Vince McMahon interview with Pat McAfee

[AkydefGoldberg]

Firstly, who is Pat McAfee as he's gotten Lesnar on his show and Austin last year. I think he's a colour commentator on SD! But no idea what his background is.

Anyway, this interview with Vince is very PR savvy as the WWE owner says all the right things ("giving the fans what they want; "respect"; Saudi) but knowing Punk's Cabana interview in my head, I found most of what he said just fairly generic.

With his age aside, he comes over as someone really relaxed I.e having no serious competition and can just do what he wants.

https://youtu.be/ThKeeYthpyk [I tried to embed but it has been ages since I did it on this forum so I can get the tagging to work!]

[KaiserGlider]

This was the first episode of the Pat McAfee show that I have watched, and it looks like I went in with too high of an expectation. Pat basically jacked Vince off for an hour and a half, didn't really press him on anything. But it was an interesting insight into Vince's lifestyle and creative process. I would say that any consistent WWE viewer should watch this, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who has lost interest in the product (so anyone here). Vince definitely still seems sharp though. So if there's one thing this interview accomplished, it's proving that.

I find it ironic that Vince says he loves confrontation, yet this is his only interview in 8 years - since the Austin podcast. Yet Tony Khan is out there holding hours long press conferences after every single AEW PPV. "Everything" is for the fans", but you'll never catch Vince in a position where he explains or defends any of the numerous booking decisions he has made over the past several years where appeasement of the fans was clearly NOT the objective.

Watching this interview made me realize what wrestlers meant when they talk about Vince's "jedi mind tricks" - how they would walk into his office ready to confront him about something, then he completely changes their mind until they agree with his point of view. It's clear that he can be an extremely persuasive person, but it doesn't matter what he says. Only what he does. That's one thing he has in common with Putin. People that watched his full speech where he announced the invasion into Ukraine actually felt like he made some valid points and Russia is the victim. But if you ignore what Putin says and focus entirely on his actions, it's much easier to believe that he's a madman who has no idea what he's doing.

[The Legend]

To answer your question, Pat McAfee is a loudmouth that used to punt for the Indianapolis Colts in the NFL. After retirement, he transitioned to an entertainment, podcast career. He also commentates for WWE, which is why he didn't press Vince on anything, he's Vince's employee. McAfee is also wrestling at Wrestlemania against Austin Theory.