A lot can be said about Vince McMahon. He’s a bold, aggressive businessman for sure, for having taken WWE national in an era when promoters adhered strictly to their regional territories. He’s a marketing genius who saw the potential in larger than life stars like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and Roddy Piper to captivate bigger and bigger audiences. He can change with the times, as demonstrated by the shift to the Attitude Era, and he’s a heck of a performer on screen himself under the guise of the conceited, megalomaniacal Mr. McMahon character.
McMahon is also a prolific idea generator.
While he’s had his creative partners, ranging from Pat Patterson, to Vince Russo, to Jim Ross, to Michael Hayes, to the Road Dog, to Triple H, and many points in between McMahon has been the constant driving force behind WWE’s creative direction. By and large, his track record is good, generating a product that has maintained a fan base in the millions for over three decades.
Of course, not every idea Vince McMahon has had has panned out. Casting Lex Luger as an all-American hero, after an initial flourish, had the crowd going mild. Turning Jim Ross heel and bringing in a replacement Diesel and a replacement Razor Ramon for him to manage flopped. Right to this day, quite a few fans still question his dogged view that Roman Reigns ought to be the face of the company.
In a career as long as McMahon’s, not every idea is going to be a winner. This article looks back at 15 we feel fortunate never made it from the drawing board to fruition.
15 The Brothers Of Destruction Bury The Shield
Among the Shields early exploits was an attack on The Undertaker in an episode of SmackDown filmed in the spring of 2013. This attack wound up writing The Deadman off TV while giving the fledgling group—a half year into its run—a little extra credibility for knocking off such a high profile legend.
Rumor has it, however, that Vince McMahon had bigger plans for this angle than a one off attack. Word is that McMahon meant for The Undertaker to be joined by Kane and potentially a third partner (some say Daniel Bryan) in avenging the attack at SummerSlam, and thereby handing the Hounds of Justice their first loss.
While The Shield probably would have been just fine given their talent, and given that even sharing the ring with The Phenom could be construed as a push, it’s probably for the best that they remained unbeaten at that point, and particularly that they didn’t have to weather a high profile loss to a part-time talent. This wasn't the only time WWE had planned for established stars to get one over The Shield, as there were also once plans for the team of John Cena, Ryback and Sheamus to get one over them, but The Shield stood up to management, thinking it wasn't a good idea.
14 Tito Santana As “The Guy”
1992 was a strange time for WWE. The steroid trial had divided Vince McMahon’s attention, Hulk Hogan had left to pursue an acting career and it was clearly time for the company to rebuild its brand. Step one, as has so often been the case in the story of WWE, was to anoint a new face of the company. That face would ideally be a skilled performer and a workhorse, in particular to cover for not having a Hogan like Herculean physique, so there’d be no allegations of steroid use. While WWE would settle on Bret Hart, there was apparently a period of time when Tito Santana was under consideration.
Santana was a talented veteran and, at that point, the only guy to join Hogan in having worked every single WrestleMania.
Particularly in the directly preceding years, though, he hadn’t been treated as more than a mid card talent—and generally a lower mid card guy at that.
Santana may have worked out adequately as the top face in WWE, but hindsight tells us McMahon probably got it right in going with Hart instead, who was younger, arguably more technically proficient, and more over with the European audience that WWE leaned into heavily during that period.
13 Stephanie’s Child
Stephanie McMahon got pregnant for the first time in 2003, in that awkward period after the Attitude Era, before WWE had settled on a PG direction. In the absence of established stars, and without a clear moral compass, the company tended to vacillate between more serious sport as represented by guys like Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit, and edgier, if juvenile content like young John Cena rapping PG-13 jokes.
Word is that, when Stephanie got pregnant, Vince McMahon pitched an idea to cast himself as the on-air father of the child. Another option? For Shane to fill that spot.
While that reveal certainly would have been shocking, the angle also would have been in awful taste and created a boat load of awkward character dynamics for the McMahon family moving forward. Stephanie, Shane, and Triple H all reportedly rallied against the angle, and Stephanie’s pregnancy generally left out of WWE programming.
Another angle Vince once proposed to Stephanie (and husband Triple H) was to broadcast their actual wedding (not the one we saw in the Vegas chapel) on PPV, but again he was turned down. There's some things that just should stay private and are simply taboo.
