take several seats. So this next clip comes from Fox News's Raymond DeRoyal. Andy is this being a, your former workplace. Are you familiar with this fellow? I had never heard of him before. I don't think so, no. Okay, well, I hope we don't hear from him again because he is definitely not a brain genius. Let's hear what he has to say. The young have been fed, force fed, this idea of a dark origin of America. The origin story here is racism and hatred and division and religion and religious propaganda and bigotry. If that's what you believe, you do learn to hate that thing, but I'm

stunned when you read these interviews with some of these kids who say, you know, I hate the country. I wish I were born somewhere else. Sweetheart, I'll give you a fast pass to the Xinjiang province in China, see how you like it, or an all expense paid trip to Cuba. Yeah. It ain't so much fun. I've been to these places. They are horrible pits of humanity. That's where you can't even speak freely or move freely. We have everything here. They're not bringing us their best. He wants to send people a fast pass to these places where you're not able to speak freely. But if we speak freely about the truth in the origin and founding of this country,

then somehow we should shut the fuck up because we're just being ungrateful because we exist in reality. Got it. That's why we pay you the big bucks right there. Oh, first of all, this guy is from the Eternal World Television Network. What? What? Does it broadcast from hell? That's what it's.

I guess he would argue the opposite, but that doesn't mean it's true. It always boggles my mind that the same people who will go on and on about China and Cuba, and look, not always without reason, but what they want here is exactly what a place like China does where an educational system is pure propaganda. and they don't want kids to be taught truth. They don't want kids to be taught that this nation was founded on the backs of slaves as just one example. They want everything to be, no pun intended, whitewashed. And that's exactly what dictators do.

That's what Stalin did. That's what Mao did. And that's what you still see in countries that have dictatorships. They don't teach the truth to kids. They teach hagiography. teach, you know, they basically make the state co-equal with the God and with religion. And that's exactly what these people want. They want kids to be taught only that America is, you know, a shining city on a hill. They want truth to be ignored. And that's their goal. It's sad and it's pathetic,

but unfortunately, a lot of people in this country agree with them. I know. And what's increasingly frustrating when you see a tax against the 1619 project, you see attacks against curriculum, is that their way to be a good patriot is to make sure that we continue with the bullshit propaganda, that American is exceptional, that Americans are better than everybody else, and that there should be no grievance here whatsoever, and that we should just all, you know, bury our heads in the sand, continue to have children create pilgrims and Indians at Thanksgiving, have us use the shortest month of the year to celebrate the three black people that white people think are important for us to know about. And then continue to go about our merry way, singing the national anthem, you know,

in between watching football games. I'm just like, that's their idea of America. And anything that exists outside of that should be attacked, right? And I'm like, how about you take a fast pass to any of these places that don't have free speech, that don't have your ability to be able to just spread lies so freely? That's what they want. That's what it means to be an American. And anybody that dissents against that bullshit is somehow unpatriotic. I don't want to go off too much here because I know this is the lighthearted clip segment. But I always think about when I was a kid, learning that the Puritans came here for religious freedom and that they were these great lovers of religious freedom. No, they weren't.

They came here because they wanted everyone to worship the way they did. They didn't like the fact that in England, there were laws that allowed. for people to not worship to the extreme that they did. And so, yes, they came here for their religious freedom, but they didn't come here to grant it to anybody fucking else. They just wanted everyone to have to follow their rules. We didn't learn that in elementary school. We just learned that they came here for religious freedom.

And it goes on and on. And it's like, just teach the truth. That's it. End of story. I don't know why this, it always has to be this, you know, rose-colored glasses view of the founding of this country. and it's just, but it's not true. Yeah, we spend all of adulthood

unlearning everything that we were taught. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. I got to light in the mood a little here. I'm sorry about that.

So you guys may have heard, you know, last year we had this whole thing where the culture war was about the M&M's no longer being something you could be horny for. And somehow we spent a whole news cycle on that. And Tucker's like New Year, Not do me. I need to complain about the fucking Eminem.

So here we go. Woke Eminems have returned. The green Eminem got her boots back, but apparently is now a lesbian maybe. And there's also a plus-sized, obese, purple Eminem. So we're going to cover that, of course, because that's what we do. We're going to cover that, of course. That's what we do. Because that's what we do.

