Actor and former Raw, Smackdown producer and writer, Freddie Prinze Jr. has revealed that the WWE was seeking a deal with Fox in the past.
According to Prinze, the principle WWE owners were interested in selling the company to Fox while they were inking a broadcast deal back in 2019.
“I haven’t said this before but I’ll say it now because it has been long enough. I was talking to a dude who was interviewing to be their COO. They ended up going with Nick Khan, he had passed (on the position) but he wanted to talk to me about the company. So we were just talking about the brand and all this, and he goes…’Yeah, they (WWE) wanted us (Fox) to buy the whole product’. He’s an exec at Fox. He goes…’They wanted us to buy the whole brand but the number they wanted wasn’t a number we were going to pay so we licensed SmackDown instead,” said Prinze on his podcast, Wrestling with Freddie, from iHeart Media’s My Cultra Network.
Many fans and industry insiders have speculated on a future sale of the WWE believing that is why the company has been clearing the decks by releasing so many of its employees in the last year.
WWE President Nick Khan commented on a potential sale twice last August.
“We’re open for business on anything and everything. Even some of the business plans that we’ve announced recently are different and unique to what the company has traditionally done. We’re open for business. If somebody called, we’ll listen, but we’re not active or out on the marketplace trying to change that structure,” he said to Recode Media.
Khan told Ariel Helwani of BT Sport that no talk of a deal was happening.
“We’re not trying to sell it. That’s not our intent. There are no internal meetings about selling this company. The internal meetings are about growing it, and the ability that we think we collectively have to tremendously grow what the value of the company is now,” he said.
Just a few weeks ago on the Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette , Eric Bischoff, who last worked for the WWE in 2019 as the producer of Smackdown, speculated on the WWE being sold off.
“Like I said, six months ago we would’ve argued about this and I probably would’ve not budged on my position but I’m becoming a little bit more open to the idea that it probably or could be at least partially true. And just look at the moves. And I also look behind the scenes. It’s like, we’ve all had this conversation in one shape or form. What happens if Vince leaves? If he goes out on the job, which is probably the way he’d want to go or does he decide to buy a yacht and go to Barbados? Who’s going to step into that spot? Is it going to be Triple H? I don’t think so. He would’ve already been there. Is it going to be Stephanie? Been there, done that, she’s a mom now. Is Bruce Prichard going to do it? Who’s going to do it? Nick Khan, he’s in and out. He’s in there to make a deal happen and move on down the road,” he said.
