Former WWE Co-President George Barrios Details Leaving The Company, Returning To TKO Board

On January 30, 2020, WWE announced that co-Presidents George Barrios and Michelle Wilson would be departing the company in a “management transition.”

Barrios joined WWE in March 2008 as Chief Financial Officer before being promoted to co-President alongside Wilson.

Speaking on the Two Man Power Trip podcast, Barrios detailed his departure from the company, and how it wasn’t the firing everyone thought it was.

“The story began in July or August of 2019. Michelle and I had a great run, and the business was almost exactly where we thought it could get to, but we knew there was more runway, which there certainly has been. We were co-leaders of the company and were like, ‘We want to lead our own thing.’ We ended up staying together and working together. After an earnings call, we were both going on vacation and we were both like, ‘I’m thinking of leaving. I’m going to tell Vince. Let’s tell him together.’ We go in and tell Vince, ‘This has been a great ride. We want to go do our own thing.’ Dead silence. He’s like, ‘You can’t do that. We’ve been through too much together.’ He gets choked up and tears are in all of our eyes. We spent a couple of hours with him saying some of the best things I’ve ever heard personally about myself. ‘I couldn’t have done this without you. For 30 years, I’ve been pulling everyone behind me to build this. For the last ten years, you guys have been pulling me. What do you want?’ ‘We want to run our own thing.’ ‘You’re doing that here,'” he recalled in recounting the conversation with Vince.

He continued, “Michelle and I walk out of his office, and she goes, ‘We’ve had a great run. Let’s stick to it. It’s time for the next chapter.’ I go into sell mode. ‘We have to do this. He has begged us to stay. Selfishly, there is more runway. There is a way to get what we all want.’ We spend the next few months trying to put together something. ‘You do that. You do less of this. We’ll do more of this.’ People start getting aggravated at each other, and it keeps getting worse and worse, and now snide remarks are slipping through. Unfortunately, that damaged the relationship, and three or four months later, it was, ‘I’m done.’ We had to stay until the earnings call in February because we had a strategy that we had to reach, but then I was going back in. We have a board meeting on January 31 and I’m not myself. I was as low-key as Vince had ever seen me. Later in the afternoon, he calls, ‘This isn’t working. We have to end it.’ ‘I agree. Let’s go back to the original plan. Six months.’ ‘No, we have to do it right now.’ ‘Now? Today? We have an earnings call in four days.’ ‘Yeah, we have to pull off the band-aid.’ ‘This is not going to go well.’ That was it. A few months later, Michelle and I talked to Vince because it was not the way to end after 12 years. Called him up, ‘Do you want to get together for dinner?’ This is the middle of COVID. He goes, ‘That would be great.’ It was nice to do that.”

Barrios and Wilson would return in August 2023 when Vince brought them back to be member of the TKO board of directors.

“When Vince called me to come back to the board because he reached a decision that the company needed to do something big for its next move, wasn’t sure what it was, but he wanted help thinking through that. I remember the call and he tells what he’s thinking and he says, ‘I just need the A team. Can you come back and help?’ I said, ‘Yeah, of course.’ ‘Do you think Michelle will come back?’ ‘Yeah, I think she’ll come back.’ He goes, ‘Can you call her?’ I called her and we decided to come back. On a selfish level, for your own ego, the fact that the whole world saw that they didn’t understand the story (believing they were fired). When it was time to do the big stuff, he brought the people he respected and trusted. He wanted the A team. It was nice going back,” he said.

Barrios is set to testify in the WWE merger lawsuit.

He recently released his book Sometimes Wrong but Never in Doubt: How a Cuban Kid from Queens Transformed WWE. Fans can purchase a copy here.