Vince McMahon’s WWE days are over. This past January, the longtime WWE Chairman resigned from his corporate positions within TKO, WWE’s parent company, after a sex trafficking lawsuit was filed against him. McMahon’s resignation represented the third time that he has left WWE in the past two years, as he previously stepped down in April 2022 and retired in June 2022. After the controversy surrounding those instances quieted down, McMahon was able to use his shareholding power to reinstate himself to the WWE Board of Directors and reclaim his corporate and creative powers, consequently causing a chaotic couple of months of WWE programming in Spring 2023.
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These episodes of WWE Monday Night Raw and WWE SmackDown were no different from the majority of the 2010s. Advertised matches were scrapped, scripts would be torn up hours before going on the air, and overall locker room morale had hit the floor. That said, the stark contrast to Triple H’s leadership style made this last spell of McMahon’s reign stick out that much more.
Former WWE Star Details Vince McMahon’s Chaotic Leadership
Did Vince McMahon relish in the chaos?
Speaking on The MMA Hour, former WWE superstar Matt Riddle opened up about working for Vince McMahon, noting that he thinks the last-minute shifts and switches he executed on WWE programming were done with a deliberate agenda.
“I feel like he did it on purpose,” Riddle said. “There would be a show and you’d get a script on Sunday. By Monday, nobody knew what they were doing. The show was being completely rewritten and stuff like that. With Vince around, it was like that probably every week. A little chaotic. I almost felt like he did that on purpose because I feel like when people know exactly what’s going to happen and you’re doing live TV and you’re trying to get passion and that energy, you kind of get set in a pattern because you know what’s happening.”
On the contrary, Riddle felt much more organization under the Triple H regime.
“With Triple H in control, [there was] a lot more control in the sense of things are organized,” Riddle continued. “At least when I was there, if someone was scheduled for something, unless something catastrophic happened, if somebody got injured or something’s not going to work out, that’s what’s happening the next day. If they write it, it’s actually happening.”
Riddle was released by WWE in September 2023. He now competes for New Japan Pro Wrestling where he holds the NJPW WORLD Television Championship.
