Vince McMahon Just Laughed At The Idea Of Fans Hating A WWE WrestleMania 35 Match

Going into WrestleMania 35 in 2019, it was a bone of contention amongst the fandom that what was billed as Kurt Angle's retirement match would see the Olympic gold medalist in freestyle wrestling Baron Corbin. Even if you're a high voter on Corbin, his position on the card and style in the ring didn't mean he was the best fit for that spot. Corbin even acknowledged the reaction in a December 2021 interview.

"To go into WrestleMania when everyone in the world wanted him to face John Cena, not Baron Corbin, and in Chicago when he announced it, the guttural boo's of like, no," Corbin told Ryan Satin. "That warmed my heart."

Now, in a Twitter thread about WrestleMania 35 posted on Thursday, then-WWE writer (and now Los Angeles Times contributor) Dave Schilling shared numerous behind-the-scenes details about the show, including about that match.

"Oh no[,] it's Kurt Angle Vs Baron Corbin," Schilling wrote while live tweeting his rewatch of the show. "When it was mentioned in a production meeting that the fans hated the idea of this match, Vince laughed so hard and said 'f**k em.'"

Though McMahon rejecting the fans' feedback isn'tt unusual, he hasn't always reacted that way. On The New Day's "Feel the Power" podcast in 2020, Xavier Woods recalled how his boss seemed genuinely bothered by how crowds rejected their original babyface gimmick.

"I remember when we were in the office and we were talking to him about that, the genuine pain in his face," Woods recalled. "Like, 'Oh, you guys really don't think this is gonna work.'" However, he did think there was more to McMahon's reaction beneath the surface: "I still to this day think it was like a test to see if we would try to nut up and change things."