Vince McMahon and Nick Khan sanctioned by judge in WWE merger lawsuit

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]We also had uh this was another big story today uh Judge Travis Ler who will be the judge presiding over the still scheduled uh WWE shareholder lawsuit which is set to begin on June the 8th and as we are getting closer uh we we will see there is always the potential of a settlement but uh today uh Judge Ler released a 41page opinion and we'll go through like the the important notes here um a beautiful graphic designed by Brandon Thirstston and an accompanying story as well. Langus has officially taken over the wrestling vocabulary.

[00:00:37]>> It certainly has. Um I if we did have a merchant merchandise store, I did encourage Brandon to to print those Langus shirts, but um maybe someday.

[00:00:46]>> Yes. Um yeah, it's it is funny that there are people that are discovering this Langa story for the first time today and um >> it's been it's like the third time it's been published like >> but for some reason today was like oh now we get this and we're seeing like you know the depositions of Nick Khan and Vince McMahon that were were available but it seems like more eyes were on it today. So the judge determined that um there was spoliation and what is spoilation? It is the the deletion of what can be considered key evidence. And there are multiple defendants in this case that the shareholders have filed suit against.

[00:01:26]Vince McMahon, Nick Khan are among them, but also is Brad Blum, Paul Lebec, uh as well George Barios, Michelle Wilson.

[00:01:35]They are all defendants in th this case.

[00:01:37]The sanctions that the judge is imposing are only on Vince McMahon and Nick Khan because he believes that these two acted recklessly. And as a result, the court is now going to elevate the standard of proof that is going to be needed by the defendants.

[00:01:55]Typically, it's based on a prepoundonderance of evidence. And because of this evidence that it's gone, they cannot obviously use that evidence.

[00:02:03]And now it's a higher threshold that the defendants are going to have to make in terms of their case for the judge to rule in their favor. They're going to go with five key facts that they are going to presume are true as a result of this because of this evidence that has been deleted.

[00:02:22]All this goes back to in the Vince McMahon the the first set of stories about Vince McMahon and the sexual misconduct allegations in 20122 that very week uh WWE's assistant general counsel they sent out a legal hold notice to all of the key people including Vince McMahon, Brad Blum, Nick Khan, LC Stephanie and stated you are to preserve and retain all documents electronically stored information and to take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent the destruction of any of these documents or information. And like it was as clear as possible and even stating that if your settings for emails or text messages have automatic deletion protocols, it's your responsibility to ensure that relevant documents are preserved and that like the onus is on you. If you are someone that downloads Signal, the default is that nothing will be deleted. You have to manually change that setting. And they were able to determine how often Nick Con and Vince McMahon specifically and others as well, but mainly we'll focus on Vince and Nick Con were switching their settings and being like to they would delete within like for some within an hour. Um, for one instance, when the DOJ um were when they sent WWE a request for information regarding Vince McMahon's alleged conduct, that same day, Nick Khan changed the autodelete setting on his signal chat with Vince McMahon to delete messages after 1 hour. And when you are looking at this like they they pretty much here were like just dead to rights here of like this this goes so counter to what they were literally instructed to by their own legal counsel and were were not preserving a lot of this. They also were like the shareholders their main focus of this is that this was not a fair process that Endeavor through Arianuel they were able to jumpstart the process before any other biders were brought into the process and that this was a foregone conclusion that Endeavor was going to end up in this company. Why?

[00:04:40]because they have Arya Emanuel uh both in communication with Vince McMahon through messages but also there's a voicemail and he's basically indicating that Vince McMahon he he's going to be able to take care of Vince McMahon have a spot for him in this new company and that he will be able that everybody at the DOJ are former LAam lawyers so on that side it will be very helpful indicating that these are lawyers that are going to be helpful uh to us as well. So you have this picture that is being illustrated of Vince McMahon having this landing spot to come back to the company in early 2023 orchestrate this sale with Endeavor. And when Liberty Media and KKR and Base 10, which is Tony Khan's company, when they were making their proposals, none of them had shown any indication of wanting to retain Vince McMahon. And the shareholders believe that, you know, this this could have driven up the price and that the shareholders could have made a lot more because this with all of these biders, you could have really had a competition for this company. And their belief is that well, this was fixed from the from before the process began. This was a this was a guarantee that Endeavor was going to get this and they may have underpaid for this company. So, it's not so much looking at what is the company worth today. It's been a super successful merger to create TKO, but what was the price or what was the stock sale in 2023 that was agreed upon and how high could they have gone after the fact. So they have they have made these points clear that going into this trial, these are the points that they are going to consider as factual that Ari Emanuel made a promise to provide Vince with a continued role at this new company and after a transaction had influenced Vince's decision-making with respect to the merger. Number two is that Emanuel offered to indemnify and offer legal support for any federal investigation of Vince's alleged misconduct um allegations. That Vince uh decided to pursue a transaction with Endeavor in 2022 before the company had formally started a sale process or a merger process. Number four is that Nickcon communicated with Reman Emanuel between August and December of 2022 to facilitate a transaction between the two companies. And number five, um that Vince McMahon and Nick Khan worked with with the Rain uh company, which was like a um investment banking firm to steer the process towards a deal with Endeavor away from other biders. So they have stated that the presumed facts relate to the conduct of Vince McMahon and Nick Con. court is not presuming that the other defendants knew about their actions or were involved. So again, that that um it it does not include like your other uh defendants here like LeC and Brad Blum and George Barios and Michelle Wilson. So like this is a big blow to the plaintiff side in particular Vince McMahon and Nick Khan. Um could this expedite their need to try and settle?

