A new Netflix documentary sheds light on the rise and fall of WWE founder Vince McMahon, who stumbled over disturbing allegations. McMahon calls it “misleading” – but it is his own words that are revealing.
Vince McMahon, the disgraced wrestling mogul, is disappointed because of serious allegations of rape and sex trafficking.
This week, streaming giant Netflix released a major documentary about his life story – and it’s not what the founder and longtime patriarch of WWE had hoped for.
“The producers had the chance to tell an objective story about my life and the incredible business I built – filled with excitement, drama, fun and a certain amount of controversy and life lessons,” the 79-year-old complained to X about the series ‘Mr. McMahon’. Instead, it is a “deliberately misleading” mixture of reality and fiction, a malicious blending of his real personality with the fictional character Mr. McMahon, which he had played in front of the WWE camera.
It was a surprising statement from the multi-billionaire, who has recently tended to disappear from the public eye – and has only increased the stir surrounding the elaborate film project. “Mr. McMahon” is the number one topic of conversation in the wrestling scene this week – because the often bizarre insights into the character and power system of the overthrown show fight emperor are as comprehensive as they are meaningful.
Netflix documentary “Mr. McMahon” focuses on WWE founder
As a reminder, McMahon resigned from WWE earlier this year after young ex-employee and lover Janel Grant accused him of raping her and offering her as a sexual commodity within his company (including to top star Brock Lesnar, who has also top star Brock Lesnar) – underpinned by the publication of numerous vulgar text messages from McMahon that suggest an exploitative relationship between the ex-boss and his former subordinate.
McMahon, against whom there are also other unresolved rape and harassment allegations, denies all accusations of criminal behavior. The case is currently the subject of a state investigation.
The Netflix project, which WWE itself announced with audible pride as a prestige project and “groundbreaking deal” with the streaming provider in 2020, has now been pushed into the middle of the ongoing proceedings – but it has taken a completely different direction than originally planned.
Behind “Mr. McMahon” is award-winning filmmaker Chris Smith, executive producer of the cult documentary “Tiger King” and director of the Emmy-nominated documentaries “Fyre” and “Jim & Andy” about Jim Carrey’s portrayal of wrestling-loving comedian Andy Kaufman in the film “Man on the Moon”.
Smith and his colleagues had actually already finished shooting when, in the summer of 2022, following the first revelations of explosive hush money payments by McMahon, events both on and off screen came thick and fast.
The project was temporarily threatened with closure, but instead – without McMahon’s involvement – a new ending was added that also dealt with the fall of the WWE patriarch of many years.
The end product offers connoisseurs of the McMahon scandal and WWE history no groundbreaking news, but a grippingly told panorama of McMahon’s work and idiosyncratic character.
A story of success and scandal
The documentary traces McMahon’s life and the history of his life’s work, WWE, which McMahon built from a regional show fighting league into a global empire: the first four episodes portray the first boom of the then WWF with the then superstar Hulk Hogan, the crisis of the nineties and the Attitude Era, the second great high of the promotion with the figureheads “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – and the won competition with the 2001-perished rival WCW.
In contrast to the business success story, however, “Mr. McMahon” also addresses the various scandals from McMahon’s early years: the steroid trial in the early nineties, the abuse allegations against former talent manager Terry Garvin and former ring announcer Mel Philipps, the first rape accusation against McMahon, raised by former ring referee Rita Chatterton due to an alleged assault in the eighties.
If WWE had the public significance back then that the company has today, McMahon might have had to step down much earlier. Instead, despite all the controversies and affairs, he always retained control over his empire, whose business is currently doing better than ever thanks to multi-billion dollar TV and streaming deals and a new audience boom that has been underway for about two years.
Around the same time, McMahon began to lose control of his life’s work.
McMahon maintained a hush money system
An investigative series by the Wall Street Journal revealed that McMahon had maintained a hush money system for years to keep allegations of sexual harassment and violence under wraps . Among other things, a $7.5 million payment to an anonymous former female wrestler came to light, who accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex on him in 2005.
Under pressure from the events, McMahon announced his resignation and alleged “retirement”, but in early 2023, he used his power as a shareholder to take back control of the company and negotiated the major merger with the UFC parent company Endeavor, becoming the second-most powerful man in the new conglomerate TKO, behind company boss Ari Emmanuel.
