Vince McMahon Told Former WWE Star ‘Funny Doesn’t Draw Money’

A former WWE star has revealed the blunt advice Vince McMahon have him when discussing his character – that being that “funny doesn’t draw money”.

Speaking with Sportskeeda, former United States Champion and Money in the Bank winner Ken Anderson – AKA Mr Kennedy – opened up about his dealings with Big Vinny Mac.

He said:

“One of the things that stands out to me was early on when I first debuted, I was really over-the-top, and sort of comedic in my delivery of everything, and I remember him (Vince McMahon) trying to tell me like, you’ve got to stop trying to be funny and entertaining. I remember thinking that isn’t that the point of what we’re trying to do here, to just be entertaining? He was like, and I said well, with all due respect, ‘He goes funny, doesn’t draw money’.

“And he goes, ‘nobody ever drew big bucks being funny, goofy and doing comedy stuff.’ And I was like, with all due respect, but I’m a huge fan of The Rock, and it feels to me that almost every one of the Rock’s promos were funny. And he said yeah, but the thing about The Rock was that he sort of hamstrung himself when he started cutting those funny promos, like he did that, one of my favorite promos ever was The Rock talking to Billy Gunn about The King of The Ring, you remember that? I know it verbatim so I could do it, I’ve seen it so many times.

“It was really, really funny, and he said that, after he did that, it’s like fans always expect you to do that and now you have to deliver that, you have to have that delivery every single night. It’s just really hard to do when you are running 52 weeks a year. So, I think that was an interesting piece of advice. There were times I think where funny is appropriate, but overall, the comedy characters, unfortunately, always seem to be secondary characters.”

Kennedy was with WWE from 2005 to 2009, and is one of the most interesting cases of ‘what could have been’ in the history of the company. First, he won the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania and was primed to become World Champion, but got injured and dropped the briefcase. As it turned out, the injury was far less severe than initially believed so he kind of dropped it for no reason.

Later on there were plans for him to be the illegitimate son of Vince McMahon, but he got suspended for steroid use and that was also dropped, and he never quite recovered. He was released in 2009 after just one match back from another injury absence, supposedly because of John Cena and Randy Orton not being happy with his performance.

• ken anderson
• Mr. Kennedy
• Vince McMahon
• wwe

Share this article with friends