The Monday Night Raw commentator weighs in.
On Friday morning, WWE issued a statement that Vince McMahon is voluntarily stepping down as CEO of the company but will continue his role in the creative department. Stephanie McMahon is filling in as the interim CEO while the company’s Board of Directors is investigating a hush-money settlement that Vince is the center of.
Monday Night Raw commentator Jimmy Smith took to his ‘Unlocking the Cage’ show on SiriusXM and weighed in on the situation at hand. Here is what Smith had to say on the matter:
‘Talent’ is a catch-all term for anybody on television. Me, Corey Graves, Bryon Saxton and in the case of the WWE, the actual superstars themselves, we’re in a slightly different category. They wrestle, I don’t, but we’re all on camera. When they say ‘talent’, they could mean anybody who’s on camera, on television okay? You get above that and it is executives. That means in the production meeting, the people who sit next to Vince McMahon. Two places you can be in a production meeting, you can sit next to Vince McMahon, you can sit across from Vince McMahon. I am one of the people that sits across from Vince McMahon. All the producers, the commentators, we all sit on one side and they go over the matches. People are sitting next to Vince and people are sitting across from Vince. What is going to get investigated over the next couple of months is the culture and the communication between the people who sit next to Vince McMahon. That is what’s gonna get looked at. Why? A culture’s hard to hide. You can’t hide and act. You do something and you make a mistake and you make amends for that mistake and all these things, you can do that. It’s what is going on communication-wise behind the scenes. That’s what this investigation is gonna be looking at. They’re gonna be looking at the executive culture of the WWE. The good news from my perspective is I have spent five minutes total talking to any executive from WWE. They don’t really have any reason to talk to me and it’s one of those things where people ask me all the time for — as for the UFC, ‘Oh, what’s Dana White like?’ How should I know? I don’t — I never spoke to Dana White. I talked to him for a grand total of five minutes in the whole year I was there. He doesn’t have any reason to talk to me. Have I heard much more from Vince McMahon? Yeah, but it’s all been about, ‘Hey, Money in the Bank’ is this date… ‘Be sure to say’ about this, this and that. It’s all about the nuts and bolts of the show. It’s never, hey, let’s hang out and get something to eat. It doesn’t work that way folks. I never did that with anybody; not Dana White, not Scott Coker. There’s a real line in sports and sports entertainment to the people sitting at the top, the executives and the people doing their job in a particular place. So, each one of those levels I just talked about, from the people who make the show work, the functional tech people, on-air talent, producers and then executives, there’s a culture to each one of these levels because all those people hang out and communicate with one another. The black shirt people all hang out and talk and I talk to them too as well. Then there’s the on-air talent, we all interact in our way, all the producers interact in their own way and then all the executives interact in their own way and those lines don’t always — in fact, they often don’t bleed into one another. So, I honestly don’t know how this communication — John Laurinaitis is another guy who’s obviously been named in this article that may be involved in this, whatever. Hey, nice guy in the two times I’ve spoken to him, shook his hand, went, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ Bruce Prichard, nice guy. The handful of times I’ve had to speak to Bruce Prichard about something and ask him a question, really nice guy. He’s on Dark Side of the Ring. You know, if you’ve seen him talk, nice dude. But I don’t know how it works, I’m not on the private jet, I’m not doing any of that stuff.
McMahon appeared on the 6/17 Friday Night SmackDown and to hear POST Wrestling’s thoughts about McMahon’s segment, check out the latest SmackDown/AEW Rampage review.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit ‘Unlocking the Cage with Jimmy Smith’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
