Cash in, cash out: Vince McMahon is selling about a third of his TKO shares

Does Vince McMahon selling some of his TKO stock mean he sees the writing on the wall?

Vince McMahon already ceded some of his control over WWE once it became part of TKO by merging with UFC under Endeavor. Now it looks like he’s prepared to give up even more — but in return for a healthy amount of U.S. dollars.

As revealed in a TKO press release today, McMahon is selling 8.4 million shares of Class A common stock, roughly 30% of what he holds. Interestingly, both TKO CEO Ari Emanuel and COO and president Mark Shapiro are interested in purchasing some of those shares.

The release confirms that the company is not selling any stock, only McMahon, which means he’ll receive all the money from the sale. Even though the TKO stock price dipped a bit in reaction to this news, the shares he’s selling still figure to net him about $700 million.

But money is money and that’s hardly the most interesting part of this situation. A much more intriguing question is what it means for McMahon and the WWE going forward under Endeavor.

When the UFC merger was finalized, Emanuel and others said all the right things about how important McMahon was and how he’d continue to be the one in charge of the pro wrestling operation. However, it quickly became apparent that he wasn’t going to have the same level of control he was accustomed to, as evidenced by Paul “Triple H” Levesque maintaining creative control of WWE programming — a call reportedly made by Emanuel.

As Jimmy Van of Fightful noted back in the spring when the merger was first announced (well ahead of it being finalized), it’s quite possible Emanuel and Endeavor simply told McMahon what he wanted to hear to get the deal done.

Whatever the motivation, controlling even less of TKO weakens McMahon’s power that much more. And maybe this was part of his plan all along, but even if it wasn’t, he can at least take some consolation in being a big chunk of a billion dollars richer.