For the love of all that is holy, please stop calling Vince McMahon a genius!
Allow me a moment to compose myself.
I believe it was Jim Rome who once described Vince McMahon as “Satan walking the Earth.” While I find that hysterical, I won’t lay that kind of bad rap on Vince. I will however, compare him to Rasputin, the Russian peasant turned Svengali for the Romanov royal family. For more than 30 years McMahon has been able to find hundreds of thousands of sycophants in the crazy world of wrestling fans, ready to defend him against any criticism and ready to turn on a dime against any detractors, whether it be writers such as Phil Muschnick or wrestlers such as Bret Hart. The latest evidence of this can be seen in light of former WWE wrestler C.M. Punk’s appearance on the Colt Cabana podcast. Punk related specific stories on how he had been screwed out of money and other opportunities in the promotion and complained that he left the organization because of multiple injuries including a very serious staph infection. McMahon appeared on his own network to refute Punk’s claims, although he didn’t actually refute them, instead just saying that there are two sides to every story. He instead opined that C.M. Punk make regret his actions of leaving one day, saying that Punk quit on the fans. On wrestling web sites you could almost see the rush of fans to badmouth Punk as if they were stooges on the WWE payroll. I’ve seen it happen year after year and I never understand why. Because “Vince is a genius,” they say. “He made pro wrestling what it is today.” Well, that much may be true but I don’t think that has been necessarily good for the wrestling business or even for WWE business.
Before I go any farther, let me say that I don’t know McMahon or have any personal animosity against him. In fact, let me point out many of his accolades. First, Vince is one of the greatest risk-takers of all-time and probably has one of the biggest set of balls in history. More than once he has laid it all on the line in order to promote his business, risking all of his money, his business and his success. That should not go unnoticed.