WWE's Vince McMahon.
(CNN) --
Professional wrestling is known for its outlandish and dramatic storylines that have captivated generations.
It's like an athletic novel based on emotional drama, with wrestlers sometimes calculating in the background for months to make their move at the right time, eliciting wild reactions in stadiums packed with fans who have followed their every move.
But the actual saga that has unfolded at the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) corporate offices over the past few weeks is beyond even what most of those wrestlers and their backstage colleagues could dream of.
Vince McMahon, the longtime force behind WWE on a corporate and creative level, returned to the company on January 10, nearly six months after announcing his retirement.
McMahon was accused of using company funds to pay millions to various women to cover up infidelities and allegations of sexual misconduct.
But last week, in a few days, McMahon staged his return to the company's board of directors, reshuffled it by forcing some members out, replaced them with his own allies, and used that newfound power in the boardroom to establish himself in his former CEO role.
His own daughter, the company heiress who had seemed poised for the job years ago, resigned.
The surprising and fast-paced events have sent the wrestling world reeling, with sell-out rumors on Twitter and people inside and outside the company wondering what this all means for the future of WWE and professional wrestling itself.
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How did we get here?
In July, Vince McMahon—an ever-present force in WWE and professional wrestling, the man who rebuilt the business in service of a vision that challenged generations of tradition, creating his own hegemony—retired.
Or he quit, depending on who you ask.
It was a moment that many wrestling fans and watchers never thought would come.
The longtime WWE Chairman and CEO was such an intense manager that he barely slept, rarely took vacations and almost never failed to put his own spin on every aspect of the company's production.
Many company supporters assumed that he would die in office rather than retire.
But a series of revelations first appearing in The Wall Street Journal about paying money to various women to cover up infidelities and accusations of sexual misconduct seemed to put an end to McMahon's legendary career at the helm of wrestling's most important company. .
Other information that appeared in December, in which other women accused McMahon of sexual assault, seemed to consolidate his final departure from WWE.
WWE has always been a family business - Vince McMahon Sr. handed the reins over to his son in the 1980s - and it looked set to stay that way.
Vince McMahon's daughter, Stephanie, who had taken a leave of absence from the company just weeks earlier, assumed the role of co-CEO with Nick Khan, a veteran media and entertainment industry executive.
And Paul Levesque - Stephanie McMahon's husband and professional wrestling Hall of Famer, better known by his ring name Hunter Hearst Helmsley, or Triple H - took over as chief creative officer, putting him at He was in charge of the storylines and in-ring action of WWE, which his father-in-law had long managed.
Why was Vince McMahon's departure so important?
That moment last summer marked a sea change in the professional wrestling industry.
Vince McMahon was more of a king than an executive in the WWE world, with his fingerprints all over it.
Through his ruthless business practices, he had shaped the industry in his image, putting most of his competitors out of business and making his company the destination of professional wrestling.
For the better part of two decades, he had a monopoly on the business.
But in recent years his creative output fell apart.
Stars who left WWE described a frustrating creative process dominated by McMahon that drowned out visions of him and led to a homogenized product that seemed a far cry from the company's heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
With the vast majority of the company's revenue coming from television rights, rather than fans spending money on tickets or pay-per-view events, the need to give people what they wanted was replaced by production. of contents.
At times it seemed as if Vince McMahon's creative decisions were designed to antagonize and annoy his audience, seeming to intrude on their vision of "sports entertainment" whether they liked it or not.
A turning point for many was the 2015 Royal Rumble event. Fans clamored for their favorite Daniel Bryan, one of the most talented wrestlers on the planet, to win the eponymous event.
For many fans, Bryan's career symbolized the hope that the company would promote his favorite fighters instead of those chosen by McMahon.
But Bryan was unceremoniously eliminated in the first half of the fight.
The Philadelphia crowd booed throughout the second half, chanting Bryan's name and refusing to celebrate when Roman Reigns - widely seen as McMahon's choice to be the future of the company despite fan apathy - won.
The audience figures reflected that loss of hope.
Although overall television audiences have fallen in recent years, with a few exceptions, WWE's decline outpaced the overall decline in total viewership and in the key 18-49 demographic, according to Wrestlenomics, a website that tracks monitoring of the commercial part of this sector.
Once considered a wrestling genius, Vince McMahon has come to be seen by critics as a creative drag.
The appointment of Levesque and the Stephanie McMahon-Khan duo seemed to indicate that a new era was dawning in WWE and that his creative system would finally receive a much-needed injection of new ideas, new faces and new energy.
