YMMV / Shane McMahon

• Base-Breaking Character: Since his 2016 return, people are divided on Shane's matches. On the one hand, fans appreciate that he's still got the daring balls-out insanity and drive to entertain that always made him memorable and fun to watch in the past, while being tempered with a new focus on proper technical wrestling skill. On the other hand, critics take issue with the fact that he's being booked as too much of a genuine serious threat to full-time professional wrestlers like Kevin Owens, AJ Styles and even The Undertaker despite still being pointedly an authority figure rather than a real wrestler, especially since he's by now past his prime. Then came the already-controversial Crown Jewel event and its "World Cup" tournament which was already getting flak for featuring 100% American wrestlers^*Rey Mysterio Jr. was born in the US even though he comes from a Mexican family, and an opening created by an injury to The Miz's leg led to Shane stepping in and beating Dolph Ziggler in the finals to win the tournament which was supposed to crown the "best wrestler in the world". And then as if that wasn't enough, he and Miz teamed up at Royal Rumble 2019 to actually beat The Bar for the SmackDown tag team championship (making Shane a WWE champion for the first time since he held the Hardcore Championship in 2000).
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Due to his habit of wrestling only in t-shirts, baseball jerseys or wifebeaters, his match against The Miz at Money In the Bank 2019 got some minor infamy as the only time Shane was ever seen shirtless - as he escaped the cage literally by slipping out of his t-shirt. The fangirls (and fanboys) rejoiced.
• Catharsis Factor: For people who were sick of Shane's mistreatment or have to deal with Abusive Parents, seeing him utterly destroying his father Vince at WrestleMania X-Seven can be very cathartic.
• Crazy Is Cool: He's considered the craziest badass of the McMahons for a reason. In the words of one youtube commenter: "he's basically Evel Knievel with a business suit".
  Adam Blampied: At King of the Ring 2001, in a Street Fight, Kurt Angle and Shane McMahon had one of the matches of the year, one that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that a) Shane McMahon is a lunatic, and b) that Shane McMahon is a fucking lunatic.
  • Any time he executes his "Coast to Coast" Missile drop kick. Especially when his target has a trash bin lodged in front of him.
  • His signature Spanish Announcers' Table spot - a huge elbow drop off the top rope, crashing through said table. His hangtime is epic.
  • The TitanTron spot, mentioned in the Shocking Moments entry.
  • Not only jumping off Hell in a Cell through a table, but jumping off Hell In A Cell through a table as a 46-year-old non-career wrestler who hadn't been in a match in eight years (By his own admission, he broke two ribs doing that).
  • At the age of 49 he won the SmackDown tag team championship with The Miz by hitting Cesaro with an almost flawless Shooting Star Press. Even those who thought the outcome ridiculous had to admit that was amazing to watch.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Surprisingly, considering he's a McMahon. The guy gets cheers and chants even when he's just showing up for his father's off the air birthday celebration. Might have something to do with Sibling Yin-Yang, but it probably has more to do with his willingness to be thrown through glass and jump off both Titantrons and the Cell.
  • Many fans who feel less than optimistic about the direction of the WWE since he's stepped away actually regard him as "the only good McMahon", in part due to his track record in and out of the ring during his tenure. It's gotten to the point where upon his stepping down as CEO of the Chinese broadband company he's been with since then^note and despite the fact that he's still a presiding officer there, people are suggesting he return during the new regime storyline and play said role on-screen. When they finally got their wish on February 22, 2016, the fans absolutely exploded.
• Estrogen Brigade: Shane was considered a Pretty Boy in his youth, and aged very well over the years, so he's always had a significant following of fan girls.
• Fan Nickname: Thanks to "King" Ross Tweedell and his WTF moments, "Colonel McSweaty Bollocks".
