A few days before the Mr. McMahon docu-series premiered on Netflix, the man himself put out a statement trying to distance himself from the show. After watching Mr. McMahon, it’s fair to say that Vince’s statement was nothing more than clever marketing.
Though the six-part show was cleverly edited and promoted as a look into “the real Vince McMahon,” the show doesn’t break any new ground. If anything it simply reinforces what is already known.
Those within professional wrestling fandom will find little truly novel or captivating while non-fans who know of McMahon from news headlines won’t find anything that hasn’t already been written or portrayed elsewhere. In this regard the program doesn’t take a truly investigative or critical approach to Vince McMahon’s life and career — yet it provides enough pondering and asks enough questions to not come off as an ego-stroking fluff piece.
This lack of novelty into the world of Vince McMahon is made crystal clear in the opening 30 seconds when Vince himself says “I don’t like talking about me.” This remains unchanged from his younger years as the man was interviewed time and again and asked about himself and he always shifted the spotlight onto another subject. McMahon reinforced this several times on this show: when he was asked poignant or critical questions about himself he either referenced something that was already publicly available or he dismissed the topic with a vague, surface-level answer.
“Surface-level” is a great way to describe the analysis given to various topics, scandals, challenges, and events in wrestling history. The show attempts to cover Vince’s entire 50-year career in the wrestling business and focus on the multitude of challenges he endured along the way. There is a degree of balance with how the facts are presented: a topic is introduced, Vince is asked about this topic, and then a wrestler or executive gives their thoughts as well. Despite the show being filled with people some might describe as Vince loyalists – Bruce Pritchard, John Cena, The Undertaker, among others – even these men disagree with Vince’s position on some subject or another.
Mr. McMahon touches on Vince overcoming uncertainty with his national expansion and the first-ever WrestleMania. It ventures into the scandals of the 1990s with the Ring Boy Scandal and Vince’s Steroid Trial. Small surprises can be found here and there (such as with New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick admitting to being an FBI informant), but by and large these first few episodes reveal precious little that anyone, even the most casual of wrestling fan, wouldn’t already know. Various guests brought in for their thoughts – Eric Bischoff, Bret Hart, Tony Atlas – provide similar commentary to what is already out there either in audio or printed format.
The show continues through more periods of controversy for WWF/E: the Sgt. Slaughter/Gulf War angle, the Monday Night Wars, The Montreal Screwjob and how this birthed the Mr. McMahon on-screen character, Owen Hart’s death, the move into the Ruthless Aggression era, and the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide. Through all of this Vince McMahon remains stoic, only providing the simplest or most dismissive opinion on these various topics.
On one hand, someone going into Mr. McMahon expecting an exposé or some kind of unfiltered ‘shoot promo’ from or about Vince will largely be disappointed since most of the soundbites provided from the guests involved can be summed up by one line David Shoemaker himself says in episode two: “Nothing that any wrestler, that anybody involved in wrestling tells you, should be regarded as fact.”
This should serve as a reminder to anyone watching that these are people with perspectives and opinions and what you get from all of them, not just Vince, is carefully crafted to be more entertaining than informative.
“What I say a lot of times is totally different than what I think. And the public doesn’t understand that sometimes,” said McMahon at one point. “As a businessman you have to throw things out there. It’s not really the way you feel, but it controls thought process by doing that.”
On the other hand, McMahon does tell the truth about how he thinks and how he operates in short summary statements sprinkled throughout the series:
- When asked about his raiding of the territory system he says “if you don’t like what I’m doing, tough.”
- When he’s asked about the controversy surrounding various angles and storylines from the past he simply notes that WWF/E under his vision was following trends and not setting them.
- When Vince accuses WCW of “stealing talent” during the Monday Night Wars (to which Bischoff rightfully points out, “stealing is in the eyes of the beholder, isn’t it?”) and Vince is asked if what he did during the Territory Era wasn’t stealing, he tried painting himself as a victim in the former and a benevolent expansionist in the latter. He tries to have his cake and eat it, too. Vince makes his hypocrisy crystal clear, but anyone surprised by him being so blatant with it should not forget the words he says to open episode three: “Life’s not fair sometimes and I don’t fight fair..
Any real excitement or novelty to be found in this show comes not from Vince himself but the others invited on and some never-before-seen footage from WWE’s enormous video library. Shawn Michaels admits that he “was such a prick” during the 1990s. Paul “Triple H” Levesque admits to being the one to propose the screw job finish for Montreal. Never-before-aired footage from Over The Edge 1999 is shown with Jeff Jarrett and Debra McMichael barely holding it together following Owen Hart’s fall. It truly shows just how much of an emotional gut punch the tragedy was to confused wrestlers and behind the scenes staff scrambling to figure out the next decision. And while there’s a small heartwarming subplot of Shane McMahon trying to gain his father’s approval after years of not getting any, that story lacks any major conclusiveness given Shane’s (non) status with WWE.
