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 wrestling outfit 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 were 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 there was no shortage of backdated scandals – to piece his story together.

The film speeds through McMahon’s upbringing briskly. He grew up in a trailer park with his mother and a violent stepfather, 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 global sensation in the 1980s.

 

To anyone unfamiliar with pro wrestling’s glitz and grappling, this is an eye-opening insight into the rise, fall, and then rise again of WWE. Backstage, from the blood, bluster, spandex, and cages, Mr McMahon starts to lose its focus, becoming a history of WWE rather than of McMahon himself.

 

Talking heads describe the on-screen Mr McMahon as an exaggeration of the real-life individual. Hogan describes them as ‘exactly the same person.’

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 overall 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 make sure he was alive.)

 

All this builds to the final episode, the current scandals, and, unfortunately, a rather damp squib of an ending. Placed in the admittedly difficult position of covering the 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.

 

Boluwatife Adesina
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Boluwatife Adesina is a media writer and the helmer of the Downtown Review page. He’s probably in a cinema near you.