Mr. McMahon – Episode Three – “Screwjob”
By Kat Bourne on 30 September 2024
Previously on Mr. McMahon: episode one and two
Sorry for the delay in this recap. There’s been a little bit of real life excitement with a tropical storm passing by and knocking out power, internet and all the fun stuff. All good here! I also needed a little breathing room after that second episode and knowing this one is probably just as bad. I’m hoping to have the fourth up in a few days, depending on work and the other real life things that don’t involve watching Mr. McMahon sounding like an old frog.
We start with the voice of Howard FInkel introducing Wendi Richter. Vince says that Wendi had become a problem and she wouldn’t do the honors and pass the title to someone else. “I’m going to make you give it up then!” We watch clips of Wendi facing The Spider. Spider was of course Fabulous Moolah, an entirely different problematic shitty person. There’s a rollup that she clearly kicks out of, but the referee counts to three. Wendi RIchter, WWE Hall of Famer appears to tell us she lifted her shoulder up at one but the referee kept counting. “My dreams were completely shattered, I was humiliated and it was on television.” Vince says he didn’t care about public uproar. “Life’s not fair sometimes and I don’t fight fair.” Vince tells us that Wendi came back after the match, bowed her head and he never saw her again.
Episode 3: Screwjob
We’re back at the steroid trial. Hulk Hogan and his blue outfit are here and tells us the Feds thought it was the perfect opportunity for him to throw dirt on Vince. Hogan tells the defense that it was his personal choice to take steroids and Vince never implied that wrestlers should. Dave Meltzer says the prosecutors were shocked, and Hogan tells us he didn’t tell the government what he was going to say. Vince tells us Vince was crafty and told them what they wanted without saying Vince did it. Tony Atlas says he was using steroids before he met Vince. Bret said he never saw it happen. Vince: “I wasn’t guilty of anything.” And according to the jury, he wasn’t. Shane McMahon felt relief when the verdict was read. Dave says it should have never happened because they didn’t have the evidence. David Shoemaker says that Vince acted like a victim and his behavior didn’t help. Bruce Pritchard says that business got rough regardless of the trial.
Vince notes that several executives left and Dave says revenues were down. Bret says no more sellouts, while Bruce knew Hulk wanted to find someone to replace Hulk Hogan as the face of WWE. Vince says they put “the machine” behind Lex Luger and thought he was going to be awesome. “Lex was okay, but nowhere near Hulk Hogan.” Bruce says Lex was just another in a chain of guys trying to fill Hulk’s shoes.
Here’s our hero Bret to call himself “the guy that pulled the sword out of the stone,” also introducing Razor Ramon, Diesel and Shawn Michaels as the New Generation. Shawn Michaels, WWE Hall of Famer makes his talking head debut to say everything changed and it could be anybody’s ballgame. Mark “Undertaker” Calaway, wearing a bandana with a hat on top of it, says everyone wanted to see who would step up. Bret thinks he and Undertaker were some of the best wrestlers ever and he was proud to be a torchbearer. He says he was never going to get busted with a teenage girl or a kilo of cocaine.
Vince tells us about the Hart family and says Bret had “enough” charisma but then Ted Turner started grabbing talent. Hulk says there was so much more money in WCW and it was like “dying and going to heaven in the wrestling business.” Eric Bischoff says Randy Savage became available and he was the next big signing. It made it feel like they had momentum and people were looking at WCW differently. Ted asks Eric what it would take to be competitive with WWE, and Eric tells him a Monday night timeslot.
Vince says he knew they were in trouble when he found out they were going with WCW and maybe they were going to put them out of business. We watch Nitro clips and Lex Luger and his majestic white shirt appear. Eric calls it fortuitous and tells Lex he couldn’t tell anyone. Bruce calls it embarrassing. Vince says he had handshake deals and learned he couldn’t keep doing that. Eric says he made a list of every way to be different from WWE: going live, being more real, and being recognized as the wrestling company where you never knew what was going to happen. Luckily he didn’t have a one-hour show on Friday and a two-hour show on Saturday as well. Eric jokes about announcing the results of Raw and Vince says it aggravated and hurt them. Eric wanted to upset the WWE audience so they would tune it to see what they would do next week.
Triple H, Undertaker and Paul Heyman all appear to say that Vince would never “sell” or show the emotion of it happening. Eric kept doing things – Madusa throwing away the Women’s Title (as if Vince cared about the Women’s Title any other time) and WWE answered back with the Billionaire Ted skits. Eric says he showed them to Ted and he thought it was funny as hell as we see video of Ted watching it and laughing at it. Kate Koplovitz of USA Network didn’t like it and it wasn’t who they wanted to be. Vince says she made him stop because she was friends with Ted, while Bruce says USA was receiving heat from people in Turner. Bruce mentions they asked Razor and Diesel to do a skit and they didn’t want to do it and that’s how he realized they were leaving. Vince says he talked to both of them and they knew it would be better for their family. HHH talks about the Kliq as we flash forward to the infamous Madison Square Garden curtain call video. He says Shawn told him he could do a tribute to his departing friends and Vince said fine. Bruce says it was sacrilegious as an old timer. Stephanie McMahon was in the audience and knew her dad was going to be mad, but part of her thought it was cool. Cody Rhodes says it was cool but to the older generation it was the cardinal sin. Taker didn’t like it and Bret says they killed wrestling that day. “It’s not wrestling any more, it’s entertainment.”
