What Does Stephanie McMahon Do All Day?

On the Monday, October 24th episode of WWE RAW, Stephanie McMahon had a backstage confrontation with Chris Jericho where she expressed her frustration with him holding up the show due to his search for “The List”.

During her tongue-lashing of the petulant Jericho, she exhaustively let us in on the tiring job of being RAW Commissioner and why she doesn’t have time for this kind of nonsense.

“I have to run Monday Night RAW.
This Sunday I have three Hell in a Cell matches, it’s a triple main event.
And then Survivor Series I’m trying to put together the teams to compete against my brother Shane and Smackdown Live.”

Something about her stating this list of responsibilities has bothered me ever since.

Is this an actual in-character list of RAW Commissioner duties, or are these the real life things that Stephanie has to do as WWE’s Chief Brand Officer? Either way, I’ve got to wonder what it is Stephanie McMahon does all day.

If this is in-character, kayfabe if you will, then Stephanie has to “run Monday Night RAW”, and yet she has GM Mick Foley at her disposal, and an apparent army of technical people and tie-wearing executive-types that are all constantly milling around backstage. Does she actively delegate work out to them? Does she oversee the technical production aspects of the show? Does she pay the wrestlers after each match, like in cash in an envelope? Would she be involved in the lighting, make-up, and/or sound editing of the show, which would then thus also include this actual scene with Chris Jericho? Therefore, is she too busy to talk to Jericho because she has to produce this Jericho segment?

I mean, aren’t all the matches already decided on for the night? If so, does that then mean she personally discusses something with each wrestler beforehand? And assuming she is just a Commissioner, and not a “booker”, what would she have to say to the wrestlers exactly? Some kind of pep talk to hype them up for their performance? And wouldn’t that then actually require her to have this discussion with Chris Jericho that she is supposedly too busy to have?

Or is it that as a behind-the-scenes creative executive, Stephanie is scripting the matches, as in writing the moves and drama that will unfold in the ring, and might actually be busy even if you’d think this would have been done in the days leading up to the show not during the live airing. And if this is what she’s referring by “running RAW”, why would she be revealing this in such a vague manner to a member of her staff? You would think that the actual creative booker would be more specific what their job entails in a candid conversation with a guy she would have worked with thousands of times on writing matches, as in like, “Look, I’ve got to go explain to Bayley that a belly-to-belly suplex is a terrible finishing move, but she just won’t change it because of the alliteration.”

Maybe as the real-life CBO she needs to be brokering the deals to get chocolate bar brands to sponsor matches on RAW, but then you’ve got to wonder why she needs to be doing this at like 9pm at night during the show, and not more likely during business hours. I’m not trying to trivialize the difficulty of negotiating with fast food brands to sell their fantastic products to children, I’m just assuming that this would take place mainly in the 9-to-5 component of her executive role.

Secondly, she then she states that she has “three Hell in a Cell matches” coming up for a RAW PPV that is 6 days away at that point. Yet, as she says, this triple main event is already set, so just what more work on her part is still required, either as kayfabe Commissioner or real-life CBO?

Is there some discussion still on whether to add another Hell in a Cell match? Or are some of the superstars involved trying to get out of their matches? The order of the “main events” did seem to be an issue that needed some intense discussion, particularly if you read the backstage gossip. So maybe real-life CBO Stephanie has to organize multiple meetings to weigh the pros/cons of putting the Sasha/Charlotte match on first or last.

Now, I saw numerous opinion pieces on this decision from fans online, and the overwhelming majority seemed to believe that this Women’s Title main event needed to be on in the actual main event position on the card. This would indicate that there are not that many hidden factors involved in the decision and probably doesn’t require the full attention of a high-level executive, everyday, for multiple weeks.

But the statement that really boggled me was the indication that Stephanie is trying to put together the RAW Survivor Series teams, for 3 matches that will take place on a PPV that is more than a month away,

If she’s Commissioner Stephanie in this vignette, isn’t this a simple decision? It probably takes like, what, 5 minutse to pick the 5 best, most-winningest, bad-ass wrestlers you’ve got on the roster, assuming the goal is to defeat that other team in a legit fight. It would then only make sense for RAW to choose Roman Reigns, Sheamus, Braun Strowman, Kevin Owens and maybe the Big Show. Yes, you could make the case for another 3 or 4 other guys, but it’s a short list of realistic candidates. Certainly she wasn’t in long debates about why R Truth or Jinder Mahal might be better on the team than a Rusev or Cesaro.

