I know I’ve told you this before, but Ric Flair and the NWA were my first introduction to this wonderfully wild and wacky world of professional wrestling.
With that said, it was the WWF that made me fall in love with the sport. What can I say? The WWF product was infinitely more kid-friendly back then. Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Koko B. Ware, Hillbilly Jim, “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase, The Honky Tonk Man, The British Bulldogs, “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, “Ravishing” Rick Rude, Andre The Giant… the list goes on and on when it comes to WWF wrestlers in those days that were more colorful and larger-than-life than their NWA counterparts.
Years and years (and years) later, I’m still watching the company’s product. We’ve seen them have their ups and downs, both from a financial and a creative standpoint. They nearly went out of business (essentially) during the Monday Night War, and they’ve also enjoyed plenty of time as the only game in town when it comes to major televised pro wrestling. Through all of it… the highs and lows, the successes and the failures, the big names that came and went… there was always one constant.
Vince McMahon.
Earlier this year, the unthinkable happened. Vince shocked the wrestling world by announcing his retirement. So… we know at least part of why he stepped away, but that’s a different conversation for a different day. The point is that we all thought he would be sitting in his throne and running the day-to-day operations of WWE until the day he died, whenever that happened to be.
It’s coming up on five months since he retired, and in that time, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. A LOT of thinking. About what Vince’s legacy will be, as well as about what Vince’s legacy should be.
On multiple occasions through the years, his net worth has been listed as well over the billion-dollar mark, including today. While nobody can say that he was a businessman that had a perfect record, you can’t take that billionaire status away from him.
This column isn’t really going to be about the business side of things, though. I want to focus more on the creative side of things. There will be times that it will be important to mention the financial side of wrestling and decisions that Vince made behind the scenes that didn’t directly have to do with a gimmick or match result.
When you look at Vince’s time with the company, you have to establish a timeframe for the “Vince McMahon Era.” He began working for his father’s World Wide Wrestling Federation in 1969, debuting as a ring announcer, and he promoted his very first card in 1971. Also in 1971, he would become the company’s new play-by-play guy, which is the role he had when multiple generations of wrestling fans were first introduced to him. He would gain more and more power within the company through the years, but you have to fast forward to February 21st, 1980 if you really and truly want to find the start of the aforementioned “Vince McMahon Era.” That was the date Vince officially founded Titan Sports, and within two years, he was running the entire Capitol Wrestling Corporation empire after acquiring control of it from his father, who was in poor health by that point and would eventually pass away in 1984.
To make things easier, the “Vince McMahon Era” needs to begin when he founded Titan Sports and end when he retired. February 21st, 1980 to July 22nd, 2022. Just about 42-and-a-half years, which is a lot to work with.
The first thing I want to do is look at a lot of the biggest creative decisions that Vince has made in that time period, whether they’re characters that were on his television product, match results that he put out there for the world to see, or things along those lines. Let’s have a conversation about how much, or how little, credit Vince deserves for these things happening. Again, I’m going to try to keep these to the creative side of things, but there is certainly going to be behind-the-scenes things that need to be brought up, as well.
Territories No More: A game changer. Pro wrestling was a territorial business for decades, with each “town” running its own promotion, with its own featured performers and its own stories. To keep things fresh, certain wrestlers would move from territory to territory, providing for some fresh stories and matches. It worked for a long time, but Vince McMahon had much bigger goals for the future. He wanted to take his promotion national, travelling outside of his “area” and being able to pick and choose different people from other territories that he wanted to sign to big-money contracts. To this day, a lot of old school personalities from the business still hold a high level of disdain for what Vince did then, but I’m not going to fault him. Without those moves, we might not be having this discussion, as there might still only be territories in the sport. Think about that for a moment. Kudos to Vince for being able to see how big and bright the future of the industry could be.
