3 matches that Vince McMahon hated and 2 that he loved
WWE Superstars can entertain audiences and their fellow performers as much as they like during matches and segments, but Vince McMahon is the one person within the company whose opinion matters the most.
Back in September 1999, for example, Mick Foley and The Rock’s “This Is Your Life” segment turned out to be one of the highest-rated moments in the history of Raw, but McMahon only described the segment as “okay” and he was initially frustrated that it ran for so long.
With regards to matches, there does not appear to be one certain in-ring style that the WWE owner prefers the most, with his top Superstars throughout the years (Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Steve Austin, John Cena etc) all having contrasting approaches inside the squared circle.
One thing we do know about the most important person in WWE, however, is that he is not afraid to make Superstars fully aware of his brutally honest opinion, even when he knows they will not like it.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at three matches that McMahon hated and two that he loved.
#5 Hated: Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens
One of the most memorable moments from Kevin Owens’ ‘WWE 365’ documentary on the WWE Network came when he approached Vince McMahon backstage following his victory against Chris Jericho in a United States Championship match at WrestleMania 33.
Owens simply asked “we good?” to McMahon, to which the WWE owner replied “nope” before allowing his new United States champion to walk away.
The rest of the documentary revolved around KO attempting to rediscover his confidence after disappointing his boss at WWE’s biggest event of the year, but he did not elaborate on why McMahon viewed the match so negatively.
In 2019, it was revealed by Jericho that McMahon’s issues were not with Y2J, who had no idea that his boss hated the match so much, and that his main problem was that Owens was performing high-flying, crowd-popping moves when he was supposed to be a heel.
Jericho told Inside The Ropes:
“I thought the [match] was good. I was very surprised when I saw KO after and he's like, 'Vince said it's one of the worst matches in WrestleMania history.' He wanted Kevin to be 'this type of heel' and Kevin was doing a lot of flashy moves and Vince didn't want that.”