[00:08:03]It's possible. But as of now, this trial is supposed to start in Delaware on June 8th. It will run for 4 days that week.

[00:08:10]And at the end of the trial date, they will there's not going to be a decision after the last day. The judge will then go away. He will deliberate. It might be months and then he will make a ruling on this. And what could this mean? Like if if the shareholders if this goes to trial and the shareholders win, it could mean like hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. like there is that potential and there is a question of how covered Vince McMahon is regarding insurance and if he would be covered by TKO's like uh uh indemnification um if he would be personally liable like that's a that's a question we don't know the answer to at least not clearly. Um so this is a very big story and um outlines sort of the um you know a lot of these their their belief is that TKO's argument is that listen we've sent tens of thousands of documents and information this is only a fraction of what's missing but their argument is because this was deleted we're going to believe that that means these were very important and not all documents carry equal weight and the fact that these ones were deleted and not submitted. Well, we're going to put the onus on like these were probably really important and they might be more important than all these other documents you have provided for us. So, they really painted themselves in a corner and were told on two separate occasions by their legal team of preserving and making it so clear like there was no wiggle room in this.

[00:09:44]>> Yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating to see it play out and um it's also fascinating to consider well what exactly is is the end result in all of this as it relates to I guess the common fan and I think the answer to that is really not much. I mean you know these these billionaires are going to lose money but the status quo will largely stay the same. Now, what sort of fallout will there be um in terms of maybe further cutbacks or u you know uh and decreases in um well higher ticket prices or something? I don't know. I wonder. But um I I just simply await um any semblance of a decision which I think will take some time.

[00:10:24]>> Do you think this is going to trial?

[00:10:27]>> My feeling is no.

[00:10:29]>> You think they will reach a settlement beforehand? Yeah, but if you're the shareholders, like what what damages are you looking towards when you feel like you might have a very winnable case here?

[00:10:40]But you also might lose and you might get offered something that hey we might we might not get anything and um it's like listen a lot of these cases like you are you are incentivized to settle and not reach this end stage like there have been you know in you know the Delaware court it is designed to get these done very quickly a lot of these major corporations when they have conflict um they have also released like the the witness uh list and like this is the all-star game of witness lists.

[00:11:15]Vince McMahon is set to take the stand for both the plaintiffs and the defendants. The plaintiffs will also call to the stand Ary Emanuel, Mark Shapiro, Andrew Schlimer. Um they may call Stephanie McMahon. She's a maybe.

[00:11:29]Um the defendants uh they have the whole list here. they're going to call as as witnesses George Barios, Brad Blum, Ari, uh Nick Khan, Steve Kunan, who was a uh who's a TKO board member and previously a WWE board member, Paul Levec, Vince McMahon, Frank Riddick, Mark Shapiro, Michelle Wilson. Um this is like this is everybody you would imagine hearing and like Vince McMahon just taking the stand alone is um it's pretty noteworthy. Like I was talking with Brandon like I cannot recall >> Vince McMahon taking the stand like he's been deposed in his history but actually taking the the the stand like this might be a first and um >> we will have Brand if this goes to trial we will have Brandon Thirstston right there in in in the courthouse.

[00:12:19]>> Amazing. Um his Wrestlemania >> um this is uh you know you know we'll start with Doug Pearlman and just move our way up here.

[00:12:28]>> Yeah. Um, incredibly fascinating. Now, like outside of this particular story, do we expect further information about just not just the makeup of TKO, but just how WWE as an operation? Do we expect anything like that to come out >> if this does to go to trial?

[00:12:45]>> I mean, already like the there's going to be a lot that come out like like the depositions are really eye opening. Um if if this reaches like just these people on the stand for an hour or so, like you're going to learn a lot about th this company that's informed by those depositions, but are going to be uh probably a lot more the questions are going to be much more narrow in uh in scope and trying to derive as much specific information as possible. And listen, quite frankly, if you are um the legal team of Vince McMahon and Vince is going on the stand, um I'd be super nervous. I'd be super nervous of Vince going on on the stand and what this guy is going to say, what his recall is. Um you know, a lot of these people are very polished, but I think Vince McMahon is a total wild card on on the stand for both the plaintiffs and the defendants. um in terms of what what you'll get out of him. I mean it's um >> I mean it'll be it'll it'll be fascinating and it'll be really interesting to see like the like I think there's going to be a lot of um entertainment reporters covering this. I think that you will probably get some sports media coverage of this like but when an Ari Emanuel is here and you know to a degree Nick Khan but a Vince McMahon as well like that that is going to garner like national media being focused on this story I feel as we get closer to June 8th. So June 8th is is the key date. We may we are awaiting to see if a settlement >> there have been cases like this way where like they have settled the night before there was like the Facebook case where they literally went their first day in court and they settled that night after everyone had gotten there after one day in court they settled. So like that's always on the table for these and like that's the multi-million dollar question is if today if you are um the team that is representing uh Nickon and TKO's side are like man we are like we're going into this already with these strikes against us after today's opinion and does that intensify their their need to to settle because they do not want to have uh a spotlight on the inner workings of their company on this national scale. Like it's one thing like these depositions, it's your, you know, your Bloomberg readers that are maybe following this like very closely, the Brandon Thirsten's, but this going to trial like everyone is going to see like an autopsy on this on this company and its business practices.

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