A few years ago, Vince McMahon reached out to a 64-year-old veteran for his opinions, and the ex-WWE figure said that his old boss only wanted to use that as an excuse to rip him apart for his departure decades prior.
On the latest episode of The Wrestling Outlaws, host Dr. Chris Featherstone discussed the recent story that CM Punk spoke about, where he met with Vince McMahon and Triple H in 2018-19 to discuss a potential return, only to be ghosted.
Ex-WWE writer Vince Russo then revealed that a few years ago (around 2021), in his last interaction with Vince McMahon, he was contacted and asked to critique RAW. However, Vince Russo felt that McMahon would use this as an excuse to rip him apart, accusing him of acting in revenge for his departure decades prior:
“It reminds me of the last conversations I had with Vince. He wanted me to critique RAW for a couple of weeks. So I’m thinking in my head, ‘Ok, bro, you want me to critique RAW for a couple of weeks, so you could rip my critiques apart, and feel good about yourself.’ I knew that’s exactly what he would’ve done, so that’s why I said to myself, ‘Bro, if you’re going to do that, that’s fine. You can do whatever you want’. But that’s when I said, ‘I’d be happy to critique as many weeks as you want, but what are you paying me?’. I knew he was going to do. No matter what I would have said about those shows bro, he would have ripped it apart to feel good about himself of me leaving the company. I know how he thinks, man. (2:26-3:33)
You can watch the full video below:
Wrestling legend Dutch Mantell thinks there’s a chance Vince McMahon could return to WWE.
Brock Lesnar’s return to WWE despite not being fully cleared in the Janel Grant lawsuit has led many to speculate whether there’s a chance that Vince McMahon could also make a return in some capacity.
On a recent edition of Story Time with Dutch Mantell, the wrestling legend said that he believes there’s a possibility that Vince McMahon could return to WWE, but he gives it a 10-20% chance of happening:
“There’s a possibility that he comes back, but the possibility of it being a success is down to about 20 percent, 10 percent. And I think Vince (McMahon) is going to take that into account unless it’s a success,” he said. [H/T- TJRWrestling]
It should be noted that even in the event of McMahon’s return, he won’t have anywhere near the power he had even before his resignation. There were multiple instances of Vince McMahon selling hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of his TKO stock. This means that he has significantly less ownership of TKO.
However, the main aspect that people appear to be subconsciously focusing on is what McMahon’s return would symbolically represent. The shocking allegations made by Janel Grant put WWE under serious scrutiny, with demands for major change in the backstage culture.
While it only represents a tiny fraction of vocal fans, the return of Brock Lesnar to many indicated that the backstage culture hasn’t changed as much as many had hoped. There’s nothing to confirm that this is the case, of course. Regardless, WWE was aware of the possible scrutiny in bringing Lesnar back, which is probably why it took two years for it to happen. The situation with Vince McMahon is a different one altogether because of his status as the most important man in the history of professional wrestling/sports entertainment.
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