We may never know the true Vince McMahon.
While comprehensive, the new Netflix docu-series “Mr. McMahon” didn’t break major new ground with the notorious former WWE chairman. Though we did get a few insightful peeks here and there while going through WWE’s highs, lows, trials and scandals.
It may be wrestling fans’ last real chance to do so with the 79-year-old McMahon now entangled in a sordid sexual assault and sex trafficking lawsuit brought by former WWE employee Janel Grant that caused him to resign as executive chairman of TKO in January and to cancel his final interviews for the series. The lawsuit is on pause until the federal government conducts its investigation.
It’s hard to see the very guarded former WWE boss granting this kind of lengthy access a second time or opening up in a way he seemed unwilling to do for Netflix even if McMahon, who is denying the claims, is exonerated or the lawsuit is settled.
It felt like the show and McMahon tells you from the start that what we hear — at least from him — was likely as much truth as he was willing to reveal.
“I wish I could tell you the real stories,” McMahon says in the opening episodes. “Holy s–t.”
When pushed to give the interviewer one, McMahon says we will be getting the “semi-interesting” version.
“I don’t want anybody to really know me,” McMahon adds with a sly grin.
Is it because McMahon wants to protect himself and the business or the idea raised by himself and others in the doc that he doesn’t quite know who he really is?
“I have…not two different brains, but like computers in my head and sometimes they work against me,” McMahon says. “I have one computer talking to you right now, and there’s another one going on with me thinking something completely different. Then, there’s a third one sometimes.
“If I wanted to tap into it, I could. So, it’s difficult for me sometimes to pay attention to things. It’s bothered me through the years because all I wanted to be was normal. I wanted to fit in.”
The series shows a history of McMahon aggressively protecting himself and WWE while building a multi-billion dollar company. He offers little remorse for the questionable choices he made in his career.
“Vince McMahon has had one truly monogamous relationship in his entire life and that’s with the business that he’s built,” Paul Heyman says in the doc “That’s his passion. That’s his love. That’s his master. Vince doesn’t own the business. This business owns Vince McMahon and he super serves it with his heart and his passion and his life. And if that hurts his wife’s [Linda] feelings, [daughter] Stephanie’s feelings, [son] Shane’s feelings, his father’s feelings or his own feelings, those people be dammed.”
There are several claims made by McMahon that others contradict because having control of the narrative has always seemed important to him.
From the inflated figure of 93,000 fans at the Silverdome for WrestleMania III.
McMahon calls the Attitude Era’s programming “family-friendly entertainment” and then maybe for an “adult family” entertainment.
He eventually gives in when pushed by the interviewer that Ted Turner’s “predatory” business practices of WCW signing away WWE talent was no different than McMahon hiring top wrestlers from the different territories in 1980s. McMahon initially claimed the difference was he was “competing” while Turner was trying to hurt him and WWE.
“What I say is totally different than what I think,” McMahon says when asked to explain the difference. “The public doesn’t understand that sometimes. As a businessman you have to throw things out there That’s not really the way you feel, but it controls thought process by doing that.”
McMahon says “none whatsoever” when asked the possible similarities between him and his Mr. McMahon television persona, only to get the opposite view from Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, and long-time WWE executive and friend Bruce Prichard.
“The character Mr. McMahon is really just Vince. He’ll tell you different,” Prichard said. “No, Mr. McMahon is Vince.”
The documentary features interviews with The Post’s Phil Mushnick, whose reporting over the last four decades has exposed and challenged both McMahon and his company.
McMahon railed against the doc before its release — calling it a “misleading account” of who he is because he claims it attempts to paint him and “Mr. McMahon” as the same in a “deceptive narrative.”
McMahon was asked about everything from WWE’s ring boy scandal, former referee Rita Chatterton’s rape allegations, the steroid trial, Owen Hart and Chris Benoit’s deaths and too many wrestlers dying young.
One of the more genuine personal things we learn is the tense relationship between Vince and Shane and why the Vince nixed his son’s idea of buying the UFC before the Fertittas.
Vince and Shane both embarked on an exhaustive search for approval from their fathers. Vince finally got his after he effectively put the territory system out of business and Shane after his match with the Undertaker at WrestleMania 32 following years of risk-taking to get his dad’s approval.
Heyman tells a story of a time Vince vehemently disagreed with a creative idea Shane had and took out his knife and handed it to Shane, and he said “Right there (pointing to his heart). If you want this so bad, stick the dagger right here.”
from former WWE employee Janel Grant. Zuffa LLC
Even with all Netflix covered, there were missed opportunities. Prichard in the final episode calls the doc a “gotcha piece” because it didn’t show the human side of McMahon — telling the story of how Vince saved his wife’s life by making sure she got the best cancer care.
It’s understandable why there might be a reluctance to paint McMahon in any favorable light given the allegations made against him over the years and his hesitancy to reveal that side of himself.
“Performing is easy,” McMahon says. “Being yourself is the most difficult part.”
But there are ways to give a more complete picture of a complicated man or get his guard down.
Though we don’t know what got left on the editing room floor from the four extra hours of McMahon interviews they have, I have some questions:
- What is McMahon like as a grandfather?
- Why were WWE television scripts constantly rewritten right before and even during the show? (McMahon’s unorthodox and exhaustive creative process was completely ignored.)
- Is the story true that WWE hired a different and less experienced descender technician (rigger) to work with Owen Hart the night of his death? If so, why?
- Does anyone have any good Vince McMahon drinking stories? (There is a famous one of McMahon taking the Road Warriors and Hart Foundation’s finishers at a bar.)
- Why did Netflix not interview WWEs long-time head of talent relations and commentator Jim Ross — now with AEW — for the documentary?
“Mr. McMahon” was still a good look into WWE’s history through the eyes of Vince McMahon and its major stars and shows some of what makes him tick. But it could have gone further — straying more from the traditional path of so many other inquiries into McMahon and the WWE,
It may have been our first, last and only chance to do so with McMahon involved.
