Season 1 |
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Episode Guide
Junior
Heat
Screwjob
Attitude
Family Business
The Finish
As a male growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, wrestling was all the rage. Watching the exploits of The Rock and Stone Cold, tearing the place up and whooping Vince McMahon’s ass, became a Monday Night staple for me and my younger brother. And with the arrival of the attitude era, the line between “kayfabe” (the persona on screen) and real life became difficult to separate.
Nowhere else was that more evident than in Vincent K. McMahon. With storylines ranging from affairs to billionaire brawls, there really is no stone that Vince will leave unturned in the name of entertainment. But beneath the glossy facade of showy PPVs and long-running soapy storylines, a darker, more sinister edge consumed the business. And naturally, Netflix is here to expose all of that.
For the most part, the show does a pretty good job of showcasing that. Across the 6 episodes, Mr McMahon jumps through the different eras to give an overview surrounding the rise of WWF (turned to WWE in 2002 amidst a lawsuit from the World Wildlife Federation) and how Vince McMahon factored into that.
Along the way, the show exposes some of the bigger scandals within the company, including steroid use, the infamous “screwjob” against Bret Hart and all the familial drama along the way within the McMahon household. However, the documentary is pretty vague on some topics, especially backroom drama, the friction that came from WCW talent joining the roster, and how Vince became more of a hindrance than a help during the early 2020’s.
In one episode, we see the topic of CTE brought up after the tragic murder-suicide of wrestler Chris Benoit. Although Dark Side of the Ring tackled this with far more depth, we do see how this brought about a wave of change for the industry, including the eventual move back to PG.
The series does well to show a lot of the stuff happening on-screen, with some backstage footage helping to flesh it all out. However, a lot of the more recent footage is annoyingly vague. We get glimmers of Stephanie McMahon and Paul Levesque trying to force Vince out the company, but we never actually get much depth around that. We just see a couple of news reports, no interviews from either Steph or Paul.
There’s not a single mention of NXT in here, nor how WWE tackled the AEW threat. This is particularly weird because it’s the brainchild of Paul Levesque, and the place responsible for some of the bigger talent in WWE today (And it reportedly annoyed Vince too because it was more popular than the main product).
Likewise, we get some context around Shane McMahon leaving the WWE, but to be honest the story itself comes from Paul Heyman. Shane himself is pretty standoffish about it. And if anybody knows how to concoct a compelling showman story, it’s Paul Heyman. But again, it’s hard to know how much of this is embellished.
There’s very little here about the storyline woes backstage, nothing regarding CM Punk’s Pipebomb that reignited the company (which is weird for a show about kayfabe and real life) nor the fans’ disdain toward Cena at the height of his reign. The term “Super Cena” was never a compliment and one could argue it brought about a wave of fans turning the product off.
There’s also nothing toward fans’ outright disdain for Roman Reigns during his push to the main event, the piped cheers into the crowd and covering up low attendances, nor the friction backstage around the direction of the company.
What is apparent throughout the documentary though is how abhorrent some of the female talent was treated. I, like many others, will remember the infamous Trish Stratus storyline involving her affair and barking like a dog, but there are a string of other questionable storylines here that now – with more context over the Vince McMahon allegations – take on a whole new dimension.
There’s a lovely little fourth-wall breaking interview late on too, one that shows one of the men interviewed (I won’t spoil who) claiming that Netflix just want to make Vince look like an asshole. But again, with so many allegations coming to light, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not.
Mr McMahon is not a bad docu-series, all things considered, but the real meat and potatoes of the show – the actual true crime allegations and scandals – really only account for about 30% of the content here.
This is first and foremost a trip down memory lane, looking at what Vince has built with the WWE and the trials and tribulations along the way. For those who know the wrestling business, there’s not much here you won’t already know, although the additional backstage footage is definitely welcome.
For those who know nothing about wrestling however, Mr McMahon is definitely worth checking out and you’re likely to get more out of this. It’s certainly not bad but similarly, it could have been so much better.
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Verdict - 6.5/10
6.5/10