Mansoor has heard WWE’s old creative team get blamed for some of the bizarre stuff that made television during the Vince McMahon era, but he says fans were blaming the wrong people. According to Mansoor, the writers weren’t exactly free to fix things when certain instructions came directly from Vince himself.
Speaking on Self-Made Sitdown, Mansoor described working in WWE during that period as anything but boring. Even when he wasn’t booked on the show, he said there was usually some kind of backstage drama going on, and the writers were often stuck right in the middle of it.
“It was never boring. It was never boring. Even if you weren’t on the show, there was always drama and something happening. Those poor writers, man. Yeah, it was like they were in a hostage situation.”
Mansoor joked that writers sometimes just wanted wrestlers to accept whatever was on the page rather than sending them back to Vince with complaints. From his perspective, keeping things moving was sometimes more important than arguing over the material.
“‘Don’t make me go back saying that you didn’t like it. Please just nod your head, take this f****** paper, and let’s just all move on from this.’”
And Mansoor thinks those writers took way too much heat from fans, particularly around 2019 when WWE creative was getting hammered online. He argued that people assumed the writers themselves were coming up with everything they saw on television when that wasn’t necessarily the case.
“I think writers get a lot of heat, or at least they did in like 2019 during the real low point in WWE under Vince. And it was always like, ‘These writers don’t know what they’re doing.’ Can we, like, be so for real? They’re not coming up with this s***, bro.”
According to Mansoor, writers could pitch ideas, but their main job was essentially putting together dialogue Vince didn’t want to write himself. And if keeping your job meant not fighting certain creative decisions, Mansoor understood why writers weren’t exactly lining up to challenge the boss.
“Like, their job is to write dialogue that Vince doesn’t want to write himself. That was their only job. They can pitch stuff, but they’d rather keep their jobs.”
Mansoor then revealed one pretty simple way wrestlers could apparently tell when something came directly from Vince. If part of the script was highlighted, Mansoor says you weren’t changing it.
“It was so funny. So anything in your script that is highlighted is from Vince, so you can’t change it. It would be certain s*** that he would just feel on the day.”
And his best example involved Sami Zayn. Mansoor recalled Vince speaking with somebody backstage when Zayn suddenly came through the door because he wanted to discuss a match. Vince apparently wasn’t thrilled about being interrupted and immediately sent him away.
“Like, for example, I f****** love Sami. Here’s something he did. Vince was talking to somebody, and Sami burst through the door to talk about a match, and Vince was like, ‘I’m talking to somebody.’”
Zayn apparently tried to squeeze in whatever he needed to say anyway, but Vince wasn’t having it. According to Mansoor, Vince simply told him to get out.
“And Sami was like, ‘Can I just—can I have it really quickly?’ Vince was like, ‘Get out.’”
That backstage interaction apparently didn’t stay backstage for very long. Mansoor claims Vince later worked what happened into Zayn’s television script, and this time the highlighted instruction wasn’t even dialogue. It was a stage direction telling Sami exactly how he wanted him to behave.
“So Sami leaves, and then in a promo, there’s a line highlighted, but it’s not dialogue. It’s a stage direction. And the stage direction that’s highlighted is, ‘And then Sami interrupts the interview like a rude bastard.’ He had to make sure that was on the script.”
So according to Mansoor, Vince wasn’t just changing lines or rewriting promos on the fly. Sometimes something that annoyed him backstage could apparently find its way directly onto the script, highlighted and untouchable, before ending up on WWE television.
What do you make of Mansoor’s claims about how Vince McMahon handled WWE scripts and creative changes? Let us know what you think in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
