Former WWE Star Recalls Vince McMahon Firing Him After A Promo
If you said the wrong thing during a promo that Vince McMahon didn’t like, it could cost you your job and a former WWE star experienced exactly that.
When Vince McMahon was running WWE from a creative standpoint for about 40 years until his July 2022 “retirement” that saw Paul “Triple H” Levesque take over, he usually made it clear what he wanted from talent.
There wasn’t always a WWE writing team that scripted promos, but from the late 1990s until now, promos were done that way. Some wrestlers had more leeway in terms of what they had to say while others had to try to follow what Vince McMahon and his creative team wanted.
From 2012 to 2015, Brad Maddox was on the WWE main roster although he wasn’t used as a wrestler. He started out as a referee, who had some controversial moments including during a CM Punk-Ryback Hell In A Cell match. After that, he had a run as the General Manager of Raw as well.
Maddox was also hurt by a controversial sex tape video getting leaked of himself and former WWE superstar Paige (now known as Saraya in AEW) that also involved Xavier Woods. It was not a good thing for anybody involved.
During an interview with Rip Rogers, Maddox spoke about his GM role in WWE while adding that Vince McMahon liked him initially.
“I didn’t like it as much as I should have. I mean, it was a huge opportunity. I hear you talk about being grateful for every day and every moment and all that sh*t, but that is such a mindset thing that if you don’t have that, there’s no amount of goods that’s gonna make you happy. So when I got that gimmick, I mean it was cool, but I still wanted to work and I was still not really embracing it and I don’t think it was nearly my best promo work.”
“I did get to stay up because after I did the gimmick with Ryback and Punk, they had me go out and cut a promo. Vince had no idea who I was or anything about me and that was in Manchester. They just had me cut a promo and I was pretty nervous, but luckily that played into who that character was supposed to be as an amateur dream chaser. I hit that one well enough that Vince wanted, he decided right then I guess, that he wanted to keep me up and do more with me, so that bought me time and probably eventually that GM role.”
As for his release, Maddox explained that he did a promo using some choice words for the crowd and Vince McMahon was so mad about it that Maddox got fired the next day.
“I was just getting in with Vince. I mean, I’ve been talking to him for a while trying to find gimmicks. Then me and Adam Rose were about to do a tag team. We’d gone to see him that day and he had signed off on it, so we were going to start a little gimmick. Then I had a singles dark match before the show.”
“I cut a promo on my way up to the ring and I called the Indianapolis crowd ‘cocky pr**ks’ at the end of my promo, and he (Vince) kicked me out of the building. The next day Carano called me and told me.”
Clearly, Vince McMahon didn’t like Brad’s choice of words and he hasn’t been seen in WWE since then.