Vince McMahon Interview

[Placebo Effect 0]

I know plenty of people, both guys and girls, that watched from 1998 to 2001 and dropped watching wrestling after the WCW vs WWF angle went up shit creek. Many have said now when they watch the product it makes them sad and laugh at it's current state.

I am, for the most part, that fan.

 

I haven't watched a full broadcast of Raw or Smackdown in a very, very long time ago, nor have I ordered PPVs.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

That's me as well. I basically tape the show and end up fast forwarding through most of the crap. There are some weeks where I watch maybe 5 minutes of both shows.

[CBright7831 0]

Sadly, the last PPV that I ordered was Wrestlemania X-8.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I watch much less wrestling than I did 1 year ago, and 1 year ago I watched much less wrestling than I did a year before that, and a year before that, etc. Before I used to watch _everything_, even the C shows. Now, I only watch Velocity when there's an Akio/London match, I don't watch Heat, and Smackdown has completely left my mind on Thursday nights. RAW is the only thing I watch, and I watch MAYBE half of it. I went from watching well over 10 hours a week to watching 1 hour a week. And I am a pretty "hardcore" fan.

[Secret Agent 0]

Would you start watching more if it got better, though? Or do you think you'd still loose more intrest as time goes by?

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

I would not. I have TNA, RoH and puro now. The WWF is an afterthought in my wrestling world.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I felt this way in the mid-90s as well. Up until about WMX I was insane for wrestling. I would rent wrestling videos every week and watched everything I could. Then they got really out of touch with the audience and got really kiddy and gimmicky and I just got bored of it. My tastes were developing and they weren't keeping up - which is very similar to what is happening today. WCW got a lot more interesting with the NWO, then they hit on the Bret Hart heel turn and the Canadian/American angle. So it is possible for my interest to return, but I am wondering if it's even worth it, or if the WWE deserves it.

[cameron chaos 0]

I am in the same boat as Rudo. I used to be itching to watch the next RAW, SD, Heat and Velocity, now if I miss them I don't care since most of the worthwhile matches end up floating around the net and I don't have to put up with the monotonous voice of HHH for a quarter of RAW on and off and then the multiple repeats of his actions on the other shows as well.

 

All the people that held my interest have been buried, discredited or move back down the card, all the charismatic wrestlers have walked out or grown stagnant due to a lack of character progression, all the entertaining daredevils have to tone their antics down or don't even get decent TV time and all the matches have headlocks, superplexes and bodyscissors so they are interchangable 70% of the time. Everyone knows HHH will hold the RAW title at least 3 times a year and SD... christ, I don't even know what the fuck they are even thinking with half the shit they put on or choose not to promote on there.

 

It's hard to get excited and want to watch a product when everything is so predictable and the majority of the roster are misused.

 

Also like Rudo, I have turned my attention to MMA as it offers exciting and generally unpredictable match ups with the spectacle of WWE but without the additional bullshit, such as completely illogical booking to discredit their roster and interviews that make me fall asleep.

 

I still watch old matches and whatever decent TNA stuff I can get a hold of, but there is little that makes me want to watch current WWE aside from the occasional good match I hear about.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Just to add. I used to plan my week around wrestling. I wouldn't go out on Monday, Thursday or Saturday. I used to even get up early on Saturday morning to catch WCW Worldwide. I even watched the WCW Sunday night show on TBS while it was around. There was a point where I knew every jobber by name.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

It harkens back to the days when a good guy would come to the ring 1st, you knew he was toast.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

And this is what it has been like for every wrestling fan that has left, guaranteed, cept some had it occur faster than others. It will happen to everyone if given enough time. Once upon a time I got so angry at the WWE for doing such stupid shit, now I'm much less abrasive, I take it much less personally. That's not good. I've been detaching myself from the product, or I should say, they've made me detach. I just don't care enough to get worked up about things, and they need their fans to care. I wouldn't be surprised to see the traffic on this site has slowed down every year since it opened because there are less arguments, there are less people bitching, there are less people in the Smackdown and Raw and Heat and Velocity threads, there are less people -period- discussing it, and certainly because there is less interesting things going on to talk about, The signs are all there, and they refuse to see it. There is no line where there are guaranteed fans. The bottom is the bottom - it is 0 fans.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

All that I'm saying is he may not be as out-of-touch as everyone would lead you to believe. Unless you are hanging out with the McMahon family on a regular basis one really wouldn't know.

