Is Vince McMahon’s son about to betray WWE on SummerSlam weekend?

Is there anything more Shakespearean than professional wrestling? If you answered “yes, lots of things – the plays of William Shakespeare, for instance”, then fine, congratulations on being smart. Everybody’s really proud of you.

What wrestling has that your so-called “legitimate theatre” lacks, however, is that incredible blurring of the lines between reality and fiction that those in the business call “kayfabe” – that beautiful bit of paradoxical thinking that allows us to accept that the Undertaker is actually a zombie sorcerer cowboy with magic powers, but that he’ll also appear in commercials to sell his action figures.

“Kayfabe” means that any time a piece of news drops about a wrestler or wrestling promotion, it immediately puts us on the intellectual back foot. Is this really happening? Or is this just a way to set up an Intercontinental Championship match at this year’s Survivor Series? You can never really be sure, and that’s what makes it great.

This week, however, saw the ultimate convergence of drama, betrayal, backstabbing and confusion that makes professional wrestling the greatest storytelling medium in the world, as Shane McMahon – son of former WWE chair Vince McMahon – was spotted taking a meeting with Fulham FC and Jacksonville Jaguars owner Tony Khan. Khan, as well as having stakes in both American and real football, also heads up All Elite Wrestling (AEW) – the closest thing WWE has had to a serious competitor in almost two decades.

Wrestling news and entertainment website WrestleTalk, in conjunction with Fightful, released a candid photograph of the two men being caught by surprise while taking a meeting together in an office at a private Arlington airport. The photo comes after weeks of rumours and speculation that McMahon was AEW-bound, either in a business or on-screen capacity – prospects which, until recently, seemed as impossible as they did bizarre. Shane has since spoken about the meeting in vague terms, saying, “We talked about many things, but mostly about our shared love for the business.”

I spoke to WrestleTalk’s Luke Owen, who explained just how strange the prospect of a partnership between the two is for wrestling fans: “This is an incredibly surreal moment. A McMahon meeting with the owner of the company that launched to be a competitor to the McMahon empire – the whole thing has a real Succession vibe. What will become of it, I don’t know – but it could be the start of something monumental.”

Monumental is certainly the word. You have to understand, for the longest time Vince McMahon was WWE. He single-handedly dominated the industry, and for much of that time refused to acknowledge that such a thing as “competition” could even exist. Any threats to his soft monopoly on the business were ignored, stamped out, or both.

Likewise, the McMahon family name was synonymous with the company – Vince bought the company from his father in 1982, who in turn had owned it since it was known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in the 1950s. It was a family business, with both Shane and daughter Stephanie becoming prominent on-screen figures – Shane in particular was a prominent member of the wrestling roster.

It seemed like Vince would stay on until the bitter end, and it was only in 2022, when the company came under fire for hush money payments he had allegedly made to a former mistress, that discussions began about him stepping down. The company was sold to UFC owners TKO last year, and the emergence of further scandals caused Vince to part ways with the company indefinitely.

Shane meeting with one of his father’s competitors – even a former competitor – is a complete repudiation of the Vince McMahon booking philosophy which dominated WWE, and by extension professional wrestling as a whole, for more than four decades. While Vince has been gone for some time now, this is one of those things that really hammers home just how enormous a sea change the wrestling landscape has experienced in just a few short years.

Once you get past the inherent weirdness of the situation, though, it does make a strange sort of sense. Both Shane and Tony are the sons of billionaires, trying to get out from under their father’s shadows. Both have made unlikely waves in the wrestling business – Tony by founding AEW, Shane by proving himself a surprisingly competent wrestler, willing to throw himself off high structures and through glass for our amusement (though he hasn’t been seen in the company since WrestleMania 39, when he tore both his quads seconds after stepping into the ring). Both also, above all else, really love wrestling.

There’s also a bit of life imitating art going on. When WWE bought WCW – its main competitor throughout the nineties – in 2001, they introduced the sale to audiences by having Shane kayfabe-betray his father by purchasing the company out from under him live on television. That ended up being the start of a WCW/WWE crossover storyline, but it didn’t really end up going anywhere and really disappointed the fans, so let’s hope that’s where the comparisons end.

For this to happen the same week of SummerSlam – WWE’s secondary flagship event, right behind WrestleMania – adds an extra level of intrigue to this whole strange situation. On what should be WWE’s biggest night of the year, all eyes are on a blurry photograph, hastily taken in an office in a Texas airport. If nothing else comes of it, the two did a good job of overshadowing their mutual rival.

Sons betraying fathers. Secret meetings. Shocking twists. If Shakespeare had a few more body slams, it would almost be as good as wrestling.