Top Five Failed WWE Ventures Outside of Wrestling

Brian Damage

Vince McMahon was able to turn his 1 million dollar investment in purchasing the then World Wrestling Federation into a global company worth billions. You would think that success could translate into other successful ventures for McMahon, but outside of the wrestling world…he didn’t exactly have the best track record. Today on the blog, we look at some of Vince McMahon’s biggest flops.

WWF New York/The World

At the height of WWF’s popularity during the Attitude Era in 1999, Vince McMahon decided to get into the restaurant business. He decided to launch his own themed restaurant to compete with the likes of the popular Hard Rock Cafe and other themed eateries of the time. Despite hosting several pay per view watch parties, hosting Sunday Night Heat and having various WWF superstars appear…the restaurant faltered and soon McMahon changed the name to ‘The World’ to be a nightclub for people other than wrestling fans. That too floundered and the WWF sold the spot to their competitors in the Hard Rock Cafe.

Boxing Promoting

Being a third generation promoter and being that his grandfather Jess McMahon was a successful boxing promoter, it only seemed natural that Vince would himself find success in the world of boxing. In the Summer of 1988, Vince took part in promoting a boxing match between ‘Golden Boy’ Donny Lalonde and ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard. The pay per view fight would take place in November of that year and McMahon heavily advertised it on his SummerSlam pay per view that year. The fight was boring and was a financial flop for most involved including Vince, who wound up editing off all mentions of the fight on the SummerSlam ’88 video release.

ICO PRO

Vince McMahon and company invested money into a series of bodybuilding supplements called ICO PRO and the results were less than stellar. Many WWF superstars confessed years later that ICO Pro “tasted like Sh!t.” Rumors have swirled for years, that McMahon buried all of the unbought supplements underneath WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

The WBF

In conjunction with the failed ICO PRO bodybuilding supplements, came an actual league created by Vince for these musclebound individuals to pose and compete called the World Bodybuilding Federation. It came complete with its own WBF magazine and Saturday morning show called Body Stars hosted by Vince himself. The WBF lasted from 1991 until 1992 and folded after that due to lack of interest from bodybuilding aficionados who found the WBF way too gimmicky and WWF wrestling fans who simply did not care.

Tout

In 2012, the WWE invested over 5 million dollars into a social media platform called ‘Tout.’ It was basically a place to record short videos to talk about anything and everything. The thing was, there was another popular platform called ‘Vine’ at that time and Tout simply was the uncool sibling of that. Years later, TikTok exploded in popularity, so perhaps, McMahon was just a little too ahead of his time in launching Tout….then again…maybe not.