Vince McMahon, founder of WWE wrestling and CEO of the TKO group, resigned Friday amid allegations that he sexually trafficked and abused a former employee, which he has denied, adding to previous accusations of sexual misconduct against the wrestling mogul.
January 2024Earlier this week, former WWE employee Janel Grant, a woman who said she’d been offered $3 million to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep quiet about her alleged affair with McMahon, filed a bombshell lawsuit against McMahon, claiming, among other things, he pressured her into having sex with him and others at the company—claims he’s said he will “vigorously defend” himself against.
June 2022In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that WWE was investigating a $3 million hush money payment McMahon made to cover up the alleged affair with Grant—leading to the discovery of a total of $12 million in secret settlements with four women, including two who alleged sexual misconduct, according to the Journal.
2022-2023McMahon initially retired amid the hush money scandal in July 2022, but after the WWE concluded its internal investigation into the payments in November 2022, he returned to the WWE board in January 2023; a federal investigation into the misconduct allegations is ongoing and McMahon was subpoenaed as part of that investigation last August—in a statement to media outlets at the time, he said he “always denied any intentional wrongdoing and continue to do so.”
2006In 2006, headlines surfaced that a tanning salon employee in Boca Raton accused McMahon of showing her unsolicited naked photos of himself and groping her, but prosecutors ultimately declined to file charges due to a lack of evidence, and per reporting by the Daily Beast in 2018, McMahon adamantly denied any misconduct at the time.
1992In 1992, Rita Chatterton, a former WWE referee, publicly accused McMahon of raping her in 1986 during an interview with Geraldo Rivera and in January, the Wall Street Journal reported that McMahon and Chatterton agreed to a multimillion dollar settlement over the allegations decades later—but McMahon has always denied the accusations and his attorney maintained that denial to the Wall Street Journal, claiming he settled the case “solely to avoid the cost of litigation.”
A spokesperson for McMahon said Grant’s lawsuit was “replete with lies, obscene made-up instances that never occurred, and a vindictive distortion of the truth,” per the Wall Street Journal. TKO noted that the allegations predated its creation after the merger of WWE and Ultimate Fighting Championship’s parent company Endeavor, but that the company was still taking the “horrific allegations” seriously and addressing the matter internally, per multiple media outlets. McMahon has said he plans to “vigorously defend” himself from the lawsuit, but would step down “out of respect” to WWE and TKO. Forbes has contacted TKO and WWE for comment.
Last year, WWE completed a merger with Endeavor, the entity behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship. McMahon was tapped as the executive chairman of the new resulting company, TKO. But news of Grant’s lawsuit Friday ultimately forced McMahon to resign. The lawsuit has also raised questions about the legitimacy of the WWE’s investigation into McMahon’s secret settlement paymets, with Grant’s attorneys calling the investigation “a sham” in the lawsuit. A former WWE board member told the Wall Street Journal that the board remained confident in the investigation but was not at liberty to comment on “what was and was not learned” during the probe.
