7 Wrestlers Who Made Vince McMahon Their BITCH!
Shawn Michaels wasn’t the only WWE Hall of Famer who had Vince’s number.
The former Sasha Banks, now Mercedes Mone in AEW, left WWE in part because she could no longer sanction Vince McMahon’s aggressive and intimidating demeanour.
While the abrupt nature of her exit was a shocking news story, it wasn’t too surprising, if you recall an appearance she once made on the Not Sam wrestling podcast. She said she preferred to liaise with ‘Papa Hunter’ Triple H because she was “quite honestly, very scared” of Vince.
Vince was harder to approach during the dire monopoly years. He was the most powerful man in the industry by orders of magnitude. The wrestlers underneath him, bereft of other options and with one childhood dream, did not have the experience of dealing with any major players, much less somebody who wielded such influence and was possessed by demonic moods. This created a grotesque power dynamic. It was already bad enough; Bubba Ray Dudley, hardly a meek sort of fellow, once spoke on Busted Open Radio about being “paralysed by fear” when a Raw segment with Right To Censor went five minutes too long. Even those who were prepared to back their own ideas, and weren’t afraid to pitch them, often struggled to hold their own.
Chris Jericho has often spoken about Vince’s “Jedi mind trick” - his ability to convince talents to take orders that they were not enthusiastic about nor comfortable with. CM Punk, another name who is not exactly shy nor lacking in his convictions, discussed on the infamous 2014 Art of Wrestling podcast Vince’s knack for persuasion. Punk wanted more time off after WrestleMania 29 - the site of his third consecutive PPV job to a part-time superstar - but was convinced to return to WWE despite carrying a knee injury because Vince needed another big match for the Chicago Payback event. What Vince wanted, Vince got.
Mostly…
7. The Ultimate Warrior
The Ultimate Warrior wasn’t a mark, and as bad as he was mechanically, he grasped the most important aspect of the wrestling business: he was over, and crucially, he knew how over he was.
He didn’t care about pro wrestling. It wasn’t his big goal in life. He didn’t grow up dreaming of being a wrestler, enchanted by his heroes on the TV; he got in because he was a bodybuilder when that exact physique was prized by the WWF. Moreover, he didn’t enjoy the lifestyle. This is how even the most savvy of operators fall. They love the life. They might have had Vince’s respect, and they might have known their worth, but they could not no-sell the romance of the road nor the ego trip that the spotlight affords. Bret Hart, for example, knew what Vince McMahon was, and he knew when he was lying to and using him, but he was a wrestler at heart. He put up with it. Warrior could and indeed did spend years at a time out of the limelight.
Warrior tolerated the lifestyle, as a necessary means of making money, but actively resented it. He almost left the WWF alongside Owen Hart in mid-1989, when the ‘Killer Kalendar’ WWF touring schedule was at its most arduous, before Owen had to gently tell him that he was too rubbish to get over in Japan. Warrior was there to do a job. He wanted to make money and made sure to get what he was owed. He was, thus, a formidable political opponent of Vince McMahon.
Warrior knew that he could walk back into the WWF when he threatened to no-show SummerSlam 1991 because he was adamant that he was owed in excess of half a million dollars from his WrestleMania 6 main event. He cared even less in 1996, when his ill-fated return fell apart. He didn’t think the WWF flogged his comic books hard enough and thought the promotion was using his own IP on his merchandise. It was rumoured that he simply didn’t turn up to house shows in protest.
Vince McMahon loved the Ultimate Warrior character. The Ultimate Warrior was adamant that the WWF was out to f*ck him financially, so he treated the promotion with contempt, mostly. Vince couldn’t handle one of his glorified action figures showing some agency, ultimately leading to the extremely petulant ‘Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior’ DVD.