Former WWE Writer Shares Crazy Vince McMahon Story

• Vince McMahon

  Birthdate:

  1945-08-24

  Birthplace:

  Pinehurst, North Carolina, USA

  Birthname:

  Vincent Kennedy McMahon

  Height:

  6 feet 2 inches

  Weight:

  248 lbs

  Debut:

  1969-06-03

  Championships Held:

  WWE Championship, ECW Championship

  Twitter:

  Notable Allies:

  Shane McMahon, Triple H, The Rock

  Notable Rivals:

  "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Shane McMahon, Triple H

  Eye Color:

  Blue

  Hair Color:

  Gray

With Vince McMahon's ongoing legal issues and the fallout from his WWE departure, many people from the wrestling industry have chimed in. A former WWE writer claims that McMahon fired him because he made some changes to a wrestler's lines. While employees generally shouldn't go against their boss' wishes, the line in question was beyond inappropriate given the circumstances.

Vince McMahon Has A History Of Being Tone Deaf & Racially Insensitive

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Former WWE writer Michael Leonardi posted a video on his LinkedIn page detailing the incident he claims got him fired from the company. The segment in question happened on a 2016 episode of WWE Raw that took place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

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PAC (who was known as Neville in WWE at the time) was in a backstage segment alongside R-Truth, Titus O'Neil and Mark Henry. They were getting ready for a 4-on-4 tag team match during the Royal Rumble season. PAC was supposed to say that he "had a dream too," which was to win the Rumble.

Everyone but Vince McMahon obviously thought that this was a poor idea and in bad taste, to have Neville use Dr. King's iconic words about American history and civil rights, on his celebratory holiday. This was especially egregious because the segment also included three black wrestlers. Leonardi shared the details:

The script called for Neville to speak up and tell everyone else that, well, he’s got a dream too and that dream is to win the Royal Rumble, and I remember Neville coming up to me after he read it and he was like, ‘Mike, man, I can’t say this.’

PAC, Truth, O’Neil and Henry all expressed their discomfort with the line, and how they didn't want to shoot the scene as it was written. Leonardi worked with the wrestlers and changed the segment, making R-Truth say the line instead. When he went to Vince McMahon to tell him about the change, it's safe to say that McMahon was not pleased:

"I’ll never forget this. He’s staring at the screen, he takes off his headphones and he turned to me, he said, ‘So you didn’t give me what I wanted?’ And my eyes got big and I’m like, ‘Umm…’ and I said, ‘Yes sir, I know, I understand.’ I explained it again, what we did, the circumstances around it, the limitations that we had. I took full responsibility for it and then he just chewed me the f*** out, pardon my French. Chewed me out.”

Everyone involved tried to do their best to make the segment work without getting bad press for the company. Although Leonardi changed the line, he didn't deliver what McMahon wanted, and ultimately got fired for his disobedience:

"We’re trying to protect the company from putting out a segment that was racially insensitive that just was poor, that just put us potentially in a bad light, over nothing… I have replayed that moment thousands of times in my head and I’ve asked myself, could I have done something to have not gotten fired?"