Nothing, nothing important. The Eminem does not look obese by any means. It's a peanut Eminem. What the fuck is wrong with it? It's Zoftig. It's Rubin-esque. Wow. So she got our boots back, but she may be a lesbian.

Like, this is hard hitting shit. Yeah. Way to go, Tucker. I don't understand how I live in a world where the top-rated show on cable news is about woke M&Ms. It's fucking can. Andy. Clearly you're not having enough conversations with real Americans, Andy, to understand that everyone's hoardy for Eminems like Tucker. Oh, my God. Yes. And Andy, clearly you don't understand wokeism because it can be ingested. Like, I am covered in chocolate. Like, I don't think that you get it. Like, do we want our kids ingesting wokeism via Eminem? So, but I thought it was a woke mind virus. So, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're on to something.

So you can eat the M&Ms and it gives you. you the mind virus. Yeah. Oh, wow. Man. Now, here's the question. Did we see any M&Ms on Elon's night table? If they were behind the gun, I missed it.

All right. There was a seismic shift in the world of professional wrestling this past weekend with the return of disgraced former World Wrestling Entertainment, chairman and CEO Vince McMahon to the board of that organization. McMahon had resigned in July. amid an investigation into allegations that he paid millions of dollars in hush money to cover up alleged infidelity and misconduct with multiple women. And rumors quickly spread that this was a springboard to McMahon selling the hugely popular company to Saudi Arabia, though this does seem to just be at the rumor stage, at least as of now.

Joining me now to talk about this is Abraham Josephine Reesman, the author of the highly anticipated new biography of Vince McMahon out March 28th, entitled Ringmaster of Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. She's also the author of True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stanley, which I cannot recommend highly enough, one of the best books I've read in recent years. So, Abe, first of all, thank you so much for being here. Oh, I'm very elated to be here. I'm a big fan of you and yours over at the show, so this is great. Well, thank you.

So true confession time. I know absolutely nothing about wrestling. You're the target audience from my book, so great. I know. Apparently I'm a Mark, is what I've been told. I'm friendly with a bunch of people who are really into it. It just never did anything for me. so I'm kind of ignorant beyond what I've read, and I'm here to listen and learn.

So let's start with McMahon returning to power. Is six months now the going rate for paying hush money to cover up affairs and mistreatment of women? Let me put it this way. The surprise was not that Vince came back for me. The surprise was that he, quote unquote, stepped down at all. This is a guy who has gotten where he is not by showing weakness or stepping down or backing down or anything down when he's faced with a trial or challenge. This was a surprising move this past summer when he, you know, stepped back.

It was unusual. And people thought that was a tectonic shift. They were like, oh, the age of Vince is over. Right. And I kept telling people, he's still the largest single shareholder of this publicly traded company, World Wrestling Entertainment, and he controls about 80% of the shareholder votes. So he's still, I kept telling people, he's still the ultimate power at WWE. I really thought it was only a matter of time before he came back.

And sure enough, he executed this pretty abrupt and aggressive re-takeover of the company, which, again, he'd never totally lost power for, but he booted some people from the board of directors and stalled himself as executive chairman. His daughter, Stephanie McMahon, a longtime performer and executive at WWE, who had been the co-CEO after Vince stepped back, she left the company under mysterious and abrupt circumstances. She claimed she was going back to spend more time with her family, which I'm sure to a certain extent is true, but whether it was what the specifics beyond that are have yet to emerge,

but it was surprising. And now we're in the situation we've been in for 40 plus years where Vince is the most powerful man in professional wrestling again. Again, he kind of wasn't ever not that, but now we're seeing, that strength is being shown in a more aggressive and headline-grabbing way. Talk to me about this whole thing with his daughter, Stephanie. When he stepped down, as you said, she became co-CEO with a guy named Nick Con. Correct.

And then when he announced he was returning, as you said, she then resigned. So I, again, knowing nothing, I assumed that this was a straight-up family business situation that she stepped in to basically be his surrogate and protect the family interests. And then she left once he came back. But from what I've been told, it's not quite that. and his relationship, Vince's relationship with his kids, isn't necessarily the best. No, it's complicated. He is very family-oriented. It, you know, for a long time was a family-owned business. The predecessor company of WWE was founded by Vince's father and to a certain extent, his grandfather.

