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Vince McMahon gets the headlines, but many say it's wife Linda who turned WWF into a powerhouse.
At's a Tuesday night in Madison Square Garden. A crowd of about 16,000 people boos and hisses the barrel-chested chairman of the World Wrestling Federation as he raves at a very large man named Mick Foley, the so-called commissioner of the WWF Vince McMahon is screaming at Foley for pitting six of the WWF's top grapplers against one another in a Lucite box-Hell in a Cell, in the vernacular. Foley calls out for the WWF CEO to settle the fight.
Dressed in a navy blue business suit, Linda McMahon strides down a long ramp toward the ring, her arms characteristically close to her sides. She greets Foley; kisses her husband, the chairman; and takes the wireless microphone.
"I absolutely respect your opinion in this Hell in a Cell match," she calmly tells Vince. "But I also respect Mick's."
Satisfied, Foley, formerly known as Mankind, soon struts from the ring. Eyes bulging and neck veins popping, Vince grabs the mike and rants at Linda for supporting Foley. "To hell with my family. To hell with my marriage.... I WANT A DIVORCE!!!" he roars. "Get out of my ring! Get out of my life! You were never good enough for me anyway. I'm VINCE MCMAHON!"
Shaken, Linda hurries out of the arena, the backstage cameras recording her sobbing flight to a waiting limousine.
Ten hours later, a poised and confident Linda McMahon reels off WWF statistics to a ballroom full of Wall Street analysts at the UBS Warburg's 28th Annual Media Conference. Revenues, ratings, pay-per-view buys and ticket sales are all up from last year, she says before launching into a smooth, articulate pitch for the WWF's new football league, the XFL, beginning next month, where the idea is, at least tacitly, to play a meaner game.
Jilted, beleaguered wife or $1.6 milliona-year corporate head of an expanding empire: Will the real Linda McMahon please stand up?
"I am not divorced," she says with a grin, relaxing in her Stamford, Conn., office three days after Vince's rant at the Garden. The real Linda McMahon, about 5 feet 5 inches tall, has a powerful handshake, an easygoing manner, arresting sky-blue...