7 Wrestlers Who Made Vince McMahon Their BITCH!
1. Jessie Ventura
Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura, a WWE Hall of Famer* and genuine American icon who used his freedom with more zeal than most, also holds a more meaningful victory over Vince McMahon than most.
(*You could argue this doesn't mean much, but in this case...)
Ventura was an indelible part of the Golden Era fabric. Hilarious and charismatic, his commentary alongside Gorilla Monsoon was superb. Even if he was bad at his job - and he wasn’t, he was one of the most quick-witted heel commentators of all-time - he deserved to be fairly compensated for it.
Ventura mistakenly thought that only featured wrestlers were due royalty payments from WWF Home Video releases, and waived his rights accordingly in 1987. When he was corrected in 1991, he promptly took Titan Sports to court, bringing forward an action for fraud, misappropriation of publicity rights, and quantum meruit. Titan moved the case to federal court, at which Ventura was awarded just under half of the $2 million sought ($801,333). Very few people have successfully defeated WWE in the legal arena - so few that Vince, albeit under the guise of his Mr. McMahon character, often bragged about a so-called undefeated streak (he said this unchallenged to Kevin Owens in 2017). (The ruling judge also awarded Ventura $8,625 in backpay, after which Ventura received royalties going forward.)
As you can imagine, Vince was a sore loser, and vowed that Jesse Ventura would never again appear on WWE programming. While Vince did edit Ventura out of many home video revisions years later, out of spite, he still lost both the court battle and the subsequent real-life feud: Ventura made several sporadic appearances for WWE in 1999 and into the 2000s
And the pleasure was all McMahon’s.