Jim Ross says Vince McMahon shouted at him through his headset several times a show, and never once did the same to Jerry Lawler.
Ross was asked on Grilling JR what it was like calling a show with McMahon in his ear, and the answer started with a warning about how consistent it was.
“If his headset was working, and there was somebody on the other end, you can bet your sweet a** he was going to be yelling. I don’t understand it. I don’t know if it’s apprehension, or someone being especially insecure, or they got to be in control. I don’t know, because oftentimes he’d tell me to say something that I’d already said, because he wasn’t listening.”
That happened often enough for Ross to have a specific example.
“I had a situation one time where something happened in the ring, and he got hotter than hell because I didn’t say something regarding the match. And if I had not said anything, then he had a legitimate (thing to say). But the problem was I’d already said it.”
“I remember we went to a commercial break on Monday Night Raw, and he said to me, JR, did you hear what I told you to say? Yeah, I heard you, but I already said it. By saying it again it made us both look stupid. Oh, that’s a good idea. Okay. Whatever. But I’d already said it. He just wouldn’t listen.”
Ross was quick to add context rather than leave it as a complaint.
“But you got to also understand, I’m not saying he’s not interested in the product. He runs everything. He might be sitting there approving T-shirt designs. Hell, I don’t know. So, in any event, he was challenging to work for every time out.”
The comparison he drew was with his broadcast partner.
“Some nights, my best times with WWE as an announcer, working with Lawler, and Heyman was great too. So I worked with some mighty powerful broadcasters in my day. But I had a great experience working with Lawler because Vince never yelled at Lawler, because he knew Lawler couldn’t take it and wouldn’t take it. So I never heard Vince lash out at Jerry, not one time. Me, on the other hand, several times a show.”
Speaking about Lawler elsewhere in the same episode, Ross said the pair never attended production meetings together during the Attitude Era, because Lawler did not want to sit in them and there was nothing anyone needed to teach him.
“He had such a great feel for the business in general that he didn’t need much preparation of that sort to be effective. I always thought that I was so lucky that I got to work with Bobby Heenan and Jerry Lawler, because they both made me look better and be better than I probably actually was.”
The two worked together at WrestleCon in Minneapolis over SummerSlam weekend. McMahon left WWE in January 2024.
