Looks like this has been a problem since 2013 and Fusion 5 with no answer ever provided.
Starting place was El Capitan + working Fusion 8.1.0 on a 2008 Mac Pro
New Mac installed (Mac Pro, El Cap), Mac data transfer tool used to transfer all applications and data to new host. All transferred OK.
VMware Fusion is only app that won't start.
Remove VMware Fusion from Applications folder. Re-download Fusion 8.1.0 installer.
Try to run installer, get "is damaged" message.
Remove from Application, manually hunt down all VMware Fusion artifacts as noted in KB article: VMware KB: Manually uninstalling VMware Fusion
Lather, rinse, repeat.
(Edited by OP to remove unneeded content.)
Message was edited by: tom perrine Removed useless remarks I had in the original post.
