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Report: More Details On Why WWE Sacked George Barrios And Michelle Wilson

Vince wants all the lovely talent...

On January 30, WWE announced that Co-Presidents George Barrios and Michelle Wilson had been fired. Frank A. Riddick III was appointed as the interim Chief Financial Officer.

In the press release announcing the shake-up, Vince McMahon cited that both Barrios and Wilson were sacked as they had "different views on how best to achieve our strategic priorities moving forward."

Many at the time speculated that the change was caused by disagreements over the WWE Network, which both Barrios and Wilson were big proponents of. However, Dave Meltzer reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that the two former Co-Presidents departed the company because they had a completely different vision to McMahon as to how WWE should move forward.

According to Meltzer, Wilson and Barrios preferred a more conservative strategy for 2020 as they were looking to maximise profits and improve the company's share price. This differed from Vince who instead wants to reassert his stranglehold on the world of professional wrestling through heavy spending.

With the new money available from their new US TV deals, McMahon wants to sign up any available free agents to effectively stockpile wrestlers in WWE, who, similar to current talents like Mike Kanellis and EC3, will be paid to just sit at home to prevent them from working for AEW or New Japan. Funds will also be used to increase existing Superstars' salaries to entice them to remain with the company.

McMahon also plans to commit more resources to create new regional divisions of NXT across the globe, similar to NXT UK, so WWE can "attempt to dominate the grassroots aspect of the market."

Ultimately, Barrios and Wilson disagreed with this strategy and were sacked.

For the avoidance of doubt, Meltzer penned: "While nothing was said publicly, privately, and this has also been reported in business coverage of the Wilson/Barrios departures is that they were looking to maximize current profits and thus build he price of stock up. McMahon was looking at the new money from these huge domestic price increases to increase profits, but also to heavily invest, notably looking at spending big money to sign up, keep and stockpile talent, making sure marketable talent didn’t leave, create new regional offshoots to attempt to dominate the grassroots aspect of the market as had started to happen in the U.K. market, and attempt to regain the monopoly of the business he seemingly had that has started to slip away with the increases in worldwide popularity of different groups, notably AEW and New Japan Pro Wrestling."

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Aidan Gibbons

Written by Aidan Gibbons

Editor-in-Chief of Cultaholic.com Twitter: @theaidangibbons