12 Brock Lesnar Destroys Daniel Bryan
WrestleMania 30 is the story of two iconic moments. Daniel Bryan made Batista tap, and went on to celebrate in the ring with two world championship belts while confetti rained. The other moment? Brock Lesnar ended the Undertaker’s two-decade-plus WrestleMania undefeated streak to the shocked silence of the stadium crowd.
Lesnar would go on to justify that shocking win with a monster run that included dominating John Cena at SummerSlam to hold the WWE Championship right up to WrestleMania 31 where he’d face off with Roman Reigns. If we’re to follow the logic of what happened, though, we’re left to assume that Lesnar was going to squash whoever had the title when he rolled into Los Angeles that August. By all indications, Daniel Bryan was never meant to lose that title before SummerSlam, but was rather forced to due to head and neck injuries.
While Bryan-Lesnar probably would have been great, and Bryan probably could have sold the beating that Cena received even more effectively, it’s a mercy that it didn’t happen. Given Bryan’s concussion issues, an inevitably stiff encounter with The Beast Incarnate—especially in a match made to look especially brutal with sixteen suplexes—was the last thing Bryan needed.
11 Mick Foley Vs. Dean Ambrose
Before there was The Shield, WWE quietly used social media to lay the foundation for a feud between Mick Foley and a developmental talent named Dean Ambrose. The two engaged in a war of words, with Foley critical of the young prospect, while Ambrose took increasingly stiff potshots at Foley and his legacy.
A variety of sources report that Vince was still testing the waters on social media at that point, and sought to use Twitter as a unique vehicle to introduce Ambrose to the larger WWE audience and have an existing issue between these two before he ever debuted on national television.
Accounts vary as to why the plan was abandoned, but there are two main lines of thought.
The most frequently pitched theory is that Foley couldn’t get medically cleared to actually work a match with Ambrose at the time.
The other idea, which did play out on social media, though most believe it to have been a work, was that Ambrose pushed things too far in going after Foley’s family, until the Hardcore Legend was legitimately offended and backed out of the angle. While this angle may well have been quite interesting, it's probably for the best that Foley stayed retired from a WWE ring, and it's hard to imagine Ambrose would have been better debuting without The Shield.
10 WCW Monday Night Raw
In 2001, Vince McMahon defeated his greatest competitor—WCW. WCW was the only wrestling to give WWE a run for its money on a worldwide level since its original national expansion, let alone to actually pull ahead of WWE in head to head TV ratings. In the end, though, WCW didn’t have the support the corporate infrastructure behind it. Combine that with crippling locker room politics and scatter-brained creative, and WWE was able to buy out its competitor for a tidy sum.
Vince McMahon notoriously wants to own ideas, and is reticent to absorb intellectual property that was built elsewhere. However, he also recognized WCW as a genuine competitor with its own unique audience. A variety of sources have confirmed Vince meant to dedicate Raw to WCW, while WWE staffed SmackDown. The split roster would probably have played out much like it did anyway with drafts, trades, shakeups, and the occasional inter-promotional dream match.
Word is that no TV networks wanted to touch the WCW brand at that point, though. The first WCW match on Raw—Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell—tanking as well was a final nail in the coffin. While WCW would come in with its own titles and stable of wrestlers, they were more or less WWE guys from the start, without a separate show. This is probably for the best given how WWE treated new arrivals from WCW, and given how lackluster the WWE version of an ECW brand turned out to be years later.
9 The Ultimate Warrior Ending the Streak Before It Got Off The Ground
While The Undertaker was treated like a big deal heel from the start of his WWE run, he wasn’t necessarily destined for greatness. His first years with the company included The Dead Man losing Body Bag Matches to The Ultimate Warrior on house shows. A number of parties have suggested The Phenom was headed for a similar fate at WrestleMania 8 had Warrior not wound up leaving the company, only to make a surprise return at that very show, rather than achieving a climactic victory. Meanwhile, The Undertaker turned face and would remain a good guy until the late 1990s, thus heading off any programs with Warrior in his two 1990s return tours to WWE.
What if Warrior had beaten The Deadman at WrestleMania VIII?
The most obvious ripple effect is that we never would have had The Phenom’s legendary WrestleMania undefeated streak. He went unbeaten in his first 21 outings as the streak itself became as much of a draw as the star behind it. Dropping a match to Warrior in 1992 would have meant the streak ended at just one victory, thus not becoming a part of WWE lore, or eventually setting up Brock Lesnar to end it and go on a monster tear.
