Depending on your perspective the creation of Netflix’s six-part documentary series Mr McMahon could not have been better, or worse, timed. The chance to get an insight into Vince McMahon – the controversial, larger-than-life pro wrestling entrepreneur who grew up, in his words, “dirt poor” and built the promoter WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) into a billion-dollar juggernaut – is tantalising.
But there is a twist in this tale. In 2022, reports broke of $12m paid by McMahon to four women to suppress allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity, followed this year by an accusation of sexual assault and trafficking (McMahon has denied the allegations). This presented the series’ creators, including director Chris Smith (Fyre, Tiger King), with a challenge.
Hundreds of hours of interviews had been recorded in 2021 and 2022, not only with McMahon but also with pro wrestling royalty including John Cena, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Hulk Hogan. Unsurprisingly, the first episode states that a final sit-down with McMahon was cancelled after the allegations emerged. But the producers still had hours of footage with McMahon, his family and former employees – and no shortage of backdated scandals – to piece his story together.
Before the opening credits of episode one, the creators boldly let the audience know what they are up against. “I wish I could tell you the real stories, holy shit,” growls McMahon. Encouraged off-camera to give us one, he replies incredulously: “No! … I’ll give you enough that it’s semi-interesting. I don’t want anyone to really know me.” No kidding.
The film speeds through McMahon’s upbringing briskly. He grew up in a trailer park with his mother and a violent stepdad, meeting his biological father for the first time when he was 12. Vince McMahon Sr was a local wrestling promoter who eventually sold, rather than bequeathed, his business to the son he had ignored for the first decade of his life. What follows is an account of McMahon’s rise as he ruthlessly eliminated the competition, paving the way for wrestling to become a muscular global sensation in the 1980s.
To anyone unfamiliar with the glitz and grappling of pro wrestling, this is an eye-opening insight into the rise, fall, then rise again of WWE. Backstage from the blood, bluster, spandex and cages, we’re shown more political intrigue than a sweat-soaked British parliament could deliver. But this is also where Mr McMahon starts to lose its focus, becoming a history of WWE, rather than of McMahon himself.
Which is not to say that the pre-2022 scandals – including a 1994 steroid trial (at which he was found not guilty), an allegation that McMahon sexually assaulted the female referee Rita Chatterton in 1986, and a later concussion scandal – are ignored. Each is given airtime but the accounts are stymied by McMahon’s belligerence and the fact that his former employees, seemingly still in thrall to the man who built their careers and wielded such power, are either unable or unwilling to fully give the game away.
There are some insights. The series’ title, Mr McMahon, refers to the promoter’s on-screen TV presence as a villainous, billionaire boss who revelled in demeaning his staff. One infamous storyline featured a female wrestler, Trish Stratus, getting on her knees and barking like a dog in the ring under McMahon’s instruction. The promoter’s argument that he is just an actor playing a role is rebutted by a host of talking heads who describe the on-screen McMahon as – at best – an exaggeration of the real-life individual. Hogan, however, describes them as “exactly the same person. It’s not a far stretch.”
There is also a glimpse into McMahon’s friendship with Donald Trump and the influence of pro wrestling on Trump’s approach to politics. (Reportedly, when McMahon was “blown up” in a limousine as part of a TV storyline in 2007, a concerned Trump called WWE offices to ensure he was alive.)
All this builds to the final episode, the current scandals and, unfortunately, a damp squib of an ending. Placed in the admittedly difficult position of covering news that is still playing out, the film-makers pay perfunctory attention to these allegations. As if an appendix was tacked on to an already finished product, rather than an attempt made – however laborious – to go back and re-examine their subject.
Throughout the series, disappointingly few women deliver accounts of working alongside McMahon. Chatterton, who accused McMahon of rape and had to wait decades for a reported multimillion-dollar settlement in 2022 (albeit no admission of guilt), appears only in archive footage. From her perspective, it’s an understandable absence. But without her input, or that of other women at the centre of the accusations, Mr McMahon feels like a missed opportunity to really get to grips with the man behind the persona. Despite all the ammunition, there is no smoking gun.
Mr McMahon is expertly produced, researched and edited, and features some remarkable nuggets. But the series does not break any truly new ground to those already familiar with the promoter’s travails. At the end, the viewer is left feeling as if they have experienced a night at the wrestling: shocked, fascinated, but with a sneaking suspicion that they still don’t quite know fact from fiction.
• Mr McMahon is on Netflix.
