Many wrestlers and wrestling personalities outright acknowledge Vince McMahon as the greatest promoter of all time. Therefore, McMahon has earned the utmost respect from a lot of his former and current employees.
The 78-year-old made WWE a global phenomenon with his hard work and dedication to the business. McMahon has five decades of experience and awareness of the industry.
In an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Chris Jericho was asked about Vince McMahon stepping down as CEO of WWE. Jericho said that he never expected McMahon to step down from his role. Jericho praised his former employer.
“I mean, you know, once again, there [are] reasons why he was stepping aside, and I’m not talking about that side of things [misconduct allegations]. I never thought he would step down. And I think had those other issues come up, there’s no way that he would have. But also, Vince is also smart. And I bet you he was like, Okay, I’m at the point now where this is not good for me to be here.”
Chris Jericho said that McMahon trained Triple H for the past two decades for his role, and he was finally confident that the company could run without him. Jericho added that everyone in AEW should have worked under McMahon for six months to understand the wrestling business.
“So he trained and groomed Triple H for 20 years, and you know probably felt confident enough that things are gonna continue without him. And I say this all the time in AEW, I think everybody could use six months working for Vince McMahon. Because that’s what you really understand what wrestling is, the wrestling business is, and how the business works. And I loved working for him. And I loved going head-to-head with him, creating ideas, debating ideas, arguing ideas. He always says, ‘I’m not here to teach wrestling lessons, I’m here to teach life lessons.’ And he did. Taught me a lot of life lessons…
He would always say, I don’t expect you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. And that rubs off. There’s a way that the WWE works where you don’t say no to anything. I mean, they asked you to do press you do it, they ask you to sign 1,000 action figures, you do it. Because if you don’t, you know there’s gonna be consequences, and big ones. And I think everybody in AEW needs to understand that sometimes.”