This Week in Wrestling 2023 Week 2

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Brian Damage

It’s Saturday and today we have ’This Week in Wrestling’, the 2nd entry of 2023. Today Brian looks at the whirlwind week involving Vince McMahon, Stephanie McMahon and the potential sale of WWE and shares all the best wrestling content from this week.

Sale of the Century?

This past week was really one for the books as far as WWE news goes. As expected, Vince McMahon returned to power as CEO and in conjunction with that, saw his daughter Stephanie resign as co CEO. Vince reportedly wanted to gain full control of WWE including the day to day creative control, but allegedly was talked out of that. So for now…Triple H remains in charge of the creative side of the company.

As for Stephanie McMahon, she was once again leaving WWE altogether, after her father returned to power. This will most likely the last we will hear or see of Stephanie as far as WWE activities go. Love her or hate her, she was a part of this company from an early age and slowly becoming the heir apparent of WWE. A position that was once thought to be her brother’s position in Shane McMahon. She made mistakes, but during this entire ordeal with her father, she really became a calming voice. She also allowed her husband Triple H create without interference from herself to satisfy her ego.

Getting back to Vince as CEO, not 24 hours after announcing Stephanie’s resignation and his return to power, came word that WWE was already sold to the Saudi Arabian government for 6.5 billion dollars and would become a private company once again. That story caught like wildfire around the wrestling world with many “fans” saying they were jumping ship and would not support WWE ever again. Some fans cited that WWE was bought with “Blood Money” and stated they would no longer watch their product.

As it turned out, a high ranking WWE official said the story was false and while the company may still be up for sale, there have been no one buyer who has emerged from any other. Does that mean the Saudis won’t buy WWE? No, but people have to understand that billion dollar corporate sales do not happen in a matter of hours. It usually takes months if not a year or so to really put together and finalize legal language and all of that. The story and reaction by everyone was so over the top and overblown. While I would prefer WWE be bought by a corporation or an individual who would allow it to be run by knowledgeable people….I wouldn’t have the kneejerk reaction many already had if it was sold to the Saudis.

Regardless of how you or I feel about Vince McMahon, I think he would want the company he really built to go somewhere that would continue to help it grow. I may be foolish to think that way…especially if someone dangled over 7 billion dollars in my face, but we shall see. For the meantime, I hope McMahon stays away from creative control…but I have serious doubts about that.

Photo Gallery

All work and no play make Vince a very dull boy…

Steve Austin remaining jacked in retirement.

If you drink IPAs, check out the Humble Beer Society. They are huge wrestling fans and have created a number of IPAs in honor of wrestlers…

A cool pic of Owen Hart and an unmasked Jushin Liger

Congrats to Dom Mysterio on his engagement to his longtime girlfriend!

Also congrats to Ricochet and his new fiancé, WWE ring announcer Samantha Irvin.

The toxicity of some wrestling fans…

Cool drawing of Konnan

Another cool great drawing of Jim Duggan

Sonya Deville and girlfriend

Grab your popcorn! LOL

Tenille ‘Emma’ Dashwood

NXT’s Arianna Grace

NXT’s Nikkita Lyons

Bianca Belair (Back and Front)

AEW’s Leila Grey

CJ Perry

Video Gallery

Hardcore Fans: American wrestling is silly and stupid. It is sports entertainment. Japanese wrestling is the real deal! They aren’t goofy!

Meanwhile in Japan…;)

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23 thoughts on “This Week in Wrestling 2023 Week 2”

  1. We’re only in the 2nd week of January and things are going fucking insane. I feel bad for Stephanie as I didn’t think I would say that as I don’t like her character and being this voice for the WWE in their anti-bullying campaign and such. Yet, I thought what she, Nick Khan, and HHH were doing was at least an improvement and did their best to at least get back lapsed fans.

    Man, fuck Vince. He just destroyed everything because of his ego and just pushed his daughter out and thinking about selling a company his grandfather created to a corrupt government.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

    • Exactly what did he “destroy”? If he did, why are companies interested in spending an estimated 6 BILLION to purchase it?

