Sometimes, we can’t help but wonder what ever happened to Shane McMahon?
We begged and pleaded for months for him to leave television, and now that he is, we kinda miss him. He may have been annoying at times and his storyline repetitive, but he was one of the better performers in the WWE. While the McMahon storyline in general hasn’t been missed, his ability to sell and play a super annoying character are.
And he’s disappeared since Kevin Owens beat him in their ladder match on Smackdown’s debut on Fox. The stipulation was the loser was fired from WWE, so that was it for Shane storyline wise, but what’s he been doing since then?
He left before
Shane left the company in 2009 for personal reasons that later became known in an interview with Mick Foley in 2016. In it, Shane admitted that working in the company was hurting his relationship with his father (Vince McMahon) and he didn’t want that to happen. So he left.
It seems simple and straight forward given how alike he and Vince seem to be. Like personalities tend to clash big time, especially when having differing views on what’s needed or currently being done storyline and development wise in the same company.
The pressure to follow in his father’s footsteps would be intense, and having Triple H be the heir apparent to running the WWE empire wouldn’t help. This isn’t saying he and Triple H don’t like each other or anything like that, but simply it can be difficult when the keys to the parent’s car are handed to your best friend instead of you.
WCW was an opportunity missed
When Vince McMahon bought WCW in 2001, the storyline had Shane purchasing the promotion out from under him, and hence began the Alliance storyline.
But there were a lot of rumors going around that Shane really did own WCW and that Vince was going to let him run it as an independent promotion to see what he could do with it.
As we all know, that’s not what happened, but there’s a twist. It’s what the fans wanted.
Seriously, we didn’t want just the WWF, but to have the Monday Night Wars continue, but not to the ruthless level it had been. We recognized how awesome it was to have two shows on simultaneously to go back and forth between and we wanted more.
We went from having three promotions to one seemingly overnight. ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) was bought out by Vince after they accrued a large debt and their wrestlers weren’t reportedly paid for weeks to months. This actually added to the equation for fans as we hoped it would continue as a separate promotion as well.
That’s largely why many of us stuck through the early years of the Ruthless Aggression Era as our favorites moved to TNA or retired.
Out of all of this, WCW hurts the most.
Imagine what could’ve been had Shane been allowed to run it without Vince’s oversight. We could be talking about Monday Night Nitro in present tense rather than past.
Of course, as I’m writing this, Shane could be comfortably sitting in his office at WWE HQ continuing to work on storylines or production items and helping to promote the company.
Whatever he’s doing, we wish him the best and hope to see him again someday. Maybe with any luck he’ll start his own promotion or be allowed to split WCW properties away from the WWE and fulfill the hope we had twenty years ago.
Maybe the answer come when we find out what happened to Shane McMahon
It can’t hurt to dream, right?
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