WWE Hall of Famer recalls promoters trying to 'stop' Vince McMahon from taking over the industry
WWE Hall of Famer JJ Dillon has recalled a bunch of wrestling promoters having a meeting to stop Vince McMahon from taking over the industry.
Many years ago, McMahon bought out a handful of territorial promotions and secured a deal with TV networks to put his company on the map. While he was determined to turn WWE into the global empire that it is today, other wrestling promoters weren't so happy with the idea.
During a recent appearance on a virtual signing with 80's Wrestling, JJ Dillion spoke about the time a multitude of promoters assembled so they could stop Vince McMahon from taking over.
"Vince [McMahon] was a risk taker, he’s a visionary, he’s someone that I learned so much from. He’s a brilliant, brilliant man and the proof is where he then took that. Pretty soon, he controlled it all and what was amazing was all these promoters that had these barter deals said, ‘Oh my God.’ They all arranged to go — to meet and all get together up in… it was… in New Jersey, around Newark, New Jersey," said Dillon.
"And they were gonna all come from all across the country to bring all their forces together and say, ‘Okay, how do we stop this threat?’ And what happened was all of these 25 different people coming together couldn’t choose a leader among them to speak for all of them and so, they were that close to — maybe if they somehow were able to put it together, they might’ve — I’m not even saying if that would have worked but they had a shot at stopping Vince and they couldn’t agree among themselves about who should be in charge and Vince just kept rolling along," JJ added.(H/T POST Wrestling)
Vince McMahon is one of the greatest wrestling promoters of all time
Vince McMahon, a third-generation promoter, has played a significant role in the evolution of the wrestling business. In 2002, he purchased his biggest competitions WCW and ECW, thus cementing WWE as the largest wrestling company in the world.
He also portrayed one of the greatest heel characters in history as Mr. McMahon. As the Evil Boss, he held the WWE and ECW World Championships and won the 1999 Royal Rumble match. Professional wrestling would not have been the same without Vince McMahon.