• Franchise Original Sin: Shane's first run with in WWE tends to be remembered more fondly and not get as much vitriol as his second run from 2016 to 2022 primarily because during that time, Shane's booking was kept under control. In that time, Shane legitimately worked hard with his daredevil style to put himself, his opponent, and the overall feud over. Wrestlers like Kane, Randy Orton, Kurt Angle, and even lower card wrestlers like Steve Blackman all benefited from working with Shane who bumped around like crazy and ultimately took the pin to make them look good. Fast forward to his second run in 2016 and despite there being a legitimate honeymoon period with Shane for a period, fans swiftly turned against him because after a while, all the brakes on the Shane Train came off and Shane repeatedly booked himself to be the center of attention and went over full time wrestlers (sometimes cleanly) like Dolph Ziggler, Miz, the Bar, and even Roman Reigns, going so far as to win the WWE World Cup at Crown Jewel in 2018. Due to all this and the fact that Shane's (over)booking became so brazen and outrageous, fans completely turned against him and ultimately, Shane's 2022 Royal Rumble antics where he tried to make the Rumble all about himself led to his own father firing him from the company because Shane apparently had gotten so out-of-control that he lost all sense of knowing how to tone it down a notch.
• Ho Yay: With Booker T during the Alliance storyline, and Rob Van Dam in 2003.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Shane McMahon is the Best in the World." ^ExplanationShane entered himself in Crown Jewel's World Cup finals on the behalf of the Miz after the latter got kayfabe injured, and defeated the other finalist Dolph Ziggler, canonically making him the best wrestler in the world. The internet were torn between raging at the decision and laughing at the stupidity of it all. Supposedly it was the setup for a Heel Turn that would've had Shane having the victory go over his head, but apparently WWE had second thoughts about it, possibly because (A) They realized that the audience are simply sick of "Heel McMahon authority figure" angles, and (B) Ratings had such a drastic downturn around that time that WWE did a Soft Reboot in which they basically went into Sincerity Mode and owned up to their recent mistakes (although blaming other reasons in kayfabe) and the McMahons took direct control of the brands.
  • INTRODUCING THE BEST IN THE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD, SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAANE MCMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHON!!!!!!^ExplanationShane did eventually turn heel at Fastlane 2019, and afterwards would order the ring announcers to announce him as this, which apparently gets longer and longer every week.
  • "Yes, I suck!" ^ExplanationA screen cap from the May 7 2019 edition of Smackdown that shows a sign that has a speech bubble containing the words "Yes, I suck" placed next to a talking Shane McMahon, making it seem as if he is saying those words.
• Narm:
  • His time as a Raw commentator in the 90s is considered a low point of his career, specifically because of his lack of broadcast experience. He was known for being very over the top, and understandably got removed from this role quickly.
  • His◊ multiple◊ punches◊ are so laughable that you'll have a hard time to suspend your disbelief while seeing it. Hilarious in Hindsight, because according to many of the veterans, Shane's a little wild with his punches and will legitimately (and accidentally) hit people.
  • As of November 2, 2018, the idea that Shane McMahon is the best wrestler in the world.
• Narm Charm: His "Shane-O Shuffle" is admittedly kind of dumb, and his facial expressions are hilarious, but you can't help but love it. All three of his kids performing it for WrestleMania 32 with him was ridiculously cute.
• The Scrappy: Sadly, Shane has gradually devolved into one of the most despised people in the entire company ever since becoming the "Best in the World", a title which he won in a tournament that he didn't even enter in the first place. At first things weren't so bad towards the end of 2018, but in 2019 things got exponentially bad after Shane turned heel. First of all, he started to become featured a lot more on both RAW and Smackdown, despite being the apparent Smackdown Commissioner, and entered feuds with The Miz and Roman Reigns; part of this was due to Shane taking a LOT of camera time despite both shows having rosters full of wrestlers starved for meaningful screeen time, and partially due to the fact that he and his cronies Drew McIntyre, Elias and so forth were constantly winning matches that not only made Miz and Roman look weak, but resulted in Shane escaping largely scott-free. (Drew was an especially frustrating addition to Shane's goon squad considering he'd just gotten out of a similar arrangement with Baron Corbin, leaving his fans groaning in frustration and déja vu.) It really didn't help matters that he started having the ring announcer de jour give him overly long, excessively hammy entrance announcements as the Best in the World that is generally agreed to have gotten really old, really fast — even the commentary teams have gotten tired of it, apart from resident heel sympathizer Corey Graves. None of it was helped by the fact that it was Shane who booked himself into this position, making him come off to many like he was using power as a writer to make himself look good.^note Apparently, his intended story was that he would semi-fluke his way into success and gain an overinflated ego as part of a long a long-burning Face–Heel Turn, but he took on the role of an annoying, overexposed Hate Sink a little too well and too far. He took it so far in fact that his own father fired him from the company after he booked the 2022 Royal Rumble to be all about himself. From a meta standpoint, this also paints Shane's return as something of a Full-Circle Revolution, since he saved the company from The Authority, but ended up becoming something very much like what fans hated about them in the first place.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Any time Shane O'Mac steps into a ring for a No DQ/Hardcore/Street Fight-type match, the HSQ goes through the roof. Like the time he dropped an elbow from the top of the fifty foot high Titantron.