Why did Vince McMahon return?
In December The Wall Street Journal reported that McMahon was preparing his return and the first rumors occurred that the new era could be on shaky ground.
According to the Journal's report, McMahon was telling people around him that he had been badly advised to step aside after the newspaper reported that he used company funds to pay more than $12 million in money-for-money settlements. Silencing women to cover up "allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity."
The WSJ also reported that McMahon believed the controversy would have died down had he remained as chief creative officer and chairman of the company's board of directors.
So, in early January, McMahon made his move.
According to a statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), McMahon said he had to return to the company because of negotiations over media rights and a "review of strategic alternatives." they required his "direct involvement, leadership and support."
He told the SEC that he was being put back on the company's board of directors, along with two long-standing allies, both of whom McMahon had fired from the company in 2020.
How could he do this, despite retiring in disgrace and being ostensibly away from the company for months?
McMahon never sold his shares in the company and remained WWE's majority shareholder.
"The only way for WWE to take full advantage of this opportunity is for me to return as CEO and support the management team in negotiating our media rights and combine that with a review of strategic alternatives," McMahon said in a press release.
"My return will allow WWE, as well as any counterparty to the transaction, to participate in these processes knowing that they will have the support of the majority shareholder."
In the course of just a few days, he had gone from being a marginalized former wrestling executive to once again running the company that had grown from regional player to global powerhouse.
It was the kind of twist you'd expect from "Mr. McMahon," Vince McMahon's twisted on-screen persona, who was wrestling's biggest scoundrel for years, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. .
Just days after reinstating himself on the company's board of directors, WWE's board of directors unanimously restored him to his former role as CEO.
Not only that, his daughter, Stephanie McMahon - who for years had seemed poised to take over the company and had played prominent roles on and off screen - stepped down as WWE President and Co-CEO, leaving it entirely.
Nick Khan was left as sole CEO of the company.
But the corporate machinations of the last week proved that once again, McMahon was the real power in WWE.
Whats Next?
There are reports that McMahon is exploring selling the company, but it is unclear if they are true.
So far, all of McMahon's statements about his intentions refer to business negotiations.
But Stephanie McMahon's departure has cast a cloud over her husband's future at the company.
As his father-in-law forced his return to the company, Levesque was gearing up for his first big stint in charge of WWE storytelling ahead of its biggest time of the year.
The WrestleMania season kicks off with the Royal Rumble on January 28 and continues through the first weekend of April, when WWE hosts a two-night WrestleMania event - its biggest show of the year - at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.
This was probably the first big test for Levesque's creative vision for WWE and had been highly anticipated by wrestling fans.
McMahon's reappearance now raises questions about how much influence the president will attempt to exert over the creative direction of the company, and how it might clash with Levesque's own vision.
In seizing creative control, the WWE Hall of Famer re-signed dozens of wrestlers McMahon had released in recent years, including stars like Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, and prioritized other wrestlers who they don't fit McMahon's typical vision of a professional wrestler: someone taller than six feet, muscular, handsome, and with actual wrestling ability considered optional.
The future of the Levesque favorites now seems less certain than it did a few weeks ago.
There are questions about how fans will receive the news of McMahon's return.
A man once considered a business legend has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple women and using the levers of corporate power to evade responsibility for him.
Fans have already turned away from the company in droves in recent years and some may decide not to spend their money, time and attention on a McMahon-led product.
And then there's the question of how McMahon's return affects the professional wrestling industry as a whole.
All Elite Wrestling (AEW), an emerging promotion started in 2019 by Tony Khan - the son of auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan and no relation to the WWE CEO - and several of independent wrestling's biggest stars, has become in the second largest wrestling company in the world simply for being what WWE is not.
Its focus on long-term narrative, big matches, charismatic stars and less sanitized production have allowed AEW to break WWE's monopoly on the wrestling industry and become a major player in the business.
As such, it had become a home for some of the industry's highest-profile wrestlers who had been burned by WWE's corporate culture and bowed to McMahon's whims.
His departure in July and Levesque's ascension to WWE's creative throne led many observers to wonder if AEW stars would be looking to jump ship and head to WWE.
WWE stalwarts were hopeful that Levesque's new regime would be successful enough to end AEW's rise.
McMahon's return may cast doubt among AEW fighters who thought of moving to WWE in the future.
Vince McMahonWWE