Jim Ross Says Vince McMahon Isn’t Done With Wrestling

Jim Ross doesn’t believe Vince McMahon has closed the book on professional wrestling, even amid the ongoing legal fallout from Janel Grant’s lawsuit against him and WWE.

Speaking on his podcast, Ross addressed the topic after reports surfaced this week that Grant’s lawsuit is headed toward private arbitration rather than a public trial. Asked what McMahon might do next, Ross made clear he thinks stepping away from the industry entirely just isn’t in McMahon’s DNA.

“He ain’t out of the game. Vince isn’t out of the game. That’s just not his makeup,” Ross said. “But what he’s going to do… one would assume it’ll have something to do with wrestling because that’s where he made his name. So, I don’t know, man. The world’s open to him. It just doesn’t seem like a lot of things interest him. He likes wrestling, and I think that’s where I’d see him headed.”

Ross also shot down any notion that McMahon could eventually align himself with AEW, framing it as an almost unthinkable pairing given both men’s history of building their own empires rather than joining someone else’s.

“He’s going to want to steer his own ship, build his own boat, and take it from there,” Ross said. “So, off the top of my head, I’d say probably not. I don’t see Tony Khan wanting to do business with him either.”

McMahon’s standing in the wrestling world has been in limbo since he resigned from WWE and parent company TKO in early 2024 following the allegations detailed in Grant’s lawsuit, which accuses him of sexual abuse and trafficking. He has denied the allegations, and the case moving toward arbitration adds another twist to a legal saga that has kept McMahon largely out of the public eye — at least publicly separated from the company he built into a global juggernaut.

Ross’s comments don’t point to any imminent McMahon return, but they do reflect a common sentiment among longtime wrestling insiders: that a figure as singularly obsessed with the business as McMahon is unlikely to simply fade into retirement, legal cloud or not. Whether that means a new venture, some kind of consulting role, or something else entirely remains pure speculation for now.

What does seem clear, at least in Ross’s eyes, is that any future McMahon project would be built and controlled by McMahon himself, not folded into someone else’s promotion. Given his decades-long rivalry-turned-wariness with competitors, and Tony Khan’s own well-documented feelings about WWE’s past conduct, a McMahon-AEW marriage remains about as unlikely a pairing as pro wrestling could produce.

For now, McMahon’s next move — if there is one — stays a mystery. But according to one of the most trusted voices in wrestling broadcasting, betting against his return to the business he built entirely from scratch would be a mistake.