 

He is as out of touch as everyone thinks. The mans concept of wrestling is out-dated, and he believes his own hype of being able to sell anything to the wrestling public. He sees himself as infallible because he is the last man standing. In this interview, did he once mention a mistake the company had made? No, of course not. His company doesn't make mistakes. It's the government, it's the wrestlers, it's the economy, it's the nature of the industry. They never lay the blame internally and that is where the blame belongs. If he wasn't out of touch he would have changed 4 or 5 years ago. If he wasn't out of touch, they would have changed the logo, the production, and the structure of their shows by now.

 

My guess is that Vince does see holes in the product but if you are the baseball coach and your son is the shortstop and underperforming, do you necessarily take him out of the game or do you work closely with him to make him better for the next game?

 

Vince isn't a baseball coach. He is the leader of a publicly traded company, and has shareholders to answer to. He also has these loyal fans who dumbly wait around for things to get better. Unfortunately, he and his family are the main stakeholders in the WWE and he doesn't care about fan loyalty. There are weak links in the chain and he has yet to get rid of them. It hasn't been one or two games either, it's been nearly FIVE YEARS, and Steph has proven herself to be absolutely incompetant as creative director. There has been NO improvement shown AT ALL. Vince likes to think -and has people tell him this all the time- that he can put business above everything, he clearly can't.

 

 

I'd also like to see the company run differently but if you are Vince McMahon and trying to groom one of your children to some day take over the family business - just as Vince Jr. did when Vince Sr. stepped down - what do you do?

 

Find someone better to run it and have the kids sit on the BOD.

 

Remove her from the position just because business is down?

 

Remove her from the position because she sucks at the position.

 

Is that the best thing to do when trying to prepare her for one day running the entire show? I personally feel that the four year experiment with Stephanie leading creative has run it's course and she should learn how to work in a capacity like Linda McMahon's position.

 

It is the best thing to do _for business_. And they are grooming Shane for the Linda position.

 

Stephanie knows how creative operates by now, move her on to something else.

 

SHE DOES??!?! Sure hasn't shown it. They should move her down to OVW and learn from Cornette. The bitch needs to be humbled.

 

As an indie concert promoter, I'd disagree with you here. It's harder to get people to come out for shows any more even if you have a real quality band. My friend owns a bar and business isn't what it was five years ago. Vince is right about declines all around, I do tend to agree that this is used as an excuse more than it should be however.

 

I am not saying that there isn't a decline in the entertainment industry, what I am saying it is not at the same *rate* as the WWE. The WWE fell very fast where in one year they were having one of their highest years *ever* and the next year they were in the red. They could have restricted their decline greatly and salvaged more fans for a longer period, but they refused to do certain things and push certain stars when they had a chance. And even worse, they ignored the obvious problems that had a hand in causing the decline because they just figured "well, we peaked and now we're receeding. That's the wrestling industry for you. Let's do what we did in the mid 90's - lots of international tours, smaller contracts - and wait out the storm"

[Vyce 0]

Goddamn, in this folder, I agree with just about everything RRR has to say on a subject.

 

Not so much in other folders, but definitely in this one.

[justcoz 0]

Rudo, I agree with you for the most part. If anything, I'm playing devil's advocate here for Vince and trying to comprehend why he refuses to see the writing on the wall. There has to be more to it and I think it does really all come down to family... keeping the business with the family and having his daughter learn how to run the show (the product part of it at least). I think we could all agree that if Paul Heyman was made creative director in 2001 and the product was producing as poorly as it has the past four years - Heyman would be demoted or unemployed by now. There is an obvious tolerance there for Stephanie that wouldn't exist for a non-family member and this is all I'm really getting at.

 

The production and pace of the show should have absolutely changed years ago. There is no reason that Shane and Stephanie can't be on the BOD and hire wrestling minds, mixed with TV writers, to handle the creative side of things. For Christ sake, they employ Paul Heyman, Jim Cornette and Eric Bischoff. My point by saying that Stephanie knows how creative works by now wasn't to insinuate that she performs the job well. She understands the creative process and how to work backstage for the production of a Raw and Smackdown. She has that understanding already so for the sake of the product - move her on to something else already. What I was getting at with my posts is trying to understand why Vince hasn't done this already and what his line of thinking could possibly be.

 

And of course he is never going to admit to errors, dropping the ball on angles or creating new stars and personalities. It's never been his style.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

Oh thank god, I thought you were insane there for a second.

[Promoter 0]

You guys should all send the stuff posted in here to the wwe website. Seriously! They can ignore it, but deep down they will know there is truth in what you guys are saying. Maybe, if it is written intelligently as it is here instead of having fans write in this sucks and that sucks they will be more responsive that maybe the fans want them to improve. Just too add to this here is my two cents about what the Mcmahons have been saying to the media.

 

You know why they have Batista in the main event of WrestleMania? Because he will likely make them much more money than Randy Orton would have against Triple H. That's not simply listening to the fans, it's putting money in their pockets. They will use that and turn around to say they listen to the fans when in reality they aren't.

