Vince is finished, Dana is done, Ari is the alpha

Make no mistake Dana White and Vince McMahon are going to be answering to a boss from here on out.

Illustration by Chris Rini

Once upon a time there was a man named William Morris.

In 1898, William came up with a great logo, rented an office in Manhattan and opened the William Morris Agency to manage vaudeville performers. You know, jugglers and shit.

See what I mean about the logo?

In 1918 William hired his son, William Junior to work for the agency. Twelve years later, William Junior moved to Hollywood to manage movie stars.

In 1949 he bought the Berg-Allenberg Agency and the William Morris Agency became the world’s biggest talent agency.

In 1995 a man named Ari Emanuel formed the Endeavor Talent Agency.

Ari was already well-known in Hollywood as a tenacious agent, a fierce boardroom bargainer whose distinctive mannerisms were irresistible imitation fodder for his actor clients.

If you’ve ever seen Jeremy Pivin playing Ari Gold on Entourage, you’ve seen an Ari Emanuel imitation.

Now I’ve never met Ari in person, but I have met his brother Rahm.

According to The New Yorker, Ari and Rahm are “consummate schmoozers” who “balance their ingratiating manners with ferocious tempers.”

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Rahm Emanuel is one of the three scariest people I’ve ever been in a room with—right up there with Chris Barnes of Cannibal Corpse and an ex-boss of mine who, according to rumor, once threw a man through the window of the Congress Avenue Cafe.

Rahm was Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff and chief enforcer. He later became Mayor of Chicago.

So I have to presume that Ari Emanuel is a lot scarier than Ari Gold.

A whole lot.

Not Ari Emanuel

By 2009, Endeavor was, according to Deadline, “a ‘client-rich’ mid-size agency with big ambitions” that “set its sights on the much bigger, ‘cash rich’ William Morris Agency.”

The William Morris Agency was valued at twice what Endeavor was, but Ari and company took advantage of internal divisions at WME and “totally blindsided” WME leadership who “truly believed that they would be running the combined company.”

Ari was credited with “brilliant strategic maneuvering to get the WMA leadership to turn on each other one by one.” At the end of the corporate maneuvering, Ari laid off over 100 WME agents while keeping the Endeavor team mostly together.

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