  • Just showing up on 2/22/16 (complete with appropriate chant from the crowd) - mainly because nobody. Saw. It. Coming.
  • WrestleMania 32, he managed to top the Titantron spot, how? He tries to drop the elbow on The Undertaker through the Spanish Announcers' Table. From on top of the cell. To put this in perspective, one of the iconic Undertaker moments, and indeed one of WWE's iconic moments, Mick Foley is thrown from atop the cell to crash to the table below. Shane (along with the rest of us) has probably seen this footage about a million times. He's the first man to consciously make the decision to jump from atop the cell. And keep in mind Shane's not a regular in-ring performer and at this point is in his mid-40s and hasn't wrestled a match in about seven years. Furthermore, the new cell being used in this era is several feet taller than the one that was used in the old Hell in a Cell classics, including Undertaker throwing Foley off of it. Yet Shane still voluntarily jumped. Far from popping at the spot, the crowd of over 100,000 actually quieted — presumably because they were probably wondering if Shane had finally managed to kill himself. To give an idea, Undertaker, who almost never breaks Kayfabe, was sitting in Stunned Silence as the refs tended to Shane following this spot.
  • His match with AJ Styles at WrestleMania 33. His feats included reversing a springboard 450° splash into a triangle choke, reversing a Phenomenal Forearm into a floatover DDT, and busting out a shooting star press.
• Take That, Scrappy!: With Shane's reign of terror over both brands threatening to make ratings hit an all-time low, one day he began to receive a sudden but much-appreciated reversal of fortune. Firstly, starting with the build up to the Stomping Grounds pay-per-view, he and his cronies got the snot beaten out of them by Roman Reigns. Then Roman beat Drew McIntyre at said PPV despite Shane's interference, and his attempts to reassert his authority the following Smackdown caused The Undertaker to come to Roman's aid out of disgust for Shane being blinded by his own greed and ego. Kevin Owens, meanwhile, became Shane's answer to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, cutting a Worked Shoot promo saying that even he was sick of Shane hogging the spotlight from talented wrestlers who got no camera time, and constantly getting the drop on him with stunners. Extreme Rules saw Shane and Drew completely fail to defeat Roman and the Undertaker in tag team action, and every measure he's tried to take against Roman or Kevin since has blown up in his face. While no-one is in any danger of liking Shane right now, plenty of people are happy to see him suffer and hope he finally takes a sabbatical. And now that Shane was fired after he was defeated by Kevin Owens in a ladder match, pretty much everyone is glad that he is no longer appearing on-screen.
• The Woobie: Out of kayfabe, people tend to get the impression that Shane has gotten a really raw deal. Despite being the most well-liked member of the McMahon family, with inside sources describing him as easily the best and easiest to work for, Shane has basically been snubbed and ignored by his family and has been passed over as the heir to the company in favour of Steph and her husband, making it impossible to ignore the implication that Vince sees HHH as the son he'd prefer to have had all along. Even WhatCulture Wrestling's video of '10 things the WWE wants you to forget about Shane McMahon' is less about times he's made a tit of himself or done something which makes the company look bad (like these videos usually are) and more about times he's been snubbed, abused, walked over, battered, ignored, been right about something that Vince was wrong about (such as buying UFC before it took off), or made the company look bad by comparison to him.

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