As former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon faces a federal investigation, a new documentary series on Netflix offers a rare look at the man credited with turning professional wrestling into a cultural giant.
McMahon participated in hours of interviews before leaving the project due to allegations of sexual misconduct.
The series only briefly touches on the lawsuit filed against McMahon in January by former WWE employee Janel Grant, accusing him of sexual abuse and human trafficking. McMahon has denied any wrongdoing and the lawsuit is on hold pending the outcome of the federal investigation.
When he addresses the scandals and controversies that have dogged him for decades, he expresses little regret.
He denies an accusation by former referee Rita Chatterton that he raped her in 1986. “If you’re accused of rape, you’re a rapist. But it was consensual,” he says in the series. “And actually, if it was rape, the statute of limitations had run out. So it’s all that kind of crap that people dig up and try to find out about you.”
McMahon blames New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick, a frequent critic of WWE, for his 1993 federal court indictment on charges of selling steroids. (He was acquitted.)
He stands by his decision to continue a pay-per-view event 25 years ago after wrestler Owen Hart was killed in a botched stunt – while other wrestlers collided in a ring still stained with Hart’s blood. “If I had been the one who got splattered on the mat,” McMahon said, “I would have wanted the show to go on.”
And McMahon rejects the explanation that wrestler Chris Benoit suffered from chronic concussions that could have led him to kill his family and then himself in 2007. After that, however, he says, he stopped wrestlers from hitting each other with steel chairs at shows.
In the documentary series, McMahon speaks in a hushed manner – almost a harsh whisper, compared to the growling roar he was known for into the microphone in the ring.
Although he is very open about his career, McMahon seems unwilling to discuss his childhood in detail, unless he suggests that it was marked by abuse.
“I’m not good at looking back at all,” McMahon says on the show. “I’m not sure I’m afraid of looking back.”
Many of the interviews in the six-part series, which Netflix will release on Wednesday, were recorded two years ago – before McMahon’s resignation as CEO of WWE in 2022 due to revelations that he paid four women $12 million to reach nondisclosure agreements related to sexual misconduct allegations. The docuseries notes that McMahon canceled the remaining interviews after the Wall Street Journal published the news of the misconduct allegations and the payments. Grant, who filed the lawsuit against McMahon this year, did not participate in the documentary, according to her attorney, Ann Callis.
McMahon said in a statement Monday that the docuseries, based on an initial cut he saw, “takes the predictable path of conflating the character ‘Mr. McMahon’ with the real me, Vince.” He accused producers of using “typical editing tricks” to “support a misleading narrative” and said he hoped viewers would “remember that there are two sides to every story.”
One question that is asked repeatedly throughout the series is how much of a difference there is between McMahon as a person and “Mr. McMahon,” the on-screen character born in WWE’s “Attitude Era” of the late 1990s that was known for pushing into R-rated territory. Several WWE stars on the series acknowledge that the way women were treated in the Attitude Era would not be tolerated today, and some, like Shawn Michaels, feel that perhaps they should have toned it down back then.
But McMahon defends the decisions made at the time. Despite storylines involving rape, simulated deaths and women being forced to take off their clothes, he describes the show as “still family-friendly – maybe more for an adult family, just not young children.” And he adds that the scenes with scantily clad women were a big ratings hit.
When McMahon himself appeared in WWE storylines and scenes at the time, he was shown cheating on his wife and asking women for sexual favors.
When McMahon is asked in the fourth episode of the Netflix series what similarities he has with the character Mr. McMahon, he replies: “None at all.” But in the sixth episode, he admits that there is some overlap. “I’m asking myself now who the character is and who I am,” he says. “I guess it’s maybe a mix, and I would say one is a little over the top, but I’m not so sure which.”