8 Daniel Bryan Vs. Sheamus III
Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus had the rare distinction of being booked for back to back WrestleManias—27 and 28. The WreslteMania 27 encounter gets forgotten because it was bumped to the pre-show, only to get cut short with shmozz finish and turned into a battle royal. The WrestleMania 28 match? While it did get a main card spot and have a world title at stake, it also ended in eighteen seconds after Sheamus caught a distracted Bryan with a Brogue Kick to steal the pin. Thus, Bryan-Sheamus would go down as one of the most underwhelming multi-WrestleMania rivalries of all time.
Another absurd piece to the puzzle. Vince McMahon actually thought about booking them against one another again for WrestleMania 30.
In late 2013, the wheels were in motion for returning Batista to beat Randy Orton for the WWE Championship in the main event, and for CM Punk to beat Triple H in another featured bout. Bryan was over and pitting him against a returning Sheamus made a degree of sense. However, when Punk walked from WWE and Batista got rejected by fans, WWE heeded the masses in inserting Bryan as the star of the show—beating Triple H and then going on to win a main event Triple Threat—a far better use of the most organically over star of his generation.
7 Screwed: The Bret Hart Story
In the aftermath of the Montreal Screwjob, there was reason to believe Bret Hart would never return to the WWE fold. He had about as much grounds as anyone to hold a grudge after Vince McMahon effectively chose The Hitman’s real life arch rival, Shawn Michaels, over him, and contrived a circumstance for Hart to apparently submit to his own hold in front of his Canadian countrymen—not to mention that Hart had had the contractual right to veto that outcome.
Time passed, however. Hart lost his brother, had a mostly failed run with WCW, and had his own career effectively ended via stiff kick to the head from Goldberg. After a stroke, Vince reportedly extended the olive branch, calling Hart in the hospital to make up, starting with a documentary and match compilation DVD set. This would be followed by a Hall of Fame induction and eventual return to being an on air character.
An earlier idea? Vince reportedly had plans drawn up for Screwed: The Bret Hart Story, a hit job documentary not unlike The Self-Destruction of The Ultimate Warrior. Fortunately, things progressed in a more constructive, amicable direction. The last thing fans needed was another wrestling legend scorned from WWE forever.
6 Face Triple H Vs. Heel Steve Austin
At WrestleMania X-Seven, WWE made the controversial choice to turn Steve Austin heel and align him with Vince McMahon (and, days later, Triple H). Austin wanted the turn, and it did succeed in shocking fans. However, fan by and large still wanted to cheer the Texas Rattlesnake, and the general consensus was he would have been better off staying a face.
Word is that the Austin turn was originally meant to be part of a longer story arc that would see Triple H ultimately turn face to challenge Austin for the WWE Championship, possibly at WrestleMania X8. As fate would have it, Triple H would get injured and miss the better part of a year, while Austin would be at the fore of the failed InVasion angle.
By WrestleMania X8, Triple H was a face challenging for the top title in the company, but WWE had given into obvious fan demand in turning Austin face, too.
Austin was so explosively over as a face at the time and Triple H was so much more natural as a heel that this pairing was doomed to fail. While no one would wish an injury on Helmesley, the fact that his getting hurt derailed this kayfabe destiny probably was the best thing for him.
5 Mr. Kennedy-McMahon
Mr. Kennedy may be one of the most profound what-if Superstars in WWE history. He purportedly had several main event level angles built around him, only for changes in creative plans, real life events, injuries, suspensions, and political issues to derail him at every turn. One of his biggest opportunities was meant to be the role of Vince McMahon’s mystery estranged son.
This spot would have set up Kennedy for the highest profile angles in the business, working alongside Vince, Stephanie, and Triple H for the months to follow, and likely as not getting figured into a world title picture. Word was that it was also setting up Kennedy for a major main event with control of the entire WWE on the line. Given how Kennedy's career unfolded, it's probably for the best that this never happened. While Kennedy was charismatic and a good talker, it’s probably just as well that he didn’t wind up in such a featured spot. He never proved himself as a top shelf in ring worker. Moreover, his run with Impact Wrestling exposed him a bit for drawing cheap heat via foul language without having a ton of substance to his act.
