The Wall Street Journal Vince McMahon Thread.

[Curt McGirt]

1 hour ago, twiztor said:

the world is full of terrible people. i hate that so many successful artists/creators are so awful. i can usually try to separate the art from the artist, but man, i wish that wasn't something that we all have to do.

Trust me, it's even worse when you know them in real life. 

[AxB]

https://twitter.com/IANdrewDiceClay/status/1760389810991034451

Kanyon, and then John Cena, on Howard Stern.

[Sublime]

Cena always the company man, good thing the company will stand by him through thick and thin too right? If he’s willing to constantly carry water for WWE and he’s not complicit in any shady dealings he’s a giant fool 

[Technico Support]

2 hours ago, Sublime said:

Cena always the company man, good thing the company will stand by him through thick and thin too right? If he’s willing to constantly carry water for WWE and he’s not complicit in any shady dealings he’s a giant fool 

Meltzer made a great point the other day about how, generalizing here, real sports' athletes have such a different mentality than wrestlers.  For the most part, athletes understand their worth to the team and expect to be paid accordingly.  Wrestlers, on the other hand, mostly are just happy to be there and approach their job from a "this promoter took a chance on me" point of view.  One recognizes their worth and demands things.  The other feels like their success is all owed to someone else, instead of understanding that this someone saw value in their skills, something they could make money on.  There's no doubt in my mind that Vince absolutely played this shit to the hilt his entire career and it's easy to see how Cena was absolutely Jedi mind tricked here.  I'm sure he feels he owes his life to Vince and not his own talents.

Edited February 23 by Technico Support

[mystman]

Cena seems to be obsessed with appearing to be the "good guy". Call Taiwan a country one second, apologize in Mandarin the next. Have to be loyal, stick by your psycho father figure, but don't get accused of victim blaming. Walk that thin, thin line. Post a lot of inspirational crap on X. Give your time to sick kids. Nobody would have a problem with making sick kids happy, right?

Walk that line. That's what Cena's done his entire career. Why would he stop now? Im far more disappointed in Punk's response to this than Cena's. I never expected anymore from him.

[Robert S]

57 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Meltzer made a great point the other day about how, generalizing here, real sports' athletes have such a different mentality than wrestlers.  For the most part, athletes understand their worth to the team and expect to be paid accordingly.  Wrestlers, on the other hand, mostly are just happy to be there and approach their job from a "this promoter took a chance on me" point of view.  One recognizes their worth and demands things.  The other feels like their success is all owed to someone else, instead of understanding that this someone saw value in their skills, something they could make money on.  There's no doubt in my mind that Vince absolutely played this shit to the hilt his entire career and it's easy to see how Cena was absolutely Jedi mind tricked here.  I'm sure he feels he owes his life to Vince and not his own talents.

Looking at how the business works it's no wonder that wrestlers have inferiority complexes in that regard. A talented young person in any sport is a hot commodity that may be treated sometimes too well (that they start to believe their own hype and don't work hard enough to reach their full potential - pro sports is full of such people), in wrestling the veterans will tell you that what you do is shit (and probably a lot of times simply that you yourself are shit) from day one, you have to start at the bottom of the foodchain and work your way up for years and years and years long after you might be ready for the top. At a certain point you will either quit or start to believe what you are told. You have to be very stable mentally not to end up with deep psychological issues. I am sure that the drugs and the alcohol are not just to treat the pain and because you are on the road a lot. I would assume even the biggest stars might take it hard when they are pushed away from the top. Flair is the most prominent example, but I am sure that he is not the exception but the rule here.

[odessasteps]

It’s prob one of the ways wrestlers are more like actors than pro athletes. So, you wonder about the people who went from being an NFL or even top level college player into wrestling, especially in the modern era. 

[Technico Support]

8 minutes ago, mystman said:

Walk that line. That's what Cena's done his entire career. Why would he stop now? Im far more disappointed in Punk's response to this than Cena's. I never expected anymore from him.

Wait, what did Punk say?

[mystman]

2 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Wait, what did Punk say?

He didn't say anything. That's the problem.

[Sublime]

Punk is a man of conviction but he has to put that to the side right now cause Tony Kahn and the Elite hurt his feelings 

[Technico Support]

2 minutes ago, mystman said:

He didn't say anything. That's the problem.

Ah, gotcha.  Well he was probably contractually obligated to leave all his women's rights-related t-shirts in AEW.

[odessasteps]

If Cena was the ultimate company man, his loyalty would be to the company itself, not to Vince. 
 

the whole “I want to help my friend in this time” wouldn’t be as bad if he had expressed any sympathy towards the victim(s).

[Mister TV]

55 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

It’s prob one of the ways wrestlers are more like actors than pro athletes. So, you wonder about the people who went from being an NFL or even top level college player into wrestling, especially in the modern era. 

