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Last week, Vince McMahon — noted 71-year-old wrestling kingpin — suffered a quad tear while doing heavy squats and needed to get surgery. While he was back at the office just a day after going under the knife, it sounds like he’s had to relinquish at least a little bit of control over his weekly television shows for the time being.

Former WWE writer Court Bauer discussed on MLW Radio recently that Triple H and Stephanie McMahon have been in charge and making the final decisions as to what goes on air — for this week, at least — while Vince is recovering from surgery.

“Right now if you watch WWE programming everyone says ‘well, always comes down to Vince and what he wants.’ Here’s the thing, yes he’s still reviewing all the scripts, yes he’s overseeing everything from afar at Titan Towers in Stamford, Connecticut, but he’s not in the trenches, he’s not signing off at the moment to moment stuff at TV,” Bauer said. “He wasn’t in Memphis (for RAW), or at SmackDown, because he’s recovering from a nasty quad tear injury. So Hunter, the rest of creative and Stephanie are assembling the show. “Right now, for all intents and purposes, Hunter is in the control seat and calling shots at the [Gorilla Position].”

While the broad strokes were likely in place via Vince before the shows went on the air, this means that Triple H and Stephanie may deserve all the credit for John Cena receiving his first televised clean loss since the dark ages … and all the blame for Kevin Owens losing a cage match to Roman Reigns before he’s even defended his Universal Championship.

(Transcript via PWMania)