JBL Reveals How Vince McMahon Saved WWE During The Pandemic
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Former WWE World Heavyweight Champion, JBL, took to his Something to Wrestle podcast this week to divulge a few interesting stories about Vince McMahon and WWE during the pandemic era of 2020 and 2021.
One of the more interesting stories was how Vince McMahon was able to save WWE during that time. If you remember, WWE ran their TV and premium live events sans audience.
“We’re going down there trying to keep the company alive. I can tell you, almost everybody in the company was against Vince running. Everybody was against it. All the press was against it, everything. ‘How dare he do this?’ Now, when I got down there, Vince said, ‘Ah, it’s just nothing but the flu.’ He said, ‘If I don’t, I lose all my TV contracts,’ and it’s what they’re wanting to do because those TV contracts of live events became worth exponentially more. You thought they were going to be worth exponentially less, is what you thought during COVID because we didn’t know if the world was ending or not. Everybody wanted out of those TV contracts. Well, the way Vince wouldn’t violate it was by running shows without a crowd, and because he did that, and I cannot emphasize enough, everybody was against it, because he did that, he got these billion-dollar TV contracts out of it. Man, he saved the freaking company with that. It was unbelievable, what he did by doing all that. Vince his entire life has constantly been one step ahead of everything and everybody else in wrestling."
- JBL, Something to Wrestle
McMahon believed that the TV networks would use the pandemic as an excuse to get out of his lucrative programming contracts for shows like WWE SmackDown and WWE Raw.
“They would’ve. He said it straight up. He said it. If they have a chance to get out of these contracts, they’re gonna get out. He told me that when I done there. He said that, almost exactly what you said. ‘They’ll get out of it if they can. I’m not gonna let them. I’m not gonna let them bankrupt my company by getting out of something and using a pandemic as an excuse.’ Not really an excuse, I get that, but he had a chance to run during it, and by doing that, they couldn’t get out of the contracts, and he ended up getting these billion-dollar TV contracts out of it."
- JBL, Something to Wrestle
It's difficult to call McMahon a savior in light of the recent allegations against him, but there's no denying that McMahon knew the TV business better than any promoter that's ever lived. Unfortunately for him, it's the wrestling business that passed McMahon by. That and ethics.
h/t to Fightful for the transcription
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