Vince McMahon’s true involvement in WWE creative remains far from clear, leading to massive speculation over what the Executive Chairman does and doesn’t control.
This meant that when Triple H announced the creation of a new World Heavyweight Championship on Raw, social media erupted. While some backed the move, others questioned why the company had created a “secondary” World Title. Attention then turned to who had made the controversial call. However, despite the speculation, and hammering of keyboards it wasn’t Vince McMahon.
It was reported back in March that Triple H had approved a new World Title belt, and in a new report for Sports Illustrated, Justin Barrasso has reiterated that it was a Triple H call.
“It is somewhat of a surprise that the decision to split into two champions did not come from CEO Vince McMahon. Levesque oversees WWE’s creative, and he believes that Raw needs a world champion.”
Vince McMahon Did Change Plans For Raw
While Vince McMahon might not have made the decision to create a new World Championship, that doesn’t mean that his presence wasn’t felt on Raw. Despite not being at the taping in person a number of matches and segments were changed at the behest of McMahon.
McMahon’s changes to matches included who was going to win, and in other cases how matches reached the agreed finish.
One match was reportedly added to the show at the request of Vince McMahon and that was the Street Profits vs. Cedric Alexander & Shelton Benjamin.
Johnson added that there were a “number of segments” cut involving female talents. One segment cut involved Candice LeRae and Piper Niven, while a second would have involved Adam Pearce and several members of the women’s roster including Sonya Deville. This was reportedly done to give more time to the six-woman tag team match between Damage CTRL and Bianca Belair & Liv Morgan & Raquel Rodriguez.