Vince McMahon was recently interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter to promote Wrestlemania 25 and ended up speaking on several subjects. Here are the highlights:
Whether WWE is concerned with TNA as competition: “My concern with TNA is not in terms of competition. My concern with TNA is that they are TV-14, and we are PG. They have to change with the times. I think some of the things they do on television are reprehensible, but it is a TV-14 rating. That’s the only bone I have to pick with them. Their TV ratings are a fraction of ours.”
Triple H’s use of a Sledgehammer in the Randy Orton home invasion on a PG program: “Right. What we try to do in situations like that is use things that you can’t find around the house. You will never see us use a baseball bat. You don’t find folding metal chairs around the house. We are very selective. You can go up to the line. It’s storytelling; that’s how our business thrives. If you have well-defined characters and put them in the right story line against other characters, people care about their welfare.”
On TV ratings weakening heading into WrestleMania: “Quite frankly our TV ratings have been very good. We averaged over a 4, I think, three weeks ago. Last week and the week before it was a bit less so because of a number of factors: how many people watched TV and one-off events. What you have to look at is our overall reach in the course of a week. On TV, we reach over 15 million people each and every week, 52 weeks a year.”
UFC’s impact on WWE: “Most people thought at one point that we would be competitors. But it turns out they are not competition to us at all, or hardly at all. They are sport, we are entertainment; it’s a huge difference. The revenue they have cut into is that of boxing.”
