Pat McAfee On How It Felt Interviewing Vince McMahon

Pat McAfee has reflected on what it was like for him to do a lengthy interview with Vince McMahon about one month before they met in a WrestleMania match.

At WrestleMania 38 in 2022, Pat McAfee wrestled twice. First, he picked up a win over Austin Theory. After that, he was forced into an impromptu match with WWE Executive Chairman Vince McMahon, who would go on to have one of the worst matches of the year with McAfee, who lost because of Theory getting involved.

One month earlier in March 2022, Vince McMahon made a rare appearance on a talk show as he sat down to be interviewed by Pat McAfee on Pat’s popular YouTube show. While Vince gave a lot of interesting answers, it was also a way to have Vince put Pat into a WrestleMania match, which is what led to Pat facing Theory.

Prior to the interview, Pat McAfee had a working relationship with Vince since he was a Smackdown commentator starting in 2021, so there was a familiarity there.

In an interview with Jimmy Traina on the SI Media Podcast, Pat McAfee was asked if he was nervous about interviewing Vince on Pat’s show.

“No. When I was doing SmackDown, I started learning the business a little more. Obviously, as a fan my entire life, I understood and thought I knew what was going on, but once you start meeting people and kind of learn about people and the process of it all, I’m genuinely a curious person too, so I would just go ask Vince questions. ‘Why do you guys do it this way? Why do you do this?’ I feel like he’s naturally a teacher.”

“I feel if people approach him and ask him questions, he wants to tell people why he did what he did. The way he goes about telling people, we’ve all seen, certainly an interesting thing and he’s certainly made mistakes as a human, I think he would recognize that and we all recognize that.”

As he continued, Pat McAfee talked about his interviewing style and how the interview with Vince McMahon happened.

“I just started asking questions about decisions I would have to make. I think he appreciated it, I think he respected the questions I was asking, and anytime you talk to anybody, I learned this with Peyton, I was very lucky to be teammates with Peyton Manning. These are humans, at the end of the day. You have to talk to them like they’re humans. Soon as you start treating them like they’re not humans, they’re going to not act like humans.”

“If you get showed up in front of somebody, they’re going to immediately shut down and not really talk to you. If you talk to people like they’re humans, they appreciate that. Him blessing us, he flew in for that. Didn’t know if it was going to happen.”

“It was reported, it was talked about, day of though, before we went live, did not get a confirmation. I just assume he’s coming. Then we get a text, ’30 minutes out, 15 minutes out.’ Plane, SUV, all by himself, no security, walks right in, sits down, does an hour and 15, hour and a half, comes out, takes a picture, says thank you to everyone, back on the plane, back home, probably had another 12 hour day after that.”

“I was pumped more than nervous. I knew that he doesn’t talk to a lot of people. I, being a wrestling fan for a long time, have obviously followed his trajectory business-wise on top of everything else. I felt pumped for the opportunity, for sure.”

Elsewhere, Pat McAfee also talked about how he still wants to be part of WWE even though he just signed a new five-year deal with ESPN that will keep him a very busy man.