“Hulkamania” Is Born: Needless to say, this was one of the most important days in wrestling history. On January 23rd, 1984, Hulk Hogan defeated The Iron Sheik to become the new WWF Champion in front of a raucous crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Hulk was brought in from the AWA to be THE guy in the WWF. It worked, to say the least, but for decades, it brought on one simple question… did Vince McMahon “create” Hulk Hogan or did Hulk Hogan “create” Hulk Hogan? This was even turned into a storyline for the WrestleMania 19 match between Hulk and Vince. If we’re all going to be honest with each other, I think it would be very difficult to say that Vince was responsible for the Hulk Hogan character becoming what it did, outside of the aforementioned national platform that he was building for the WWF. Before Vince signed Hogan, Hulk was already a big star with an equally big personality. It was in the AWA that a then-heel Hulk Hogan turned face and had some incredible face reactions. In 1982, Hulk had a brief-but-memorable role as Thunderlips in Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky 3, which went on to make $270 million at the box office, which would be $834 million today, and that helped to make Hogan a bit of a household name before Hulkamania was running wild in Madison Square Garden on that winter night in 1984. All Vince needed to do was throw a ton of money at someone who made it big elsewhere, allowing for a much larger audience to get a chance to become fans of Hogan. That’s partial credit, at best, for Vince.
Rock-N-Wrestling Connection: Riding the wave of Hulk Hogan’s popularity, the WWF would go on to form a partnership with the still brand new MTV, which was huge at the time. Kids, this might seem insane to you, but MTV used to be one of the biggest channels on all of television, and for one simple reason… they played music videos. All day and all night. The partnership was surely due to Vince McMahon’s gigantic brain foreseeing what capturing a younger audience could do for the sport, right? Nope. It was actually the idea of legendary wrestling manager “Captain” Lou Albano, who met music superstar Cyndi Lauper on a flight to Puerto Rico. The two would quickly become friends, and when Lauper needed someone to play the role of her father in the music video for her new single, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” the role was offered to Albano. Lauper would then make appearances on WWF programming, leading to a storyline where she began feuding with Albano after he made misogynistic comments about her. That would lead to MTV airing The Brawl To End It All, a WWF event that saw the main event (The Fabulous Moolah, with Albano in her corner, defending the WWF Women’s Title against Wendi Richter, who had Lauper in her corner) broadcast live. It was a huge deal, and it directly led to what will be the next entry on this list. However, as I said, this was a brilliant move on the part of Lou Albano, not Vince McMahon. Vince is notorious for living in the WWF/WWE “bubble” and doesn’t know what’s going on in movies, television, music, sports, and so on if it isn’t on his programming. He likely had zero idea who Cyndi Lauper was, what MTV was, and so on. He’ll get a sliver of credit for going along with the ideas of Lou Albano and anyone else that told him this would be a good idea, but that’s it.
WrestleMania: Every territory had their “big show” every year, whether it was a show on a day like Christmas or a “supercard” like the AWA’s SuperClash events. Vince McMahon, in his quest to take the WWF bigger and better than any wrestling company had ever been, wanted to do something special. It wasn’t enough to simply have a special show somewhere. He wanted to roll the dice and put a major show on pay-per-view, which was a gigantic risk at the time. All those people who were pissed at Vince for raiding the territories were rubbing their hands together because they just KNEW that this idea was going to backfire on Vince and it would lead to the beginning of the end of the WWF. Vince loaded the show up as much as he possibly could, from the stacked card to the use of numerous mainstream celebrities, including television star Mr. T wrestling in the main event, teaming with Hulk Hogan to face “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff. It has long been said that Vince and the WWF put so much on the line here that they would’ve been forced to go out of business if the show was a flop. Well… we’re on the road to WrestleMania 39 right now, so you can do the math on whether or not the show flopped. Once again, Vince does get all the credit for having the vision here to take things to an entirely different level than pro wrestling had ever seen before.
