Vince McMahon Interfering In WWE Storylines Leading To Frustration
While Vince McMahon may have changed his look by adding a mustache, there is frustration in WWE regarding changes he makes to TV shows.
For the past three months, since Endeavor made a deal to acquire WWE and merge them with UFC, Vince McMahon has been involved in the WWE Creative process.
In the past, that wouldn’t be a big deal because, for over 40 years, Vince McMahon was the creative force behind WWE. However, he “retired” in July 2022 following the news that he paid off several women with “hush money payments” after he had sexual relationships with them, or tried to have them.
When Vince McMahon returned to WWE as the Executive Chairman in January 2023, it was assumed that his son-in-law Paul “Triple H” Levesque would continue to call the shots creatively as the WWE Chief Content Officer, which he has been doing since last July.
However, Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel has made it clear he wants Vince McMahon involved, which means that Vince has the ability to edit anything even though he’s not at WWE Raw or Smackdown most weeks. Vince can edit things remotely and there is apparently nothing and nobody stopping him from doing it.
[sided-debate-embed debate-id=”27475″]
In the hours before the June 23rd Smackdown aired, Vince McMahon changed three matches that were scheduled – Shotzi vs. Bayley was removed, Baron Corbin vs. Cameron Grimes was removed and LA Knight vs. Santos Escobar vs. Butch was changed to LA Knight beating Rey Mysterio. He had previously changed Raw matches in the past as well.
This week in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer wrote about Vince McMahon continually getting involved in the creative process.
“There was a lot of talk after Smackdown about how frustrating this was, but it’s pretty much how the booking was done regularly before Paul Levesque was in charge. One person close to the situation said it’s a very complicated matter with so many things playing out at once. Vince is changing things for what in his mind makes for a better show, but it does mess with long-term planning. And there were people internally who felt that on Raw, it was for the best.”
“Pushing an angle that gave more steam to Balor coming into MITB was a good thing, especially since Balor had lost to Rollins clean a few weeks ago and hadn’t been pushed prior to that as one of the top singles acts.”
“The negative is that they did such a big beating but by the end of the show they had to negate is by having Rollins be okay to everyone knew he was defending against Breakker as advertised, and in that match, while Rollins did tape is ribs, the match was worked as a normal title match where the challenger comes close and Rollins went in hurt but basically said you always go in hurt and didn’t play it up and was still doing his laughing and joking character by the end of the show and the next day.”
As he continued, Meltzer shared a quote from a source within WWE noting that Vince McMahon interfering isn’t necessarily a problem, but how and when Vince interferes is what leads to frustration.
“It was noted that Vince is aware that everyone in the company, including the big three, Nick Khan, Levesque and Stephanie McMahon, all operated for months with the idea he would never be back and when he told them he wanted back, they did not support him at first until he made it clear he was coming back. It’s noted that Vince believes he understands the business and is doing what he thinks is the best thing, as he always thinks.”
“As one person close to the situation noted, “He believes in what he says. Is he wrong all the time? No. Actually, he’s not. He’s actually got better input than most would believe. Is it all good? No, he’s stuck on certain mindsets that are long gone, and it could be damaging. It’s not the interference itself that is the problem. It’s how and when he does it.” It was noted that if he delivered all this input on Thursday night for Smackdown, or even Friday morning, or Sunday night for Raw, or even Monday morning, it would be different.”
“Making all these changes three or four hours before the show goes on the air live throws everything into the chaos that it has been of late.”
Tonight’s edition of WWE Smackdown will take place in London, England ahead of Saturday’s WWE Money in the Bank Premium Live Event, which is also in London, England at the O2 Arena.