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Posts Tagged ‘Shane McMahon’

It’s a song-and-dance as old as log beds, but a new interview with Vince McMahon in the Connecticut Post this week has the WWE’s owner claiming that he wants to fade his Mr. McMahon character out over time. Apparently now that he’s retirement age, Vinnie Mac is not as interested as being in the spotlight or even in the ring, as he once was.

Sure, he’ll probably never withdraw completely as long as he draws breath, and that’s fine. But it’s nice to hear McMahon talking about “developing new, young faces” who can become the future of the company.

Of course, behind the scenes we all know that Stephanie McMahon Levesque is the future of the company, a point made ever more clear at the start of 2010 when her brother Shane left his duties in WWE to go off and do his own thing. That has turned out, so far, to be an investment in International Sports Management (ISM), a small sports agency that manages some cricket and golf stars in Europe.

With the exit from WWE of Shane McMahon, it will be interesting to see how WWE and Tyson’s entourage interact with each other; Shane has historically been the point-person to deal with boxing celebrities and all that comes with them.

Tyson is the scheduled guest host of Raw next Monday, which airs from Minneapolis’ Target Center.

So, if Tyson’s ego is not soothed properly and stuff goes wrong, such as his people not being pleased with the sort of water softener provided them, keep in mind Shane’s departure from WWE and how it might affect the guest host program going forward on Raw, if the Tyson appearance goes south.

Talk about getting out of Daddy’s shadow!

The latest word on the street is that once he leaves WWE on January 1, Shane McMahon will be looking to gain a financial interest in UFC and become one of the mixed martial arts promotions’ executives. No word from UFC president Dana White on whether UFC would even be open to this, though Shane O’Mac definitely has the financial wherewithal to support such a bid.

With his marketing experience and global connections, McMahon could help UFC expand as a global brand; the question is whether he’d be welcomed in, due to his ties to pro wrestling. And it’s unlikely he’d have any major role in the on-screen product.

Has Shane McMahon suddenly gone off the deep end? Is he in need of drug rehab? Nah… he’s not that bad off. He’s just realized that WWE will probably be Steph’s toy, so now he’s out looking for one of his own.

Just weeks after his mother, Linda McMahon, announced she was stepping down from her WWE position to run for US Senate as a Republican, Shane McMahon has also announced his intent to leave his father’s company, effective January 1, 2010.

Shane behind the scenes was a creative force on the media side of WWE, helping to create the Attitude Era, modernizing the company’s Web site and fulfillment center in 1997, and generally helping the company to become “with it” going into 2000. Since then, however, the company has been stuck in neutral, clinging to what worked a decade ago, and that’s just not cutting it anymore.

Perhaps Shane is stepping down to help his mother’s political campaign. Perhaps he’ll start a company of his own. No one’s talking about his next step just yet, and anyone who is, is using only the vaguest of terms.

Either way, with Vince in his 60s and suddenly seeming to age quickly, both of these moves seem to clear the way for Vince to set up daughter Stephanie McMahon-Levesque to slowly take over the reigns of the company from her father.

Whether she remains behind the scenes completely or follows her father’s example of inserting herself into WWE programming, the change won’t be felt immediately, but in, say, five to 10 years, expect everyone to look back at this event as the day Stephanie won the battle for control of WWE.

OK, in reality, we know that Triple H and Stephanie McMahon are husband and wife, initially drawn together by an in-ring fictional story that cast them as a couple. Now they have their first child and no one questions it.

But the new storyline in the McMahon Family Saga is that Vince fathered an illegitimate child in the past and he or she is now the “missing McMahon,” who’s probably pretty pissed off about missing out on the chance to share bunk beds with Steph and Shane, Vinny Mac’s two real-life kids.

Is this tacky? Sure. But is it better and safer than a fictional murder storyline when a real-life WWE superstar committed a double-murder then took his own life?

You bet.