Awesome / Vince McMahon

• Let's start with the first and most important fact of them all: the fact that he managed to turn a regional promotion such as Vince Sr.'s World Wide Wrestling Federation into the behemoth that the WWE is today. Singlehandedly, as pointed out by his own son and many a wrestler out there.
• The way he grew up in a trailer park with an abusive step-father. He also had dyslexia. Comparing what he's achieved with his background, he's nothing short of Determinator personified.
• Any time Vince goes into a match that doesn't end up a Curb-Stomp Battle. His matches with Ric Flair and CM Punk were believably even handed. Even those he does get the worse of it, you have to admire his persistence (especially since most of the time he booked those matches himself).
• The sheer amount of punishment he's taken over the years, for the sake of making entertaining product. Keep in mind, Vince has been punched, kicked, Pedigreed, nut shot, Stunned, chokeslammed, hit with every foreign object under the sun (including a chair shot by Mick Foley that, according to him, knocked two of Vince's teeth caps out), busted open, F5'd, had broken bones, Rock Bottomed, put through tables, superkicked, covered in poop, been ground into the sides of Hell in a Cell, Superman punched, chokeslammed again, and had his face shoved into another man's ass. TWICE. And that's probably not even half the list. No one else who owns a billion dollar company would even CONSIDER putting up with that, yet Vince has nary a hesitation to let those things happen to him.
  • Shawn Michaels once said that Vince won't ask a wrestler to do anything that he himself wouldn't do. For example, Vince did a test run of Shawn's famous zipline entrance at WrestleMania 12 himself just to prove to Shawn that it was safe. Vince would later do something similar at WrestleMania 36, jumping off a ten-foot-high platform during the rehearsals for a stunt that NFL player Rob Gronkowski would do during the show itself.
  • Paul Heyman kept asking Vince if it was OK to throw in his face the amount of bile he ended up throwing during his "You disrespected your father" promo. Vince's retort? "Does it make me money?" And, of course, there's also CM Punk's "Pipebomb" promo. Yep. He's willing to let himself be insulted and disrespected in television by stuff that happened in real life if that drives ratings, buyrates and the likes up. This also has the residual effect of making it so that wrestlers taking shots at Vince on a rival promotion's broadcast will have no effect on WWE whatsoever and nearly always come up just short of generating the desired buzz. Simply put, you can't hurt Vince McMahon by saying "Vince McMahon Sucks" when Vince McMahon himself put "Vince McMahon Sucks" into his own canon!
  • In Mick Foley's book "Have A Nice Day!", no less than Terry Funk, the father of all garbage wrestlers, pointed this out, calling him "the most hardcore man in the business". His reasoning is that, on some level, the wrestlers do what they do because they need a paycheck, but Vince, on the other hand, is a billionaire who doesn't really need the money, and could do anything he pleases with his life, but he gets beaten up, thrown around, steel chairs wrapped around his head, thrown through tables, etc. on national television just because he likes it (and he knows people love to see him get beaten up, since he plays the heel all too well).
• Black Saturday in 1985 where Vince bought Georgia Championship Wrestling and it's time on WTBS was a disaster. The traditional Southern fans hated the WWE's product, and the fact that Vince only bothered to provide Clip Shows didn't help. However, his recovery qualifies as a real-life CMOA. Vince negotiated his way out of the contract and then sold the timeslot back to Jim Crockett Promotions for one million dollars, money which he used to fund the first WrestleMania. So in summary, Vince stole a timeslot out from under his biggest rival, sold it back at a huge markup, and that aforementioned rival ending up essentially paying for a successful and profitable PPV that made Vince even more money.
• Yeah, it did involve irreparably damaging the career of Bret Hart, but you almost have to admire the cojones it takes to take something that was nothing short of a disaster for the business (revealing that everything is rigged, and that you literally just screwed a company man on live television) and turn it into a massive, massive boon via the invention of the Mr. McMahon-Stone Cold Steve Austin rivalry. Pragmatic Villainy at its finest.
  • It helps that Bret Hart and Vince made amends mid-2005 and Vince admitted in the Bret "Hit Man" Hart: The Best There Is, the Best There Was, the Best There Ever Will Be DVD that the Montreal Screwjob was kind of a dickish move and showed some regret in doing it.
• Appearing at the very last telecast of WCW Monday Nitro, where he announced the purchase of WCW. Whether you like him or not; after all he's gone through from 1995 to 2001, it was probably satisfying for him to have finally reached his goal.
• When Mr. McMahon fires somebody as a face, such as Paul Heyman in 2001, Kurt Angle in 2004, Eric Bischoff in 2005, or John Laurinaitis in 2012. It can be intensely satisfying.
• Vince being relived of his duties by HHH. (Nope, he didn't yell, "Vince....YOU'RE FIIIIIIIRED" and then Pedigree him.) It started as cheers because he got fired, but then Vince started crying and the crowd started chanting "THANK YOU VINCE". Crazy old bastard still knows how to work a crowd.
• After 70 weeks of no crowds due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Vince welcomes the fans back as only he can.
  Vince: WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!?

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