In 2022, Stephanie McMahon walked away from WWE but later returned when her father, Vince McMahon, was forced to retire. However, as soon as he came back, she was gone again, something which spoke volumes about her relationship with Vince.
He's now been fully forced out of WWE amid a series of sexual misconduct allegations and we've seen Stephanie make appearances at various shows. Among them was the second night of WrestleMania XL where she hyped up the "Paul Levesque era."
In a recent interview, backstage WWE interviewer Cathy Kelley shared her hope to see much more of Stephanie in WWE.
"She really is an advocate for so many women," Kelley started. "She’s not the advocate, but she is an advocate for so many women, and she is so versatile in everything that she has accomplished and has been able to do throughout her career, so I think it’s a little bit of a detriment that we don’t have her there full-time right now."
"God, I love her so much. I’ve talked about this before. She is the reason I came back. We had multiple conversations before I came back, and she is the one that really encouraged me to come back," she added. "It [what convinced her to do so] was her being at the helm. It was her and Triple H and they really took care of me the first time that I was there."
This echoes what Kelly said last September about her WWE return:
"When I left the door was never completely closed, it was wanting to be a part of a specific — either Raw or SmackDown at the time. I had always an open door with both Steph and Hunter, staying in contact the entire time. I think it started as me reaching out to Hunter as a happy birthday text. I was in Alaska with my mom at the time and he started talking about how he was fishing there years ago and how he remembers it fondly, but that turned into him asking me to have a conversation with Steph, which is something that he also asked me when I was leaving."
"I had my mind made up at the time, but I credit them to me coming back. I think that they’re incredible leaders. I loved working with him in NXT. Yeah, it felt like the right time and the right opportunity. Steph was really welcoming with listening to what I wanted to do, she offered if I wanted to learn how to do commentary, if I wanted a writer role, and this opportunity opened up right as we were having those conversations."
You can watch this new interview with Kelley in the player below.