      Again I believe your personal beliefs against people you disagree with clouds your judgement of a situation. Certainly WWE stockholders don’t believe what he did this week “destroyed “ the company.

      And feeling bad for someone (Steph) who owns between 2-3% of the company (worth around $200 million) shows you have a different metric than me of who we should feel bad for.

      Hopefully you are consistent and do not purchase goods and services from ANY company that does business with a government you feel is “corrupt”.

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      Reply

      • The reason the perception the of him destroying his company has been painfully & plainly visible for years if you’ve been paying attention at all. His latest scandals, many of which are being added on & continuing with more & more allegations, have been a constant source of black eyes & bad publicity for a publicly traded company. He was given a chance to bow out gracefully & chose to be defiant until he was all but forced out. In short, he’s bad, toxic for his company & the employees who work there, yet his ego will let him leave well enough alone.

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    • I guess everyone involved should have seen this coming as there was no way Vince was ever going to stay “retired” & away from his company for very long. He’s been looking for an in ever since & he’s always had as the majority stockholder& is now has masterfully leveraged that position to worm his way back in. Let it burn I say.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  6. Nothing says naive like any wrestling fan using the term “Blood Money”. 90% that use it have no clue what it even means and only heard it and parrot it to try to appear informed. A simple search shows many of the companies these same people support daily are partially owned or invested in by the Saudi’s. And most retail businesses also operate there as well. I don’t see them calling out McDonalds, Starbucks, Nike, etc like they do WWE. It’s more about fan dislike/hatred on WWE and Vince than understanding how the business world works.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Idk, how many of said companies willingly signed a working agreement with a country & regime that are basically responsible for the murder of a news journalist despite knowing beforehand about said occurrence?

      Basically this is yet another example of why Capitalism in this country has gone so far as it has in hurting the very country that it initially helped. When taken to extremes like it has been in this& the last century, it has lead to America being willfully bought & sold due to excessive greed. The lack of true large scale American-owned businesses is a damming indictment of this.
      Personally I feel this was a test to gage the public’s response to such a hypothetical scenario should it ever occur, which it very well could.

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      Reply

      • No excuse, many companies pulled out of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine to the detriment of shareholders, showing it can be done. And showing they believed it was the correct thing to do regardless of investment. So why didn’t the companies doing business in SA do the same after the “incident “ in question? Your question about signing an agreement makes no sense in that they can, and should walk away if they are offended. They didn’t so they deserve the same scrutiny as WWE for doing business in and with SA. This isn’t that hard to see. Any complaints from wrestling fans is simply anti WWE bias from hypocrites who still do business with companies that are doing the same things they bitch about WWE doing.

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      • “Any complaints from wrestling fans is simply anti WWE bias”

        Sounds like you have a bias of your own if you feel no one’s allowed to scrutinize or complain about things they don’t like to see or hear, especially in regards certain actions made from certain company. Whataboutism isn’t really a firm foundation for an argument when it’s being made in bad faith.

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      • Replying to your comment below. All I ask is that people are consistent, which they aren’t. Those complaining about “Blood Money” and WWE are doing it in their Nike’s while eating McDonalds, drinking a Starbucks coffee on their IPhone. Is it realistic to boycott every company that does business with SA? Of course not for most people but yes, the bias against WWE is mostly by wrestling fans who don’t like the product or Vince and use SA as another opportunity to take shots at them. Period. It has nothing to do with their willingness to boycott SA.

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      • Of course, but it certainly doesn’t help. Rather than being a shining example of progressition as they always claim to be, maybe don’t willingly get into a partnership with a troublesome regime/country? I’d expect the same from other companies as well, and if they can’t, they deserve as much scrutiny as anyone else who gets in bed with bad people. Again, more whataboutism, when it’s no one else being mentioned here but Vince & the WWE.

        Like

      • Dave, I get where you’re coming from and I wholeheartedly agree, but you’d have better luck asking people to grow a second asshole… People just refuse to think for themselves.

        Like

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