Not a Book: Mr McMahon

Back on a streaming documentary this week, and it’s more of an interesting watch than an enjoyable one, and less of a recommendation than that word implies for reasons which I will explain if you read on…

The basics: Mr McMahon is a six part Netflix documentary about Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling promoter who ran WWE (or WWF as it was) from the early 1980s until basically the start of this year. Interviews for this documentary started before the 2022 allegations of misconduct against him emerged, and McMahon himself cancelled his final interviews for the series after this happened (as the series tells you several times). McMahon took WWE from one of a number of professional wrestling companies to the dominant force in the industry – but to say his tenure was not without controversy is to vastly understate the case.

This is the point where I say that I am not a wrestling viewer. In fact one of the things I say often when people ask me what sports I do (or don’t) watch (usually in the context of the Summer Olympics) is that I will watch pretty much anything except boxing and wrestling. During the dominant years of WWE, it very much just wasn’t on TV at a time I was watching (or channels I was watching). And lets be fair – I’m not the target market for it anyway. So I went into this not knowing a lot about wrestling other than the fact that Hulk Hogan was one of the biggest stars for a period, that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena started out in WWE and that there used to be loads of WWE toys in the Argos catalogue that I used to flick through when I was younger. Oh and that the women of WWE are called Divas, and that the winners are pre-determined.

So this was an eye-opening (and horrifying at times) watching experience for me. And of course I have no idea what has been left out, or glossed over or otherwise elided. But it does explain a lot – whether it’s how wrestling actually works, or about the wider state of the world in some ways. One thing that really, really comes through is the force of Vince McMahon’s personality. He says on camera that he doesn’t really want people to get to know him, and even in the interviews recorded after the 2022 allegations, the WWE employees are still incredibly reluctant to say anything against him – one of them describes the stuff they’ve seen so far as a hit job.

And I should say that we got to a point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the end of the documentary. The feeling started somewhere around the point where Owen Hart died (off camera but in the arena) during a Wrestlemania, and they continued the show, even with his blood on the ring, but intensified during the next episode where the Mr McMahon character and the Ruthless Aggression era just become overwhelming. But I was determined to stick it out to the end. And, oh boy. And that’s why I said at the top it’s not really a recommendation, because I came out of this pretty depressed that WWE still exists and is a thing, and that so much of it was allowed to happen at all, let alone in giant stadiums in front of baying crowds and then shown to worldwide TV audiences. But at least now I feel better informed about the world of wrestling, so I guess that’s something right?

Mr McMahon is on Netflix, you’ll probably need to be in a pretty resilient mood to watch the final few parts, and I would say go armed with a drink, but that’s not the sort of behaviour I should be encouraging, but I needed one by the end…