WWE’s head of production Lee Fitting accused of years of unchecked misconduct toward woman leading to his dismissal at ESPN

WWE’s head of production Lee Fitting is subject of an article by The Athletic today alleging misconduct allegations at his former employer, ESPN.

Fitting, who was hired last January just a few months after his abrupt dismissal at ESPN, has put his fingerprints on WWE’s production after the departure of Kevin Dunn, who was the primary driver for decades of how the WWE product looked on TV.

The Athletic cites current and former ESPN employees who say they were surprised it took so long for Lee’s conduct toward female employees to affect his status at ESPN. In 2023, a complaint was made within ESPN’s human resources department, which led to an internal investigation. By the end of the year, ESPN terminated Fitting. “It finally caught up to him,” said one women who saw his conduct at ESPN. Article excerpt:

Many women who worked on “College GameDay” and under Fitting elsewhere at ESPN — The Athletic spoke to more than 20, including six who participated in the network’s 2023 investigation into Fitting — said that the workplace culture under Fitting featured boorish behavior and offensive remarks, many of them sexual in nature. …

[Employees at ESPN] watched Fitting rise within ESPN despite, according to them, making comments objectifying women, criticizing their physical appearance and making crude jokes, some sexual in nature, in the workplace. This went on unchecked for years, according to the scores of current and former ESPN employees interviewed by The Athletic, who requested anonymity to speak freely because they still work in sports media. It had a devastating effect on numerous women who believed they had to endure or go along with his conduct to stay employed or ascend at ESPN. Many women in sports media quietly shared their interactions and concerns about Fitting with each other. Some left ESPN in part because of their experience with him.

The article cites examples of Fitting’s behavior, such as offering his lap as a chair to a woman at a meeting when all chairs were occupied and sending a text to a woman, saying “You look hot,” commenting around ESPN employees on a woman’s likelihood of a woman to be good at peroforning oral sex, and offering “bed checks” and asking women for their hotel room numbers.

One woman who worked with Fitting said she would open her notebook when Fitting made a crude sexual comment and write it down. When Fitting noticed, she said she was “just jotting this down for the book.”

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The article said women they spoke to “believed that if they raised the alarm about Fitting’s behavior, it would cost them their careers.”

Excerpt:

It had a devastating effect on numerous women who believed they had to endure or go along with his conduct to stay employed or ascend at ESPN. Many women in sports media quietly shared their interactions and concerns about Fitting with each other. Some left ESPN in part because of their experience with him

The article also notes Fitting was involved in a scheme that led to ESPN’s “College Game Day” receiving statuettes it didn’t earn, leading to Fitting being banned from future Emmy participation.

Fitting, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on his termination from ESPN, but did deny certain specific allegations in the article. For example, when he asked a female employee if he should get a hotel room for them for the night, she alleged that was suggesting they sleep in the same room, but he said through a spokesman that he was asking if they should reserve a conference room. WWE chose not to comment to The Athletic regarding this story.