There have been plenty of crazy takes about current events in the wrestling world over the years. What can you expect from such a crazy business?
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One of the craziest came down in the last few weeks, but a new theory by one of the industry’s most polarizing personalities and analysts gives the relevant take the capacity to run off with a whole dessert platter.
We recently reported that former WWE performer and heir to the empire Shane McMahon, son of the disgraced ex-Chairman Vince McMahon, has exchanged messages with somebody at competitor AEW.
The mystery person is reportedly somebody who worked for the McMahons for years in WWE and knows them well. He or she is also a mutual friend of famed announcer Jim Ross and his podcast partner Conrad Thompson and allegedly tried to sell Shane on becoming All Elite.
This twist set the Internet Wrestling Community ablaze and got people speculating, and predicting with a level of aplomb, that Shane McMahon was AEW bound. Note there is nothing concrete indicating he’s had serious conversations with any higher-up, including owner Tony Khan, whom he’s supposedly never met.
Still, there are those, such as former writer and performer Vince Russo, who are running with this story as a strong possibility. Russo, however, goes a step further. He thinks Shane will act as a Trojan Horse for his father, who will swoop in and buy the company.
“It happened before. [Purchasing AEW] could be under the guise of Shane, that’s what I’m saying,” Russo said on a recent edition of the Sportskeeda Wrestlebinge, alluding to the McMahon conquest of WCW in 2001 that turned into a storyline war between family members.
Russo added that Vince McMahon would hide behind his son, who is universally liked, to shield this psyop from his damaged reputation. “Shane is as clean as [a] whistle. Vince could be behind it without anybody knowing it.”
Russo also used Mike Tyson as an example of the way the senior McMahon thinks and does business. He claims that when Tyson worked with WWE in 1998, McMahon assigned his son to Tyson’s team in a bid to court the boxer. Vince McMahon wanted to be Tyson’s new manager.
That could be another tall tale of wrestling lore that has a good chance of being joined in the annals of legends by the Shane-AEW story. The latter has many extenuating circumstances working against it; not the least is the health of the father-son relationship.
There has been no hint we know of that the two are still in contact after Vince’s scandals shook the wrestling world and forced his departure from the company that was his life.
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