Staff Writer Teddy D’Ancona reviews Mr. McMahon, diving into the controversies of Vince McMahon and presenting critiques of the Netflix documentary.
Content warning: This article contains discussions of sexual assault and domestic abuse which may be distressing to some readers.
The Rise of a Ringmaster
Professional wrestling is an unavoidable medium. Whether you’re a member of the “WWE universe” or not – you know what it is. The love child between combat sports and soap opera, the staged sport has best been described as an “athletic theatre”. The origins and history of pro-wrestling is truly fascinating, dating back to strongmen in travelling circuses, fixed matches between genuine amateur wrestlers and territorial borders between wrestling promotions.
But pro-wrestling – or “sports entertainment” – as we know it today was created by Vince McMahon
From Chris Smith, the creator of Netflix’s smash hit Tiger King, the Mr. McMahon documentary is a long overdue character study of an absolutely fascinating figure. A man who – for a time – ruled both the wrestling and entertainment world. This documentary is perhaps the most ambitious piece of media covering pro-wrestling ever created, as McMahon himself, his family, journalists and generational wrestling icons all take part to answer the same question. Who exactly is Vince McMahon? And where does the line between fiction and reality end in the character he portrayed on television?
As covered in the first episode, Vince was the estranged son of legendary wrestling promoter Vince McMahon Sr. owner of what was then known as the WWWF. Vince McMahon didn’t come from wealth, having grown up in a trailer park in North Carolina. He’s always been hesitant to disclose the full details of his troubled upbringing, although he stated suffered both sexual and physical abuse as a child, once expressing it to be a shame his step-father died before “I could kill him. I would’ve enjoyed that” in an 2001 interview with Playboy.
After finally meeting his father when he was twelve-years old, Vince started his career in the wrestling business as a commentator and ring announcer for matches. He did not inherit the WWE from his father, but instead bought it from him in 1982, using money generated from the company to pay, in what Vince’s wife Linda phrases as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. Poaching talent from other promotions by offering far more lucrative contracts, McMahon formed a roster of superstars that led to wrestling’s “boom period” in the limelight. And the rest is history.
A Gilded Age
The series examines just how much of the entertainment juggernaut WWE was during his most successful periods. As shown in the documentary, the product was flourishing both in popularity and financially following their first and flagship pay-per-view: Wrestlemania and the rise of their global megastar Hulk Hogan. The WWF (as it was then known) had become a mainstream product in the entertainment industry. From then on, wrestling and entertainment became forever intertwined, with the likes of John Cena, Dwanye “The Rock” Johnson and Dave Baustia making the jump from WWE to Hollywood.
The “Golden Era” from the late 1980s to early 1980s can better be described as a gilded age, as scandals threatened to put the WWF out of business. As covered in the second episode alone, McMahon was accused of sexual assault, turning a blind eye to both a paedophile sex ring within the business and wrestler who committed murder and most infamously supplying steroids to his wrestler – an alleged act that would take him to court. While many involved with the documentary openly confess they committed, with wrestler Tony Atlas admitting “we abused the hell out of women”, McMahon still maintains his innocence on all accounts.
As for the onscreen product, the documentary elucidates Vince McMahon’s ability to make money out of mayhem, as following an infamous incident known as “The Montreal Screwjob”, he was an utterly reviled figure and played into it as an on-screen character. When WWF champion Bret Hart refused to lose his championship to fellow wrestler Shawn Michaels in his home country of Canada before leaving the company, McMahon called for the bell in an unscripted moment without Hart’s knowledge of the match’s predetermined outcome. While McMahon reaffirms in these interviews that he has no regrets about this decision, he embraced the despise the WWE fans had for him, portraying an evil tyrant boss on television simply known as “Mr. McMahon”.
Living the Gimmick
A character a wrestler plays on television is known as their “gimmick” and McMahon’s was that of WWE’s main antagonist. When asked what similarities Vince shares with his character, McMahon’s own son Shane answers that his gimmick is Vince’s personality ‘blown out of proportion’, while wrestling legends Shawn Michaels and Hulk Hogan claim he’s essentially the same person. Vince’s calm and reserved demeanour in the documentary might lead the viewer to share no similarities whatsoever with the lunatic overlord Mr. McMahon, yet notorious backstage gossip contradicts this.
The six hour documentary doesn’t even scratch the surface of insane stories about McMahon, ranging from repeatedly trying to grapple with his wrestlers, having announcer Johnathon Coachman arrested as a prank, urinating on WWE Hall of Famer’s Ric Flair’s bed and outlawing sneezing backstage. Interviewee Paul Heyman recalls a disturbing story he witnessed between Vince and his son Shane while the two were having an argument. Vince handed his son a knife and dared him to stab his father if he was “man enough to do it.” if he wanted control of the company. Needless to say – this documentary debunks McMahon’s attempts to portray himself as an entirely separate entity to his character.
