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Congratulations are in order for the winner of the 2024 WWE Men’s Royal Rumble: Slim Jim.
No, that’s not the name of a wrestler, even though it may very well have been a name CM Punk called someone on his way out the door of AEW…I kid, of course. I look forward to seeing him lose out on the main event of Wrestlemania to The Rock (again). At least he and Cody Rhodes know they have options.
Slim Jim is one of WWE’s sponsors. The brand that first involved themselves with wrestling years ago entered into a sponsorship with “The Fed” last year. It was a great move, as no company on the planet knows how to market to their audience better than the WWE…
All seemed to be well and good until Slim Jim recently made the decision to “pause” the sponsorship in light of a bombshell report about sex trafficking allegations made against Vince McMahon, the former owner of WWE and, until Friday, the chairman of TKO Group Holdings, the company formed by Endeavor to house both the WWE and its sister by another corporate mister, UFC.
The timing of the move couldn’t have been worse, happening right before the Royal Rumble, an event Slim Jim featured prominently in the advertising for.
Many questions needed to be answered: Would the event look different? Will the strained relationship cause problems for future events? What is LA Knight going to drive now?
Thankfully, we don’t have to answer any of those because rational heads prevailed when Vince announced his resignation from TKO. A follow-up discussion with TKO management paved the way for “The Jim” to resume their over the top (rope) marketing strategy.
Vince McMahon forced TKO’s hand
Now, we don’t know if Vince McMahon willingly stepped down or if his bosses at TKO told him he needed to resign or face termination, but considering how his retirement from WWE in 2022 ended, I’m thinking the latter scenario is the more plausible one.
It’s good that TKO did what had to be done but there isn’t much joy in how we got here. It’s bittersweet celebrating the end of the career of a man who, in spite of the crimes he’s allegedly committed or covered up in both his personal and professional lives, is, more than anyone else, responsible for pro wrestling as we know it today.
That being said, if you’ve read the report, you know there’s nothing to celebrate because the man is a monster.
As shocking as all of it was, it was even more shocking that TKO, in light of the allegations and the accompanying fallout, actually took action. It may have not been entirely surprising to them but they still took action.
TKO took action when, a year ago, no one could be bothered to issue a statement in the wake of then UFC President (and now CEO) Dana White slapping his wife, a moment captured in all its glory and packaged in a nice little bow for the world to see, to live on in Internet infamy.
Why would Ari Emmanuel and Mark Shapiro, the men who run both Endeavor and TKO, choose to hold accountable the former head of one of their corporate fiefdoms but not the current head of the other?
The reason could be due to the scale of the indiscretions since, as bad as it looked seeing Dana strike Mrs. Dana, it pales in comparison to the atrocities committed by Vince McMahon towards one former WWE employee (not to mention all of the other men and women he has harmed in the 40+ years he ran WWE).
It could be due to the level of importance that’s been placed on both men by TKO in the current business landscape too, as while Dana White is still the unquestioned and unchallenged leader of the UFC, Vince McMahon had been slowly getting phased out of any power and influence he had left in WWE. TKO seems content on allowing Nick Khan and Paul “Triple H” Levesque handle the business and creative sides of the company respectively, scuttering Vince McMahon into a role where he could do as little damage as possible.
Maybe that was due to the fact all of the damage had already been done…
UFC is no longer different from WWE
That’s the long and short of it right there, isn’t it? Dana White can get away with whatever he wants because he’s “irreplaceable.” There isn’t another promoter on the planet who combines the business acumen and the marketable look and brand that continues to make Dana White one of the most important stars of the UFC.
Then again, that was Vince McMahon once. He made the moves in the 1980s that allowed the World Wrestling Federation to become a national phenomenon, while his on screen rivalry with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin during the Attitude Era of the late 1990s is what allowed him to finish as the victor in the Monday Night Wars with WCW.
In the years since then, WWE grew and expanded exponentially. That’s in spite of the continued criticism lobbied at the company due to its content. Content that, regardless of who booked the shows, always had to go through Vince McMahon.
That means that, as any longstanding viewer of Monday Night Raw can attest, his alleged coprophilia is not anything new.
Fans had been through all the highs and lows of WWE’s content quality to the point of not necessarily hoping for Vince McMahon to go away but just hoping it would happen before the product became too toxic to be salvageable.
It’s kind of interesting to think about all of that in light of where UFC’s product is currently at, isn’t it? There are quite a few similarities.
I mean, I wouldn’t say the quality of UFC events under Dana White has ever been bad to the point of being unwatchable but, with so many events a year, it’s hard to find top-to-bottom cards that feel worth the price of admission. The opinions regarding UFC 297’s quality were uniformly harsh. It’s gotten bad to the point of postponements due to poor quality.
Vince McMahon didn’t say it’d be like this…
I can only imagine how many more Apex cards we’re going to get following UFC 300 to make up for all the strong and (mostly) relevant fights we’re getting. Oh and we still don’t have a main event for that show, but at least UFC gets to crotch chop PFL by stealing Kayla Harrison away.
It feels like we’re falling into the doldrums of the UFC not just in terms of card quality but in terms of fighter accountability as well. It shouldn’t be too surprising that, in a world where Conor McGregor was and still is the top draw (ROAD HOUSE!) that a fighter like Colby Covington would realize he could become successful by saying hateful things. Or Jorge Masvidal could become successful in spite of the crazy things he believes. Or Sean Strickland could be openly sexist and transphobic and no one would think anything of it.
Dana White’s reaction to all that has been to, at worst, brush it off and ignore it and, at best, exploit it and profit from it. The man who used to police this kind of behavior to the point of suspending and firing fighters has now deemed it not only acceptable but inevitable.
How can we be expected to hold these men and women to higher standards? They’re fighters, not rocket scientists or math teachers from Ohio!
Can Dana White escape the same fate as Vince McMahon?
Endeavor/TKO, in choosing to not address any of this in any way, is giving a ringing endorsement to it, most likely because, while WWE is still viewed as family-friendly entertainment, UFC is made to cater to an different crowd, a crowd that’s more likely to still use “woke” unironically in everyday conversation.
Just think of a similar sponsor situation, brought up by Dana White himself, when a sponsor objected to content the UFC CEO made and endorsed online. Dana doubled down and said that he would “never bow down to pressure like that…” And, if his employers continue to stay silent on the matter, he won’t have to.
Thus, we come to the real difference maker in what made the downfall of Vince McMahon possible while Teflon Dana continues to thrive. The real questions that should be asked in the wake of the Vince McMahon/Slim Jim situation is this: is this indicative of how TKO will run all of its businesses? If a similar situation happens now or in the future, one where a sponsor pulls advertising due to actions on Dana White’s part, will TKO act accordingly?
Vince McMahon has been where Dana White is now. If, given another 25 years at the helm without any meaningful checks or balances in place, could Dana’s career face a similar fate?
If his does, at least we won’t have to worry about Pelatons…
Maybe it won’t be an issue if Endeavor continues to target advertisers that appear to be okay with the alt-right Wild West the UFC has turned itself into. Maybe it won’t be an issue so long as advertisers feel like they need the UFC more than the UFC needs them.
But if it does become an issue? Or if something else ends up damaging the UFC’s business due to Dana White’s past actions, such as say…an antitrust lawsuit? Guess we’ll need to snap in and stayed tuned.
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