10 Worst WWE Moments Of 2009

In 2007, Vince McMahon decided to kill off his onscreen character with a dramatic limo explosion storyline that was only halted by the very-real Chris Benoit tragedy. In 2008, he tried to take himself off TV again with the whole 'Million Dollar Mania' fiasco. That didn't work either. Perhaps 2009's Monday Night Raw sale was Vince's latest bid to scale down his appearances in front of the cameras.

On the 15 June 2009 Raw, a pensive Vince announced that he was selling off the rights to his flagship show Raw. He described it as a business opportunity he simply couldn't say no to, then revealed that none other than Donald Trump was the buyer. It was all fictional, of course, but the company put out a press release to try and legitimise the storyline anyway.

Apparently, some people bought it as real, because there was some panic amongst investors when Trump also claimed he’d make the next week’s episode “commercial free”. Within hours of that press release, WWE’s stock reportedly dropped as much as 7% on Wall Street. Panicking, McMahon fielded advice from others on the board and stopped the 'Trump buys Raw' tale.

On TV one week later, Donald agreed to sell Raw back to Vince for double the price he'd paid for it. Then, everyone quietly moved along like nothing had ever happened. It was a disaster, and an ultimately pointless one due to the stock problems. All WWE accomplished here was costing themselves some money and stock value.

All of that for what amounted to a few extra minutes of TV sans ads.