McMahon, WWE Leaders’ Signal Use in UFC Deal Probed by Investors

Vince McMahon and other WWE senior leaders defended Wednesday their use of the Signal platform with its disappearing messages amid UFC merger negotiations challenged by investors.

There’s no gap in communications to probe, their attorneys told the Delaware Chancery Court.

The World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. co-founder “is a prolific texter,” and 22,000 messages across multiple platforms have been produced to investors, said one of McMahon’s lawyers, Haley Stern of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

McMahon’s attorneys preserved data from his personal devices, even after they were seized by federal authorities investigating sexual misconduct allegations against him, she said. But Signal data sought by the investors wasn’t available for retrieval until after those devices were returned in October 2025.

The investors argue messages apparently missing from chats on Signal, an encrypted platform that can be set to have content disappear, could’ve been relevant to the litigation.

“We don’t have to show intentionality to show adverse inferences,” said one of their attorneys, Anthony Calvano of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP. “Recklessness is sufficient.”

Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster adjourned the hearing without ruling on the investors’ motion.

The investors speculate that McMahon and WWE’s directors and officers reserved their most candid conversations for Signal, but in fact they spoke openly about the deal in group chats, texts, and voice memos, said Eric Leon of Latham & Watkins LLP, representing the WWE’s other senior leaders.

“These parties negotiated this deal really the old fashioned way,” he said. “They did it with dinners and lunches, and they did it over the phone, and we produced all of the phone records.”

Investors have challenged the fairness of WWE’s $21.4 billion merger with mixed martial arts giant Ultimate Fighting Championship. The lawsuit alleged McMahon manipulated the deal to secure control of the company and rejected higher offers in favor of a deal with a longtime friend, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel.

The 2023 merger followed McMahon’s return to the WWE in the wake of allegations that he sexually harassed and abused female subordinates for decades. Shareholders agreed to drop a separate lawsuit after McMahon agreed to repay $17.4 million that the WWE spent investigating those claims. McMahon resigned as executive chairman of TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of UFC and WWE, in January 2024, after another sexual misconduct allegation was made against him.

Laster sanctioned former Facebook director Sheryl Sandberg in January 2025 for intentionally deleting emails related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, a decision that would have made it harder for her to defend herself at trial. Meta Platforms Inc. settled the lawsuit against Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, and other senior leaders for $190 million.

The case is In re World Wrestling Ent. Inc. Merger Litig., Del. Ch., No. 2023-1166, hearing 5/13/26.