Shareholder plaintiffs in the WWE merger lawsuit are asking the Delaware Chancery Court to sanction defendants — including Vince McMahon and lead WWE executives Nick Khan and Paul Levesque — over the alleged destruction of relevant evidence, including Signal messages and McMahon’s handwritten notes.
The plaintiffs are seeking adverse inferences: sanctions that would allow the judge, at the anticipated trial, to assume that the missing evidence would have been unfavorable to the defendants responsible for the loss.
The motion, which appeared publicly on the docket this week, alleges that Vince McMahon, Khan, Levesque, as well as non-defendant former executives Stephanie McMahon and Brad Blum failed to preserve communications despite multiple notices from WWE’s legal team to do so. Under Delaware law, parties subject to a litigation hold are required to preserve potentially relevant communications once litigation is reasonably anticipated.
Khan, WWE’s current president, is characterized as “spearheading” communications on the messaging app Signal, which allows users to time messages to auto-delete. Khan is also alleged to have deleted conventional text messages, which plaintiffs say, based on context, included merger discussions and the investigation of alleged misconduct by McMahon.
The motion contains a new factual allegation not previously made public: that Vince McMahon, Stephanie McMahon, and Khan met with Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and President Mark Shapiro on December 13, 2022 — a few weeks before McMahon exercised his controlling interest in WWE and returned to the company and immediately pushed to explore a sale or merger. Emanuel and Shapiro are now the top two executives for TKO, after merging Endeavor’s asset UFC with WWE in 2023, at the conclusion of that M&A process.
The December 2022 meeting, which plaintiffs say was for the purpose of discussing a possible merger, adds to a previously reported August 2022 meeting that’s reflected in text messages between McMahon and Emanuel, in which McMahon asked whether he could bring along Khan and Stephanie McMahon. At the time of both purported meetings, Khan and Stephanie McMahon were serving as co-CEOs of WWE. Vince McMahon, though still controlling shareholder, was ostensibly out of the company. He had announced his retirement in July 2022 amid allegations of sexual misconduct and investigations into millions of dollars in previously undisclosed hush-money payments to women who formerly worked for the company.
Representatives for each of TKO, WWE, Vince McMahon, and Stephanie McMahon did not respond to requests for comment from POST Wrestling on whether the December meeting occurred or its purpose.
The plaintiffs, representing a class of shareholders, present the meetings as part of their central allegations in the case that the eventual TKO merger was predetermined by McMahon, with the cooperation of other key executives and board members. In exchange, Emanuel allegedly promised to give McMahon a role in the company after the merger and help him with the federal investigations into his alleged misconduct. The plaintiffs describe McMahon’s July 2022 resignation as “pretextual,” claiming that the merger process was “rigged” in favor of Endeavor, allegedly depriving WWE investors of a more competitive, valuable M&A deal. The defendants in the case have denied the allegations.
Filings unsealed last December revealed records showing McMahon and Emanuel in communication throughout the summer of 2022, after McMahon resignation. Public court records also showed Shapiro texting Endeavor executives with his expectation that McMahon would return to WWE within months and initiate an M&A process — messages sent just hours after McMahon’s retirement announcement, anticipating exactly what McMahon would do in January 2023.
The plaintiffs contend that Khan’s deleted text messages also include discussions with Emanuel in March 2023, during the time that WWE and Endeavor negotiated the merger. In a written response filed earlier in the case, attorneys stated on behalf of Khan that he “has no recollection of the particular content of any deleted messages,” that the plaintiffs had identified in discovery materials.
Unsealed exhibits include a table produced by McMahon’s attorneys during discovery showing the existence of Signal communications between McMahon and numerous individuals. Last November McMahon’s attorneys provided a table to the plaintiffs that showed the existence of McMahon’s communications over Signal with various people, including apparently Khan, Emanuel, Stephanie McMahon, Paul Levesque, Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority Turki Al-Sheikh, Brock Lesnar, WWE executive Bruce Prichard, then-WWE production executive Kevin Dunn, former WWE executive John Gaburick, and others.
However, in the public versions of these materials, notes that may indicate the intervals at which messages were set to auto-delete are redacted for the individuals the plaintiffs allege failed to retain communications: Khan, Levesque, Stephanie McMahon, and Blum. That portion of the table is redacted for messages with Emanuel also.
Above: The two segments of a table provided by Vince McMahon’s attorneys to counsel for the plaintiffs on Nov. 17, 2025, detailing McMahon’s Signal chats; disclosed in public versions of exhibits filed on both Dec. 23, 2025, and Feb. 27, 2026.
Plaintiffs cite text message records that they say show Khan steering conversations away from standard text and toward Signal. In one previously reported exchange, McMahon texted Khan about the 2023 Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns WrestleMania main event. Khan replied with the word “Langis.” When McMahon asked what it meant, Khan responded: “Read it backwards!” — an apparent reference to the Signal app. Plaintiffs argue that the exchange reflects Khan directing McMahon to shift the conversation to the encrypted messaging app rather than continuing by conventional text.
Above: “WWE Record Hold Notice” document, dated May 23, 2023, one of three such notices instructing executives and board members to preserve communications. This document is one of many exhibits initially filed under seal and later filed publicly.
Defendants in the case are Vince McMahon, Khan, Levesque, and former board members George Barrios and Michelle Wilson. Stephanie McMahon and Blum are not defendants in the case. Neither WWE nor TKO is a defendant in the case; however, the company’s attorneys are representing defendants other than Vince McMahon, who has separate counsel.
If the plaintiffs prevail in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in June, they could recover monetary damages. Shareholder lawsuits following mergers of billion-dollar companies, like WWE and UFC, are common. In large mergers, convincing a court of even a difference of a few percent in equity value can translate into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. That’s why during such M&A negotiations and at other sensitive times — like the time surrounding the 2022 investigation of alleged misconduct by Vince McMahon — key executives and board members are generally advised to preserve their communications records in anticipation of potential litigation.
