Former WWE writer claims he was fired after changing racially offensive segment in todays Wrestling news
Michael Leonardi posted a video on his LinkedIn
Former WWE writer claims he was fired in 2016 after changing a script to Vince McMahon’s displeasure.
Michael Leonardi was a part of WWE’s on-air promotion team from 2001 to 2005. He returned to the company as a creative team member in April 2015. He was fired from the company the following January.
Leonardi posted two videos on his LinkedIn account recently detailing the reasons for his departure from WWE.
Leonardi captioned the first video he made with:
Vince McMahon fired me in 2016 for trying to protect the company against airing a racially offensive segment. For years, I felt ashamed of the situation and replayed it in my mind 1000’s times to see what I could have possibly done to avoid being fired. I wanted to let it all out as I am finally starting to think that maybe I didn’t deserve being fired.
Leonardi begins his first video by stating that he has enjoyed working with WWE, and his coworkers. He says:
I love WWE. I loved working at WWE. I loved my coworkers. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: the most talented people I have ever worked with.
Leonardi claims he was fired by the company because he changed a segment which aired in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2016 edition of Raw.
He continued:
I was fired for a particular segment that still irritates me. I think about it constantly and always wonder what I could have improved to avoid being fired.
Mark Henry, Titus O’Neil (R-Truth), and Neville (PAC) were all involved in the segment. Leonardi said that they were given a new script for the segment at short notice, and had little time to shoot it.
Leonardi continued:
The script asked Neville to speak out and tell everyone that he has a ‘dream’ too, and that dream was to win the Royal Rumble. I remember Neville coming to me after reading it and saying, “I can’t do this.”
To try and play off of that was dumb, it was poor phrasing.
It doesn’t make Neville appear like a face. This is what a heel would do, right? It would be something a bad guy says to undermine the importance.
Leonardi said that Truth, Henry and O’Neil also felt uncomfortable with the line.
Not only did Neville not feel comfortable saying it, but the other three men in the room, Titus, R-Truth, and Mark Henry were like, “Yeah this is f****** terrible.”
We didn’t have time to go and get rewrites, and I wasn’t comfortable with the idea. I also did not think it was a good option to ask them to do this as is. The talent did not want to shoot the video that way.
He said that they had to find a way of pulling off the scene, without it coming across as racially offensive. Leonardi describes the change as “light and funny.” They had R-Truth read the line in place of Neville.
Leonardi’s boss, Dave Kapoor (Ranjin Sing), approved the scene at the time but told Leonardi that he should tell McMahon the changes made. Leonardi claimed that he explained to McMahon the situation and received the following response.
I’ll never forgot this, as he stared at the screen and took off his headphones, he turned to me and asked, “So, you didn’t give me what i wanted?”
I told him what we did again, the circumstances, and the limitations we had. I accepted full responsibility and he then just spit me out, pardon my French.
Leonardi was given the script for SmackDown and told to have Titus O’Neil read it word-forword. Leonardi said that it took them over two hours to shoot the video.
Leonardi said if he had it to do over, he would have told the talent to shoot it the way Vince wanted it and also to shoot another version in the style they wanted.
When you have a talent who is like ‘I’m hesitant to say this’, and you’ve got three Black men on a racially offensive thing, they are like ‘this is terrible’, and they’re saying, ‘we can’t release this’. And you don’t have time to go back to get rewrites, approvals, etc., so you have to make decisions on the spot.
We all worked together, including my boss, and came up with what we thought would be the best solution. Vince thought it was a big no-no, and I got fired.
Leonardi then explained his departure from the firm in 2005. He noted that he had been tasked with creating an audio-visual package for the Muhammad Hassan vs. Undertaker feud, leading up to The Great American Bash. Leonardi stated that he requested to work on another project because he thought the angle was insensitive. This was especially true in light of the London bombings which occurred in July 2005.
They demoted me. They demoted me.
He was given his responsibilities back after UPN demanded that the Muhammad Hassan character not be shown on their channel. Leonardi left the company shortly after, but he says he loves it and is still loyal to it.
Former WWE writer claims he was fired after changing racially offensive segment in todays Wrestling news, Chatalong Chatbox, Results will be Hidden inside a spoiler Button so you will not bet spoiled about direct results.
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