10 Wrestlers That Vince McMahon Hasn't Forgiven
Forgiveness is a powerful tool…but so is the genetic jackhammer.
It’s often said that it’s the bigger person who can forgive and forget when they’re wronged. Forgiveness is something you do for yourself as much as for anyone else: it allows you to let the anger and resentment go, put the past behind you, and move on.
Over the last four decades, Vincent Kennedy McMahon has been involved in more scandalous spats with people in the wrestling business than any other man in history. Yet the truism goes that, given time, anyone can come back to work for the WWE again. Business is business, after all: and Vince is happy to forgive anyone for anything if there’s money to be made.
Thing is, that’s not quite true.
Normally, you can fall out one of two ways in business. If it’s nothing personal, you might simply decide never to do business with them again. If you hold a grudge, on the other hand, you might well choose to work with that person again. After all, money is money... and it might give you the chance to get a little payback...
Over the years, Vince McMahon has ‘forgiven’ personae non gratae like Bret Hart, Madusa, Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, Brock Lesnar, ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage and most recently Jeff Jarrett, usually because it made good business sense to do so.
But what about the people that, to date, he’s refused to forgive? In ascending order of HELL NO, here’s the rundown...
10. Lex Luger
In mid-1993, Hulk Hogan left the WWF, and Vince McMahon’s reaction was about as mature as you’d expect: he immediately transferred Hogan’s spot, push and ‘all-American hero’ character to another blond, jacked bodybuilder.
In the end though, for whatever reason, McMahon didn’t follow through on the Lex Luger push. In less than a year Luger was back in the midcard, and by summer 1995 WWF thought so little of him that they let his contract expire without realising. This allowed him to jump to WCW, arriving on Nitro’s inaugural episode without informing McMahon.
Luger must have been desperate - Eric Bischoff only made the offer as a favour to Sting, who’d made a pitch on behalf of his old gym buddy, and it was a fifth of what his old WCW contract had been worth.
Regardless, McMahon never forgave Luger for keeping him in the dark, and didn’t offer Luger a contract when he bought out WCW in 2001. Things might have been squared away between them, but Luger’s later relationship with Elizabeth Hulotte screwed things up still further. Randy Savage’s ex-wife and former valet was remembered fondly in New York, and her subsequent drug habit and death from binging on painkillers and vodka was laid squarely at Luger’s door.
Luger spent some time after that wasted and on the wrong side of the law. After getting out of prison, he suffered a spinal stroke in 2007 that paralysed him, ending his career. Supposedly he worked with them briefly in 2011 on their Wellness Policy, but as far as the WWE are concerned, Lex Luger has been damaged goods for a long, long time.