ProWrestlingViews.com

Posts Tagged ‘Vince McMahon’

In sports entertainment, it’s hard to know when something’s real and when it’s a work; however, it would be baffling to understand why Vince McMahon would choose voluntarily to adopt a sickly demeanor during his appearance on last Monday’s RAW. He entered the arena without any of his typical energy and swagger, and seemed lacking in energy while in the ring with Triple H.

There are only reports suggesting McMahon was suffering from the flu; but is it possible that age is finally catching up to the savvy promoter? Currently 66, McMahon is past retirement age, but already seems a shadow of his former self from as recently as five years ago.

While he once struck a figure that helped him seem credible in the ring when he’d opt to let Steve Austin or someone have a storyline match with him, he now looks like an aging executive from whom you might solcit an RV insurance quote.

While “Hunter as CEO” has been a storyline WWE had run with a measure of success since this summer when the whole C.M. Punk storyline began, it could become reality sooner than later that the company’s day-to-day operations will be turned over to Stephanie and her husband.

If so, it will mark the end of an historic era; but let’s hope we don’t have to write Vinnie-Mac’s final on-screen notes any time soon. In small doses, he’s still entertaining.

It might have been easy to miss, but when Vince McMahon appeared on RAW to “fire” Triple H on Monday’s very shoot-oriented RAW, he did not have Hunter step down as CEO, only as RAW general manager. So there’s potential for The Game to assert his authority in the future.

In the meantime, the nice angle here is that they didn’t go with the typical “Vince returns” option, but named the tall, creepy-looking, heel-fave, John Laurenitis, as RAW’s “interim general manager.” The raspy-voice, behind-the-scenes power broker, who is vice president of talent relations, is not naturally charismatic but is drawing a solid heel-pop from the crowd so far.

Laurenitis looks sharp in his Armani exchange coupons-acquired suits, though he’s quite raw in front of the camera has lacks the necessary presence to be a long-term answer. Still, kudos to Vince and company for moving the storyline in a less-predictable direction.

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.

For a match 13 years in the making, the long-anticipated Bret vs. Vince match failed to live up to the pre-match hype. Instead of a somewhat competitive display, the “double-screwjob” angle with the entire Hart Family serving as McMahon’s lumberjacks… and immediately turning on Vince… made little sense in its timing.

Worse, however, was the in-ring execution. Now 64, McMahon is no longer able to pull off a convincing in-ring presence. While his match with Hart made storyline and business sense, McMahon simply isn’t up to the job the way he was twelve years ago when he was regularly facing off with Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The entire match had Bret on offense and McMahon barely made a recovery, let alone ever got any offense going enough to put the outcome in doubt and add some drama to the event. As a result, I’d have enjoyed myself more spending that time buying new office furniture.

Hart himself is no spring chicken, either. At 52, he is at an age where he might be in shape enough to take bumps convincingly the way McMahon did twelve years ago when he was 52, but to dominate an opponent like this? Not convincing. The match lacked energy and called to mind the tired, plodding pace of the Verne Gagne-Nick Bockwinkle AWA matches of the mid-1980s.

Although I think it was clear to most people that Donald Trump “buying” Raw from Vince McMahon was a storyline designed to raise viewer interest in WWE’s product, apparently Wall Street is full of rubes who needed that spelled out for them after the twist ending of the three-hour Raw broadcast of a couple weeks ago. Of course, the WWE did confuse things by issuing that phony press release regarding the sale of Raw to Mr. Trump, but hey, it’s the June curse.

June was when WWE ill-advisedly tried to sell as “real” storylines in which Vince McMahon was killed (twice) as well as other storyline twists that ended up being bad, bad ideas. Still, the Trump thing seemed a bit more obvious so maybe some Wall Street rubes were just bored. But, hey, that’s the WWE treadmill for you; while the details change, there is a season for everything, including storylines that require retraction and clarification.

Welcome to June.

Chris Jericho dropped the bombshell on Daddy’s Little Girl last week on Raw: none other than Vinnie Mac himself is returning to Raw tonight, and with the run-up to WrestleMania in full swing, the timing is just right.

How successful McMahon’s run will be depends largely upon how it’s handled. In recent years, Vinnie Mac on Raw means his presence covers over undercard wrestler appearances like a set of area rugs. They overkill his presence and refocus the entire broadcast around him.

That’s not healthy for a promotion that should be about getting the in-ring talent over. So here’s my list of suggestions for making Vinnie Mac’s return a welcome visit.

1) No more fake deaths/murders.

2) Keep his appearances brief, intense, and rare.

3) Write him back out of the storylines after WrestleMania and keep him gone after that until he’s really, actually needed again.

I’m a fan of the McMahon family and their involvement in the TV storylines, but I must admit that their extended absence has been a good thing for RAW and SmackDown.

Sometimes, too much of them on TV is simply too much and their prescence becomes about as welcome as commercial collection agencies at a Debtors Anonymous meeting.

That’s why I hope they don’t rush Vince back to his on-camera roll. The shows are more fun and less predictable now, and I’d like to see WWE run with this concept for a while longer.

Who knows? Maybe when they finally bring Vince back, they’ll even find a way to make his character fresh and unpredictable.