 

I've been seeing and reading what the Mcmahons have been saying in the media along with their new son in-law. I find it to be spin control with Triple H's position in the company. I've seen Triple H's comments on TSN, The Score, and other stuff like that Big Donny show or whatever it's called. Pat Patterson supposedly told Vince Mcmahon a major reason why business has been dropping is that HHH is too powerful and just maybe fans think he is using politics. They are even alluding to it in HHH's promos.

 

By stating the fans decide who is a superstar they can validate who they keep at the top. It can't be denied that Triple IS a major star, thus they will justify his position by saying the fans want it.

 

A general fan from the masses will buy it because Triple H was there during the hey day. They can use the Austin study that the fans forced the wwe to make him a star, but in truth the guy had the tools to be a star and stuck through all the crap they had him in with Savio Vega. Austin was also the job boy for Bret Hart's return in 1996 and 1997. They had to push him once HBK was injured and Bret Hart got bounced out the company. It's some revisionist history. They push who they want.

 

Personally, I think Jericho is over-rated on the net, but that doesn't take away the fact the guy does have some tools. If Jericho was given the chance that JBL was given he might have actually turned face, but why couldn't that happen? Because the wwe planned on Triple H carrying the company as a face. They calculate things the best they could. Chris Benoit by the numbers actually did the best numbers ratings wise as champion in the last couple of years and he wasn't even pushed as the top guy. There is a reason why they do this. There are some guys who are real threats to people's position, while others aren't. JBL is not a real threat in terms of becoming a popular heel or face champion that would detriment who they really want as the top guy.

 

The way they have done things over the years actually disproves what Vince said in that interview. Now, with that said, they do listen as well. I mean, doing things like bringing back the nWo and getting people like Eric Bischoff was probably in response to fans complaining that the Invasion should have had those guys. The problem comes when they book them how they want them to be booked instead of how the fans wanted them booked. I mean just look at the Hogan/Rock match to see the evidence. There was proof before that match that Hogan may have got bigger face pops than Rock simply from the tv shows leading up to the event. Hogan was cheered for pinning The Rock in Chicago before Mania. The crowd was singing along Hogan's catchphrase as well at times. They didn't want it that way though which says they don't actually really listen. There are other examples such as Austin's heel turn which flopped at the box office.

[cameron chaos 0]

Even if we were to send in our complaints formally we'd like get the token "thank you for your interest in WWE" letter regardless of whether our letters had merit.

 

Writer after writer after continuity observer has been fired or demoted for raising their voices and speaking their minds, so I doubt Vince truly gives a fuck about the fans as long as he can afford more houses and private jets. It's all just good PR to act as if he gives a shit, the only people he need answer to are the shareholders and since the majority shareholders are his own blood, I doubt he even has to answer to them.

 

They'll continue to make workers take paycuts and blame "the cyclical nature of this business" for their woes until Vince has to start paying out of his own pocket as he had to for a period in 97. It was only at that point the real turn around came and he started ripping off ECW. Vince isn't going to be concerned until it really concerns him or at least his bank balance.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I think they just hire these people to say "you are doing nothing wrong", and when they don't, "they clearly don't get the wrestling business".

[cameron chaos 0]

Sounds about right. It's hard to believe at times both Cornette and Heyman, who both ran semi-successful promotions, are not on the writing or booking team while Vince's daughter, who worked in the accounts department prior to her promotion to creative director, is head of the whole shebang. How he can honestly believe a 20 something female with a background in finances is better suited for the role than two guys who have been in the business for 20 years aren't right for a position on the team, I don't know.

 

It has to be said, if Heyman is down in OVW right now as reports claim him to be, I can only imagine how good the product will improve down there with the promos under Heyman and rest of the show under Cornette.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

Yeah, but the McMahon Genes have at least 70 years of experience in running a promotion, and it is a scientific fact that wrestling writing ability is passed through the X chromosome from the fathers side. It's right beside the hair gene, I believe. Really, Heyman and Cornette don't stand a chance.

[Promoter 0]

Damn, I forgot Vince has people like Heyman and Cornette under his wings. Hell, call me crazy, but they are also missing a chance with Bischoff on the creative team. All he probably needed was guidance like Russo did(who was also brought back and sent home).

[spman 0]

Vince doesn't even have to answer to the minority stock holders though, every time they have a conference call for stock holders, at least one person calls in complaining about the product and asking why it has not improved, and Linda Mcmahon always espouses the same company line that Vince spouted in this interview, and then they start telling their own stock holders only to ask questions related to the financial and buisness aspect of the company, not about the creative end.