Former WWE writer claiming to have been fired for changing racially insensitive promo

[Chris]

A former WWE writer is alleging he was fired from the company in 2016 for changing a script against Vince McMahon's wishes.

Michael Leonardi worked with WWE from 2001 to 2005 as part of the on-air promotion department. He also returned to the company in April 2015 as a member of the creative team before he was fired the following January.

Leonardi recently posted two videos to his LinkedIn account detailing what led to both of his departures from WWE.

Leonardi captioned his first video with:

I was fired by Vince McMahon back in 2016 while trying to protect the company from airing a racially insensitive segment. For years I felt ashamed and replayed the situation 1000's of times over in my head trying to figure out what I could have done to not get fired. In light of everything going on, I just wanted to get it off my chest as I'm finally starting to feel like maybe I didn't deserve to be fired

Leonardi starts his first video by explaining that he enjoyed working with WWE and his co-workers. He says:

I love WWE. I loved working there. I loved all of my coworkers. I've said this before and I'll say it again, the most talented people I've ever worked with.

However, Leonardi says he was fired from the company for changing a segment that aired on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of Raw in 2016.

He continued:

I was fired over a very particular segment which quite frankly still rubs me the wrong way, and I think about it all the time and I always think about what I could have done better, if anything, to have not gotten fired.

The segment involved Neville (PAC), Titus O'Neil, R-Truth, and Mark Henry. Leonardi said they were given an updated script for the segment on short notice and did not have much time to shoot it.

Leonardi continued:

The script called for Neville to speak up and tell everyone else that he's got 'a dream' too and that dream is to win the Royal Rumble. And I remember Neville coming up to me after he read it and he was like, 'I can't say this.'
(Trying to compare) a wrestler who wants to one day win the Royal Rumble to one of the most iconic speeches in American history about civil rights and how important that was - to try and play on that was just dumb, it was poor writing.
It doesn't make Neville look like a face. That would be something that a heel would say, right? That would be something that a bad guy would say in that way to undermine the importance of that speech.

Leonardi continued to say that Truth, Henry, and O'Neil were also uncomfortable with the line.

Not only was Neville not comfortable saying it, the other three guys in the room, Titus and R-Truth and Mark Henry, were like, 'Yeah, this is f'ing terrible.'
We did not have time to go back and get rewrites and I was not comfortable at all, nor did I even think this was an option, quite frankly, to try and get them to do it as is. The talent didn't want to shoot it that way.

He continued to say that they tried to find a way to pull off the scene without it coming off as racially insensitive. They changed the script to have R-Truth deliver the line instead of Neville in a way that Leonardi says was "light and fun."

Dave Kapoor (Ranjin Singh) was Leonardi's boss at the time and approved the scene but told Leonardi to tell McMahon about the changes they made to it. Leonardi said he explained the situation to McMahon and then received the following response:

I'll never forget this, he's staring at the screen, he takes off his headphones and he turns to me and said, 'So, you didn't give me what I wanted?'
I explained to him again what we did, the circumstances around it, the limitations that we had. I took full responsibility for it and then he just chewed me the f**k out, pardon my french.

The following day at the SmackDown taping, Leonardi was given a script and told that Titus O'Neil needed to deliver it word-for-word. Leonardi said it took over two hours for them to shoot it.

Leonardi said that if he could handle the situation over again, he would tell the talent to shoot the scene as Vince wanted it but also shoot another version the way they wanted to do it.

When you have a talent that is like, ‘I’m not saying this, I’m not comfortable saying this’ and you have three Black guys on a racially insensitive thing, they’re like, ‘this is terrible, like, we can’t put this out’ and you have no time to go back and get rewrites or get approvals, or anything else like that, you’ve got to make calls on the fly sometimes.
We collaborated, we all put our heads together, my boss included and we put together what we thought was the best possible thing. But, Vince thought that was a major no-no and I got fired for it.

Leonardi then detailed his departure from the company in 2005, noting that he was tasked with creating a video package for the Muhammad Hassan and Undertaker feud leading up to The Great American Bash. Leonardi said he asked to work on a different project as he felt the angle was insensitive, especially considering the London bombings in July of that year.

They demoted me. They didn't demote me financially but they pretty much took away all my responsibilities at the time.

However, he was given back his responsibilities after UPN insisted the Muhammad Hassan character no longer be shown on their network. Leonardi decided to leave shortly after regardless but says he still loves the company and that's why he went back 10 years later.

https://www.f4wonline.com/news/wwe/former-wwe-writer-says-he-was-fired-for-changing-racially-insensitive-segment

 

[Hidden Blaze]

Well fuck, that was definitely a read. Good on him for doing what he could to make it at least better than what they intended.

 

[Cwalker]

Much respect to him for sticking with his guns

 

[Leon TrotSky]

Vince doing Vince things

 

[Buffy]

Has earned a lot of my respect.

 

[Grimoire Lenin]

Vince McMahon and racism? I'm shocked!