On the other hand, if it’s CBO Stephanie here, then is she attempting to pick the right wrestlers for the Survivor Series matches that would thus put on the best performance rather than just win the match in a “shoot” way. Maybe RAW and Smackdown are competing based on style and workrate at the Survivor Series PPV, and so potentially there might be more of a conversation involved than simply choosing the most hardcore ass-kickers on the roster (even though the options still wouldn’t be that different). If that was the case, then shouldn’t RAW and Smackdown put on their own inter-brand Survivor Series matches and compete to see which show can craft the better art? Why would they be cooperating to make each other look good?

Of course, we all suspend our disbelief over the legitimacy of the “fights” during pro-wrestling, and we are willing to accept the pre-determined nature of the “matches” while embracing hazily that we don’t want to know the secret outcome, but the WWE is doing nothing to make this a smooth state of mind to inhabit in 2016.

Since CBO Stephanie McMahon and most of the WWE executives have no problem blatantly admitting that WWE is scripted while giving business presentations and talking to the media, are we then supposed to pretend like we didn’t hear any this when viewing the show? I suppose, but that’s not as easy as it sounds when there is no clear discernible difference between CBO Stephanie and Commissioner Stephanie.

In fact, do we have any idea what either of those jobs are specifically? The best we can gather from WWE programming is captured in confusing quotes like the one above, or moments “caught” on camera where Stephanie is in the middle of a phone conversation with “someone”, often her own executive husband or father, who are usually en route to the taping of the show that they are apparently also too busy to be present for.

The confusion has to start with the existence of these backstage vignettes in general. We’re now used to watching these scenes yet it’s never clearly been stated whether these are either reality-show-style, fly-on-the-wall productions or narrative sketches happening backstage that characters/announcers are not supposed to acknowledge having seen.

It seems the lack of explanation feeds into the spontaneous / convenient nature of the WWE’s storytelling style, sometimes they want us to think it’s a private moment while other times it’s something we all are able to see.

Wouldn’t it be nice if WWE attempted to set-up a rule of some kind for their backstage segments, if not for the coherence of the show in general but to even allow it to matter when they do break the rule? At one point TNA made it clear that all their backstage footage was being captured by a live film crew who were not in on the storyline, and Lucha Underground indicates that all of their backstage vignettes are pure serialized drama that is not known by the “live” in-ring wrestling aspect of the show. Both of those at least make some sense and can be used to tie together all aspects of their ongoing narrative.

WWE only creates more troubling questions with their basic lack of style or logic. I don’t want to be caught in a loop of wondering what Stephanie McMahon is supposed to be doing because I’m watching some awkward backstage conversation between a boss and an employee, or two creative characters in a story who are discussing things that happen off-screen and only doubles back onto the storyline and makes everything technically irreverent.

Is it possible that we are supposed to accept that nothing happens between vignettes and matches with these wrestlers and performers?

Wait… do the WWE on-screen characters actually only exist when we see them on the screen?

Therefore when the Stephanie McMahon the WWE RAW Commissioner character is not on TV she then goes into a sort of stasis, like a Westworld robot, where no activity or thought based on the storylines can take place.

If that was the case, then it would make some sense as to why she is so exhausted from trying to grapple with those three bullet points related to the running of RAW because there’s just no time to think about those things during the 20-30 minutes she’s on screen. While it would seem like she has the rest of the show and rest of the week to figure out which 5 wrestlers to put on her brand’s Survivor Series teams, in fact her character can only think about this while appearing on camera.

Ah ha.

That would be one way to justify the obvious snap decision that was made to produce a Survivor Series team “qualifying” Battle Royale on the next week’s episode of RAW. If you really wanted to win at Survivor Series, you wouldn’t create a random scenario where Bo Dallas might end up on the team, right? She’s obviously just too busy to think clearly since she only exists during those frantic moments when the camera is on her.

But then that makes me think about this: are we sure that WE are not really just characters in the WWE Universe? Do you know what it’s like to live in a world where there is no WWE to discuss, complain about, and dream of? I know I don’t, and I’ve gotta be older than most people reading this. And are you absolutely certain that you would exist if you couldn’t read about pro-wrestling online? I mean, what do YOU do all day anyways?