“Mr. McMahon” Review

There was the old cry of declaring televised wrestling as fake. Was it scripted? Sure, but the fighting was real. It was so real that when Bill Maher tried to make a snide comment about how fake it was, Rowdy Roddy Piper lifted his shirt to show the wounds he got from matches and brought up how Owen Hart died during an accident preparing for a match. Wrestling is fake in the same sense that Jackie Chan’s movies were fake; reducing them as such removes the pain that was placed in the theatrics.

But there’s a deeper questioning of the realism and play within the docuseries Mr. McMahon, covering the rocky legacy of Vince McMahon handling the WWF/WWE. Vince took over the family business and turned it into an empire that dominated television. Watching his wrestling program as a kid, however, I saw a different version of him. Vince took part in the many wrestling matches as his character, Mr. McMahon. He played up his role as an evil slimeball of an owner who would constantly play the heel to the babyface. As I later learned about what was going on behind the scenes, Vince wasn’t so much playing a character as he was basking in the controversial and egotistical decisions he made with his company.

This series lets the audience in on the controversies early. In the first few minutes of Vince’s interview footage, the text informs the viewer that it was recorded in 2021, right before a major sexual harassment/trafficking scandal forced Vince to exit the company. We know that Vince has made some horrible choices before the show even starts, lest it be easy to get wrapped up in his rise to fame, his troubled relationship with his father, or his eccentric wrestling persona. This is important to keep in mind because it’s so easy to grin at his over-the-top performances. Even as I watch the archived footage of Vince snarling in the microphone to fire someone or having his head shaved by Donald Trump, I still find myself amused, even when knowing all the hideous things that Vince did during these productions.

The wrestlers interviewed harbor a similar sentiment. All the top talents are assembled to speak about Vince, ranging from the organization’s first star Hulk Hogan to the more modern marvels of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena. All of them attribute their success to Vince but also don’t shy away from the problems he caused. Vince was shrewd with his business tactics as he gobbled up markets and forced his wrestlers to work an absurd schedule of matches. Brutal injuries, drug use, and sexism ran rampant in this business and that’s all Vince really saw it as: Business. Unless he was attacked, as when the WCW started snatching up his wrestlers and ratings with better working conditions. When Vince is asked about the hypocrisy in his criticism of the WCW tactics, he doesn’t have much of an answer outside of a word-salad way of trying to say, “It’s only okay when I do it.”

Following the chronological series of events, we get a complete picture of Vince’s career and how easily his insidious practices were accepted. As wrestlers Hulk Hogan and Tony Atlas try to relay, they can tell you the history but can’t place you in that time’s mindset. They’ll reveal shocking stories of steroid use and sexual harassment that went on in locker rooms but brushed it off as being something that just happened in this line of work. All of it had this air of being allowed without much room to dispute. Drug use did land Vince in the courtroom, but without much evidence to convict him of any wrongdoing. But, as the wrestlers state, drug use wasn’t demanded, but it was heavily implied if you wanted to stay buff. Likewise, there was not enough to convict Vince for the death of Owen Hart, ruled as a manufacturer defect in the equipment he was using to descend into the ring. Bret Hart, knowing everything he knows about Vince, still couldn’t shake the feeling of this being Vince’s doing. His distrust wasn’t unfounded, as Vince fixed a match that ruined Hart’s career in the WWF.

The docuseries doesn’t exactly cover everything scandalous about Vince’s company. One aspect that is glazed over too quickly was when Jessie Ventura tried to unionize the wrestlers for better pay and conditions, only for Hulk Hogan to rat him out to Vince, crushing any hope of unionizing. Knowing this, it’s hard to find any sympathy with Hogan’s conflicting business deals. Also, knowing that Hogan made racist rants on a leaked sex tape, which isn’t present in the show, doesn’t make his presence any more favorable, though it does explain his vocal endorsement of Donald Trump at the RNC. It might also be a touchy subject, but the controversial association WWE formed with Saudi Arabia, where the government paid for the shows, feels like a whole can of worms to big for a limited series like this to open.

Mr. McMahon gives an engrossing and oftentimes gross picture of Vince’s wrestling business and persona. Throughout the interviews, Vince assures that he is divorced from his wrestling character, but admits there might be a little bit of himself in those performances. As the other wrestlers state, however, it’s a blurred line. By many accounts, Vince was mean, slimy, and more than capable of crossing lines, where his sexual affairs on his wrestling storylines carried more truth than fiction. McMahon spoke openly about how much he loved watching the heels of matches when he was young, desiring to be one. He got his wish, but perhaps became more of the villain than he realized. There’s no amount of strutting and apologia from the wrestlers raised by him that can hide his mistreatment and criminal behavior. Much like wrestling, it’s not a question of whether or not the cocky billionaire’s evil storylines were fake; it’s how much of it was fake. The concerning answer was not much.