No Rules For Shawn Michaels: Look… we all know that different rules apply to different people. That goes for everything and everywhere. Maybe you had a sibling that got more, or less, discipline from your parents than you did. Perhaps someone at your job is allowed, for one reason or another, to get away with things that anyone else would get fired for. Lord knows we see it happen in society all the time. When Shawn Michaels was first making his way to the top of the WWF, he was an insufferable prick to pretty much anyone that was within a 20 mile radius of him. He’d be the first person to admit that. As the years have gone by, we’ve learned about more and more incidents that involved Michaels in that time, and many of them would’ve seen “lesser” wrestlers fired without hesitation if they were responsible. Vince reacted to Shawn’s antics as if HBK owned the juiciest blackmail photos of all-time and was threatening to make them public. Because life can sometimes be a set of dominoes falling, Shawn’s antics going unchecked would lead to other issues and incidents, one of which I will get to shortly. This entire thing was not only a bad look for Vince McMahon and the entire WWF, but it was a really dumb creative decision on Vince’s part. It wasn’t worth the trouble, and things really snowballed for him after the fact.
The Montreal Screwjob: In December 1995, WWF Women’s Champion Alundra Blayze signed a contract with WCW, then showed up on a live episode of WCW Monday Nitro to dump her title belt in the trash. Fast forward nearly two years later, and the WWF found themselves staring down the barrel of a similar, yet infinitely worse, situation. Bret Hart, the WWF Champion, was set to jump ship to WCW, and there were discussions in place about how Bret would drop the title before leaving the company. Because of the aforementioned bullshit that Shawn Michaels continued to get away with, his relationship with Bret had gone from good to completely in the dumpster. The company wanted Bret to drop the title to Shawn at Survivor Series 1997, but Bret refused. Not only did he want to drop the title to Michaels, but he definitely didn’t want to do it in his home country of Canada, where he was a national hero. He pitched some other names that he would have no problem losing to, but the WWF wasn’t budging. Everybody involved was too stubborn for their own good, but some battles don’t need to be fought and dragged out. Yes, you don’t want Bret to show up on Nitro and dump the WWF Championship in a trash can. I completely understand that, but I also think the fear of him doing so was completely blown out of proportion. He was more than willing to drop the title. Even if it wasn’t to someone you initially wanted, just do the title switch and then have THAT person drop the title to Michaels. This was a completely unnecessary piece of drama that unfolded simply because Vince McMahon couldn’t grow a set and stand up to Shawn Michaels whatsoever.
The Attitude Era: There are two ways of looking at this one when it comes to Vince McMahon. On one hand, he was behind the shift to a much edgier product, delivering the Attitude Era to the masses. It was a financial success to the gazillionth degree, and helped to create some of the greatest stars that the wrestling business has ever seen. Hooray, right? Well, the other way to look at it is that Vince was, for all intents and purposes, the last person that thought the Attitude Era would be a good idea. Keep in mind that the WWF product was ridiculously corny before the Attitude Era, geared to a younger audience, and was in that weird era of time when every wrestler had a second job (TL Hopper the plumber, Doink the clown, Duke Droese the garbage man, Irwin R. Schyster the tax collector, Repo Man the repo man, etc.) and made it part of their gimmick. WCW came along and aimed their product to a more adult audience, and it worked for them. They would shock the wrestling world by standing up to the WWF, and then going on to start smacking the WWF around. Person after person would come to Vince and tell him that things needed to change, but Vince, for whatever reason, wanted to stay the course. Eventually, with the threat of going out of business looming over his head, Vince begrudgingly went ahead with the shift in focus. Does he get credit for making the change? Yes. Does he get a ton of credit? No. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t have made the change at all, and who knows where he would even be today. Then, you have to look at a lot of the success that the company had during the Attitude Era itself. Numerous wrestlers are on record saying that Vince Russo was the driving force behind a lot of the shifts that we saw in the WWF product. The idea of having focused storylines for people up and down the card, a lot of the gimmick changes, the ideas for heel/face turns, and so on. Obviously, Vince McMahon has the final say, but if we’re talking about creativity, there’s a big difference between coming up with ideas on your own and hearing someone else’s ideas and deciding whether they’re good or not. Did Vinnie Mac spend the entire Attitude Era doing nothing creatively? Of course not. It’s just that the winners get to rewrite history the way they want to, and we’ve seen Vince Russo involved in a lot of losing when it comes to WCW and later TNA, so his participation in the winning gets pushed to the side so that the other Vince can get the credit.
