WWE News: Four Horsemen manager JJ Dillon discusses working with Vince McMahon at his house
What's the story?
JJ Dillon recently spoke with Ricky Morton of the Rock 'N Roll Express on a recent episode of The School Of Morton Podcast where they talked about several subjects. Once of the subjects was what it was like to work for WWE Management from Vince McMahon's house.
In case you didn't know...
JJ Dillon is best known for being the manager of The Four Horsemen from 1985 to 1989. The original lineup consisted of Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Ole, and Arn Anderson. Ole would later be replaced by Lex Luger and later Barry Windham.
The heart of the matter
From 1989 until 1997, Dillon worked as a front office executive in the WWE. In the podcast, Dillon stated how he had a close friendship with Vince and talked about how he would regularly spend time at Vince's house to get work done. After the work was done, Dillon would stay and have dinner with the McMahon Family.
Dillon would expand on the unique working environment with Vince further (transcript provided by WrestlingInc.com):
"I was in the office all week and all of the creative was done at his home on weekends and I would go out to his house with Pat Patterson and we would sit in casual clothes… in the summer we would be out… he had like a pool where I watched Stephanie and Shane grow up"
"He had a veranda out there with a bank of phones and that's where we would work out there. In the winter time we would work in his formal dining room. Saturday and Sunday and then we would stay and eat dinner at his home around the dinner table with Vince and Linda. "If Shane was there or Stephanie was there we would sit and have dinner with them, too. It was a wonderful time in the business."
Dillon stated that he had a first-hand look at how Vince ran his business and for that he has a tremendous amount of respect for him. According to Dillon, Vince was willing to work hard for success and earned everything that came to him.
After Dillon left the WWE in 1997, he would return to an on-camera role for WCW as their Commissioner during the rise of the nWo.
Parallels from history
Vince McMahon previously discussed working from his house on the Stone Cold Podcast that aired on the WWE Network in December 2014. Vince and Austin were talking about how different it is working for WWE Creative compared to the days of working by his pool at home.
They also mentioned how any visitors that would come by would end up being thrown in the pool because Vince loved doing ribs. Austin would follow that up with the time that Shane would throw Vince himself into the pool.
Author's take
The stories of working out of Vince's home are really cool. I could just imagine Vince going from phone to phone making calls for the business on the phone bank Dillon was describing (which was basically a row of telephones each connected to a different line).
I have a lot of respect for what Dillon did in the business as well. Not just on-camera, but behind the scenes when he worked for the WWE.