One of the most famous nights in the history of professional wrestling is when Shane McMahon showed up on Monday Nitro after WWE purchased WCW, effectively putting an end to the Monday Night Wars. Well, we could have had a repeat in 2023 if AEW owner Tony Khan had his way.
After plenty of controversy and personal troubles, WWE was finally put up for sale by Vince McMahon in 2023. The company was purchased by Endeavor for a cool $9.3 billion, merging WWE together with UFC to create the new company TKO.
Since the merger, WWE has seen its business grow. In spite of many fans seeing a recent downturn in the product, WWE’s business metrics have arguably never been stronger in revenue and attendance. And their new deals with Netflix and ESPN have seen them widen and modernize their scope both domestically and globally.
However, that sale has come under scrutiny from WWE shareholders. A lawsuit was filed alleging that McMahon and WWE took a sweetheart deal from Endeavor in exchange for greasing the wheels for McMahon to have a prominent role in the company.
The longtime WWE owner had originally stepped down in 2022 after a litany of personal misconduct allegations were made public, but pulled off a coup to return to power in early 2023. After the Endeavor sale he was given a board position, but finally resigned permanently in 2024 after sexual assault allegations were made public.
As discovery in that lawsuit has moved forward, Brandon Thurston of Post Wrestling has reported who else placed a bid for WWE during the sale process. And one of the companies was Base 10, backed by none other than AEW owner Tony Khan. Liberty Media and private equity group KKR also put in bids.
While the thought of Tony Khan creating a pro wrestling monopoly and bringing WWE and AEW together would keep fans awake for weeks thinking of all the possibilities and fantasy matchups, it turns out the Base10 bid was actually the lowest of all the offers according to Thurston.
By a considerable margin, Base 10’s bid price was the lowest of the four. Tony Khan’s company offered $76.83 per share. KKR offered a range between $90 and $97.50. Liberty bid a range of $95 to $100. Those were offers that would have converted WWE shares to cash. Meanwhile, Endeavor’s winning bid was an all-stock deal valued at $95.66 per share before synergies. Instead of cash, WWE investors’ shares simply converted to the same number of TKO shares when the deal closed. Three years later, TKO’s share price trades at about $200 as of this writing, essentially doubling the bid prices of 2023.
It will be interesting to see where the lawsuit goes from here given the offers from KKR and Liberty were at least competitive at the time with Endeavor. Even if Khan’s was the best monetary offer, it would have been a shock to see Vince McMahon and company sell out to a rival promoter given the WWE empire was built on him going national and extinguishing the territory system that had marked pro wrestling for decades. Tony Khan’s father Shahid, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, has a net worth over $14 billion. But even that probably wouldn’t have been enough for WWE to admit defeat in that regard.
And in the end, it may have also been best for pro wrestling. While everyone romanticizes the Monday Night Wars and dreamed of what could happen if two promotions collided, the infamous WCW/ECW invasion of WWE has been widely regarded historically as a flop. An AEW invasion of WWE, or vice versa, probably would have been met with the same problems that plagued its predecessor. And if the industry has proven anything over the years, it’s that competition is a much better thing than consolidation.
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