Mr. McMahon: Of course, this is about the television character, and not the man himself. Well, if there’s much of a difference at all. While Vince always envisioned himself as a pro wrestling character, the plan was obviously not to make that dream happen. When it happened, it certainly led to a lot of memorable moments. He goes down as one of the best heels in wrestling history, but when he was a face, he was as over as anyone in the business, too. That’s great and all, but again, this was never supposed to happen. He basically stumbled into it when the Montreal Screwjob went down and he saw how much vitriol he was receiving from fans because of it. You don’t get anywhere near full credit for accidentally guessing something correctly.
“Stone Cold” Steve Austin: Austin has a very valid claim to being the biggest star in the history of pro wrestling when it comes to money made, merchandise sales, television ratings while he was on top, and so on. However, when you think about him and the success he had, you can’t help but also think about debuting with the WWF as The Ringmaster. He showed that he could really work while in WCW, and he showed a completely different side of his personality during his brief time in ECW, so Vince McMahon’s great idea for him in the WWF was… The Ringmaster, an apparent mute who needed “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase to do all the talking for him. Huh? That didn’t make sense to anybody other than Vince McMahon. As wrestling fans, you’ve probably heard variations of the saying that most of the best characters in wrestling are simply the people being themselves and turning the volume up to the max. The Ringmaster is not Steve Austin with the volume turned up. “Stone Cold” is, though. Again, this should be easy for someone like Vince to figure out, but he was too busy trying to give the dumbest possible gimmicks to people at the time to notice. We’ll get back to Steve Austin in a bit.
The Rock: Here’s another one that is similar to what we just discussed with Steve Austin becoming The Ringmaster. I completely understand trying to play up Dwayne Johnson’s family tree when you’re giving him his first ring name and character in the WWF. That’s fine. Rocky Maivia, with the whole “Blue Chipper” talk, wasn’t the best of ideas. Coming off of being Flex Kavana in the USWA before signing with the WWF, Rocky Maivia was not a name that Dwayne Johnson wanted to use. Vince would “persuade” him, though. That whole thing worked for approximately 14 minutes before fans started to turn on the happy-go-lucky face that was cutting some of the most boring, saccharine sweet promos you’ll ever see. Vince was completely unable to read the room and thought the WWF fans would love and adore Rocky Maivia, and he was proven wrong very quickly. Things were corrected once Maivia would return from a knee injury and turn heel, joining the Nation Of Domination and becoming “The Rock” and cutting promos in third-person. It’s almost as if Dwayne Johnson just needed to be given an opportunity to be himself. He was able to show more of his personality, charisma, sense of humor, and demeanor… and it worked.
The Show Must Go On: When Owen Hart tragically passed away at 1999’s Over The Edge pay-per-view, Vince McMahon was left with two choices. One, he could’ve put an early end to the show, even though only two main show matches had been completed, with five matches yet to take place. To a lot of people, this was the only sensible option. Fans had just watched one of the most horrific things a human being could ever witness. Owen’s family, friends and coworkers had just watched the man die. It would be asking an insane amount from people to simply put that away in their minds somewhere and then have them watch Val Venis teaming with Nicole Bass to face Jeff Jarrett and Debra. Had Vince called the show off, he could’ve outright canceled it, or he could’ve worked on a re-do, holding the Over The Edge event on another date, allowing the fans who had bought tickets or ordered the pay-per-view to get their money’s worth. The other option is to do what he ended up doing, and that is to keep the show going after a brief delay to allow for medical personnel to attend to Owen’s body in the ring before they were able to rush him out of the arena. To a lot of people, this was the only sensible option. The term “the show must go on” has been a term used in showbusiness since the 19th century, and it was used A LOT in the aftermath of Owen’s accident. The people who felt Vince had no choice but to continue the show weren’t saying so out of callousness and a lack of caring about what happened. They were trying to look at things from a logistical point. Cancelling the show seems easy, but money makes the world go ’round, whether you like it or not. There were 16,472 fans in attendance that night. That’s 16,472 fans that you have to work with on complete refunds, or giving them tickets to a future show, Over The Edge or otherwise. Then there’s the money that the WWF spent to rent Kemper Arena out for the show, as well as the money that traded hands which would allow Over The Edge to air on pay-per-view providers. An absolute logistical nightmare for the company, to say the least. This was a no-win situation for Vince and the WWF. No matter what he did, people would’ve been upset.
