Eric Young Said He Believes Vince McMahon “Failed As A Leader”

On Busted Open, Young criticized the way WWE is organized. With Chris Van Vliet, Young described the work environment as one where “you’re trying to fix other people’s mistakes.”

“With the WWE, I’m not the first guy to say this, Moxley talked about this a bunch, it’s a broken system,” Young stated. “It’s impossible to be creative. It’s impossible to get ahead. It’s impossible to feel like you have even a foothold in your career at all. I’m a person that spent 20+ years grinding, trying to make my reputation and it’s basically dumped on by one person for no reason whatsoever.
“He looked up from his cellphone for five seconds, saw me doing something that maybe he didn’t agree with in that moment and that’s the end of it. The whole time you’re there you’re just trying to fix other people’s mistakes. That’s what it feels like, and it’s an exhausting process. You’re not having fun. There’s no creativity. He wants everyone to be the same, do the same things and sell the same way, and that’s not what pro wrestling is to me.”

Young noted that his experience talking with Vince McMahon was never a negative one. He did say that despite offering ideas, none were ever acted upon.

“He always treated me with respect,” Young noted. “When we talked, we definitely had a few personal conversations between me and him. I had pitched some things and told him what I thought. He was receptive to it. Nothing ever came of it. I don’t take it personally, but I’m in this position because he couldn’t recognize that I had anything to offer.”

Young later called McMahon a failure as a leader. He said that if McMahon could not find something for him in a three-hour show, then he failed not only the company but also everyone else involved.

“The last thing I’ll say about it is this,” Young prefaced. “If you have a three hour pro wrestling television show and you can’t find something for me to do, then you’re failing as a leader. Plain and simple. You failed your company. You failed the shareholders, you failed the fans and you failed yourself. The reason I wasn’t on the show was his choice. No one else’s.

“I think if you ask most of the people who work there, they would be in my corner. He wasn’t in my corner, so I wasn’t in the show, and I would tell him to him his face, ‘you failed as a leader. You can’t find something for Eric Young to do.’ It’s a really weird place. You can’t fully understand it until you’re there.”

Despite Young’s criticisms of WWE and McMahon, Young said he never regretted leaving Impact for WWE. However, he felt that he was capable of doing a lot more than he was doing