Promotional Poster for “Mr. McMahon” Netflix Series. Netflix
On Sep. 25, 2024, the “Mr. McMahon” documentary series was released on Netflix. The six-episode series was claimed to give insight into the mind of the infamous former Chairman of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Vincent K. McMahon.
When news about the docuseries came out in the midst of his sexual misconduct allegations, it was believed that it would be the nail in the coffin for McMahon. It was thought that new information would be exposed through the project. However, after watching the series, this couldn’t be any further from the truth, making it a huge letdown.
For those unfamiliar, McMahon was the owner of the WWE from 1982 until his resignation in July 2022. McMahon did a little bit of everything in the company; from ring announcing, commentating, being chairman, booker, and most notably playing an on-screen character as the evil billionaire owner of the WWE.
McMahon constantly regurgitates that his on-screen persona and his true self are completely different. However, as we’ve slowly come to find out more about his personal life, we realize that the two have more in common than we thought.
For almost 40 years, he ran his company with an iron fist, taking down any competitor in his way. To the point where the WWE almost held a monopoly on the industry.
The docuseries mentions McMahon’s role in purging of the former “territory system” in which every region in the U.S had its own wrestling company, a.k.a “territory.” These territories collaborated by sharing not only their talent, but their championship title belts in order to keep each other in business.
However, as history shows, McMahon’s greed for expansion would lead him to buy out his competition or their talent. As a result, this would cost his competitors money and ultimately eliminate the territories.
This is how the WWE became the huge conglomerate it is today. Throughout most of the documentary, McMahon is portrayed as the genius businessman who brought pro-wrestling to mainstream attention.
This is one of the main issues of the docuseries. Production began in 2021, months before news broke of his sexual misconduct towards former WWE employee, Janel Grant. Therefore, most episodes can be described as non stop praise to stroke the ego of McMahon.
The series is filled with interviews with big names such as John Cena, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, and more. All were top stars of the company and have a longstanding “father and son-like” relationship with McMahon, thus having a biased outlook of what he’s truly like behind the scenes.
A majority of the docuseries feels like a PR tactic that we’ve seen countless times over the years in WWE’s own documentaries. Not to mention that it retells stories that have been told many times before, most recently in Vice’s “Dark Side of the Ring” series, rather than giving us new information about McMahon’s countless other controversies.
It is clear that McMahon and his colleagues came into the interviews with the purpose of cleaning his public image. In one of the last interviews, filmed in January 23, 2024, Bruce Prichard was asked his opinion on the preview he received of the first few episodes of the docuseries.
“Thought they sucked … I thought it was portrayed as a gotcha piece. And it was all about “How can we make Vince look bad?’” responded Prichard.
Those words didn’t age well, as Grant’s allegations against McMahon were made public two days later. This brought an end to WWE’s involvement in the documentary, as McMahon went on to cancel his final interviews for the series.
McMahon allegedly tried to buy the doc back from Netflix after seeing early footage. Two days before the docuseries dropped, he posted a statement on X about his disapproval in the early footage.
Vince stated, “The producers had an opportunity to tell an objective story about my life and the incredible business 1 built … Unfortunately, based on an early partial cut I’ve seen, this doc falls short and takes the predictable path of conflating the “Mr. McMahon” character with my true self, Vince.”
I believe this is a testament to the failure that this documentary is. It seems probable that the creators convinced McMahon and WWE to become involved in the series under the premise of letting them control his narrative. It wasn’t until the lawsuit became public that the series was forced to shift its focus by briefly touching on the allegations in the last episode.