The Invasion: There haven’t been many storylines in wrestling history that had more potential than the WCW “Invasion.” Also, there haven’t been many storylines in wrestling history that were screwed up as royally as the WCW “Invasion.” That falls on Vince McMahon. Wrestling fans had just spent the last several years fantasy booking their “dream matches” that would feature WCW wrestlers facing WWF wrestlers, and now, they were being given the opportunity to see those matches possibly take place. However, the entire thing was doomed from the start. If we’re being fair, the first problem was completely out of Vince’s hands. A lot of WCW’s top talents were still under contract to AOL Time Warner, WCW’s parent company, when the purchase of WCW was made. Those wrestlers wisely chose the option of “stay home and get paid more to do nothing” over “wrestle for the WWF for less money.” Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, Ric Flair, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, Sting, Lex Luger, Randy Savage, Scott Hall… the list goes on and on of WCW wrestlers who chose to stay home and take the money. Now, could the WWF have turned around and given those guys even more money to convince them to come work? Sure, but then what do you do for the likes of Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, Kane, Triple H, and all the rest of the WWF’s top performers? How would you feel if you were a WWF wrestler that was busting your ass for the company, making X amount of money, only to see WCW guys get considerably more money thrown at them to come wrestle for the WWF and potentially push you down the card and take whatever “spot” you had. I don’t see any way of waiting at least a year, and probably more than two years, to do the storyline so that you could have the AOL Time Warner contracts expire. That wouldn’t have made much sense, so I’ll give Vince credit for taking what he could and working with it. From there, though, it gets ugly. The entire vehicle was basically a way to get the entire McMahon family on television as often as possible, as if they needed help getting airtime. Then, of course, Vince’s ego got in the way, and the WCW and ECW teams were never really allowed to look strong. Common sense would indicate that the WWF would eventually win the story in the end, but why not make the Alliance team look as strong as possible? There was only one real member of The Alliance that was made to look strong, and he was a “WWF guy” that had turned heel. More on him in a moment, though. It still amazes me, more than two decades later, that Vince allowed his ego to get in the way of what could’ve been an all-time great story. The worst part about it is that he didn’t “pay” for his “sins” here. He still made a shit ton of money, television ratings were great for the whole thing, and the Invasion pay-per-view became the highest grossing non-WrestleMania event in company history. That’s part of a trend in Vince’s entire career… if you think he did something poorly, why would he ever bother to do it another way when it makes him so much money?
Turning Steve Austin Heel: The on-screen feud between “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Vince McMahon helped to change the landscape of wrestling forever. At face value, that makes a heel turn for Austin, where he joins forces with his most hated rival of all-time, something that should’ve worked as the ultimate “swerve” to fans. Austin himself agreed that a heel turn was something he probably needed as there were so many new stars made during his time away from the ring because of injuries. The man has also said that the “how” and “when” of his turn are the only real regret he has of his entire career. It just didn’t make sense. The WWF fans didn’t want to see an Austin heel turn. They were still ready to cheer him. To make it even worse, the turn happened in Austin’s home state of Texas, where he could’ve punted a kitten off of a bridge and gotten cheered for it. You saw the turn… it should’ve been one of the most shocking, despicable things to ever happen in wrestling, but the fans in Houston that night had zero intentions of booing their hero. Would it have been any different if WrestleMania 17 was in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Seattle, or anywhere else outside of Texas? Probably not, but having it happen in Texas was dooming the entire thing from the start. Austin says he wishes he could’ve called an audible during the Mania 17 match once he realized the crowd wasn’t reacting the way the company expected them to. He said he would’ve switched it up and had Austin hit Vince with a Stunner after the match, with the implication being that he “used” Vince to get what he wanted, and then perhaps the heel turn idea could be revisited down the road. Vince is also someone who could’ve/should’ve seen that things weren’t going to work. Sure, you can get caught up in the moment, but one of them needed to quietly mention a potential audible during what was happening, and then that would be that.
