Pat McAfee Reflects on Interviewing WWE’s Vince McMahon

Pat McAfee was able to get Vince McMahon on The Pat McAfee Show back in March 2022. This not only helped set the stage for McAfee’s involvement in WrestleMania 38, but it was the same interview where McMahon let slip that something was wrong with his relationship with Linda McMahon by referring to her as “my wife at the time…my wife.” This was months before The Wall Street Journal released a string of reports in which McMahon was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women, eventually leading to his “retirement” from WWE in July. He has since returned as the company’s executive chairman. 

McAfee was a guest on Jimmy Traina’s podcast this week and was asked about that interview. On top of confirming that he’s still in talks with the promotion about returning to TV, he discussed his approach to the interview. 

“I just started asking questions about decisions I would have to make,” McAfee explained (h/t Fightful). “I think he appreciated it, I think he respected the questions I was asking, and anytime you talk to anybody, I learned this with Peyton, I was very lucky to be teammates with Peyton Manning. These are humans, at the end of the day. You have to talk to them like they’re humans. Soon as you start treating them like they’re not humans, they’re going to not act like humans. If you get showed up in front of somebody, they’re going to immediately shut down and not really talk to you. If you talk to people like they’re humans, they appreciate that. 

“Him blessing us, he flew in for that. Didn’t know if it was going to happen. It was reported, it was talked about, day of though, before we went live, did not get a confirmation. I just assume he’s coming. Then we get a text, ’30 minutes out, 15 minutes out.’ Plane, SUV, all by himself, no security, walks right in, sits down, does an hour and 15, hour and a half, comes out, takes a picture, says thank you to everyone, back on the plane, back home, probably had another 12 hour day after that. I was pumped more than nervous. I knew that he doesn’t talk to a lot of people. I, being a wrestling fan for a long time, have obviously followed his trajectory business-wise on top of everything else. I felt pumped for the opportunity, for sure,” he added.