And Vince then bought the company from his father. It was not given to him. He bought it between 1982 and 1983 over the course of some payments that year. and his children have been very active in the business. When I say the business, I mean business with a capital B. This is a term of art within wrestling. The business is the business of wrestling, and Vince kind of is the business of wrestling in a lot of ways. His kids were being set up to be major figures, and they were major figures to a certain extent.

He has two kids. There's Shane, his son, and Stephanie, his daughter, who's a little younger than Shane. and they were major performers in the storylines that you see on television. That started around 1999 when Vince started incorporating the rest of his family into the drama. He had already entered himself into the drama a couple of years prior. And initially, Shane was sort of envisioned as the one who would inherit the company. There's a New York Times editorial that Vince published back in the 90s when he was undergoing a lot of scrutiny for steroids.

use in the World Wrestling Federation, as it was called back then. And he wrote this op-ed for the times, and it said, you know, just as I'm proud of my company, having been founded by my father, you know, so too will I pass it to my son. Well, it didn't work out that way. Shane, long bumpy story, but he is, you know, not really involved with the company now at this point. And that was a bit of an abrupt drop. He was sort of, by some accounts, kicked off. WWE and off of the show a little while ago, a couple years ago. But Stephanie seemed to be a slightly more stable presence at WWE. She was an executive.

She was a very gifted performer who endured really insane stories that she chose, you know, to act out and were usually dictated by the writers or by her father. But a lot of really intense stuff. I mean, she used to walk out to the ring. And when she was a villain, people would just start screaming. slut, slut, slut at her from the crowd as a chant. And she's done all kinds of horrible things in the storyline. You know, she's been a very villainous character at times, and she's been sort of in weird sexual situations in the storyline as well. But she seemed to really believe in the company

and really want to be a part of it and really worked hard at it in creative and in other executive capacities. Then, not so long before she had to come back, she had left, actually, in May of 2022. last year, you know, about a month before she was brought back, she announced the leave of absence from the company. She said, again, she said she wanted to spend more time with her family, and that's actually plausible, at least as being part of the explanation, because her husband, who is also a major figure at WWE, both as a wrestler and an executive guy named Paul the Vec, also known as Triple H. Triple H had a heart attack and was having some medical problems. So they're married, and it is understandable that she might want to spend her time with her family. But of course, this being

the WWE, people can't help but speculate that there's something more salacious going on, which knowing the WWE is very possible. I mean, Stephanie and Vince had a very close relationship. I, you know, I interviewed somebody who was talking about how they used to, you know, kiss on the lips when they would greet each other and people would be a little taken aback by that at the office. And she was sort of very much her father's daughter, very cold and calculating in the business setting and whatever relationship they had, it seems to have been at least a little disrupted by this recent move. But then again, you never know with the McMahon's. You know, this is, this gets back to what I was saying before about how there was sort of this illusion that he'd

stepped back and now he's back when in reality he retained a tremendous amount of power consistently the whole time. This is wrestling. It's all about the mix of fact and fiction. It's not like a movie where the movie itself is pretty much 99% of the time. I'm just supposed to be fiction, even if it's like based on a true story, we don't expect that it's all going to be accurate. Most of the time things are just a fiction. Wrestling, everything has to be blended. There always has to be this element of like, wait a minute, maybe this part's real. Or like, maybe they really do have this personality trait. Or maybe they really do eat each other, all of that stuff. Right. So I could ramble on and on about the mystery and magic of wrestling. But all I'm trying to say here is whatever's going on, we're being worked. You know, this is this is a term from wrestling. There's, There's a work and there's a shoot. A work is something that's fake. A shoot is something that's real. And when somebody is trying to convince you that something that's fake is real, you're being

worked. Whatever is happening right now in WWE, and it's kind of a black box right now. I mean, even seasoned reporters have been doing wrestling reporting longer than I have, have been having a devil of a time getting anything resembling a clear vision of what the hell's going on there because this is Vince's management style. It's not dissimilar from Trump's. I mean, they're very good friends. have similar approach to management and business, they like chaos and they like keeping people