Wasn't the knocks on Goldberg and back in the day Luger always more about their "attitudes" than anything else. 

[(BP)]

You either don’t care enough about wrestling and aren’t there for the right reasons or you're a mark who’s too into wrestling and doesn’t treat it like a business. 

[Technico Support]

45 minutes ago, (BP) said:

You either don’t care enough about wrestling and aren’t there for the right reasons or you're a mark who’s too into wrestling and doesn’t treat it like a business. 

Schrodinger’s ingrate

[odessasteps]

Or you’re a second/third generation worker who should know the perils better than anyone.

[DMN]

17 hours ago, twiztor said:

the world is full of terrible people. i hate that so many successful artists/creators are so awful. i can usually try to separate the art from the artist, but man, i wish that wasn't something that we all have to do.

This is where I've landed. For the most part it works, although sometimes it does bleed into the person's work too much for me. Like, I can watch a Chris Benoit match, but I wouldn't choose to listen to a R. Kelly track. It doesn't really make sense, but it's the only way to stay sane and still have entertainment options at this point.

2 hours ago, Mister TV said:

Wasn't the knocks on Goldberg and back in the day Luger always more about their "attitudes" than anything else. 

I know Cornette has the story about asking Lex what he would have done if he'd had to do the Memphis circuit for what they got paid, and Luger basically just says 'I wouldn't.'. Jim explains how he understood it because of where Lex had come from, but that it still rubbed a lot of the 'boys' the wrong way.

[Zimbra]

1 hour ago, DMN said:

This is where I've landed. For the most part it works, although sometimes it does bleed into the person's work too much for me. Like, I can watch a Chris Benoit match, but I wouldn't choose to listen to a R. Kelly track. It doesn't really make sense, but it's the only way to stay sane and still have entertainment options at this point.

Part of the calculus for me is "how much does this person's art remind me of the awful shit they've done?"  So, like, R Kelly and Benoit are both right out, but I can still watch the Usual Suspects.

[zendragon]

The thing about Cena's comment is your are talking about a 70 year old man. I assume he was at least in his 60's when the Janel Grant thing happened, and we have accusations going back decades. This isn't like a young person who can come back. Its well past the age of should no better and its repeat behavior 

[DMN]

4 minutes ago, Zimbra said:

Part of the calculus for me is "how much does this person's art remind me of the awful shit they've done?"  So, like, R Kelly and Benoit are both right out, but I can still watch the Usual Suspects.

Yeah, that's basically why R. Kelly is right out for me. I guess my brain separates the worked violence of professional wrestling from the real violence of what Benoit did, I dunno. Maybe being a football fan has just conditioned me to be more accepting of CTE as a mitigating factor, maybe I just 'like' Benoit matches more than I 'like' the remix to Ignition and thus mentally parkour my way through... just wish it didn't have to be that way, but every one is terrible, it seems.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

3 minutes ago, zendragon said:

The thing about Cena's comment is your are talking about a 70 year old man. I assume he was at least in his 60's when the Janel Grant thing happened, and we have accusations going back decades. This isn't like a young person who can come back. Its well past the age of should no better and its repeat behavior 

Vince is 78. Janel Grant worked for WWE between 2019 and 2022. So we're not talking that far back.

[zendragon]

didn't realize it was that even that recent

[mystman]

7 hours ago, odessasteps said:

If Cena was the ultimate company man, his loyalty would be to the company itself, not to Vince. 
 

the whole “I want to help my friend in this time” wouldn’t be as bad if he had expressed any sympathy towards the victim(s).

He's not a company man. He values his own brand more than anything else. And his brand is never be confrontational, never be controversial, never say anything that might get people pissed at you. 

[Curt McGirt]

8 hours ago, mystman said:

Call Taiwan a country one second, apologize in Mandarin the next.

Man, how much of a whore do you have to be to think "China is the biggest movie industry next to us right now, I better learn the language so I can get in their good graces and sell myself better"? And then GO AND DO IT?! It's not even, like, a Romance language or something possibly easier to learn, or uses the English script. 

[piranesi]

11 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Meltzer made a great point the other day about how, generalizing here, real sports' athletes have such a different mentality than wrestlers.  For the most part, athletes understand their worth to the team and expect to be paid accordingly.  Wrestlers, on the other hand, mostly are just happy to be there and approach their job from a "this promoter took a chance on me" point of view.  One recognizes their worth and demands things.  The other feels like their success is all owed to someone else, instead of understanding that this someone saw value in their skills, something they could make money on.  There's no doubt in my mind that Vince absolutely played this shit to the hilt his entire career and it's easy to see how Cena was absolutely Jedi mind tricked here.  I'm sure he feels he owes his life to Vince and not his own talents.

I remember I think in Beyond the Mat someone mentioned that Vince’s greatest advice to him Was “never let the workers know how much they are worth.”

 

kind of a moral imperative at the boss level now.