— Vice has posted a brilliant editorial focusing on the inside workings of the WWE empire, including discussing such topics as the real-life tension that often exists between Shane and Stephanie McMahon, working for Vince McMahon, as well as WWE’s business empire.
— The article has referenced former WWE employees and writers, making it not only very accurate but also an enlightening read. Some excerpts are below:
Shane was a WWE executive, too, before he left the family business under shadowy and uncertain circumstances in 2009. He has claimed that he left to pursue other business ventures—”to do it on my own,” as he told BuzzFeed in 2014—but two senior-level sources say that his resignation was at least partially due to a real-life power struggle with his father and sister. “There was always tension between Shane and Stephanie,” a former senior-level executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me. “That tension hasn’t gone away.” Regardless of the reasons behind his departure, Shane had not been part of a WWE product—on television or otherwise—in the seven years since. Until now.
In 2011, Stephanie was promoted to executive vice-president of creative, where she oversaw character and storylines—the backbone of WWE’s core product. To other employees in that area of the company, her new title was a strange if not altogether inaccurate label. “We never ran scripts by Stephanie, we never went to her with an idea,” a former employee in the creative department told me. “She never sat in on production meetings. She didn’t go on the road unless it was a pay-per-view, [when she went] to glad-hand.”
To read the full article, click HERE.