In this corner - the CEO
McMahon runs a tight business
By JASON BOTCHFORD --
Toronto Sun
It's not often one of the world's most-powerful CEOs allows herself to be ridiculed in front of millions.
For Linda McMahon, though, it's just another day at the office.
The 53-year-old wife of WWF magnate Vince McMahon has allowed herself to be pushed into a ring in a wheelchair with her face strangely contorted, her lips frozen.
In other cameos, she has been slapped ringside in front of a national TV audience by her daughter, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley.
She has waged a very public, and faux, war of words with her husband.
But she has also been on the cover of some of the world's most-respected business magazines for her work in turning her first venture, a small regional company, into a billion-dollar global empire.
'MORE PASSION'
McMahon co-founded the WWF with Vince, chairman of the parent company, in 1979.
If Vince was the soap opera visionary, she was a tough touch of reality, mapping the marketing plan, getting deals done and brokering the first toy deals by the early 1980s.
"If others had done this, they may have had similar success but no one could have done it with more passion and commitment," McMahon said yesterday, as she readies the franchise for tomorrow's WrestleMania X8.
She said it was never a requirement for her daughter Stephanie and son Shane to join their father in the company and even as characters in the show's storylines.
But the kids have followed their parents. Stephanie has developed a sassy bad-girl image and Shane has become Shane-O Mac in the ring. Both are often pitted against dad.
"Our public persona can be one of America's most dysfunctional families, but we are certainly not like that," McMahon said.
