Former WWE official “Road Dogg” Brian James spoke on Chris Van Vliet’s Insight show about his time spent working directly with Vince McMahon.
“You sit under that learning tree, sometimes you sit under it until three in the morning, but you learn stuff, little stuff about the business and not just about the business, but how to be a professional and be an executive. He had somebody coming to the office once a week from Carnegie and teaching me how to be an executive. He wanted to make me an executive. It was on me, I couldn’t handle it. To work with that man is difficult. It’s not difficult because of how he is, it’s not difficult because of how he is, it’s difficult because of who he is. He’s a workhorse. He will work all night and be the first one up in the morning to work again.”
“He’s a workhorse, and I couldn’t keep up with it. That’s the truth. I went to him and said, ‘I feel I’m losing my serenity, my sobriety. I’m white-knuckling my sobriety because I’m on call all the time.’ My whole life was SmackDown, and that’s how you have to be in the WWE. You’re married to it. It got hard and I couldn’t hang. I went to NXT where I thought I could stay for a while, and I did, but then they made business decisions to trim some fat and, it’s no secret, I’ve gotten fat. They cut me and 14 other people, it was a business strategy. I called him and said, ‘Hey, thank you.’ Not only did he pay me for ten years and give me ten years of life experience, he sent me to rehab, for free. He saved my life and he did the same for my brother. You’re bitter at that guy? Something is wrong with you. He’s a great leader, he’s a leader of me, that’s for sure.”
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(quotes courtesy of Fightful.com)
