When you're the boss' daughter, there are bound to be some people who don't like you. When you're Vince McMahon's daughter, Stephanie McMahon, those hard feelings become full-on feuds.
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00:00When you're the boss' daughter, there are bound to be some people who don't like you.
00:04When you're Vince McMahon's daughter, Stephanie McMahon, those hard feelings become full-on
00:09feuds.
00:11Chyna and Triple H real name Paul Levesque were once an item, reportedly dating from
00:151996 until 2000. Their relationship ended abruptly and bitterly when she learned that
00:20he was having an affair with the woman who would become his wife, Stephanie McMahon.
00:25Chyna's former manager, Anthony Anzaldo, told Wrestling Inc. that Chyna found a love letter
00:29McMahon had written Levesque and angrily confronted him.
00:33When they had that encounter, let's just say it was loud and there was issues.
00:39Anzaldo explained that Chyna immediately exited the home they were sharing, not even bothering
00:43to take any of her stuff. He claimed that Chyna was fired the next day without cause.
00:48That led Chyna to corner Stephanie in her father's office for an understandably tense
00:52meeting.
00:53It didn't get physical, but it was ugly.
00:55Former WWE announcer Jim Ross, however, shared a different recollection of Chyna's WWE exit.
01:01He told BR Magazine that despite all the drama, Vince McMahon still wanted to keep her in
01:05the fold, firmly believing that her beef with his daughter would subside.
01:09Ross claimed that WWE offered Chyna $400,000 to renew her contract. However, she demanded
01:15$1 million and wouldn't budge. Ross said it was an outrageous demand that wasn't even
01:20realistic.
01:21Tragically, Chyna died in 2016 at the age of 46.
01:26In 2013, a Raw segment involving Stephanie McMahon and then-diva Caitlyn, among others,
01:32reportedly spilled over from real life. The scripted segment featured Caitlyn, whose real
01:37name is Celeste Bonin, interrupting McMahon, who angrily told her to never do it again.
01:42The Wrestling Observer reported that this TV moment was based on an actual behind-the-scenes
01:46incident.
01:47The outlet reported that Caitlyn had butted in while McMahon was engaged in a conversation
01:51with someone else, irking McMahon. It wasn't long after that encounter that Caitlyn lost
01:55the WWE Divas title. On a 2023 episode of Muscle Memory, Bonin wondered why Stephanie
02:01ran her down like that.
02:02To be so honest, it was all very confusing. It was, like, all so confusing.
02:06Her WWE career as Caitlyn soon came to an end, save for a brief 2018 return. Bonin told
02:12Renee Paquette that when she exited in 2014, she was at a frighteningly low ebb.
02:18I thought I was just gonna get fired. I felt, like, less and less relevant. I was — I
02:22had so much, like, shame.
02:25Bonin seems to be in a much better place now, but it's unclear if she and Stephanie ever
02:29made amends.
02:31It's not always clear how much of the animosity between WWE wrestlers is real and how much
02:36is total fiction for the cameras. That was certainly true of the rivalry between Chris
02:40Jericho and Stephanie McMahon that persisted for years.
02:44Some conflict between the two happened entirely backstage, though. Before a scheduled 2009
02:49match between Jericho and John Cena in London, Jericho taunted the audience so intensely
02:55that someone in the crowd threw a glow stick at him, smacking him in the eye. Suddenly,
02:59glow sticks began flying throughout the venue. When he exited the ring and went backstage,
03:04WWE management was furious with him for getting the crowd so amped up that things became potentially
03:09dangerous.
03:10According to Jericho, Stephanie was particularly enraged. In an appearance on the Busted Open
03:15podcast, Jericho said that when he went backstage, he was told that Stephanie wanted him fined
03:20and suspended. His response?
03:22Well, Stephanie's not my boss. I don't give a s— what Stephanie wants. You can tell
03:25her that.
03:26To make his point, Jericho left a voicemail for Vince McMahon, angrily telling him that
03:30his job is to generate heat in the ring, and that now he was in trouble for doing his job
03:35too well.
03:36It all worked out, according to Jericho, as Vince texted him back,
03:40with a smiley face emoji.
03:42In his heyday, Bret Hitman Hart was one of WWE's biggest stars. He's been retired for
03:47more than 20 years, but has demonstrated that he keeps up with the product. And he wasn't
03:51the biggest fan of its evolution a few years ago. He argued in a shoot interview conducted
03:56around the time that Triple H won the WWE title in 2016 that Triple H and his wife,
04:01Stephanie McMahon, weren't doing a great job. He said,
04:04The two of them are starting to show they don't know what they're doing, in my opinion.
04:08Hart had expressed similar views when he spoke with Forbes around the same time, lambasting
04:12Stephanie for possessing little front-line knowledge of the company she was leading.
04:16What does Stephanie McMahon know about wrestling? I don't know.