Katie Vick: What a stupid fucking idea. According to decades-long Vince McMahon kiss-ass Bruce Prichard, this was a “group effort” between himself, Vince, Brian Gewirtz, and Michael P.S. Hayes. That’s cool and all, but Vince is the boss. Even if this was 100% the brainstorming of other people, Vince McMahon is still the one who has the final say in everything. He can give the green light to it just the way it is, or the red light and cancel it, or even the yellow light and allow it to be “fine tuned” a bit before airing. All those wrestling minds putting their heads together, and what we saw is the final product that they all agreed on. Can you imagine some of the shit that never made it to air?
John Cena: Here’s a similar one to what I mentioned earlier with The Ringmaster and Rocky Maivia. John Cena was someone that was able to show a ton of personality during his time in Ohio Valley Wrestling before making his official debut for the company. Then, he debuts against Kurt Angle and has absolutely nothing. No charisma, no real character, no “wow” factor… just a dude in some plain gear. He wasn’t making any real crowd connections, and by all accounts, he was on the verge of being released from the company. Then, as fate would have it, Stephanie McMahon overheard Cena freestyling in the back of a bus on one of WWE’s European tours. She was amazed at his ability to create lyrics seemingly out of thin air, so she tested him, giving him different topics to freestyle about, and he nailed every single attempt. She asked him if he wanted to do it on television, and that’s what led to the Halloween episode of Smackdown in 2002, Cena would perform yet another freestyle, this time dressed as Vanilla Ice. The rest, as they say, is history. All of a sudden, he had a character. He had substance. It helped to propel him up the proverbial WWE ladder, and here we are, 20 years later, waiting for him to get his turn as a WWE Hall Of Fame inductee at some point. No thanks to Vince, and all thanks to Stephanie, of all people. Speaking of Stephanie…
Wanting An Incest Storyline With His Daughter: This is one of those stories that you might read on some rumor site and think that there’s no way in hell it’s true. Then, the McMahon family themselves admit that it’s 100% fact, and you just stare at the screen, shaking your head slowly. In 2006, when Stephanie McMahon was pregnant with her first child, her father had the brilliant idea to pitch a storyline to her that would see him… again, her actual birth father… get revealed as the father of her baby. I don’t know how it would be revealed, and frankly, I don’t think I want to know. According to Steph, she shot that down immediately. That’s the end of this story, right? Wrong. After Steph shot down an angle where she would be impregnated by her own father, he would return with a counter pitch of having her brother, Shane, revealed as the father of the baby. Again, Steph shot that down immediately. Shock value is one thing. In some cases, shock value is actually a really good thing when it comes to wrestling storylines. Vince McMahon decided to tell on himself with these pitches, though. You can’t sit there and tell me that this was the very first time those types of thoughts crossed his mind. I’m not saying he WOULD sleep with his own daughter. I am saying that he has THOUGHT ABOUT sleeping with his daughter, though. Thinking about his son and daughter sleeping with each other is merely the rancid icing on a super weird, moldy cake.
Saying “No” To The “Yes” Movement: The sport of pro wrestling has been around for hundreds of years now. In that time, I don’t think there has ever been a stronger case of someone not giving a single iota of a fuck about what the fans wanted than what we saw with Daniel Bryan in 2013 and 2014. Say what you want about the WWE Universe hijacking shows and all that. It’s a relevant part of the overall story, but in this instance, that’s not the point. Daniel Bryan was as beloved a wrestler as you’re ever going to see in this business. It wasn’t just a case of “hey, I like this guy, so I’m going to cheer him” like it is almost unanimously across the board. This went so much further than that. Fans wanted to see Bryan reach the top so badly that they were willing to do whatever it takes to help him get there. All the while, Vince McMahon and the rest of those in charge of WWE simply put their fingers in their ears and ignored the cheers and chants in every arena they were in, week after week, month after month. It took way longer than it should, but Vince finally realized that he wasn’t going to get his way for once. He could try to keep moving away from Daniel Bryan if he wanted to, but he was going to run the risk of his entire televised product being overcome and overwhelmed by the “Yes Movement” again and again and again. Those fans meant business. They were more than willing to boo fan favorites like Rey Mysterio simply because he wasn’t Daniel Bryan. Even now, almost a decade later, it still astonishes me that Vince saw and heard the fans, but constantly tried to ignore them and continue doing whatever he wanted to do. I get that it was his company, but to come across as completely allergic to giving the people what they want? Incredible.
