Vince McMahon Retiring From All Duties, WWE Had Lesnar Replacement

In case you missed Friday’s late news, Vince McMahon is retiring from all WWE-related duties, per reports. Plus, though things worked out, WWE had a Lesnar replacement in mind.

Vince McMahon Retiring From All Duties

After an avalanche of bad press stemming from a lot of hush money payments and bad behavior, Vince McMahon is retiring from all WWE duties.

The news broke late Friday, just hours before SmackDown was to kick off in Boston.

There might have been some speculation on just how much Vince was relinquishing via his retirement, but according to WrestleNomics, he is retiring from all duties.

Including creative control, which as we all know…was Vince’s pride and joy.

Just as the breaking news of the millions in hush money made mainstream news, so too did McMahon’s retirement.

Outlets such as ESPN and FOX covered the retirement.

Where WWE goes from here will be interesting to watch.

Nick Khan joins Stephanie McMahon as co-CEOs of the company moving forward. Khan has his hands all over the company already, as he has reportedly been behind many of the recent cuts to trim budgets.

The bigger note? Fans finally get what they have wanted, ever since NXT became the darling of many.

Triple H takes over John Laurinatis’ former EVP role, and is expected to have a big hand in creative.

Whether that fixes the current issues or not remains to be seen.

For all we know, with his daughter and son-in-law now holding two prominent positions, Vince might just be feeding them both things to do.

I’d imagine WWE to be better off with fresh, non-Vince ideas…but we shall see.

WWE Had Lesnar Replacement

Now, the other crazy news from Friday was that one half of the SummerSlam main event stormed out of SmackDown…and WWE had a Lesnar replacement if he wasn’t going to work.

Key words here being had, and if he wasn’t.

If you caught Friday’s show, it closed with The Beast showing up and destroying Mr. Money In The Bank.

This lets us know something…but what exactly is not yet clear.

Was the story of Lesnar being upset and going home all fabricated?

Or, was it legit, and someone in the new power structure (or, several someones) spoke to Lesnar and convinced him to stay the course?

Knowing how things work, we should eventually figure this out.

It is possible that, upon learning of McMahon’s retirement, Lesnar was ticked off and stormed out. After all, he has had a great relationship with the former WWE CEO.

Vince retiring might mean less big paydays…or none at all, if Nick Khan and team don’t value Lesnar like Vince did.

Regardless of who did what, Lesnar was talked off the proverbial ledge, at least for now. He was all smiles as he dominated to close out SmackDown.

More notable was that, if Lesnar was unable to be reasoned with, WWE had a Lesnar replacement lined up.

Now, that could mean that they would have given Drew McIntyre or Sheamus the SummerSlam shot, instead of (or in addition to) the UK shot.

Or, perhaps someone had made a call to a bigger surprise, someone not currently active or even signed?

One report indicated that Goldberg might have indeed been plan b.

Even though we’ve seen a lot of Lesnar and Reigns, I think another round of that pairing would far surpass a match between Reigns and Goldberg.