Full Transcript Of Stephanie's Interview With Government

Below is a transcript of an interview government officials conducted with Stephanie McMahon Levesque on Friday, December 14, 2007 largely regarding steroid use in World Wrestling Entertainment. McMahon also goes into great detail on the behind the scenes aspects of WWE.

But first, here are the main points coming out of the interview:

- Scripts for television shows are constantly being changed up until and on the day of the show.

- Stephanie now oversees John Laurainitis because "he needed some management."

- Stephanie calls Vince and Linda "Vince" and "Linda" at work. However, she calls them both mom and dad at home.

- They are in the midst of capitalizing on ECW's strong following, but they want to change its image and clean it up.

- Vince doesn't believe in appealing to a certain demographic – they appeal to a "cross-section of Americana."

- Only issue of a wrestler not wanting to switch brands was with Shawn Michaels (Stephanie doesn't specifically state his name though) because Tuesday is his day of worship.

- WWE want everyone to be a main-eventer because it means more money for everyone.

- Stephanie calls Hulk Hogan a terrible wrestler from a technical standpoint, but he has incredible psychology and is incredibly charismatic.

- WWE talent relations gave Chris Benoit four months off after he said he was having a very difficult time and needed some time off to go home.

- Main eventers can make between $150,000 to $200,000 per pay-per-view event. They can also make up to $1,000,000 at a WrestleMania event.

– Wrestlers are compensated with 25% of the revenue for licensed merchandise (like T-shirts only available at K-Mart with the tag saying Fruit of the Loom for example) and 10% for WWE brand merchandise. Stephanie said Vince made his contracts that way because he believes his performers should be part of the company's revenue stream and deserve to be treated as fairly as possible.

- The typical WWE contract runs from three to five years. If they want to keep a three-year contracted performer employed, they usually start negotiating one year before the original contract is set to expire.

- Stephanie doesn't name the wrestler, but at the time, they had a a person in the developmental program that creative wanted to call up, saying he has amazing charisma. However, he wasn't ready to be called up because his ring skills weren't up to par. She says while charisma will probably take you the farthest, you still need to be able to wrestle at least somewhat decently.

- Road agents always meet with the wrestlers after their televised matches to explain what worked and what didn't work.

- During the provision in which suspended talent could still work television tapings and house shows (if need be), they'd get a $200 per day salary for food and road expenses.

- WWE is hoping MVP will be a main-eventer one day.

- Stephanie doesn't agree that the WWE stars of today are more "muscular" (in general terms) than wrestlers during the Eighties.

- Said the average weight of the wrestlers on the WWE roster was in the high 100s, which surprised her. Although it should be noted that females likely factored into the average, thus bringing it down.

- The Chris Benoit tragedy made the company look at how they could be treating their employees better. They asked them if they had any financial planning or health insurance, which a little over 60% of the wrestlers have.

- They also implemented seminars for the wrestlers, including "exit strategies" such as life-skills type seminars for when they are done in WWE.

- Only Stephanie and John Laurinaitis decide who gets called up to the main roster from developmental. Although of course, Vince can decide to call someone up if he really wants to. Stephanie also noted that they have called up certain talents to add more ethnicity to the brands.

- Said they don't hire wrestlers they think are on steroids. She doesn't give a specific name, but they brought someone in recently and didn't hire him based on a positive drug test.

- Said she has never heard of an experienced creative team member or agent or anyone telling any worker they needed to be bigger to be signed or called up to the WWE roster.

- The only time she recalls telling a person to change their body was telling some of the female performers to lose weight, which she says isn't easy. She also brings up a recent story regarding Beth Phoenix as she told her to change her hair because she looked too similar to another female talent they have.

- Said Chris Benoit was supposed to be ECW champion, but "didn't show up at the pay-per-view because he was dead."

- Said workers might be more prone to concussions because of their line of work. Said Chris Nowinski had multiple concussions and they no longer wanted him to work in the ring.

- Said they are looking to do proactive impact testing for concussions or for workers that may be prone to concussions.

You can also read the entire interview in PDF file form at the following link.