guessing. They like people that they work for being in the dark about their true plans, Vince and Trump. I think right now there's only one person who knows what Vince McMahon's going to do, and that's Vince McMahon. I don't think he has disseminated his plans to the rest of the company. So it's kind of up in the air what's going to happen. Well, that's interesting. And look, obviously this is not a wrestling podcast, and I know I lied to you and told you it was to get you on, but that's what I'll do anything to get the guest, Abe. I'll never trust you again, Andy, yes. I know, but it, but it doesn't matter because I've already got you here. I don't need you after this. So I want to talk a little bit about what McMahon's return maybe means to the non- Wrestling world or sort of a bigger picture. And I was

going to say, let's start with his sort of relationship with Donald Trump. I'm not saying that McMahon's return to wrestling has anything to do with Donald Trump, but as you pointed out, they are very good friends and they have very similar personality styles. Yeah, Trump and Vince have been very close friends for decades now. I was unable to figure out exactly when they first had their first encounter. I have this suspicion that Trump may have been present at the post-Resslemania 1 victory party at the Rainbow Room in 1985, but I haven't been able to get proof of that. The closest we have to real clear beginning of the relationship was their first public. intertwining, and that would be with the two WrestleMania's that Trump, quote-unquote, hosted in Atlantic

City in the late 80s, WrestleMania 4 and 5. WrestleMania is the annual Vince McMahon-led World Wrestling Federation, then World Wrestling Entertainment, extravaganza, where, you know, all the storylines come to a head and it's bigger than all the other big events, and it's sort of the Super Bowl, if the Super Bowl was only one team playing against itself. And, you know, Trump was a huge fan of wrestling, of McMahon family wrestling, of Vince's dad's brand of wrestling, going back to the 50s. You know, you have reports about Trump watching McMahon family wrestling when he was, you know, like nine. I mean, he was watching it at the target demographic for wrestling back then, which was young kids. He was a good fan. And when he got

the opportunity to work with Vince, he leapt at it. And, you know, there were these two WrestleMania is where Trump was this big figure in promoting it. And, you know, of course, it was classic, both wrestling and Trump in that it was alleged to have been hosted and held at the Trump Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. Of course, it was not actually at the Trump home country. It was down the street, or maybe it was across the street. I can't remember. But it was right nearby at a different venue that could actually accommodate a WrestleMania. So you were lied to, if you were out of that. It was not actually the Trump Hotel and Casino. But that was right. But That was just the beginning. I mean, they have had a rich and longstanding relationship since then.

Trump has been at many wrestling shows, and when he had, you know, showed up over the years, he would generally get interviewed at ringside or somebody would be like, hey, look, there's Donald Trump. And behind the scenes, he and Vince got very personally close. And then come 2007, it was financially advantageous for WWE and The Apprentice, by which I really mean, you know, Trump himself as the brand of the apprentice, it was advantageous for them to partner up. So there was a WrestleMania that year in 2007 where you had the so-called Battle of the Billionaires, where Vince and Trump, two ostensible friends, had this huge rivalry where they were fighting each other, mostly by proxy through wrestlers they had chosen, or quote-unquote chosen. It's all made up, obviously. But they had this

very public and very lucrative rivalry where Trump and Vince were issuing threats to each other and everything and doing press conferences. And then they had this big culminating event at the WrestleMania that year where the two wrestlers that had been selected as the proxies for Vince and Trump had a, you know, choreographed match. And during it, there was, you know, that famous moment, infamous moment where Trump sort of body-checked Vince. And I say infamous because then years later, when Trump was newly the president, somebody on Reddit re-edited that clip. So it looked like he was body-checking CNN. Like it was, they put the CNN. over Vince's head. And it's so funny to think now that that was a huge scandal. It was,

and it disappeared pretty quickly because it was overshadowed by everything that came after. There was a big deal at the time. It was relatively early in the Trump administration. It was like, this is insane. Like after he's done all this incitement against the media. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. The point is the conclusion of that match, the WrestleMania Battle of the billionaires, was Vince got his head shaved. The conclusion of it was, whichever Ristler wins, their sponsor, Trump or Vince, will have to have their head shaved. And they both really value their hair a lot. But Vince is willing to make fun of himself. Trump isn't. Right. And Vince was the one who then lost and, you know, Trump gleefully shaved his friend's head on live television. And there

