Shane McMahon was fired by WWE after making a Royal Rumble return, and here's why. Vince McMahon has been the boss of WWE since the early 1980s, and while it's likely he envisioned his children Shane and Stephanie would follow him into the family business, it's doubtful he anticipated exactly how they would do that. While Vince, Shane, and Stephanie have all ended up wrestling a number of matches for WWE - which is already weird enough for corporate executives to do - Shane took his in-ring run to the next level.
Unlike Vince and Stephanie, both of whom are comparatively tame in the ring, Shane quickly won over WWE audiences with his ability and willingness to pull off death-defying stunts that would make people like Jeff Hardy and Rob Van Dam nod in approval. Shane O'Mac, as he's often called, has been thrown off just about every possible structure in WWE, including the giant Hell in a Cell. Outside of falls, Shane is also an adept flyer, pulling off moves like shooting star presses with ease. He can also take loads of punishment, as evidenced by his bloody brawls with the likes of Kurt Angle. At age 52, Shane isn't the fresh-faced young buck he once was, but in the few matches he's had in the last decade, has still been willing to take a beating. After a lengthy absence from WWE TV, Shane returned at the 2022 Royal Rumble, coming in at #28. Reports quickly followed that Shane was planned to have featured matches at both February's Elimination Chamber and WrestleMania XXXVIII. Then the next day, reports emerged that Shane had suddenly been let go by WWE, and those planned matches canceled.
According to the myriad reports that have come out since the rather disappointing Royal Rumble, Shane was not only a participant in the match, but helped produce it. The primary issue became that Shane was doing this in a self-serving way, demanding a late entry slot, and to be eliminated only by eventual winner Brock Lesnar. Shane also insisted on a now-infamous spot in which he improbably won a striking exchange with Matt Riddle, a legit former MMA fighter. However, apparently Shane had many other ideas that weren't used, as he butted heads with the other producers, stars like Lesnar and Randy Orton, and even his own father Vince McMahon. Ultimately, Shane ended up crossing a lot of influential WWE figures, leading to his firing.
With so many top-level personnel unhappy with what they believed to be unprofessional behavior by Shane, Vince McMahon decided he had no choice but for his son to part ways with WWE. Given McMahon's own reputation for backstage drama, the extent and severity of the dispute might seem slightly unsurprising. However, given the familial bond between Shane and Vince, the seriousness of the younger McMahon's punishment may come as a surprise to some fans.
That said, those who enjoy seeing Shane O'Mac on WWE TV shouldn't necessarily be too upset. As one might expect, most of the reporting on the story also suggests that since Shane is Vince's son, and WWE is in his blood, it's seen as only a matter of time before Shane is welcomed back into the WWE fold after the bad feelings have died down. In other words, anyone daydreaming about Shane McMahon jumping to AEW shouldn't expect that to ever happen, at least not while his father owns WWE. In the meantime, Shane will likely go back to focusing on his various business ventures outside the professional wrestling sphere.