10 Times Vince McMahon Had Nothing To Do With WWE's Massive Success

Gulp.

Vince GULP
WWE Network

Obviously, Vince McMahon is a genius.

The man is a master promotor. No matter how terrible the WWE product becomes, the effectively brainwashed hardcore audience invariably returns to the fold. It doesn't matter that Roman Reigns will headline WrestleMania 40. It won't matter that Vince will probably refer to it as WrestleMania XL, trolling the continuity crowd with his maddeningly inconsistent whims. It doesn't matter that Backlash has taken a back seat to an hysterically overstuffed show on Saudi Arabian shores on which women, who we are now to take as seriously as their male counterparts, are not permitted to perform. With one slickly-produced epic video package alone, McMahon's empire is capable of obscuring awful hypocrisy and chasmic episodic storytelling by creating a sense of excitement unlike any other wrestling company on the planet. It doesn't even matter that he refuses to call wrestling wrestling.

Vince McMahon perfected FOMO before we even had an acronym for it.

Obviously, McMahon' fingerprints are all over the vast legacy of his own creation. The Undertaker, his greatest creation ever, roamed the yard for a quarter of a century. McMahon was astute enough to realise that Kurt Angle, in 1999, was never getting over as a white meat babyface, and thus repurposed him as heel deluded into believing, hilariously, that he was a white meat babyface. Even now, as Vince's tastes become ever more obsolete, his vision of Braun Strowman is the most over babyface in WWE not named Daniel Bryan.

All that written...

10. The Royal Rumble Match

Vince GULP
WWE

The Royal Rumble is, in a word, perfect.

A genius twist on the antiquated Battle Royal, its formula is mathematically precise. Two men commence the action, creating scope for just one of several intriguing match-within-a-match set-ups: tag team partners colliding, the resumption of a classic feud, an opportunity for a rising talent to test their mettle opposite an established headliner...

Then, with the remaining field entering at scheduled intervals, the magic of the countdown clock is such that an appearance from anybody, Shawn Michaels to Michael Cole, is hugely anticipated. Entertaining onscreen and fascinating off - the final four is surely a forecast of the remainder of the year - the Rumble is one of few magical WWE properties to hold the interest of the casual audience. Everybody loves the Rumble.

Vince McMahon, upon hearing Pat Patterson's original pitch, settled on a different word: "Stupid".

"Pat, tell Dick about your stupid idea for that battle royal," Vince said during a meeting with NBC figure Dick Ebersol. Dick, like everybody else, loved the idea, and when it materialised, it was so self-evidently brilliant that it was soon transposed, with major success, to the pay-per-view arena. McMahon was adamant that the idea was "never going to work". Patterson, knowing he was on to a winner, eroded McMahon's stubbornness.

CM Punk was on to something when he blamed many of WWE's ills on the toadying of "gladhanding, nonsensical yes-men."

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!