Clarification & Updates On WWE Saudi Arabia Sale Rumors

WWE

Major wrestling rumours emerged last night, when it was reported that WWE had reached an agreement to sell the company to the Saudi Arabian Public Investments Fund.

Steven Muehlhausen of DAZN initially tweeted:

Sources: #WWE has been sold to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The company will go back to being private.

Unknown if Vince McMahon will return to head of creative but it is expected by some people.

However, a short time later, Cassidy Haynes of Bodyslam reported the following, which Muehlhausen said he’d also heard:

The deal isn’t completely finalized because WWE must provide notice to shareholders & other parties.

There are legalities to go through, as the company is publicly traded.

But, again, I’m told a deal has been agreed to in principle.

Today (January 11), multiple outlets, including TMZ and Ariel Helwani, reported that a deal was not finalized.

Now, Bryan Alvarez, who was one of the first people to tease that “monster news” would be breaking last night without being specific, has spoken on Wrestling Observer Live today to provide clarification and updates on the situation, and how the rumours of a sale started.

He said:

“Yesterday, Stephanie McMahon resigned, and they sent out a big thing, and there was a whole bunch of stuff about it. I would speculate that it was shortly before NXT began that I got a text, and the text was that WWE had been sold to the Saudis. Well that seems like pretty big news. Now, I don’t know about everyone else, but my goal has never been to be the first to break the news, I would rather get the news right. My first thought was ‘how?! This bloke just came back, how can it be sold already?’ So, I was like ‘ok, well whatever’, literally the first text I got I kind of ignored it, because I was like ‘that can’t be right’. So then, like another 15 minutes past, and I got another text ‘WWE has been sold to the Saudis’. Different person. I was like ‘what the heck is going on here’.

“So, I did tweet that we may have big news breaking imminently, but that was it. Because now, I decided that I needed to start figuring out what was going on. So I started asking around, and other people started asking around, and one person after another was like ‘I heard the same thing’. I was like ‘holy smokes, how?’

“So, you know, after a while, probably an hour later, everybody has heard this story. So for those of you who are just thinking, you know whatever CNBC said about online wrestling reporters or whatever, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

“Everybody in wrestling was talking about this. They were talking about it in AEW, they were talking about it backstage at NXT, they were talking about it on the main roster, everybody heard this, everybody was talking about it, this was not some crazy made up story that someone pulled out of thin air. Everybody was talking about it, it was going all over the place.

“So, time goes on, everyone’s like ‘it’s 5am in Saudi Arabia, you know, a couple of hours’. Then it’s 8am, 9am and nothing. Now today, everyone’s, I don’t want to say they’re backtracking but it doesn’t appear to be sold yet. Now, here’s the thing everybody. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know if it’s been sold or not, but I do know this, I lived through the sale of World Championship Wrestling, I lived through the sale of the UFC. Every single one of these things is going exactly the same as this Saudi story is going.

“I’m not saying that for sure they’re going to be sold to the Saudis, I’m not saying that, but this is the exact same thing that happened. Do you know that when WCW was sold, after it was sold, there were still people denying that it had been sold, after it had been sold. The exact same thing that happened when UFC was sold. It was deny, deny, deny, and meanwhile every bit of this sale was being reported, but the people within UFC; deny, deny, deny. There were people there, at the very top, that didn’t know and had been told that it was not for sale, and they weren’t selling, they didn’t know until after it was sold.

“So for those of you who are like ‘oh these rumours, they just made it up, there’s nothing to them’, I’m not saying it’s anything, but this is the way things work when you sell a company. It could very well be that this deal has been agreed to in principle, but it’s not done yet, and of course a lot of things need to be done, if the rumour which is Vince is selling to the Saudis and he’s going to go private, you can’t just do that, there’s a lot of stuff that has to be done. Nothing is over until it’s over, until it’s REALLY over. Because, you’ll also recall during the sale of World Championship Wrestling that Eric Bischoff’s group issued a press release about how they purchased the company, they actually issued a press release, they said the deal was done. Well guess what, the deal was not done, and someone else bought it, WWE.

“So anyway, I can’t sit here and tell you, for sure, anything, and nothing will be sure until a deal is made, a sale is completed, and some time has passed for it to really complete. Obviously some people jumped the gun and said the deal was done, they shouldn’t have done that, but if you think this is much ado about nothing, you might be in for a pretty big surprise coming up at some point.”

If you use this transcription or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

Fightful Select (subscription required) also provided more updates on the situation, noting that they heard that Vince McMahon himself had conversations along the way, but that doesn’t mean that a sale is imminent.

The report also notes that there have been numerous wrestlers, including some who have recently returned to the company, as well as top stars in the company, that have told Fightful that they would walk out if the sale to Saudi Arabia were to be announced.

As for the rumours of a sale being good to go, WWE sources dismissed the rumours last night, and they even “more emphatically” rejected it this morning.

We will provide more updates on the situation as they become available.

On January 6, using his power as majority owner, Vince McMahon put himself and former WWE presidents George Barrios and Michelle Wilson back on the company’s Board of Directors, disposing of JoEllen Lyons Dillon, Jeffrey R Speed, and Alan M Wexler in the process.

McMahon had stated that his intention was to facilitate a sale of the company.

He changed bylaws to ensure that no sale or media rights deal could be completed without his approval.

Upon McMahon’s return, two further Board members resigned of their own volition, those being Man Jit Singh – who was the one heading up the Board’s investigation into McMahon – and Ignace Lahoud.

Stephanie McMahon then resigned from her role as co-CEO and Chairwoman and her position on the Board on January 10, as Vince McMahon was elected Executive Chairman.

There has been much speculation that Vince McMahon was looking to sell to a party that would commit to keeping him in charge of the company despite the multiple sexual assault allegations that have surfaced in the past year that led to his initial ‘retirement’ in July.

It’s important to make clear that there has not been an official announcement regarding a sale to Saudi Arabia yet, so we’ll obviously keep you updated so keep an eye on the homepage and Twitter for anything else that breaks.

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• Sale
• saudi arabia
• Vince McMahon
• wwe

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