been a bunch of other crossover events. And what's always struck me is two things. One, Trump was not a public speaker of the kind that he is with his rallies before 2007. Before he started doing these. I'm not saying it's a one-to-one relationship. Sure. He figured out how to speak to a crowd of shouting and interacting people just from wrestling, but I think it was probably the biggest influence on his ability to work a large crowd into a frenzy. That was not his thing before wrestling. And then you see him in the ring in his wrestling storylines addressing the crowd. And you can't help but wonder, like, what if we had an alternate universe where Trump just decided to work for WWE full time and was just like the WWE president,

you know, on the full or the K-fabe, you know, the word that they use in wrestling is K-FAB, which is an old carny term. And it refers to whatever the kind of mix of fact and fiction, emphasis on fiction, is in a given wrestling situation. But, you know, why couldn't Trump just become a K-Fabe personality and just work the crowd there and get them hateful and angry. You know, it's in a safer environment. You know, it's an alternate world that you can imagine. But they're so close that Sam Nunberg, the Trump campaign advisor and Gadfly, I interviewed him for the book.

And he told me that during the campaign, there were only two people in the entire human population who Trump would get calls from and then demand that everybody leave the room, the entourage leave the room so he could take the call. Because generally Trump likes to show. showboat. So usually he takes calls on speakerphone. Doesn't, you know, Michael and Merkel, it could be the Pope, and he'd be like, hey, everybody listen to me, work this person. But with Vince and Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice, according to Sam Dunberg, Trump so confided in or at least

trusted these guys that he would kick everybody out of the room so he could take the calls in private. That means Vince is on a very short VIP list with a guy who was for a time, you know, the leader of the free world, the so-called free world. So they're connecting. connections run deep. I'm not even done. I mean, I could keep going. Vince's wife was Trump's cabinet, you know, we haven't even gone into the Linda factor. Yeah. But I want to talk about the Saudis. Now, I know from talking to you and from doing some reading that there were a lot of people jumping the gun on this and saying that a sale to the Saudis was a done deal, which is insane because it doesn't work that way. It's a publicly traded company and it would take weeks, if not months, to do anything of that

nature. But let's talk more generally about McMahon's relationship with the Saudis, because that goes back a while, right? And it's a pretty tight relationship. That does go back a few years. Coming up on a decade, because it was 2013, December 2013, that WWE announced it was going to start holding shows in Saudi Arabia. Now, initially, these were so-called house shows, meaning they they weren't televised. They were just live events to be enjoyed as live events. First, house show happens in Riyadh in 2014. And then they have a few more. But then the real turning point is when Muhammad bin Salman, El-Soud, MBS, takes over in Saudi Arabia. Now, MBS is my age.

He's a millennial. And he, like many millennial Saudis and people in the Middle East in general, started getting access to wrestling, WWF and W.W.E. wrestling in the 80s and 90s with the advent of widespread satellite television. Wrestling is huge in the Arab world. People love it there. And has been for a while. And so when MBS took over, the details of the transaction are a bit of a mystery, including to the U.S. government, as it turned out, there was a little report where this journalist, David Bixen Span, who's great, reached out to try and FOIA documents about this deal between the WWE and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and found out that the government doesn't even really know. Like, they have some documents, but generally don't really know who was doing all this negotiating.

But what it looks like is MBS takes over. He has this Vision 2030 initiative. Saudi Vision 2030 where he's trying to rebrand Saudi Arabia and quote unquote modernize it and reform, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And part of that was there was a deal with W.W.E where they were going to start doing not just house shows, but like big televised events. I say televised, you know, it's streamed, but that's that's the nature of media now. They were going to have these big events in Saudi Arabia that were going to be a huge coup for the Saudis in that it is this very public display of influence and prestige and power. But it's lucrative for WWE because there's a lot of money involved. Right.

