In the most recent issue of the British wrestling magazine Power Slam, Ring Of Hell author Matthew Randazzo V gave his unique take on recent WWE gossip in his regular column The McMahon Quarterly Report. So what intriguing nuggets of info did Randazzo divulge that haven't already been mentioned here at Cageside Seats?
Due to Linda McMahon's advisors believing that Vince would hurt his wife's run for the U.S. senate seat in Connecticut by continuing to appear on television, WWE creative is told to devise a way in which Vince's TV character can be "blown off" at WrestleMania and "turned babyface" in the process.
Vince and the creative team decide that McMahon...should be the recipient of a Steve-Austin-at-WrestleMania-XIII-style face turn. The idea, apparently, is that Vince will take such a hammering from "The Hitman"...that fans will be unable to resist the urge to rally behind the outnumbered WWE chairman.
- The absence of the eldest McMahons from the traditional WrestleMania company party caused "a great deal of speculation that Vince might have suffered a concussion from a Hart Attack-style move he recklessly took on the floor, and is in agony after absorbing those 18 chair shots to the arms, legs and back".
- The story behind Batista losing his WWE film role to Triple H was that Vince made a "judgement call to show Batista who's boss", after Batista had threatened to leave the company in March 2010 over being sick and tired of life on the road and WWE's lame creative direction.
- Apparently Vince's shortlived wooing of Bill Goldberg was an attempt to find a replacement for Batista.
- The knockbacks by these two veteran talents is supposedly what caused Vince to go on his post Mania youth movement kick.
- Randazzo confirms that Funaki was fired to punish Shawn Michaels for abandoning the McMahons and WWE, and that Mickie James was fired in part over her star-crossed romance with a certain married main event star.
- The NXT roster were supposedly concerned that Vince would kill their hot invasion angle by booking himself as their leader.
- Randazzo is of the belief, strongly denied at the time by company hatchet man Jim Ross, that Daniel Bryan was fired personally by Vince due to pressure from his wife's political advisors for compromising her strategy of portraying WWE as wholesome family entertainement.
- The anonymous G.M. idea was because Vince didn't like any of his creative team's suggestions for a replacement.
- Vince being beaten up by NXT sounds like it was a second bite of the cherry to turn him babyface and write him out of the storylines for his wife's benefit. It probably didn't hurt that Connecticut investigative reporter Brian Lockhart was there to document this angle and Vince's fake reason for writing himself off TV.
- Finally, Randazzo confirmed that Chris Jericho is being de-pushed for his outside WWE gig of hosting ABC's game show Downfall and speculates that he'll soon follow Shawn and Batista out the door.