Is Shane McMahon Return Emblematic of Real-Life Vince McMahon/Triple H Power Struggle?

Shane McMahon made a shocking return to WWE last month, and is slated to fight the Undertaker at WrestleMania in early April. As the storyline goes, the stakes of the match are for control of Monday Night Raw. Because this is the company’s flagship program, the stakes are high.

Now, obviously professional wrestling is scripted, and WWE, a publicly traded company (of which I’m a very slight shareholder), even provided a statement saying that Shane McMahon is “merely playing a character on a TV show,” but there could be something more going on behind the scenes.

Longtime wrestling reporter Dave Meltzer wrote in his latest newsletter (subscription required, but, if you care at all about this stuff it is great content every week):

"Exactly how much of this is legit or exaggerated you can make up your own mind, but the Vince McMahon vs. HHH dynamic is something that everyone is talking about internally, even more since Shane McMahon appeared on the scene."

Meltzer wrote that privately Vince may not be as high on NXT — WWE’s developmental league, and Triple H’s baby — as is said in interviews, and that Vince resents the idea that he is “old and out of touch” and should cede creative power of the main roster to his son-in-law Triple H and daughter Stephanie.

As Meltzer pointed out, this is what Vince McMahon had to say publicly about Triple H and NXT in the Orlando Sentinel this week, when he was speaking with the newspaper because WrestleMania will be there in 2017 and they will also be opening up a Hall of Fame themed restaurant:

"“What Paul has done, he’s done an extraordinary job and because of the welcome here in Florida, because of the Performance Center, its world-class qualities, we are able to attract so many more athletes now. You saw the NXT talent that was here. I was talking to John Cena who was there [at the Performance Center] this week giving a pep talk and he said these talents are really, really good. And he says, ‘I’ve got to tell you, watching the new talents in there, the looks that they certainly have, you can see that they’re very different and they’re gifted athletically.’"

And the chairman had this to say to the Orlando Sentinel about Stephanie as a brand ambassador:

"“Nonetheless, corporately the growth over the last two years has been exponential and Stephanie’s part has been even more of a meteoric rise. What she does in terms of representing the brand, no one can represent the brand in all aspects, in all facets of our business, and she fits everywhere. Talk about an ambassador, she’s obviously beyond an ambassador and her growth corporately has been great. I’m very proud of both of them.”"

Pro wrestling characters — Steve Austin, Randy Savage, and Ric Flair, to name a few — are always the most compelling when you are not sure where their real-life persona ends and the acting begins. That is equally true for storylines, and we’ll never quite know exactly how much give-and-take there is in intra-McMahon power struggles, and that surreality is what makes it interesting.