Dean Malenko On What Vince McMahon Said To Him When Agent Got Changed To Producer

AEW producer Dean Malenko recalled what Vince McMahon said to him whenever the term "agent" was dropped.

Malenko left WWE in 2019, and then he soon signed with AEW soon after Chris Jericho left the company.

“It was fun. I thought we had a great relationship in the beginning,” Malenko stated. “It didn’t really get bad at the end either. It’s just that I thought it was time for me to go and join someone else. Vince is very stern, and it’s his show and we get that. I don’t think he expected anything less than perfection or didn’t want anything less than perfection. I think he trusted me a lot, just going out there and helping talent, and try to get the best match, and camera angles and teach guys the business a little bit, kind of what I do here.”

He then recalled the switch from being an agent to a producer, and what Vince said to him.

“We were at the Hammerstein Ballroom,” Malenko recalled. “Vince said, ‘From now on, there’s no more agents. I don’t know what agents do. You are now a producer. You help produce the matches. So from this day forward you’re a producer.’ So I couldn’t help myself. I raised my hand. ‘Yes, Dean,’ and I go, ‘Do producers make more money than agents?’ He goes, ‘No, pretty much the same.’ But now I’m a producer.”

Jericho asked him how tough the position had to have been sitting with Vince in Gorilla. 

“You put on a live telecast most of the times, and you want to do the best you can. It’s his show, and if he wants to scream at you, it’s his business,” Malenko pointed out. “Sometimes you have to be extremely hardened to work in that kind of job, in that kind of environment. It’s not the easiest environment to work into. There’s a lot of guys that could have made really good producers.

“They looked at me and go, ‘There was no way in hell I would ever take that job. I couldn’t do what you do.’ I used to hear that a lot. I still hear that. ‘I couldn’t do what you do,’ and it’s a very taxing job. It’s very stressful because there’s expectations of you to succeed every night and make sure things are different. It was a ride for sure.”