Vince McMahon's 20 Biggest Real-Life Feuds

12. Verne Gagne

Verne Gagne was one of Vince McMahon's first main rivals upon taking over the WWF from his father in 1982. Vincent Kennedy had a vision that involved taking the local northeastern promotion into a national company through the rapidly expanding world of cable television. In order to create a product that would captivate viewers from all over the world, Vince needed to acquire top-level talent from all over the world. Vince's biggest coup came from Verne Gagne's AWA when Hulk Hogan left the promotion without notice. Vince offered to buy out the AWA, but Gagne refused, believing Vince would never succeed. After the refusal, McMahon successfully negotiated more stars away from Verne including integral AWA components (and future WWF cornerstones) Bobby Heenan, Mene Gene Okerlund and Jesse Ventura with Heenan being the only man to give Gagne any sort of notice. Verne's promotion limped on until 1991 when it closed its doors for good. A little more than a decade later, another competitor would successfully woo stars away from the company that first promoted them, but this time it was Vince McMahon that was losing the talent. Vince claimed it was strictly business and fair negotiation that allowed him to sway talents away from AWA, but when on the receiving end, Vince considered similar tactics to be a raid and unfair business practices but more on that later.