Matt Riddle has worked under some pretty massive personalities between UFC and WWE, but apparently none of them topped Vince McMahon as a boss. Given the choices of Dana White, Triple H, Shawn Michaels and McMahon, Riddle didn’t have much trouble picking his favorite.
During an interview with That Sweet Pop in New Zealand, Riddle was asked to compare the people he worked under throughout his MMA and professional wrestling careers. Dana White, McMahon and Triple H were brought up before Riddle added Michaels to the mix himself. When it came time to actually pick the best boss, Riddle went straight with McMahon. His reasoning was pretty simple — Vince wasn’t interested in sugarcoating shit.
“You know, I’m a big thing when it comes to bosses. I love brutal honesty. And for me, out of all of them, Vince was the best boss. If he did something he didn’t like, he didn’t wait. He didn’t say, ‘Good work.’ He told you right to your face, and he told you you messed up and you need to fix this or you’re not going to be here much longer. And you adapt, right?”
Riddle’s experience with Dana White was apparently a very different story. He said that by the time White really let him know how he felt, Riddle had already been fired from UFC, and he specifically brought up White publicly ripping him on Fox.
“Well, I feel like, I mean, by the time Dana did, I was already fired. So if he would have said that stuff to me before he fired me, before he went on Fox and just ripped me to shreds and called me on there…”
Riddle also believes his outspoken support for cannabis didn’t exactly help his relationship with UFC at the time. He pointed to the company allowing TRT use and landing Budweiser as a sponsor while he was publicly pushing a much more cannabis-friendly message.
“But at the same time, different folks, different strokes. At that time, they were allowing players to use TRT. They just got the sponsorship of Budweiser. So me pushing, like, more of a cannabis-friendly [approach] and saying alcohol and testosterone is bad, they didn’t like that.”
Riddle certainly had his own ups and downs during his WWE run, but apparently Vince’s management style worked for him. Getting told immediately that he screwed up — and that he better fix it if he wanted to stick around — was something Riddle preferred over finding out how the boss really felt when it was already too late.
Who do you think Matt Riddle worked best under during his career — Vince McMahon, Triple H, Shawn Michaels or Dana White? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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