Stephanie McMahon and WWE Creative

Ask any WWE fan what’s wrong with the company today and you will get a multitude of answers – nothing, over-pushing of “Super Cena”, repetitive storylines, same-old same-old on top of the heap, too much puerile comedy, not enough wrestling and so on and so forth. Ask anyone who is responsible for everything that’s wrong with the company today and two names come up with almost monotonous regularity: Triple H and his wife, Stephanie McMahon-Levesque. It’s the latter of the two that I want to examine in this column. Stephanie has had almost a lifetime of the WWE and she has played, and continues to play, major roles in its history and development, both on-screen and off. Over the years she has been accused of all sorts of things, from the obvious charge of nepotism to outright killing the business. Where, then, does the truth lie?

One of the problems we face when trying to get to grips with any of the McMahons is that they do not, on the whole, give a lot of interviews and those that they do participate in are seldom really in-depth. However, in Stephanie’s case we do have one wonderful resource, the text of her interview with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (back when Congress were considering investigating pro wrestling regarding steroid abuse back in late 2007) that gives us a fantastic insight into her working life, and the WWE creative process as a whole.

Our second problem is one that we face with more or less everybody in professional wrestling, and that is separating the real woman from her on-screen persona. It’s true that it is many years since Stephanie was a regular on-screen character. Nevertheless, it’s probable that most fans think of her as “The Billion Dollar Princess” of the General Manager of Raw or Smackdown before anything else. In actuality, Stephanie’s job title these days is Executive Vice President, Creative Development and Operations. In essence, this means that she is ultimately responsible for the creative team’s output, the management of talent and the booking and management of all live events (always answering to Vince McMahon, of course) which, say what you will, is one heck of a portfolio.

Stephanie’s sheer power within the wrestling business also makes it difficult for us. If a current WWE employee tells us how wonderful she is, we have to ask ourselves whether they really mean it, or whether they simply want to look after their own jobs. By the same token, if a former employee slams her, we have to wonder whether or not they are simply smearing her reputation out of bitterness at being let go. It is always wise not to take things entirely at face value, especially when dealing with the wrestling business. So, what can we be sure of?

In my opinion, the one thing that we must never forget when dealing with Stephanie McMahon is that she was brought up, not merely in the wrestling business but in the WWE. This may seem an obvious point to some but I often think that people don’t really think about what it means. Stephanie was a switchboard operator for the WWE at the age of 12. At around about the same time she was making on-camera appearances modelling WWE merchandise. Since that time, she served in a variety of internships with her mother and father. The only thing that she did that was not a part of the family business was to get her degree in Communications from Boston University. Once she had done that she signalled her intent to go to work full-time in the WWE and began appearing as an on-air character and having a bigger role backstage.

One must also remember that the McMahon family is not the only family in this family business. Kevin Dunn, Executive Vice President, Television Production and one of the most powerful men in the company, is also second generation, as his father worked for the production company that worked with Vince Senior. Dunn is widely regarded as sharing Vince’s vision for the product and he has worked for the company for around about 25 years now. Put simply, as long as Stephanie has worked within the company, Kevin Dunn has been there. All this goes to show that Stephanie has grown up with a very specific vision of how things are done within the wrestling or rather, sports-entertainment, business. She would need a very, very good reason indeed to consider changing that vision.

Stephanie’s on-screen displays have attracted mixed reviews over the years. Personally, I always found her work entertaining. At her height, when she and Triple H were running the show in early 2000 with the McMahon-Helmsley Era, she was a real heat-magnet, just as she was during the WCW/ECW Invasion. Just like her father, she has shown a willingness to be the butt of the joke on occasion and she has generally thrown herself wholeheartedly into whatever situation she has been involved in.

It was in November of 2000 that Stephanie took over as head of the WWE creative team, replacing the fantastically successful Chris Kreski (although Kreski remained on the team for another year or so). At first, all seemed to go well. Stephanie’s first Wrestlemania in her new role, Wrestlemania 17 was very well received. Many reviewers have rated it as being the best, or among the top 3 or so, of all the Wrestlemanias. Critics, however, would argue that at this point Stephanie’s creative team was still following the direction chosen by Kreski. The seeming deterioration of the WWE product over the following few years was assumed to be, by many, proof that Stephanie was not up to the job.

Looking back, it is clear that there were wider issues affecting the WWE at this time than simply the competency of the creative team and there new manager. The first real challenge/opportunity for Stephanie to make her mark was the WCW Invasion storyline, widely recognised as one of the biggest flops in pro wrestling history. How much of the blame for that should be laid at Stephanie’s feet is open to question. What killed the Invasion angle was a combination of several factors, most of which bear the hallmarks of Vince McMahon’s decision-making. The fact that WCW’s top stars were mostly sitting at home collecting big cheques for doing nothing was outside Vince’s control, that’s true. However, Vince has been known to embarrass talent he acquired from the competition long before Stephanie was in charge of creative. It seems that, even when he owned WCW, he couldn’t resist pointing out its inferiority.

Once The McMahon children were involved and Steve Austin had switched to The Alliance, it really was WWE-lite. These were creative decisions, doubtless but one can’t help but suspect that they were Vince McMahon’s decisions. Even if they were not, he still gave the green light to them. Stephanie makes it very clear in her interview with Congress that Vince has the final call on EVERYTHING. This is something that everyone else, whether critics or boosters, agrees on. No matter who is in charge of what, in WWE, everything is ultimately Vince’s call.

Given this, I think it fair to say that the only way to really know what Stephanie’s creative vision is would be to see her running the show without Vince. Sure, the general consensus is that she and Vince are very similar and have a similar vision for the product. Nevertheless, we know that there are times when she disagrees with him. How many of her ideas are over-ruled by Vince? Without taking part in creative meetings, we have no way of knowing. Both her detractors and supporters agree that Stephanie is very intelligent. She’s driven, hard-working and one could not see her leaving, as her brother recently did. She has been brought up in the Vince McMahon/Kevin Dunn way of doing business, the sports-entertainment way, so maybe that will always be her way too. Still, it seems a little unfair that some critics seem to blame Stephanie for everything they dislike about the WWE but then praise Vince for everything that they do like. Ultimately, the buck stops with Vince – the blame and the credit should mostly go to him for every creative endeavour because, without insider knowledge, it is impossible for us to know which calls were his and which hers. All we have to go on are rumours and speculation. Although, aren’t they what this business runs on?