10 Times Vince McMahon Got Revenge
Decades running the WWE have shown Vincent Kennedy McMahon is a man who bears a grudge.
Do not get on the bad side of Vince McMahon.
It would seem like that's an obvious piece of advice given Vince's influence in the wrestling industry is virtually unmatched. A look at the WWE's history, however, shows that upsetting Vince is even more dangerous than just riling up the boss.
Vince bears grudges, and when he has the chance, he exorcises them with acts of pure savagery.
McMahon has no problem using ridicule to belittle anyone who offends him. He has even done it to the detriment of the WWE's on-screen product, creating angles and characters that played out in front of a bemused audience ignorant of the personal vendetta Vince was pursuing. A surprising number of the WWE's storylines over the years have their origins in Vince trying to get payback.
For all its worldwide appeal and multi-million-dollar scale, wrestling still seems like it's run by petty, squabbling promoters at heart. That impression has never been more apparent than when Vince McMahon took vengeance against his perceived enemies, and created some insanely bizarre, obscure, or downright bad wrestling product as a result.
10. IRS
Vince McMahon has historically had a problem paying taxes. While he has avoided actually being busted for non-payment, the IRS has had to ask pretty forcefully to get their pound of flesh from VKM. In later years Vince and wife Linda were late enough paying property tax on a luxury condo that it impacted Linda's attempt to kick off a political career.
If you ever wonder what Vince thought about all this, look to the wrestling ring, where he made his opinions very clear indeed with the character of Irwin R. Schyster.
'IRS' was a heel taxman whose sole character trait was the desire to harangue the audience for not paying taxes. That was literally the only thing he did. Every IRS promo was the same - pay your taxes or a huge angry man in an ill-advised wrestling tie will audit you, by which he meant levelling you with a flying clothesline called the 'Write-Off'.
Vince's vengeance against the constant annoyance of the Internal Revenue Service was to embody it as an equally annoying heel. IRS hardly ever won, either. He was purely a dig at the tax-gathering apparatus of the US Government.