The Saudi government in that deal has invested as much as like $40 million per show that they do, which is an insane amount of money for a wrestling show. But it's a huge portion in the past few years of the WWU's operating budget. Is this money that they get in this, you know, 10-year deal, 10-year strategic multi-platform partnership between WWE and the Saudi General Sports Authority? They are going to keep doing these shows. And they've been very controversial because, you know, for obvious reasons. The first one that they did, no women were at the event. Subsequent to that and, you know, that one and future ones, there are certain wrestlers

you just won't go. They say, I don't want to have anything to do with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Or sometimes it's a little opaque. It might be them saying it or it might be the Saudis saying, hey, you want this person there. But, you know, there's an Israeli wrestler who didn't go. And there's Sammy Zane, who's Syrian, who has done a lot of sort of leftist human rights work and was not interested in going. But the vast majority of the lineup, if they get told you're going to Saudi Arabia, they go. If you don't have a lot of leverage and if the Saudis aren't explicitly banning you, you go. I mean, it's wrestling. The thing about wrestling is there's no players union or performers union. There's no real meaningful government regulation of it.

It's this very punishing follow the leader kind of structure where the wrestlers are all independent contractors. They're not even employees of the WWB. So they don't have a whole lot of power when something like the Saudi Arabia shows happen. They don't get to say, hey, I'm so important, I'm not going to do this, or much less, you know, we're not going to do this. We're all ganging together to make a statement. That doesn't happen in wrestling. You know, it's a very totalitarian ecosystem. If you are the promoter, which is the name for the person who's kind of in charge of whatever the promotion is, and Vince is very much the promoter of WWE, you do what the promoter tells you. It's how it works. You follow orders. It's like being a soldier. So, you know, they started this relationship. They've had a

bunch of pay-per-views. The first one, Greatest Royal Rumble, was very surreal to watch. There were all these little, like, pre-taped promos about how great Saudi Arabia is and how great the Vision 2030 initiative is. And then announcers kept saying, wow, this is such an honor to be here in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, modernizing country, et cetera, et cetera. They don't really do that as much, the propaganda stuff when they do the Saudi shows now. But the whole thing is propaganda. I mean, it's embedded in the whole endeavor. So the recent question has been, if Vince is indeed looking to sell the company, which it looks like he is, and keep himself in creative control, but, you know, just have a different ownership structure. The Saudis are a very attractive

suitor for him because of a lot of reasons. One is they got very deep pockets and they've been very eager to do business with him in the past. And another is just at the risk of sounding too political or something, although I guess this is a political podcast. The Saudi government isn't going to ask questions about abuses. Right. Like the Saudi government is not going to say, hey, WWE, you need to have better treatment of your wrestlers or none of that. That's not going to, or better government regulation.

That's not going to come up. The Saudi government doesn't operate on the basis of morality. It operates on the basis of interests, which is the same as any government, but they are particularly strategic about that sort of thing. And the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia might buy it. I'm not going to speculate on that yet, just because, like I said, it's such a black box right now, and I really think Vince is the only one who is seeing anything resembling the full deck of cards. So I'm not going to say it's definitely going to happen, but if the Saudi government buys WWE,

I think it would be in keeping with trends that have already been happening with Saudi and WWE rather than being some kind of shock or break from the way things used to be. So it'll be really interesting to see. I mean, it's crazy to me. As somebody writes history of, you know, writes about the history of professional wrestling, it's completely bonkers that you ended up with a situation by 2018 where a wrestling promoter, Vince McMahon, was so powerful and so well connected that his business was arguably national security risk. I mean, his wife at the time was the director of small business administration. in Trump's cabinet. So there's a cabinet level position. And at the same time, her husband is making, you know, 100 plus million dollar deals with the Saudi government, not some other entity there. Like, it's directly negotiating with the Saudi government.

Right. It's kind of unprecedented. You don't have wrestling take that kind of precedence and importance and risk in past iterations of what wrestling was. Vince has really transformed WW into an international force, kind of for better or for worse, you know? That's absolutely fascinating. I'm sorry that we don't have more time to talk about this. No, no, no.

You can have me back on and we can pick up where you left off. Oh, I'm absolutely having you back on. I can't wait. The book is Ringmaster, Vince McMahon, and the Unmaking of America. It's out March 28th. Abe Reisman, thank you so much for being here, and we will most definitely talk again soon. I look forward to it. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal.

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