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Full Transcript Of Stephanie's Interview With Government
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Full Transcript Of Stephanie's Interview With Government
Below is a transcript of an interview government officials conducted with Stephanie McMahon Levesque on Friday, December 14, 2007 largely regarding steroid use in World Wrestling Entertainment. McMahon also goes into great detail on the behind the scenes aspects of WWE.

But first, here are the main points coming out of the interview:

- Scripts for television shows are constantly being changed up until and on the day of the show.

- Stephanie now oversees John Laurainitis because "he needed some management."

- Stephanie calls Vince and Linda "Vince" and "Linda" at work. However, she calls them both mom and dad at home.

- They are in the midst of capitalizing on ECW's strong following, but they want to change its image and clean it up.

- Vince doesn't believe in appealing to a certain demographic - they appeal to a "cross-section of Americana."

- Only issue of a wrestler not wanting to switch brands was with Shawn Michaels (Stephanie doesn't specifically state his name though) because Tuesday is his day of worship.

- WWE want everyone to be a main-eventer because it means more money for everyone.

- Stephanie calls Hulk Hogan a terrible wrestler from a technical standpoint, but he has incredible psychology and is incredibly charismatic.

- WWE talent relations gave Chris Benoit four months off after he said he was having a very difficult time and needed some time off to go home.

- Main eventers can make between $150,000 to $200,000 per pay-per-view event. They can also make up to $1,000,000 at a WrestleMania event.

-- Wrestlers are compensated with 25% of the revenue for licensed merchandise (like T-shirts only available at K-Mart with the tag saying Fruit of the Loom for example) and 10% for WWE brand merchandise. Stephanie said Vince made his contracts that way because he believes his performers should be part of the company's revenue stream and deserve to be treated as fairly as possible.

- The typical WWE contract runs from three to five years. If they want to keep a three-year contracted performer employed, they usually start negotiating one year before the original contract is set to expire.

- Stephanie doesn't name the wrestler, but at the time, they had a a person in the developmental program that creative wanted to call up, saying he has amazing charisma. However, he wasn't ready to be called up because his ring skills weren't up to par. She says while charisma will probably take you the farthest, you still need to be able to wrestle at least somewhat decently.

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