A new report has shed further light on the extent of Vince McMahon’s influence over WWE creative long after the public believed he had stepped away.
According to the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, McMahon remained the final decision-maker on creative matters “until well into 2023” following his return to the company. While Paul Levesque (Triple H) and the writing team were responsible for crafting the initial scripts, McMahon reportedly had the authority to revise them and ultimately approve—or reject—the final versions of the shows for much of that year.
Dave Meltzer reports that this arrangement only changed when Ari Emanuel, the CEO of TKO, intervened directly. Emanuel allegedly “decreed that Levesque in fact was actually going to be in charge of creative,” a move said to be driven by internal complaints regarding McMahon’s frequent last-minute changes to television scripts.
The shift marked the first time since McMahon’s return that creative authority was clearly and firmly removed from his hands.
Meltzer also pointed out an ironic twist regarding WWE’s current creative direction. Although Cody Rhodes is widely viewed as a “Levesque guy” in the modern WWE era, it was actually McMahon who personally negotiated Rhodes’ return in 2022 and laid the groundwork for the long-term storyline that ultimately paid off across WrestleMania 39 and WrestleMania 40.
The Observer’s reporting aligns closely with newly disclosed documents and text messages obtained by Wrestlenomics and Post Wrestling from the ongoing WWE shareholder lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that McMahon breached his fiduciary duties by engineering the WWE–UFC merger primarily to maintain his own power.
Among the most notable revelations is a July 22, 2022 text message from Mark Shapiro, sent to CFOs Andrew Schleimer and Jason Lublin—the same day McMahon initially announced his retirement.
“Nick and Stephanie are going to take over the WWE for the next nine months,” Shapiro wrote.
“Vince [will] be back with a new board, or he will take the company private, or he will sell it/coming to us. The race is on. The courtship is on.”
Shapiro’s prediction proved accurate. McMahon returned to WWE’s board less than six months later, in January 2023, and the sale to Endeavor was finalized shortly thereafter.
The newly revealed documents also confirm that McMahon was actively involved in creative leading into WrestleMania 39, directly contradicting public comments made at the time by Nick Khan, who stated on CNBC that McMahon had no creative input because he no longer held an executive role.
With the shareholder lawsuit set to proceed to trial in 2026, these revelations continue to paint a far more complex—and controversial—picture of WWE’s creative power structure during the transition into the TKO era.
