After six Netflix hours, Vince McMahon remains a mystery
Netflix documentary Mr McMahon emerges more like a potted history of wrestling than a true examination of the man behind the "evil boss" character.
Netflix’s docuseries Mr McMahon is as weird as it is definitive
Like every wrestling fan on planet Earth, I spent six hours this week glued to my TV screen for Netflix’s highly anticipated docuseries Mr. McMahon. Directed by Tiger King filmmaker Chris Smith, the doc has had a very unusual journey to the screen. Initially, WWE was very keen on the project, playing a part in announcing it way back in 2019 and serving up just about every big name from wrestling history as a talking head. Most attractively, Vince McMahon himself sat down for a string of interviews — a very rare case of the elusive boss speaking with something close to candour1 about his life.
Most of the interviews in the doc were recorded in 2021 and 2022, which is significant because of what happened in April 2022. The Wall Street Journal reported on a series of hush money payments by McMahon to cover up what he claimed were consensual affairs with WWE employees. He stepped down from the company in June 2022, only to return six months later and sell the company as part of a merger with UFC. In January 2024, former WWE employee Janel Grant filed a lawsuit accusing McMahon of coercing her into a relationship and subjecting her to horrific sexual abuse, as well as trafficking her to other men. McMahon denies all of Grant’s allegations.2
All of that real estate is important to cover because it fundamentally reshaped how the public, and therefore the documentary, sees Vince McMahon. The allegations hover over the entire series like an elephant in the room, briefly mentioned in the premiere and then explored further in the final episode with a series of new interviews.3 Certainly, the framing and promotion of the documentary, focused around the differences and similarities between the real Vince and his “Mr McMahon” character on TV, feels influenced by the unsavoury allegations about the kind of man he might be behind the scenes.
This is a terrific central concept for a documentary. Professional wrestling as an art form thrives in the fuzzy hinterland between fiction and reality. The once rock-solid idea of kayfabe — the portrayal of events on a wrestling show as real — has now been muddied so far that the true excitement of being a wrestling fan comes from never quite knowing how close to reality the fiction has become. Arguably, Vince McMahon has used that murky ground to conceal the worst elements of himself behind the shield of a fictional character. That would be quite the story for a truly incisive documentary to tell.
So it’s strange to see what Mr McMahon actually is, which is a fairly straightforward journey through modern wrestling history. The first episode depicts McMahon’s purchase of his father’s wrestling company and his subsequent determination to expand, shattering the existing territory-based system and forming the enormous company that would turn wrestling into a mainstream art form with the first WrestleMania in 1985. McMahon is absolutely the right figure to use as the centrepiece for the story of modern wrestling and, in terms of telling that story, Mr McMahon feels as close to definitive as any wrestling documentary can be.
Part of this comes from the genuinely incredible array of talking heads. There isn’t a single surviving giant of the wrestling business who doesn’t appear, with the stars of every era featuring prominently — Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, John Cena, Cody Rhodes, etc. The other members of the McMahon family are also present and correct. It’s no exaggeration to say that no single docuseries, even including those made by WWE itself, can match this exhaustive who’s-who of a cast.
Unfortunately, the trade-off of that incredible feat of cast-building is that the documentary sometimes loses sight of itself. While billed as a forensic examination of the mercurial maestro at the top of the business, Mr McMahon often feels like a cosy fireside chat between a load of old boys reminiscing about the good old days. Wrestling fans have heard these same old stories about the Curtain Call, the Monday Night Wars, and the bloody Montreal Screwjob a million times. There isn’t a single square of turf untouched when it comes to those topics, so this doc can’t offer much more than a morsel of new info.
As I mentioned earlier though, the selling point is McMahon. Out-of-character interviews reflecting on his own life are so rare that a 2001 Playboy article is still cited as something close to the definitive text on the “real” Vince McMahon. For the most part, McMahon is allowed to indulge in his own self-mythologising throughout the doc, with only occasional flashes of genuinely revealing, unguarded moments. In one of these, he confesses that he never really says what he actually thinks. In industry parlance, he’s always working us.
That’s not to say the doc always lets him off the hook. There are some sharp, entertaining instances of fact-checking through clever editing, whether it’s wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer skewering the famously inflated attendance at WrestleMania III, every wrestler rubbishing Vince’s claim that he’s nothing like Mr McMahon, and a genuinely glorious montage about whether the Attitude Era could ever be called “family-friendly”. Spoilers: not even slightly.
Perhaps my issues with Mr McMahon wouldn’t be there were I not so immersed in the wrestling world. If you’re hearing about the Montreal Screwjob for the first time, then it’s a crucial part of how Vince McMahon the boss became "Mr McMahon” the on-screen villain. The story of the Monday Night Wars shows how McMahon displayed dogged determination and innovated to beat his competitors at their own game by creating a product even more precision-tooled to target the anti-authority young male demographic in the 1990s. But if you’re a wrestling fan, you’ve heard that particular story told by the victors a million times.4
Mr McMahon is, in that respect, caught between two stalls. Like so many works about pro wrestling — and indeed documentaries in general — it has to tell the story for those who are entirely new to it and also provide enough fresh info to stimulate the devotees. Mr McMahon, for me, leans far too heavily in favour of the novices. As a wrestling fan, it feels frustratingly surface-level for 80% of its runtime, with the highlights being those deeper moments. The segment devoted to the relationship between Vince and his son Shane is revealing in regards to both men and really illuminates Vince McMahon’s bizarre hold over those who seek his approval.
In some ways, Mr McMahon suffers from arriving in the heart of a story that’s still developing. McMahon is currently under federal investigation around those allegations of sexual assault and trafficking. As a result, there’s an understandable need to focus on how other people see McMahon, prior to the truth of his life being unveiled. If he’s guilty of even half of what he’s accused of, he’s a true monster. But the series still shirks the duty of its central aim — the exploration of whether Vince McMahon and Mr McMahon are one and the same.
McMahon himself has disowned the doc with a statement on social media5, but there’s a nagging sense that the series could and should’ve gone further. There’s no doubt that its roster of talking heads makes it a feast for wrestling fans, but it misses its chance to truly wrangle Vince McMahon into an inescapable submission hold. Bizarrely for a doc that, on its poster, describes its subject as both a “mastermind” and a “madman”, it often lets him off a little too easily. When the bell rings at the end of this heavyweight bout, Vince McMahon lives to fight another day.
Mr McMahon is streaming on Netflix now.
Nobody with this much time spent in the carny world of wrestling can ever be fully honest. And nor do they want to be.
In a statement to Deadline, McMahon said: “I stand by my prior statement that Ms. Grant’s lawsuit is replete with lies, obscene made-up instances that never occurred, and is a vindictive distortion of the truth. I intend to vigorously defend myself against these baseless accusations, and look forward to clearing my name.”
None of the big names sat down for another chat and McMahon himself is revealed to have cancelled at least one interview with the team following the 2022 hush money story.
When the WWE Network first launched as a streaming platform in 2014, one of its first pieces of original programming was a 20-part series called “The Monday Night War: WWE vs. WCW”.
https://x.com/VinceMcMahon/status/1838320734579441946