There are more details in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter on Stephanie McMahon’s “leave of absence” from WWE and the attempts to bury her a couple of weeks after her exit.
As noted earlier this week, there has been an attempt to bury her and Dave Meltzer reports that the Business Insider story on her departure was planted by someone in the company as a way to bury her. The story noted that Vince McMahon is the reason why she took her “leave of absence.” However, Meltzer noted that she was the one who wanted out and she had been thinking about leaving for a while.
Meltzer added that he believes that the odds of her returning have “greatly diminished” but time does heal wounds. McMahon had been working for her father for decades and had been the face of the company for many years.
On the burial of Stephanie, Meltzer stated that this was not done when George Barrios and Michelle Wilson left the company so something significant must have happened since Stephanie’s departure that has people at the top burying her. In addition to this, WWE has hired people to take over her job duties.
Meltzer added that nobody would say anything bad about her when she left because Vince would find out but clearly, the Business Insider story and “other stories were done with Vince’s approval and the opposite of what key people in the company thought was the case.” He also noted that “the company planted the story, basically that WWE’s brand partnership revenue was well behind that of UFC, a similar sized company.”
Business Insider quoted a WWE source saying, “We weren’t seeing that growth. When someone is moved out of a company, it’s usually the result of something not working. WWE took stronger control of that a few months ago.”
Stephanie had reportedly been thinking about leaving for a few months and she evidently went to Vince to tell him and he was surprised and then he started to get the ball going on the change.
There are no answers right now on why exactly the decision was made to bury her but some people in wrestling are speculating that perhaps it has to do with the MLW lawsuit against WWE where it was alleged that it was Stephanie who made the call to FOX about getting the MLW deal with FOX-owned Tubi nixed.
