News

Vince McMahon Nearly Fired Writer Due To Not Knocking On A Door

By John Canton • Published 23rd December 2022
Vince McMahon WWE

The temper of Vince McMahon is well-known and it even led to a time when he almost fired a writer that forgot to knock on his door before going to talk to him.

Vince McMahon ran WWE for over 40 years as the Chairman, CEO and the man that owns most of the company’s stock. In July, the 77-year-old McMahon retired after it was reported that he had made several “hush money” payments to various women over the last 20 years due to secret affairs that he had.

A recent story from the Wall Street Journal reports that Vince wants to return to work for WWE, although it’s unknown if it will happen. It should make for some interesting discussion over Christmas since Vince’s daughter took over as the Chairwoman and Co-CEO of WWE after Vince’s retirement while her husband Paul “Triple H” Levesque took Vince’s job running WWE creative with the Chief Content Officer job title.

Since Vince’s retirement, there have been plenty of stories about his strange behaviour from people that worked there in the past. There are also many well-known things that Vince McMahon hated like saying the world “belt” instead of title/championship or yelling at people that sneezed, among many other things.

Former wrestler and WWE writer Jimmy Jacobs appeared on AdFreeShows.com recently to talk about his time as a writer in WWE from March 2015 to October 2017. Since being fired by WWE, Jacobs has worked behind the scenes in Impact Wrestling.

Jacobs spoke about how he respected Vince McMahon a lot while remarking that since it was Vince’s show, he knew that it was all about doing what Vince wanted.

“Vince is a legend. Anything I say, it’s with a certain amount of respect and love, and it’s only from the perspective and the experience I had there. So none of it is meant to disparage him because it’s his company. It’s his sandbox. You’re playing it. That’s what you have to understand when you’re there. You go, ‘Why isn’t this different?’ Because it’s not your show. That was my motto. That was my mantra. It’s not my show. If it was my show, this is how I would do it. It’s not my show, so we’re gonna do this.”

As he continued, Jacobs talked about what he thought Vince might be like when he first go there.

“When I first got there, I thought that Vince was going to be a dude, a billionaire, but a dude. Like when I first got there, I was like, why is everybody so scared of Vince? Everybody, like, just treat him like a human, guys. What are you talking about? Then I learned almost immediately I was like, oh, yeah, and I started becoming scared of Vince.”

That led to Jacobs telling a story about how a writer friend of his nearly got fired due to not knocking on a door.

“One of my first, maybe my first month there, my closest friend on the team, 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.’ So he fixes the promo and he comes back to him. He doesn’t knock, and Vince wanted to fire him.”

“Dave and Ed, great bosses, great dudes, they saved him. The guy’s name was Ryan Callahan. Saved his job. He just, have to go on the home team. Can’t go on the road and be in front of Vince. He’s got to bring him to the home team. Ryan, Callahan, not Ward, Ryan was an incredible writer, and he’s there now. He’s one of the lead writers of SmackDown. He’s 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 just start to behave in a way to try to not get fired. Then your ideas become ideas in an effort to not get fired. Pretty soon you have a whole bunch of people that are playing to not lose instead of playing to win.”

H/T WrestlingNewsco