Jimmy Jacobs has shared another wild story about the now retired Vince McMahon for his days as a WWE writer.
Jacobs joined AdFreeShows to discuss his current work as a producer for IMPACT, but also recollected about his time in WWE. During the interview he shared how one of his really good friends nearly lost their jobs due to not knocking on McMahon’s door, a moment that he admits scared him to the bone. Highlights can be found below.
How Vince constantly surprised him:
Vince surprised me. He’s a legend, anything I say, it’s with a certain amount of respect and love and only from the perspective and experience that I had there. None of it is meant to disparage him. It’s his company, it’s his sandbox, you’re playing in it. That’s what you have to understand when you’re there. When you go, ‘Why isn’t this different?’ It’s not your show. That was my motto, ‘Not my show.’ When I first got there, I thought Vince was going to be a ‘dude.’ A billionaire, but a dude. When I first got there, I was like, ‘Why is everybody so scared of Vince? Everybody just treat him like a human. What are you talking about?’ I learned, almost immediately, ‘Oh, oh geez,’ and I started to become scared of Vince.
Recalls Vince nearly firing someone for not knocking:
Maybe my first month there, my closest friend on the writing team almost got fired because he came into Vince’s office without knocking. Vince had said, ‘fix up this promo and come back to me.’ He fixed up the promo, he comes back. he doesn’t knock. Vince wanted to fire him. Dave (Kapoor) and Ed (Koskey), great bosses and great dudes, they saved him, it was Ryan Callahan, saved his job. He had to go on the home team, couldn’t go on the road and be in front of Vince. Ryan Callahan was an incredible writer and he’s there now as one of the lead writers of SmackDown. Brilliant guy. You start to realize that you’re one weird interaction with Vince away from being in the doghouse or being fired. Then, you start to behave in a way to try and not get fired and your ideas become ideas in an effort to not get fired. Pretty soon, you have a whole bunch of people playing to not lose instead of playing to win. That surprised me. It surprised me how Vince just wasn’t a dude. Hunter [Triple H] is a dude, he’s a guy. I don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on everything with Hunter, but you could pitch Hunter, ‘what do you think about this?’ Whether he likes it or not, you could talk to him like that. Vince wasn’t like that, but he’s a legend.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
