Vince McMahon Didn’t Like WWE NXT Stars
Vince McMahon didn’t seem to care about some wrestlers who got called up from NXT to the WWE main roster.
When Cameron Grimes was called up to the WWE main roster in the spring of 2023, it came after he spent nearly four years as part of the NXT brand. Unlike some people in NXT, Grimes was an experienced pro wrestler when he got to the NXT brand.
After his call up to the main roster, there was a bit of a power struggle at the time because Paul “Triple H” Levesque was the Chief Content Officer running the creative team, but former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was still around. There were many instances when reports would come out about how Vince would change things that Triple H’s team had planned.
Grimes was on the WWE main roster for about one year before his April 2024 release. When Grimes was released, Vince McMahon was no longer affiliated with WWE after TKO executives forced him to resign. Vince being gone didn’t help Grimes because apparently, Triple H’s creative team didn’t have anything for Grimes.
Cameron Grimes has gone back to using the Trevor Lee name on the independent wrestling circuit. In an interview with Denise Salcedo, Lee spoke about how he would be part of Smackdown shows and then Vince McMahon would change the script, which made Lee think that Vince didn’t care about some of the former NXT talent.
“At the very beginning when I got drafted there, there was still kind of a power struggle happening. Vince was gone, but he wasn’t gone. Hunter was in charge, but he wasn’t fully in charge. So, what I would know is that I’d be on the script and then it would go to Vince and he would change the script. I don’t think he really liked NXT guys.”
“The changes that would always happen would be me being taken off the show. That happened for a couple months until finally Vince was completely gone and now Hunter was in charge.”
“Then it became, well how do we reintroduce this guy who hasn’t been on TV for a few months and hasn’t really done much. How do we reintroduce him back into a show that is so hot at the moment?”
“If you look at that time period, we were building to WrestleMania [39]. We’re building to all of this huge stuff, we’re getting into the massive Bloodline angle and we’re on a two hour show. When there’s an hour promo promoting the hottest angle in the company, you know what I mean? Then you got to get the females on the show, you got to get the other stars on the show. It’s hard to get that spot when you’re trying to figure out like, well, what do we do?”
Cameron Grimes Pitched Ideas To WWE Leaders Like Triple H And Vince McMahon
As he continued, Grimes talked about how he would pitch ideas to WWE’s creative team led by Triple H and Vince McMahon while admitting that he would annoy writers as well.
“I pitched a bunch of different ideas because it just drove me crazy honestly. A lot of people, you’ll hear throughout the business, ‘Oh, you’re getting paid, why don’t you just shut up.’ That’s not what I fell in love with, I wanted to wrestle.”
“So, I would annoy the hell out of the writers and try to pitch ideas and try to like figure something out. They have a very stressful job as well, the writers, trying to figure out everything and write everything. It doesn’t help when I’m asking to work every single week, right? It was just hard.”
“It’s very hard. It should be, it’s WWE, it’s the top of the top, it’s the best of the best. When you’re fighting for a two hour time slot, you have to get those spots and when you get them, you’ve got to take full advantage of them and I don’t think that I fully took advantage of the moments that I could’ve taken advantage of.”
Vince McMahon is remaining busy in his post-WWE life because the 79-year-old billionaire is launching an entertainment company even though pro wrestling isn’t supposed to be part of it.
Meanwhile, McMahon is still fighting back against the January 2024 lawsuit filed by Janel Grant filed a lawsuit against McMahon, alleging sex trafficking and sexual abuse.