4 The Undertaker Hatched From An Egg
Survivor Series 1990 was largely built around a mysterious oversized egg, which WWE promised would hatch at the PPV, presumably revealing a new star. As it turned out, the egg revealed the Gobbledy Gooker—a dancing Hector Guerrero in a turkey costume. Even for the kids this character was surely meant to cater to, the reveal was severely overwhelming, and never went on to accomplish anything in WWE. Interestingly, the Gobbledy Gooker was by most accounts a late addition to the show.
The egg was originally supposed to contain The Undertaker.
That same night, The Undertaker debuted as the mystery final member of Ted DiBiase’s Survivor Series team. It was a strong debut for him, eliminating two faces before battling Dusty Rhodes to a double count out. He was established as a force quickly, and would be challenging for the WWE Championship in a year’s time.
But what if Vince had stayed the course, and had The Deadman debut by hatching out of an egg, rather than debuting as a key member of a high profile team? Maybe he still would have gotten over based on talent, aura, and commitment to his gimmick. Perhaps the egg gimmick would have been too silly for anyone to forgive, though, and crippled him out of the gate.
3 Romance Angle Between Chris Jericho And Stephanie McMahon
The build to WrestleMania X8 saw undisputed world champion Chris Jericho largely overshadowed by Stephanie McMahon—Triple H’s real life wife who wound up playing Jericho’s heel manager. The storyline didn’t entirely make sense and Jericho revealed a big part of why in his book, Undisputed. According to Jericho, he was originally slated to be in a kayfabe affair with Stephanie to explain why he was doing her bidding, and add an element of personal heat to his 2002 rivalry with The Game.
While Chris Jericho and Stephanie becoming a new couple may have made storyline sense and filled in some storyline gaps, it nonetheless would have saddled Jericho with an unsavory connection to the McMahon family. And though Jericho had some recovery work to do after becoming such an afterthought as world champ, he’d probably have had an even deeper hole to climb out of if WWE were also trying to either erase the kayfabe affair from fans’ memory, or double down on it with further related storylines. Ultimately, they chose to keep Jericho and Stephanie's relationship on-screen entirely platonic, and thankfully, Jericho was eventually able to recover from an angle in which he was overshadowed. Would any fans have preferred the story to go down this path?
2 The WWE Network On Cable TV
The WWE Network is a quintessential part of the wrestling fan experience, and has been for over four years now. Thus, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember a time when the idea of WWE launching its own network felt like a pipedream, and fans were accustomed to shelling out forty dollars a month to watch a monthly PPV. Then when HD was introduced, the prices could jump to as high as $60 for WrestleMania. Remember how difficult that was on our wallets?
Long before WWE settled on a streaming network to broadcast live shows and offer a peerless on demand archive of wrestling, the company explored other options for bringing a network to life. First and foremost was the idea of cable station, not altogether unlike The Golf Network, specialized to WWE content airing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, potentially including PPVs. WWE actually did have an on-demand premium service with selected specials and old PPV stream-able to subscribers. All of this seems a bit archaic now. The technological shift, and the WWE Network we wound up with demonstrated Vince’s forward thinking and underrated patience to wait out the right opportunity (it may have also been a blessing in disguise that he struggled to reach an agreement he liked with cable providers).
1 Santino Marella As a Shoot-Style Wrestler
Santino Marella may well go down as the best comedic performer from his generation of WWE Superstars. While he was a trained pro wrestler, too, once he gathered steam and found his footing in his gimmick, he was played almost entirely for laughs with his put-on Italian accent, over the top selling, and absurd use of the Cobra finisher.
It’s interesting to note that the original plans for the performer were quite different.
I’m not only referring to the Milan Miracale inspirational face he debuted as on the main roster, but rather the gimmick he cultivated in WWE’s developmental system as an ultra-serious shoot fighter, who might come across as something like a blend of Tazz and Kurt Angle. Fortunately, those original plans, which probably wouldn’t have gotten Marella past a short run as a lower card talent, were put aside in favor of his more memorable comedy gimmick. While many may have felt Santino was underused in his WWE tenure and grew tired of the comedy schtick after a while, the fact is, Santino still got himself a good career out a role that many felt was long gone in the landscape of modern wrestling. Comedy can in fact work in wrestling.