The Mr. McMahon “character” and his rivalry with anti-hero wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin. was a key part of WWE winning the “Monday Night Wars”, in which they went head to head with rival promotion WCW with both of their flagship shows Raw and Nitro airing on Monday night. During this time WWE switched to a TV-14 rating and consequently its presentation became edgier, gritter and supposedly more “adult”. Many consider this period – known as the “Attitude Era” – to be one of the greatest times in wrestling history, with the rise of such stars as The Rock, Steve Austin and Triple H, but documentary re-examines its distasteful content, such as degradation of women, use of racial stereotypes and needlessly violent content. One of the most infamously panned segments being McMahon making his on-screen mistress Trish Stratus get on the floor and “bark like a dog”.
McMahon and executive director of the WWE Bruce Pritchard continually defend these storylines in the documentary as a product of the time, with the latter protesting “at that time, that’s what was on television” (timestamp: Episode 4, 41:33) McMahon continually exposes himself with contradictory statements with simply intercutting footage that show otherwise, bafflingly claims his product was still family friendly as there were “no use of knives or guns” (timestamp: episode 4, 38:11) and no plot lines involving sexual assault. Both of these claims are shown to be incorrect.
Some of the comments captured are outright damning, as after wrestler Owen Hart fell to his death after a failed stunt at the 1999 Over the Edge PPV, McMahon made the infamously contentious decision to continue the show. In a baffling justification of this he simply says the audience “ “came to see a show. They didn’t come to see somebody die”” (timestamp: episode 4, 47:26).
The Darkest Day in Wrestling History
The main criticism to be levelled at Mr. McMahon is it’s uneven pacing, as it spends the bulk of it’s runtime documenting the Golden and Attitude eras, yet only a single episode is dedicated to the modern state of the WWE, as the most horrific tragedy in wrestling history is only given fifteen minutes of documentation. The details of the Chris Benoit double-murder suicide are too harrowing to detail in this review, but needless to say it exposed the life threatening nature WWE’s wrestling style.
For context, due to repeated concussions from extreme harmful manoeuvres to his head, Benoit suffered from untreated severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), his brain being described by neurosurgeon Julian Baines as having the same appearance of an eighty-five-year old Alzheimer’s patient. While Benoit was clearly a sociopathic person regardless of this, being accused of domestic assault on several occasions, McMahon continually takes no responsibility for this catastrophe in relation to his company’s wrestling procedures. When asked about a brutal concussion Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway suffered leaving him with no memory whatsoever of the entire day, McMahon posits that this was due to psychological trauma of losing his undefeated Wrestlemania streak. While his rebuttals are nonsensical, the interviewers needed to probe him further on the reckless care of his employee’s health, as it took something as catastrophic as the Benoit homicide for WWE to change its safety protocols within the ring
End of an Era
Despite these criticisms, the documentary is overall an exceptional chronicle of Vince McMahon’s life, as a man respected and reviled in equal measure. Regardless of whether you’re a wrestling fan or not – this is essential viewing. The series is not intended to be an exposé or misrepresentation of character to ‘support a deceptive narrative’, as McMahon would state on Twitter on the day of the series’ release. To tell the story of Vince McMahon’s, one cannot simply ignore the years of controversy that plagued his company beneath the glitz and glamour of sports entertainment. The dark underbelly of pro wrestling is so unbelievably vast that it’s a genuine miracle that most of WWE and Vince McMahon’s misdeeds are covered in six hours.
It might seem to the viewer that McMahon was genuinely untouchable, surviving scandal after scandal, until his resignation in 2022 and again in 2024 after a brief return to the company, effectively being exiled thereafter. McMahon was accused of sexual trafficking, hush money settlements to keeping sexual offences and extramarital affairs confidential and concealing assault suffered by a wrestler Ashely Massaro while on tour in Kuwait. He supposedly resigned “out of respect for the WWE universe”.
Since his retirement, WWE is in the midst of what’s being called its “renaissance era”, receiving a considerably more positive critical reception, after years of the onscreen product being panned, being praised for its storylines, wrestling and characters. Under the watch of chief content officer and head of creative Paul “Triple H” Levesque – McMahon’s real life son-in-law – the company has set record profits for attendance, merchandise and sponsors. The company’s flagship show Monday Night Raw is moving to the very same streaming service of the documentary, in a legitimately groundbreaking deal to broadcast the show on Netflix.
No one involved in the documentary comes to a concrete conclusion on who Vince McMahon truly is, as both on and off the screen it seems as though he’s portraying a character. However after the six hour coverage of his life, McMahon seems to be even more detestable than the character he played on television. While the interviews manage to capture glimpses of emotional honesty out of McMahon in reference to his loved ones in both his family and the business, he further taints his legacy with his incriminating comments. Ultimately, Vince McMahon became his father. Someone who innovated the wrestling industry, but refused to accept where it was heading and to adapt alongside it. And it’s in a better place than it’s ever been without him.