Firing CM Punk On His Wedding Day: Let’s do some quick math, shall we? CM Punk walked out of WWE on January 27th, 2014. Punk married AJ Lee on June 13th, 2014. That means Punk got married 137 days after leaving WWE. That’s a full four-and-a-half months. Over one-third of a calendar year. That’s a long time for Vince McMahon to decide he wanted to fire Punk. He just so happened to make his decision on Punk’s wedding day. What a kowinkydink. Look… we’re not here to talk about whether Punk should’ve walked out or not. We’re also not here to talk about whether or not Punk is a nice guy. This is all about Vince being a dick when he didn’t have to. He could’ve fired Punk on January 27th. February 8th. March 20th. April 7th. May 3rd. He had 136 chances to do it before Punk’s wedding day, but he wanted to prove some sort of point.
Roman Reigns: This one is a little different than the previous entries for The Ringmaster, Rocky Maivia, and pre-rapping John Cena. From the moment The Shield debuted, I was one of the first to go on record and say Roman Reigns was a future World Champion. Everyone was focused on the “independent darlings” Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, and I’m certainly not taking anything away from those two, but just LOOK at Roman Reigns… he is everything that Vince wants in one of his superstars, all conveniently rolled into one person. I figured that Rollins and/or Ambrose would beat him to becoming a World Champion in WWE, but that he’d definitely get there one day. Once Vince truly started pushing Roman, the “Roman is the new John Cena” tag was formed, and it stuck with Roman for a long time. There were definitely parallels that everyone could see. Roman, like Cena years before, was a “cool” heel that was still getting cheers by both the men and the women of the WWE Universe. There was an “edge” to his character. Once he really got going as a face, though, much of that same “edge” was taken away. Eventually, the cornball promos would start to happen, with Roman’s “sufferin’ succotash” promo especially standing out. Crowds all over the world began to “turn” on Roman just like they did to Cena. The difference here, of course, is that Roman would get the chance to become a heel again, and it has led to the best work of his career. Could Cena have done something similar if he turned heel at some point when he was at the top? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. This is another one of those partial credits for Vince McMahon. Yes, he neutered Roman Reigns for a long time, and he continued ignoring what the audience was saying, but he eventually changed directions, and that change is benefitting the product even after Vince left the company.
Relationship With Saudi Arabia: Money. That’s all the partnership between WWE and Saudi Arabia is about. You know it. I know it. WWE knows it. In the interest of fairness, it is A LOT of money. In an incredible statistic, the $50 million that WWE generates in revenue for each show in Saudi Arabia under the current deal equals out to $400 million, which is $150 million (adjusted for inflation) more than the company has earned for every single ticket sold to every single WrestleMania in the event’s history. Think about that for a second. All that money, and most of them have been glorified house shows with nothing of note actually taking place. If it were almost any other country throwing that type of money at WWE, we wouldn’t even be talking about this right now, because the company would be stupid not to take the deal. Saudi Arabia is a different animal altogether, though. Women’s rights issues, the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, numerous wrestlers refusing to make the trip, serious travel issues, lawsuits… and that’s just a list of problems from a single Wikipedia page. WWE has come under serious fire for reaching a business deal with the government of Saudi Arabia, but again… it’s all about that cash money, so who cares about anything else, right?
