WWE Attorney Jerry McDevitt Considering Retirement

In an interview with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, WWE’s longtime attorney Jerry McDevitt noted that at age 72, he’s looking to wind down as he heads towards retirement. Here are highlights:

On how he started working with WWE: “”That night, I got a call from the lawyer who was then representing the WWE — I assume he probably regrets making the call since I ended up stealing the client. But he asks me if I would represent Neidhart. I said I would, and that was the start of the whole relationship.

I didn’t know much about wrestling at the time. What I recall was that Jim Neidhart was about 6-foot-1 and a 280-pound solid block of granite. His nickname “The Anvil” came from the fact that held the world record for throwing an anvil farther than any other human being. He had a ZZ Top-type of goatee, butch haircut and wrap-around shades.

He was one of the scariest looking people I had ever seen in my life. And when he came into my office he was petrified of the fact that he had to call this guy named Vince. He was scared to death of calling Vince. And I thought to myself if this guy is scared of Vince. I wonder who Vince is.

One of the things “The Anvil” was concerned about then was that him being charged with this crime might prevent him from appearing at this thing called Wrestlemania. I said what the heck is Wrestlemania?

He said, “Well, we’re having it this year in the Pontiac Silver Dome. It’s going to feature Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant as the main event match, and it’s already sold out 90,000 tickets.” I said, “What? 90,000 tickets to see a wrestling show!” That was when I first started to get some idea of the magnitude of this thing.”

On defending the company during the 1990s steroid scandals: “I represented Hulk Hogan in the first investigation. Then I represented the company when they were criminally charged up in the Eastern District of New York in the early 1990s, which is really where the relationship kind of cemented because they went through 18 months of an ordeal unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was a real witch hunt.

They were acquitted of all charges without even calling a witness. We just cross examined the government’s case. After that, my relationship with Vince and Linda McMahon became almost family-like.

Since then, me and my firm have done everything for them. It’s not just litigation. We do Vince’s estate plan. We do his tax returns. We handle a bunch of trust work. We’ve established an estate planning device for him and his family.

The litigation that I’ve had to do for him has been across the board on ever subject imaginable from defamation claims to defamation defense to copyright infringement to trademark infringement to litigation with the USA Network on whether we would be permitted to leave that network and take our programing to other places, to helping Vince set up the XFL Football League, not once but twice.

The WWE through the next 30 years became such a big part of the DNA of my law firm.”

On his future with the company: “WWE is a major client, but I have other clients. I also represented Dr. Cyril Wecht. I’ll be 72 in January, so I’ve been trying to turn it down a little bit as I’m headed into retirement. But because of my longstanding relationship with WWE, I continue to represent them, although I keep telling Vince I do want to retire.”