Vince McMahon shocked the wrestling world back in January when he muscled his way back onto WWE’s Board of Directors.
This led to McMahon being named Executive Chairman and essentially taking control of the company once more. While McMahon initially stayed away from the day-to-day running of creative, as the months passed rumours about his involvement increased.
Following the announcement of WWE’s deal with Endeavor, McMahon confirmed his involvement in creative and ran the April 3rd episode of Raw from the Gorilla position as he had done for decades. Despite this, he has only been involved in production on a remote basis since.
However, speaking in a new interview with Nick Hausman for the Haus of Wrestling, Rick Bassman revealed that McMahon was supposed to attend Backlash in person. Bassman is a former Disney Executive with extensive experience in martial arts and professional wrestling, having discovered legends such as Sting and The Ultimate Warrior.
In conversation with Hausman, Bassman discussed his new company and how he ended up backstage in Puerto Rico.
“Oh, you know, just hanging out,” he jokingly began, explaining how he wound up at the show. “I had nothing better to do for the weekend. You know, I have a day job these days, and I run all entertainment and sports industry relations for a company that does hyper-real synthetic media, which is often known as the dark, nefarious, deep fake. And we’re verifiably the number one company in the world doing this now. Far and away the number one, we’re called Metaphysic.
“And we recently did things like brought Elvis Presley back to life to perform on America’s Got Talent, which was hugely viral. We create and produce and distribute ‘Deep Tom Cruise,’ which is a very viral thing on Tik Tok and YouTube and whatnot, and just wrapped a movie in London with the director Robert Zemeckis, where we were aging Tom Hanks and Robin Wright up and back over a period of 50 years.
“So we’re at the pinnacle of that industry right now. And we’ve got a really cool activation potential underway with WWE. So we were there meeting with the top brass about that.”
Bassman added that he ended up meeting with a number of “top guys,” adding that McMahon was initially scheduled to be in attendance.
“No, he wasn’t there,” he revealed. “But I got a really nice email from him Saturday morning saying, ‘Hey, I’m not going to make it. But let’s, you know, I’ll talk to the guys after the meeting. And we’ll continue on from there.’
I did wind up meeting with the top guys in the company after events. But he was initially scheduled to be part of that, yes.”
Lawsuit Against Vince McMahon Dropped
It was recently confirmed that a group of shareholders has dropped their lawsuit against Vince McMahon. On May 3rd the group said their claims became moot when McMahon agreed to repay $17.4 million to WWE for their investigation into his conduct. Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster granted the motion on the same day.
Another group of shareholders is already seeking a “mootness fee” after dropping a related case after McMahon “walked back” some of the bylaw changes that he pushed through when he forced his way back onto WWE’s Board of Directors in January.
H/t to Haus Of Wrestling