There’s a lot of talk about a potential WWE sale and it appears to be serious because the company has hired JPMorgan and the word is that the company wants to sell before the next TV/media rights negotiations stars.
On the latest “What Happened When” podcast with Tony Schiavone, Conrad Thompson explained how he knew at the time Nick Khan was hired by WWE that it was to help sell the WWE:
“I’ve been saying on this program for a while that WWE was going to sell. Do you know why I said that? Because I knew. You know how I knew? Remember when Nick Khan first joined WWE? Well he joined, and he was, of course, an agent. You’ve heard of like UTA and CAA and WME, all these big Hollywood agencies. He was a guy who was helping to negotiate contracts and make deals and things like that. I happened to have some friends who needed representation like that. We’ll say that.”
Thompson continued, “My friend was represented by the same company that Nick Khan was sort of running, and when my friend sees that the guy who runs this big agency is now going to WWE, he thought, ‘What the f**k? This doesn’t make any sense.’ So he called his contact and said, ‘Dude, what’s up with Nick going, blah, blah, blah.’ He said, and this is years ago now, ‘Yea. He’s got a deal with Vince where in his contract, he gets a big payday when he helps facilitate the sale.’ He told me the number, and I won’t say the number because that’s talking about somebody’s money and that’s not cool, but let’s just say this, it’s more than AEW’s TV contract is for a year. It’s a lot. It’s a lot, a lot. So when you hear it’s a lot, a lot, you think, ‘Well why would this guy go here?’, Ah ha, and now, Ta Da. I’ve heard backchanneling before Mean Gene passed away, he said, ‘Well, I heard from’, and I won’t say who he heard it from, ‘When the stock gets to so and so,’ This has been brewing for a while. I know a lot of wrestling fans have been thinking, ‘Well this is just a brand new development.’ It’s years old.”