Record Profits? Pandemic? So? You’re Fired: Before I get going, I will freely admit that WWE’s roster was, at one point not all that long ago, far too bloated. You have to do something about that at some point. I won’t deny that. There’s just something messed up about WWE, in the middle of making more money than they ever have in the history of the company, releasing dozens and dozens of people and claiming that they were doing to because of “budget cuts.” To make it worse, the releases took place during the middle of a global pandemic, when there wasn’t exactly a thriving wrestling scene for those wrestlers to land in. A lot of the blame for this has been aimed at John Laurinaitis, and for good reason, as he’s the one who is responsible for contacting the employees and telling them that their services are no longer needed. Again, though, Vince McMahon was the boss, and everything goes through him. It’s not as though Laurinaitis was just firing people behind Vince’s back. The whole thing just felt slimy, and it wasn’t a necessary way to go about doing things.
Are you getting the point I’m trying to make here? Realistically, I could have kept this column going and going and going, damn near turning this into the length of a novel. As it is, you’ll see that a lot of the things Vince McMahon is most attached to in history are things that he accidentally stumbled upon, things that were the ideas of others, or things that he went out of his way to avoid doing until it was almost too late. I can’t sit here and say that Vince is any sort of creative genius because he has proven to the world a million times over that he isn’t, and he has only gotten worse with age.
Even though Vince isn’t perfect as a businessman (WBF, XFL, etc.), he still gets plenty of kudos for taking his company and turning it into a global phenomenon. That will be his legacy. He had the vision to look beyond pro wrestling’s small territorial mindset, wanting nothing but the biggest and the best.
Just don’t ever let anyone try to tell you that he was any sort of creative genius. His “creative” mind did far more to hurt his company than it ever did to help it, and he should be eternally thankful that several names through the years were there to help/save him. He was his own worst enemy. As my homie, Ro, said on Twitter, Vince is the king of not knowing how to read a room. Further proof of that is the news that Vince wants to make a return to WWE. Nobody is asking for that. There are already multiple reports out there that WWE employees don’t want him back. The man simply can’t help himself.
Your turn. I want to know what you think of Vincent Kennedy McMahon when it comes to the creative side of things. Is he a genius, a hack, or is it somewhere in between? As always, hit me up in the comments section below, or on Twitter (@HustleTheSavage), and let me know what’s on your mind.
Weekly Power Rankings (Writer’s Note: For those who don’t follow me on social media, I was rushed to the hospital yesterday after showing signs of a stroke. I ended up being diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. I’m home now, but I spent a lot of time at the hospital, and because of that, I didn’t get to write anything for this section of my column. Obviously, that isn’t important in the grand scheme of things, but I needed to share why my column is a little different this week. Thank you for reading.)
– FTR vs The Briscoes
– Men’s Iron Survivor Challenge
– Jon Moxley vs Konosuke Takeshita
– Women’s Iron Survivor Challenge
– Pretty Deadly vs New Day
– The Acclaimed vs FTR
– The Street Profits & Akira Tozawa vs The Judgment Day
– The Possibility Of Brock Lesnar vs Gunther At WrestleMania
– Claudio Castagnoli
– Daniel Garcia vs Wheeler Yuta
– PWG’s Battle Of Los Angeles 2023 Getting Even Stronger
– Ricky Starks
– The Usos vs Sheamus & Butch
– New Day & Ricochet vs Imperium
– Athena
– Bron Breakker vs Apollo Crews
– Alexa Bliss vs Bayley
– AJ Styles vs Chad Gable
– Samoa Joe vs Darby Allin
– Mercedes Varnado Going To Wrestle Kingdom
– Mandy Rose vs Roxanne Perez (Yes, I have more to say about today’s breaking news about Mandy Rose. I’ll probably address it, at least a little bit, in next week’s column.)
– Seth Rollins vs Bobby Lashley
– Tony Khan Purchasing The Rights To John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock”
– The Embassy
– Matt Riddle Going To Rehab (Not in a “haha he got suspended and has to go to rehab” way, but being happy that rehab is the option that was chosen, even if it was forced on him, because we’ve seen too many wrestlers through the years refuse rehab and then their story didn’t end well.)
This Week’s Playlist: Multiple episodes of Mick Foley’s “Foley Is Pod” podcast… Multiple episodes of Jim Ross’ “Grilling JR” podcast