The eternal Vince seemed invulnerable once and for all – but when Janel Grant’s lawyers made their lawsuit and the incriminating evidence public, McMahon was quickly pushed into a permanent resignation.
Despite the comprehensive critical examination of McMahon, the documentary is not designed to personally destroy him; director Smith and his team are noticeably striving for a three-dimensional picture.
Strange relationship with one’s own family
In a masterful move, Smith has McMahon’s longtime confidant Bruce Prichard blaspheme over the project in the last episode: the rough cut he saw was “shit,” McMahon is not the “asshole” that the documentary wants to portray him as, and the human side is neglected – for example, the fact that McMahon extended the life of Prichard’s wife, who had cancer, by financing the best possible therapy.
Numerous interviews with McMahon’s companions also make it clear how many of his former stars – John Cena, the Undertaker, and formerly also old friend-enemy Bret Hart – regarded him as a father figure or still do.
On the other hand, as the documentary makes very clear, there is a strange relationship between McMahon and his own family in many ways: with his father, Vince Sr., whom he ousted when he founded the predecessor league WWWF; with his wife Linda, a former cabinet minister in the government of his business friend Donald Trump, with whom he has long had a de facto marriage of convenience; To son Shane, who openly admits that he sought the love and respect of his father, which he would otherwise not have received, with his daring ring stunts. In part also to his daughter and once designated company heir Stephanie, to whom he once – Vince tells it himself – suggested the story idea that he had made her an incest baby.
The fact that something is missing in Vince McMahon’s life is also revealed when he talks about retirement in the documentary – and explains that it is a mystery to him why anyone would ever want to leave their professional life: “If you stop growing, you die. What exactly do you want to do when you retire? I have no sympathy for people like that. Then die.” (McMahon’s first resignation after the hush money revelations was justified a few months later with the words: ‘At 77, it’s time for me to retire’)
“Sometimes performers lose sight of who they are”
What drives the man McMahon instead is presented at the end of the last episode with another snippet of an interview from 2021 – which, due to the subsequent revelations, now also appears in a different light.
When asked by the filmmakers, McMahon discusses the very question that the documentary, according to his later claim, misrepresented: what he is really like and how much of the fictional character “Mr. McMahon” he is.
McMahon’s answer from 2021: The question is difficult, he is certainly “egomaniacal”, but “physical culture”, “sexual activity” and his need to be “challenged every day” are also important to him: “Sometimes performers start to believe that they are the role they are playing and lose all sense of who they really are. I often wonder what part of me is the role and what is me. Maybe it’s a mixture. In any case, one part is somewhat exaggerated. I’m just not sure which.”
The line between reality and fiction itself is blurred
The final point of the documentary makes it clear that McMahon and his remaining supporters are oversimplifying when they accuse the film project of blurring the line between reality and fiction.
It is McMahon himself who has repeatedly done this, hiding behind his role, using his alter ego as a power-hungry boss as a shield for real power games with his subordinates, and using creative control over the story-based world to cast himself and his scandals in a more favorable light – or at least to try to do so.
The Netflix documentary shows various revealing examples in this regard: When McMahon was accused by a solarium employee of sexually harassing her in 2006, he staged a story at WWE two weeks later in which wrestler Mickie James sent an innocent man to prison with trumped-up harassment charges.
A year later, McMahon put James’ colleague Ashley Massaro in a TV segment in which he shouted at her in a humiliating way, made her cry and announced a (story) suspension – as it turned out shortly after McMahon’s resignation, the late Massaro accused McMahon of having taken revenge for rejected sexual advances with a disparaging portrayal of her TV character.
Janel Grant? “An affair I ended”
Janel Grant’s lawyers see the character portrait as confirmation of the impression that McMahon used his wrestling empire as an instrument of power against women.
“The series makes it clear that there is no difference between McMahon’s TV character and his real self,” Janel Grant’s lawyers commented on the documentary: The ‘violent outbursts, sexual perversion and manipulation’ that McMahon lives out in his role are ”exactly what Janel Grant experienced behind closed doors for years.”
Meanwhile, McMahon remains unmoved by the mass of accusations against him – and is confident that he will be able to clear his name and that the Janel Grant case will never go to court. In his new statement, he casually refers to it as “an affair I ended”.
