Vince McMahon Never Wanted To Support Indy Wrestling
A wrestling legend who worked closely with Vince McMahon says that the former WWE boss didn’t want to support indy wrestling like the current regime does.
The new WWE ID program was announced recently as a way for the company to sign independent pro wrestling talent who will remain on the indy wrestling circuit until the time comes for WWE to utilize them in NXT or on the main roster.
It is something that the new era of WWE led by CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque and President Nick Khan as the company looks toward the future.
When Vince McMahon was running WWE for 40 years, something like WWE ID never happened. That’s because of how Vince viewed the pro wrestling business and how he was focused on WWE only.
Jim Ross worked for Vince McMahon for over 20 years on-screen as a Hall of Fame announcer and also as an executive running the talent relations department from the mid-1990s until the early 2000s.
While speaking on his Grilling JR podcast, Jim Ross spoke about how Vince McMahon viewed independent pro wrestling.
“I think it’s about time. Vince was never very motivated to invest time and money in supporting the indies.”
Ross went on to say that he recalled having conversations with Vince about how important the indies were to WWE, but the former boss didn’t seem to care that much.
“It’s just a crazy deal, you want different personalities, you want different body types, you want different ethnicities.”
As he continued talking about the WWE ID deal, Jim Ross spoke about how it will be a good recruiting tool for WWE.
“If you don’t sign a contract and you got maybe a letter of agreement or something casual, I can see that being a good recruiting tool because then guys build their confidence, they build their self-esteem, they got a WWE deal in the works.”
TKO Boss Met With Vince McMahon
It was in January 2024 when Vince McMahon’s WWE tenure was about to end. That was when former WWE employee Janel Grant filed a lawsuit against McMahon, John Laurinaitis, and WWE alleging sexual abuse and sex trafficking. The suit has since been paused and a federal investigation was launched.
Vince McMahon believes he is innocent of what Grant accused him of and he is fighting it as best he can.
After the Grant lawsuit became public, WWE owners TKO Group made Vince sell his stocks and leave the company, which he did.
Earlier this week, TKO President Mark Shapiro revealed that he recently had breakfast with Vince to check in to see how he was doing and had good things to say about the former WWE boss.