• Stephanie McMahon On If There’s A Replacement For Vince McMahon
During a recent interview with Bloomberg Business of Sports, Stephanie McMahon talked about the WWE Network moving to Peacock, who will replace Vince McMahon when he steps down & more.
Below are the highlights:
On WWE Network moving to Peacock in USA:
“Vince’s perspective has always been to be slightly ahead of the curve. You never want to be behind. So that’s why we were one of the first, 7 years ago, to launch our streaming service, the WWE Network.
We did learn a lot from that time. Actually we were actually pretty far down the pike negotiating a linear deal. But our partners wanted to lock up our rights for about 10 years. It was just a real long time, so we decided to take a step back and do deeper research.
We learned that our fans were consuming five times more online video than average. So we thought ‘let’s control our own destiny.’ And we doubled down and within eight months we launched WWE Network.
We learned a lot, pivoted a lot and we tried to make the best service we could. But again, we’re always looking at the media landscape and it’s constantly evolving and shifting. The pandemic clearly sped up digital consumption, but even prior to that we were already having conversations with different partners.
We’re not a technology company. I think we did a remarkable job, but that’s not who we are at our core. That’s not our level of expertise. What we are is incredible content creators.
So we wanted to find the best partner we could, and NBCU has been our partner for almost 30 years. They have this incredible service (Peacock) and we’re so happy to launch this week.”
How Vince McMahon’s vision made WWE successful:
“It’s really remarkable when you think about our history and what Vince accomplished. Think about what he’s done. He took what was a regional business and had the vision to go around and create one organization, nationally and then ultimately globally.
My father saw the opportunity for syndication, he saw the opportunity for advertising. Ultimately he saw the opportunity to really create something that had never risen to the level of popularity it had never seen.”
Who will replace Vince when he steps down (Stephanie indicated that it’s going to be a group effort, as no one person can do what Vince does):
“I do think a lot of the institutional knowledge is important, particularly with regards toward the core content.
But it’s also surrounding our business with strong, smart executives. And that’s exactly what we have. So I do think it’s the marriage of institutional knowledge, the incredible production value, the creation of talent IP and storylines and really strong business executives to help us expand. I think it’s a combination of things.
I don’t think there will ever be a person to person replacement for Vince McMahon. He does too much. The landscape would look different however it shakes out. But I think it’s a marriage of those things.”
Also Read: “He knew we’re going to push him?” – Vince McMahon Was Shocked When Jeff Hardy Quit WWE
WATCH: Stephanie McMahon Kisses Vince McMahon:
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• OLD SCHOOL VIDEO HISTORY (March 20, 1993) – WCW Worldwide
On this day in 1993, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling aired an episode of their weekly TV show ‘WCW Worldwide’.
This episode was pre-taped at the Coliseum in Macon, Georgia and featured matches, interviews & storyline segments on the road to the “WCW Slamboree 1993: A Legends’ Reunion” PPV.
The card of the show can be found here:
– 2 Cold Scorpio & Marcus Alexander Bagwell vs. Mike Moon & Randy Sledge
– Davey Boy Smith vs. Mike Thor
– Maxx Payne vs. Joey Maggs
– WCW TV Title Tournament R2: Robbie V (RVD) vs. Vinnie Vegas
– Paul Orndorff vs. Dustin Rhodes
