Ex-WWE Employee Recalls Top Executive Being Difficult To Work With
A former WWE staffer has spoken about what it was like working for one of the top executives from Vince McMahon’s era of running the company.
There was major news in the land of WWE on New Year’s Day 2024 because it was announced that Kevin Dunn was leaving the company. After more than 40 years of being a key part of the WWE production team, Dunn announced his resignation since he intended to retire.
At the time of his retirement, Dunn was the company’s Executive Producer & Chief, Global Television Distribution. That meant he ran the production team while WWE programming was directed by him.
Former WWE Director of VOD and Supervising Producer John Carlan was a guest on Conrad Thompson’s Insiders show on Adfreeshows where he spoke about how tough it was working for Dunn.
“It was hard. It was never easy. He certainly had a high bar. At times, I didn’t like it, to be honest. Our relationship was good for the most part. We had a couple of ups and downs. We also had times where we had fun after the show where we would hang out in a group and he’d be part of that. It was hard.”
“There was a lot of things there…it’s difficult because there were things that were handled differently than I would have handled them personally. There were certainly some policies that not all of us agreed with. He was the boss. It was what it was.”
“There are people who are still there that grew up from Kevin that may have some of the same qualities that I may not necessarily agree with, but we rolled with it day-to-day. It wasn’t like I worked a lot with him directly. I had a little tenure on the road. That was my closest interaction in a professional environment. He was around if there were shoots that were very important. There were other times where we had fun and we had old production meetings.”
A Huge NFL Game Led To A Fun Moment Involving Kevin Dunn During WWE Meeting
In the 2001-02 NFL playoffs, the New England Patriots defeated the Oakland Raiders in the AFC Semifinals in a snowy game. It is known as the “Tuck Rule Game” because Tom Brady had the ball knocked out of his hand by Charles Woodson, which led to the Raiders recovering the fumble. However, the NFL ruled that Brady was “tucking” the ball, so it was no fumble and the Patriots went on to win the game. That was the year the Patriots won their first Super Bowl.
That was important to know because Carlan told a fun story involving Dunn and how it was related to that game.
“Every time we came back from the road, KD would run the production meeting with all the producers. He would give a recap of the week and we’d go through different things and people would have questions. KD is a big Raiders fan. I’m a big Patriots fan. We’re leading up to the Tuck Rule game in 2001. Stephanie McMahon used to go the production meetings. We got close because we grew up Patriots fans and went to school down the street from each other in Boston.”
“I told Steph before the meeting, ‘Underneath my work clothes, I have my Tom Brady jersey on. At the end, he’s going to ask if anyone has questions. I’m going to get up and say ‘We’ll see you this weekend,’ and I’m going to rip my work shirt off and spin around. Will you have my back?’ She said, ‘I have your back.’ We went through the meeting.”
“I was dying inside thinking, ‘Am I really going to do this?’ I did it. Everybody popped and laughed. He looked at me and goes, ‘I’ll tell you right now, if they win this game, your ass is fired.’ It never happened, it was all in fun. It was great. That was a fun interaction with him. He’s certainly controversial, no question. A lot of that outside stuff is inaccurate, but a lot is accurate.”