Vince McMahon's Assassination Conspiracy | Tales From Backstage
Remember when Vince McMahon was desperate to kill Mr McMahon?
Per multiple Bruce Prichard podcast anecdotes, the former boss could often be heard saying words to the effect of "I can't be on television if I'm dead" in creative discussions, so desperate as he was at the time to remove himself from television. The same man that tried to worm his way back into the organisation after resigning in disgrace in 2022 was once so sick of his elevated persona that repeatedly tried to get rid of it once and for all.
As far back as 1999 - barely a year into playing a role that was so effective that it helped WWE comfortably overturn WCW in half the time Nitro was in front of Raw - McMahon was looking for an exit strategy the gimmick. Having fought arch nemesis Stone Cold Steve Austin in the Royal Rumble match and steel cage main event of St Valentine's Day Massacre a month later, he tried and failed to stop 'The Rattlesnake' regaining the the WWE Championship at WrestleMania XV. It was during the build to the 'Show Of Shows' that he'd fallen afoul of an Undertaker character that wanted to take the entire company from him, distracting him somewhat from the initial task at hand. When Austin saved McMahon's daughter Stephanie from a deranged forced marriage to 'The Deadman', it seemed to bring their rivalry to an end...until Vince confirmed himself as the "Higher Power" ordering Undertaker to do all the mad stuff in the first place. It didn't all hold together, bro, but the story had just about found one more peak, and McMahon decided to use it to create the finality he felt it needed. At Fully Loaded '99, Austin and The Undertaker's First Blood WWE Championship match would also be for the career of the CEO. Austin won, and as of the July 26th 1999 edition of Monday Night Raw, Mr McMahon was booted off of television forever.
To illustrate how well that went, on the September 16th edition of SmackDown, he became WWE Champion.
This bananas plot point was to get him back on screens when it became apparent just how beneficial he was. Now fully working as a babyface, McMahon returned in order to try and elevate Triple H at the umpteenth time of asking, presenting 'The Game' as a bully who was willing to decimate an old man in order to seize the title and control of the entire company. It half-worked when the two traded the title, but a combination of Hunter running into Mick Foley and running off with Stephanie McMahon proved to be the real magic formula. Stephanie's December 1999 heel turn at Vince's expense once again sent him packing from television, this time until WrestleMania 2000 season, when he came back to align with The Rock...only to swerve turn on him on 'The Grandest Stage'. The Attitude Era went through end-of-the-world storylines like laxatives through a Stampede Wrestling star, and by that summer, McMahon removed himself yet again, this time to be a "genetic jackhammer" while Commissioner Mick Foley ruled the roost. His next return at the end of the year kicked off the most evil era for the character, partially in service of the incredible McMahon Vs McMahon match at WrestleMania X-Seven, but also because his impending purchase of WCW and creation of the XFL seemed to result in the most pronounced overlapping of the persona and the person. If the best characters are real people turned up to 11, McMahon's backstage megalomania must have been beyond reproach.
Even when he wasn't needed - such as during the period the character hired Eric Bischoff and Stephanie McMahon as General Managers for Raw and SmackDown respectively - he hung around like a revolting stench, getting bigger and pinker while necking on with Sable, actually trying to win fights with the likes of The Undertaker and Kurt Angle, before ultimately settling into something of a part-time overlord role that was purpose-serving for big announcements and/or WrestleMania storylines. The most effective of the latter came in 2007 with the "Battle Of The Billionaires" against Donald Trump at WrestleMania 23. With Trump at the height of some renewed fame bossing The Apprentice TV show and two disgustingly rich idiots putting their hair on the line, the stage was impeccably set for a Bobby Lashley/Umaga clash, refereed by Stone Cold Steve Austin no less. The show drew 1,188,000 buys, topping the wildly successful WrestleMania 21 and falling just behind a Rock/John Cena-headlined WrestleMania XXVIII as the second highest drawing pay-per-view in company history. Whether this was a desire to see the Chairman bald or a combination of the overlapping pop culture/boom era figures in one place, McMahon saw the increased eyes as yet another opportunity to off himself. As it turned out, going bald begat McMahon's unsubtle slide into insanity, first reflected in an obsession with becoming ECW Champion and wearing a variety of different headgears, before slipping into a semi-comatose state, controlled mostly by his assistant-cum-carer Jonathan Coachman.
Per reports at the time, it was the closest the character had been to the real life version in some time. A few months earlier, the Wrestling Observer had reported how McMahon "went nuts" backstage at a taping following the New Years Revolution pay-per-view. According the source at the time, he "hated the ECW TV show and was screaming that there was no one in ECW who knew how to work", and added that then-ECW Champion Lashley wasn't being agented correctly while working with his Raw and SmackDown contemporaries. It's funny to thus assume that he believed himself to be the only possible solution to the Lashley problem when in fact the opposite was true. By the time McMahon was a confused mute on television following a decisive loss to the 'All Mighty', Lashley himself was starting to flag. He lost to John Cena at the Great American Bash in July, got injured, and subsequently left the company for a decade. Another failed project in a series of them in the 2000s, Lashley was the rule rather than the exception, but McMahon took this particular creative stumble a little more seriously. The problem wasn't his creative, he reasoned, but once again, his character. He set about assembling a new demise for the character that was to be the grandest yet and provide a narrative whodunnit to try and revive the company's fortunes over the summer. Following a "Mr McMahon Appreciation Night" edition of Raw on June 11th that featured all of his enemies doing anything but pay their respects, McMahon walked through a guard of honour made by his tragic midcarders, left the building, took what felt like a pointed breath of fresh air, and stepped into the back seat of his limousine. He took one last infuriated look back at the building, almost as if he'd snapped out of his frazzled state (or possibly implying that it had been a work all along), hesitated, then slammed the door shut. As he did so, the limo exploded, killing him instantly.
If only those territory promoters had thought of that one.
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