It was an overdue comic moment.

It has become almost an annual event for WWE Chairman Vince McMahon to insert himself into the WWE storyline and, in a raw display of Raw power, insist someone he’s looking to mess over join “the club.” In this case, of course, the club in question is the Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Club, in which Vinnie Mac drops trou on national TV and invites some WWE superstar to literally kiss his bare behind.

Past victims have included Shawn Michaels, William Regal and others. This year, the victim is Hornswaggle, the midget wrestler who was chosen to be revealed as Vince’s “bastard child” in a storyline from late last summer. It has become tradition for McMahon to find new ways every week to make Hornswaggle’s life difficult, and for Hornswaggle to somehow survive each encounter with his “father’s wrath.”

So far, Regal is the only superstar to willingly kiss McMahon’s rear, though an unconscious Shawn Michaels did the dead last year. In this week’s Raw, Hornswaggle found a new twist on the situation. McMahon offered up his rump, and Hornswaggle didn’t kiss it … he bit it, and didn’t let go for several seconds.

It was a hilarious low-brow comedic moment and a better payoff of the gag-inducing gag than has been offered up previously. The only question now is, does Vince have a Medicare advantage after being bitten by a midget, or will he spend his own fortune on the medical bills and rabies shots to follow? Heh.

WWE Monday Night Raw turned 15 years old this past week, and it doesn’t take Doink the Clown dressed in a pair of golf shoes to point out what a watershed moment that marks. The 15th anniversary show had plenty of guest appearances for nostalgia’s sake, including Marty Jennetty, Mick Foley, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and a 15-man battle royale involving a lot of lesser-name jobbers from the past decade and a half.

Of course, personally, I had a lot of favorite moments that I appreciated. It was fun seeing Chris Jericho confront Eric Bischoff so soon into Jericho’s return after a two year absence; Bischoff, in the storyline, fired Jericho when Y2J left WWE to pursue his music career. Having Jericho come back and get his revenge was a satisfying storyline moment for longtime fans.

I also enjoyed the Evolution reunion, especially the flashback when Evolution betrayed Orton. Back then, Orton was the babyface and Evolution were the heels; now those roles have changed and it was surprising how well the betrayal moments still worked.

The only two notable superstars missing on the night were Bret “the Hitman” Hart and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Too bad.

Mutilchannel News broke the story that NBC-Universal and the WWE have extended their current TV contract by an additional two years, through 2010; the current deal only ran through 2008.

Although no Cartier watches were exchanged, the new contract does call for a higher payout to WWE for programming, above the current level of $31 million per year.

NBC-Universal airs WWE Monday Night Raw on the USA Network, as well as ECW broadcasts on the SciFi Channel; the agreement also means there will be more WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event specials on NBC periodically throughout the year, when Saturday Night Live would normally be broadcasting reruns.

The agreement keeps the lion’s share of WWE-branded programming on NBC-Universal venues; the exception is WWE Friday Night SmackDown, which airs on the CBS-Warner Brothers-owned CW Network.

It’s somewhat amusing but also a cop-out finish to what was an intriguing storyline for a while there. It’s not as bad as Mae Young giving birth to a hand, but here’s the WWE press release anyway:

==

STAMFORD, Conn., September 11, 2007 – Five weeks after the WWE® Chairman was served with a paternity suit for an illegitimate child he allegedly sired, it was announced on last night’s Monday Night RAW® (9/8pm CT on USA Network) that Hornswoggle™ was the missing member of the McMahon family.

During last night’s show, Mr. McMahon’s moment of discovery was accompanied by a scowl of disbelief as Hornswoggle scrambled from under the ring and across the mat to cling tightly to his newfound father’s leg. The latest addition to the McMahon family marks the culmination of weeks of speculation in which the lawyer for the woman who brought the paternity suit against the Chairman dropped the clue last week that, “things are looking up.” The lawyer then dropped additional clues one by one on last night’s show to finally reveal the Lil’ Bastard, as he had been appropriately known.

Log on to wwe.com for the latest news on Mr. McMahon. Additional information on World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: WWE) can be found at corporate.wwe.com. For information on our global activities, go to http://www.wwe.com/worldwide/.

ECW’s C.M. Punk would be a great choice if you’re looking for a payoff out of left field. Punk’s image is the exact opposite of the McMahon Family’s, and his revelation as a “bastard” son of Vinnie-Mac could drive storylines forward for years to come.

Trouble is, simply because C.M. Punk is so young, it would be a huge risk to bestow such a title on the kid. After all, what if, like previous highly-promoted wunderkinds like Kurt Angle, he had a falling out over a contract dispute, and switched to another promotion like NWA-TNA? One can only imagine the cannon fodder that would give Vince’s storyline son in real-life, behind-the-scenes negotiations, or that such a wrestler could carry with him when switching to a rival promotion.

No, something like that would be like entrusting your Orlando real estate to Eugene. For that reason, I just can’t imagine a younger superstar like C.M. Punk being awarded this kind of storyline honor.

C.M. Punk, therefore, is unlikely to be Vince’s fictional “bastard child.” Still, the chemistry when they teased this storyline on ECW was fun. Trouble is, I really see this all resolving RAW rather than ECW or SmackDown.