Vince mentions numerous performers backstage hitting the roof as several talking heads discuss the word “kayfabe.” HHH calls it keeping the illusion and Taker mentions that good guys and bad guys should never intermingle. He wanted people to believe he thought he was the character and he always wanted to keep people intrigued. HHH calls it an antiquated thing and mentions the dirtsheets. Shawn doesn’t know why it was so important and he figured everybody already knew. HHH says he was the one head to roll for the incident and it was his, losing his King of the Ring win. He said to Vince that the reaction was the biggest reception of the night and the world’s changing. HHH: “To quote Vince, ‘You’re going to have to learn to eat shit and like the taste of it.’” Lord.
WCW continued to evolve as we watch Scott Hall appear for the first time on Nitro. Eric knew it was the perfect time to try the Outsiders idea he had in his head. Cody says it was the last example of fans not being able to fully tell if wrestling was real. Eric calls it the sweet spot as we watch him getting powerbombed through a table at the Great American Bash. Vince sues WCW with Bruce saying Scott Hall was as close to Razor Ramon as it could get. Vince calls it stealing, Eric says he was like a schoolgirl crying. Dave says Vince took others’ stars and made them his own much like WCW did to him. Vince tells us there was no similarity to him doing it, he was doing it to compete and Ted was doing it to hurt them.
Bruce says the true turning point for WCW was Bash at the Beach with the third member of Hall and Nash’s team. Cody says he was there and explains the story. Hulk legdrops Randy Savage and the world changes. Cody calls it a defining moment in sports entertainment. Bruce calls it “a big holy shit moment” and Hulk knew it was going to be the greatest moment of his career or destroy his career. Cody says maybe it was too much heat and Hulk was scared nobody was watching the ring. Eric calls it the most amazing moment of his career. Cody calls it uncomfortable and a strong punch to the gut for wrestling fans. Vince says the move was done very well and Hulk says the promo was all him. Bruce says Vince took it personally and “shit changed.” We watch the NWO grow and Eric calls it more powerful of a brand than the WCW brand. Cody says WCW was cool and he started to see WWE as “less than.” Taker recounts WCW kicking their ass week after week. Eric says “83 weeks” too many times and plugs his podcast. Booker T, WCW Performer ‘93-01 says it felt infectious and they never thought they could lose. Vince calls it a war and he wasn’t sure they could stay in business.
Bruce says that Vince saw the Monday Night wars as Vince and Ted but really Eric Bischoff was the opponent. Vince recalls Eric doing an audition with WWE as we watch the video of Eric calling Hulk his hero. Vince is asked if he regrets not hiring Eric at the time and Vince says he doesn’t regret anything in his life. Sounds right. Vince says everything Eric did was a WWE creation. He flies to Bret’s house and offers him the 20-year contract. Vince calls it a big contract and it wasn’t working. He goes back to Bret and says that he can’t afford him, with Shane explaining Vince showing Bret the loopholes and how he could leverage it with WCW. Vince explained the title around Bret’s waist belonged to WWE and it wouldn’t make sense to leave with the title. Shawn thinks Bret didn’t have a problem losing the match, it was losing it to him.
Bret: “Shawn was a real dick at that time and it’s just the truth.” Shawn calls their rivalry real, Vince says Shawn started doing shoot promos and Shawn loved poking the bear. Bret says he came close to punching out Bret, saying he crossed a line with the Sunny accusations. Vince: “This is good for television.” We go to Montreal for Survivor Series and Vince asks Bret to do the job. Bret doesn’t want to do it. HHH says there was a call with himself and Shawn and HHH told Shawn to do it FOR Bret if he won’t do it. Shawn explains that he gave Vince his loyalty and he’d do anything for him. Bruce said it was going to be a schmohz finish and they’d throw the finish out and Bret thought it worked for him. He knew about Wendi Richter and says he didn’t trust anything or take his eyes off Shawn. Bret calls it a great match and Shawn puts the Sharpshooter on. Bret says Shawn put it on wrong and he told him to do it right. Bret sees Vince call for the bell and Bret says “They did it, they did screw you.” Bret spits on Vince. Vince: “Right into my eye. That was gross but I thought damn, how did he do that.”
Bret breaks the monitors and writes “WCW” in the air. He says Owen was trying to calm him in the ring. Bret talks about giving Vince everything he had in his career and none of it meant anything. We get the behind the scenes footage from the documentary of Shawn saying he didn’t know anything. HHH says Vince was adamant they say they knew nothing about it. Taker recounts being pissed that they did things the way they did. Vince says he felt like he owed Bret something in a weird way. Bret says they tied up like a wrestling match and he threw an uppercut. Taker says he has no idea how the punch got through but Vince was out cold. Bret: “Probably the best thing I ever did.” Taker talks about “best for business” and Vince says he doesn’t regret any of it. Taker says it gave him a new perspective on the business with HHH calling it a shift in the business. Bruce says it introduced the Mr. McMahon character as we see a quick montage of McMahon clips. We end with a clip of the Vince “Bret screwed Bret” video, saying “We’re just getting started.”
This was a less painful watch than last week, with less abuse stories and more of the stories we as the insider fans have heard 500 times. Vince vs Ted! Montreal Screwjob! It was a breezy watch. It didn’t feel as deep as the second episode and didn’t conjure much personal feetling. I’m sure that’ll change again.