But despite everything, Mr. McMahon continues with this theme that Vince McMahon is invincible as he brushes off one scandal after another. Booker T is asked what it would take for Vince to leave WWE and he responds “a nuclear bomb exploding,” and the events that began in June 2022 are introduced as being to that effect.
Episode six introduces the two waves of allegations that’ve circled the company for over two years. However, it’s not long before Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter is asked if Vince would return (in footage filmed before January 2024) and he says yes, given the historic trend of Vince overcoming scandals as though he were made of Teflon.
Then some details of the Janel Grant lawsuit are presented and in some cases vivid details are shown on-screen through what are alleged to be screenshots of text messages. This is presented as the final nail in the coffin of Vince’s involvement with WWE yet it lacks that decisive finality since, after all, the case is still ongoing as of the time of the show’s broadcast. And since no one interviewed for this show can speak about an ongoing lawsuit and a federal investigation, the viewer is left with an incomplete portrait of the current state of things. Though it’s almost certain that Vince McMahon is indeed gone from WWE, it would be inaccurate to conclude that this latest lawsuit is finally the one to have done Vince in.
Ultimately, Mr. McMahon comes across as a WWE 24 Network Special but with Vince McMahon in front of the camera rather than behind it.
There are a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments of wider acknowledgement that wouldn’t’ve happened in another era, such as the Chris Benoit tragedy being spoken of by current WWE wrestlers and AEW being acknowledged as another entity in the business, but these are minor details in a larger story that’s still largely the same as before.
There are a few people not directly involved in the wrestling business like David Shoemaker and author Sharon Mazer who give more insight into the wrestling business itself, that provide a more refreshing analysis of why things are the way that they are.
But when it comes to the titular character, there is next to nothing groundbreaking in the show. Curious audiences might get tickled by Vince admitting that he’s not a filmmaker (despite supposedly writing the script for No Holds Barred over three days in a hotel room with Hulk Hogan) and his claim that his entrepreneurial spirit makes him a shining example of Americana (despite most of his non-wrestling ventures failing, in some cases spectacularly).
But anyone who has followed or looked into Vince McMahon’s behavior for any length of time could see the telltale signs that he only wanted the spotlight shined on him when he was in full control of the narrative. Small glimpses of this secrecy of Vince’s exist in small forms in other places but they all lead to the same conclusion:
- When Jerry Lawler gave Vince a hand-drawn portrait of Vince, his son Shane, and his father Vince Sr., the younger Vince scrambled to hide his tears.
- On the subject of tears, when Vince discussed the death of André the Giant he looked to be visibly uncomfortable, clearly unaccustomed to being in such a “vulnerable situation.”
- When his wife Linda ran for office and had her public speeches alongside donors and supporters, Vince did everything to avoid being in camera shots and later said he preferred chatting with the bartender at the event since “that was his sort of people” (in this show Vince makes his disdain for the rich apparent and explains that elements of the Mr. McMahon character come from how he perceived the upper class to look down on him).
- Even in WWE’s own constructed and self-contained universe, whenever the WWE Hall of Fame rolls around Vince has made it crystal clear he does not want to be mentioned by any of the inductees who, in all likelihood, have at least one nice thing to say about him on that night of thanks and of otherwise positive emotion.
Wrestling fans – current, lapsed, or former – won’t find anything all that compelling that hasn’t been said or written elsewhere. Jim Cornette’s podcast contains an episode or two retelling Vince stories that would make for remarkably entertaining programming if they were animated while retaining his narrating abilities. There exist a few stories done on SlamWrestling’s own archive (such as this interview with former WWE writer Dan Madigan or Ryan Nation’s recollections of interviewing Vince McMahon’s mother, Vicki Askew) that shine a much brighter light on WWE’s internal machinations and Vince himself than this documentary.
And all across the internet there are shoot interviews with wrestlers, many of whom have more refreshing tales of interactions of Vince McMahon that, even if outlandish or fabricated, paint a more interesting picture than this one.
Perhaps Vince was telling everyone watching that asking him questions about his past was pointless and wasn’t going to lead to either entertainment or compelling investigative programming. After all, why else would he respond to a question about how his past affects his present with the phrase, “throw it the f**k back there and go forward”?
RELATED LINKS
- Sep. 23, 2024: Vince McMahon comments on upcoming Netflix documentary
- Aug. 29, 2024: Vince McMahon documentary to debut in September
- McMahon family story archive