He recalls one specific time where a talent ran into former WWE talent, Mr. Fuji, who was in poor health and working at a movie theatre. They approached McMahon with this and McMahon put $10,000 cash into an envelope and told them to bring the money to Mr. Fuji. Jericho points out that McMahon is not a fire-breathing tyrant like some fans think.
Kelly notes that McMahon never screamed in his ear on commentary either. There were a couple of times where McMahon would feed him lines and he’d refuse to say it because the moment had passed, and McMahon would calmly say, “Say it”. McMahon was mostly always calm and professional on the headset.
Kelly informs that after his one year contract expired Kevin Dunn wanted to let him go as Dunn never liked him to begin with for some reason. Head Writer at the time, Vince Russo, pushed to have Kelly join him on the writing team and McMahon approved. Soon after WWE switched to a three-man booth, and Kelly was back on commentary but he still continued his work on the WWE Magazine.
Kelly feels that WWE’s poor fortunes started to change when they switched the look and feel of their programming. RAW is WAR brought a new energy to WWE and the attitude era ushered in a new magazine, the half-shoot “RAW Magazine”. This was Vince Russo’s idea and McMahon loved it, but McMahon would sometimes get furious about the content of the magazine.
