Does Vince McMahon Actively Try to Annoy WWE's Hardcore Fans?

Earlier this week, former WWE ring announcer Justin Roberts made the rounds, as he was promoting his new book called Best Seat in the House: Your Backstage Pass Through My WWE Journey. During one of his interviews with Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Roberts was asked, by Alvarez, if Vince McMahon makes booking decisions just to annoy the fans. You can check out his response below.

Alvarez: “Fans always say this and you were there so you’d be a good person to ask — sometimes WWE will make a booking decision, and the hardcore fans like on message boards and such will go ‘Vince has just gotta be ribbing us!’ So I guess the question is, do you feel that every now and then, Vince had it in his mind that ‘it really doesn’t matter what we do. These fans are gonna come back. They always come back.’ And so every now and then he’d make a decision that was done to rile up and make angry the hardcore fans?”

Roberts: “I personally think, in my opinion, that [Vince] enjoys entertaining himself. Sometimes they’ll put ego in front of business or what the fans want just to do what they wanna do, and sometimes they do things to entertain themselves. A lot of gimmicks you’ve seen over the years and a lot of finishes, sometimes it’s done for his own entertainment because nobody can question him, he can do whatever he wants, and yeah, people are still gonna buy tickets, they’re still gonna come to the shows, they’re still gonna support the company, so he can do whatever he wants and he enjoys it.”