Former WWE president George Barrios will be releasing a book covering his tenure in the company.
Skyhorse Publishing has released information for the June 2026 release:
George Barrios helped transform WWE from an $800 million wrestling company into a $9.3 billion global sports and entertainment powerhouse. For the son of Cuban immigrants who grew up in a cramped Queens apartment near LaGuardia Airport and nearly flunked out of high school, the climb to the corporate boardroom was anything but obvious.
Barrios’s story blends grit, reinvention, and bold bets. He went from a 2nd grader forging a letter from his parents so the nuns wouldn’t expel him to the highest levels of corporate leadership. As WWE’s longtime strategist, he pioneered streaming years before other sports properties caught up and helped make WWE the #1 sports brand on YouTube with over a billion followers.
When Vince McMahon abruptly fired him in 2020, Barrios cofounded Isos Capital—and three years later, McMahon called him back. The Cuban kid from Queens had become indispensable.
For readers of Shoe Dog, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and Good to Great, Sometimes Wrong but Never in Doubt offers:
- A framework for spotting undervalued assets and transforming legacy businesses.
- Hard-won lessons on navigating corporate politics and surviving setbacks.
- A masterclass in disrupting before being disrupted—and betting on conviction when everyone else doubts your vision.
This is both an immigrant’s story and a playbook for entrepreneurs and executives seeking to stay ahead of the curve—proof that preparation, persistence, and courage can change everything.
Barrios started his career at WWE in 2008 and rose up the ranks to become its co-president with Michelle Wilson, and was heavily involved in the WWE Network.
In January 2020, WWE publicly announced the departures of Barrios and Wilson and their removal from its board of directors. Vince McMahon was quoted in the release stating that the parties had “different views on how best to achieve our strategic priorities.”
The abrupt change among its executive ranks caused the WWE stock to take a significant dive, but it also proved fruitful as the president’s role would be assumed by the incoming Nick Khan in the summer of 2020, and was one of the most important hires the WWE has ever made.
In late 2023, McMahon orchestrated a power play to return to WWE by using his eighty percent voting power to return to the board of directors. McMahon brought Barrios and Wilson onto the board and replaced the outgoing JoEllen Lyons Dillon, Jeffrey Speed, and Alan Wexler.
In 2021, Barrios founded Isos Capital Management alongside Michelle Wilson and is listed as a trustee for the Global Sport Group out of London.