04:19Hart insisted that Stephanie never went on the road with him and his fellow wrestlers,
04:23and that her brother Shane McMahon had a better grasp on the industry.
04:27Gail Kim had two separate stints in WWE, from 2002 until 2004, and 2008 through to 2011.
04:34Looking back on her years with the promotion while appearing on the Café de Renée with
04:38Renée Dupree podcast, Kim shared that while Stephanie McMahon never mistreated female
04:44wrestlers, she also didn't go out of her way to increase their salaries to the levels of
04:47their male counterparts.
04:48Stephanie was nice. Stephanie was professional with us backstage. But in no way did I ever
04:55feel like she was fighting for us.
04:58She also revealed that many members of the WWE women's roster were hesitant to address
05:01the pay disparity or otherwise upset the status quo, for fear that they might lose their jobs.
05:07Kim added that even if McMahon had taken a stand on behalf of the women's roster, it's
05:11more than likely that she would have encountered huge resistance at the top, from her father,
05:15Vince McMahon.
05:16I just thought it was a losing battle, because Vince just never liked women's wrestling.
05:22You know, that's what you chalk it up to.
05:24In 2015, actress Patricia Arquette, whose brother David is a former WCW world champion,
05:30you may recall, made an impassioned speech upon winning an Oscar at the 2015 Academy
05:34Awards. She said,
05:36"...it's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women of
05:40the United States of America."
05:42Her comments caught the ears of Stephanie McMahon, who thanked Arquette for using her
05:45platform to promote the issue of men and women's salary inequity. McMahon's tweet fell flat
05:51with former WWE diva AJ Lee. The wrestler, who now goes by her real name, AJ Mendes,
05:56on social media, fired back at her former boss, replying,
05:59"...your female wrestlers have record-selling merchandise and have starred in the highest-rated
06:04segment of the show several times, and yet they receive a fraction of the wages and screen
06:08time of the majority of the male roster."
06:10McMahon took the diplomatic route, replying,
06:12"...I appreciate your opinion along with the hashtag, useyourvoice."
06:17Scott Steiner, alongside his brother and tag team partner Rick Steiner, wrestled for
06:21many organizations over the years, including a few different runs in WWE. He has made it
06:26clear that his experience with Stephanie McMahon and her husband, Triple H, was not a positive
06:31one. That's the takeaway from a 2017 interview he gave to Nick's Strength & Power. When WWE
06:37came up, his response couldn't have been more blunt.
06:41When pressed as to why he felt that way, Scott said it was the leadership, and named two
06:45names. That said, Scott seems to have had a change of heart over the years. He and Rick
06:54returned to WWE in 2022 to be indicted into the Hall of Fame.
06:59When Rob Van Dam transitioned to WWE after being one of the top stars in ECW, he quickly
07:05realized that he'd have to use some different skills. He was expected to participate in
07:09far more tightly scripted storylines to keep the weekly TV shows moving forward. That included
07:15some acting in backstage segments, and one that never came to fruition called for him
07:19to become romantically involved with Stephanie McMahon. He had some second thoughts about
07:23that one. He explained on his podcast, One of a Kind with RVD, that his then-wife would
07:28not have been pleased.
07:29I saw where the story was going and I was uncomfortable with it because that would make
07:34my life hell at home.
07:35Van Dam shared his concerns with McMahon, who advised him to look at the situation as
07:40if they were both actors portraying characters. Van Dam added that pretending to romance the
07:45daughter of the guy who paid his salary wasn't necessarily the most comfortable situation
07:48for him. He said he felt like he would always have to wash his hands before a segment because
07:53he was, quote, probably dirty or whatever.
07:56A longstanding pro wrestling rumor has it that Macho Man Randy Savage's 1994 exit from
08:02WWE had to do with an inappropriate romance with Stephanie McMahon when she was 17. According
08:07to former pro wrestler and WWE manager Dutch Mantell, whether the rumor was true was beside
08:13the point. He said on his Storytime podcast,
08:15It was more or less accepted as fact.
08:18The way Mantell recalled the situation, Savage had been warned to stay away from Stephanie
08:22— likely not by her father, then-WWE chairman Vince McMahon, but by someone else within
08:27the organization.
08:28She may have said something like, she likes him, and he got back to Vince.
08:33Mantell said he could not confirm whether the rumor was true. However, Savage's ex-girlfriend,
08:38Stephanie Bellers, who went by the name Gorgeous George in WCW, claimed that Savage had accidentally
08:43confirmed it was true while he was high. She said in a phone call to The Hannibal TV,
08:47Oh, he told me. I think he didn't mean to tell me that.
08:50It was long thought that Savage was not inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame while he was alive
08:55because of this rumor, and the conflict it caused with the McMahon family. Savage was
09:00posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015, four years after his 2011 death from
09:05a heart attack at age 58.