Jonathan Coachman recently appeared Busted Open Radio to talk about various topics including WWE’s new billion dollar deal with Fox.

Coachman stated in this interview that just three years ago he got a call from WWE about wanting to get on ESPN because other than the occasional appearance by The Rock to promote a movie, there was no consistent content on any mainstream media because he believes that WWE Chairman Vince McMahon and other officials knew that this day (TV deal) was coming.

“I knew if I wanted to do more than just ESPN, that this was a good way to help and to help facilitate. I got into fights, I pushed the envelope, and I got four other guys to help me and we called them ‘Coach’s Group.’ We just got given credit by the president of the company to Wall Street for helping facilitate this Fox deal so they took our content that we did every single week on SportsCenter.

Then we got stuff into SportsCenter every single week. They took that content they took it to Fox. They had meetings with ESPN and said listen, after the shock value of the few people who called in saying ‘I can’t believe they’re having wrestling content on our beloved SportsCenter.’ After that shock value wore off they came to it in droves.”


Coachman added that the work he did for ESPN is still living on to this day and that Fox plans to put WWE in situations where it’s a cross-over promotional content and the network will already have that established audience.

“They started an entire website that still lives today. Because of that and I’m not saying it’s the entire reason, but it’s a big part of the reason that his billion-dollar deal was done. Because Fox executives looked at what we did at ESPN and said, ‘imagine if you had a partner instead of just a platform.’

H/T to Wrestling Inc for the transcript quotes.

WWE’s television contract was slated to expire in 2019 with the USA Network, which led to them holding meetings with the USA Network, Fox, Disney, CBS, Amazon, and YouTube.

Just last month, it was officially announced that Monday Night RAW would remain on the USA Network while SmackDown Live would move to Fox and air each Friday on Fox broadcast network. Both deals are for five years.

It’s been reported that Fox is paying WWE $1 billion over the five years for the rights to SmackDown Live. The deal averages out to around $205 million annually for the broadcast rights.