During a recent conversation with TMZ.com, former WWE star Matt Riddle shared his perspective on Vince McMahon’s approach to running the wrestling business and how it differed from others in the industry.

“I will say the one thing I loved about Vince is Vince was like, ‘This is my company. I run it. It’s my company.’ It didn’t matter if the fans were like, ‘Oh, we don’t like this.’ The storyline was going to go as long as Vince wanted it. And with that, it kind of works better. It’s like a plant or anything else. If you give it everything you think it wants, just like a kid, they get slow. They don’t appreciate what they have, etc. But just like a plant, if you let it starve a little bit, then you feed it, it gets stronger, it gets healthier, it eats more, you know. And I feel like fans are like that, too. If you give them everything they want, you give them that dream match tomorrow, what are they going to tune in to next week, you know? So, I felt like Vince did a very good job with that a lot of the time because he would just give people what they wanted.”

Riddle also compared McMahon’s style to that of Triple H and AEW’s Tony Khan, noting that both tend to be more flexible with fan expectations.

“I feel like Triple H bends a little more. Tony [Khan] definitely bends a lot, you know. They’re all pioneers. They’re all great at what they do, you know. This is just an opinion from just me, so it doesn’t matter. But yeah, you know, I like Vince because he stuck to his guns. Even when I worked at MLW, Court Bauer and others there, they stick to their guns. A storyline’s a storyline. That’s a storyline, you know. So if this is what we’re doing, this is what we’re doing. It really doesn’t change, you know?”