Mr. McMahon – Episode Four – Attitude

Previously on Mr. McMahon: episode one – episode two – episode three

Sigh. Here we are again. I just want it to be over at this point. Really this has been less interesting than expected at this point, though 2/3rds of it hasn’t been a HARD watch. They’re hour-long episodes but they don’t drag on and seem like twice as long. Three more to go!

Loud Netflix noise

This week we start with classic footage of Dr. Jerry Graham vs Angelo Savoldi in 1959. Vince says that we all have favorites as kids, and his favorite was Dr. Graham. He says maybe he liked him because he was a heel, he never liked the good guys. His step brother helped dye his hair brown and he would strut like he did. Dr. Graham took Vince for rides in his convertible, running red lights. Vince: “Yeah, that’s who I want to be” as we flash through McMahon clips.

Episode 4: Attitude

On screen text: “In January 2024, Vince McMahon resigned from WWE after allegations involving sexual misconduct, assault, and trafficking. The majority of the following interviews, including with Vince McMahon, were filmed before the allegations were made public.”

We’re back at Survivor Series and the screwjob because that will never end. HHH calls it surreal, HBK says it caused inner turmoil within the business. Michaels says the Internet world got ahold of behind the scenes info and it spread, because the Internet started in 1997. Dave Meltzer says most people did not side with Bret. Trish Stratus appears and says, “I fucking hated Vince.” HHH takes on the “Bret screwed Bret” speech, saying that’s when they started to blur the line. Vince mentions that he has heat now and he thought, “Why not turn that into business? Use you now as a character.” He always wanted to be a performer and says it felt natural.

HHH says that the Mr. McMahon character is created as the evil boss and it changes the business. Vince goes on TSN’s Off The Record and is asked about WCW being so far ahead in the ratings. Meltzer calls it a domination and Eric Bischoff says Bret coming over put the WCW roster in a better position than WWE. He says he wanted to dominate and win and if WWE went out of business, he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

Meanwhile, we see clips of Mantaur, MVP, Gobbledy Gooker and others with Taker saying they always had the young demographic and 83 weeks of getting beat in the ratings messes with your head. Bruce Prichard says the networks were asking what was going on. Vince says you listen to the audience, because he is FANTASTIC AT THAT. There is nothing Vince has proven himself to do better than listening to the audience instead of doing the opposite of what they want. Bonnie Hammer, USA Network’s VP of Original Programming ‘89-98 says that there was war between the companies when she started working with him. Vince does his “cure for the common show” promo, teasing new things happening and Eric says he scoffed at it.

The producer asks Bruce when the Attitude Era was born. Bruce mentions Shawn coming out in bicycle shorts stuffed with a sock. Shawn argues that it was gauze, and that Vince called him the next day and said he was fining him $10,000. Shawn told him it was entertaining and it got them into the entertainment zone. Shawn mentions he got out of the fine, while Bruce says Vince was living but weeks later said Shawn Michaels had attitude and we need more attitude. Raw becomes Raw is War with a new presentation and new faces.

Cody Rhodes calls D-Generation X a faction, saying they were anti-authority and it spoke to fans. He says sometimes it felt like it was too far but you couldn’t turn away. HHH ways Vince kept telling DX that they were going to get in trouble, but people were going crazy when they came in the back. Taker says the writing changed for the 18-30 year old male demographic. Stone Cold Steve Austin busts through the glass with David Shoemaker calling him the biggest star of the era. He was something new for wrestling – foul mouthed, blue collar and a badass. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, WWE Hall of Famer, joins us to say that he didn’t know how far he would make it when he started wrestling. We watch him in WCW briefly before going to ECW, which Shoemaker calls punk rock and indie. Austin calls ECW an eye-opener. Paul Heyman calls ECW a necessary disruption of professional wrestling, a “what the fuck am I watching atmosphere.” Vince calls it a renegade promotion to catch a niche audience, saying he appreciated it and the promoter behind it.

Heyman says Vince saw everyone else as a feeder system to WWE and he knew he wouldn’t have Austin for long. Austin appears in WWE – skipping the RIngmaster phase – and became a trash-talking SOB and he was gaining traction. Triple H is punished for the Garden incident and loses the King of the Ring spot. Vince tells Austin he is winning instead. Austin gets his lip busted open and Michael Hayes approaches him for a promo. Austin 3:16 is born. Vince thought it might not play too well in the Bible belt. Vince calls it brilliant, changing his character. Bruce says there were Austin 3:16 signs everywhere and Stone Cold quickly took over. It wasn’t as immediate as Bruce says, but we’ll get there.

As the show got better, Austin thought they should have been winning the ratings. Vince told Bruce they needed to get eyeballs on them and make WrestleMania big, so they did. We watch Vince introduce Mike Tyson on Raw. Bischoff gets a call, saying he didn’t care and they were so far ahead he was arrogant but then his thought process changed quickly when he learned it was Mike Tyson. Shane McMahon is here and he was a big part of the Tyson deal. We cut to 2013 footage of Stephanie McMahon being interviewed, being asked if Tyson’s baggage made it risky for WWE to invest in him. Steph: “He hadn’t been arrested for rape yet though when we did that, right?” and the producer responds that “he had.” Bob Costas says Mike’s image now is in a much better place than it was then, while author Sharon Maze says heat doesn’t have to be positive. Well.

Dave calls it a big deal as Tyson is announced as guest referee. Dave thinks it is going to get very competitive with WCW now as we see the Mania main event, with Austin calling the match forgettable. Eric says the Mr. McMahon character became a real thing after the Tyson story played out. Vince says, “I’ll always be a good guy” at the Mania press conference. HHH says the feud with Austin and McMahon ignited, changing the course of the business. Taker says it’s the anti-system Austin and the eccentric boss Mr. McMahon and it was perfect. Austin says he’s a heel in any other era, but he brought the gray area to the business with this character. Tony Atlas remembers back in his day, with it being this storyline being “the bad and the worst.” He says nobody wants to see good guys, even in the movies. “Look at the video games!”

Vince mentions they don’t always set trends, but they try to follow them. Austin says people live vicariously through the storylines, but he got a chance to punch his mouth in person. He thinks the fans responded strongly because McMahon was such an easy-to-hate character. Bruce says he became the most hated character in the history of the business. Vince calls Mr. McMahon a character he could relate to, as he grew up poor and hated rich people. He can play someone who can intimate because he thought that’s how rich people were when he was growing up.

Austin says Vince can manipulate a crowd as well as anyone who has ever done it. Vince says he loves heat and you really want to embrace the heat. Austin says Vince made people feel emotions, and that’s what makes people buy tickets. Vince: “Performing is easy, being yourself is the more difficult part.” The interviewer asks Vince what similarities he shares with Mr. McMahon. “The character Mr. McMahon with me? None whatsoever.

Shane: “Mr. McMahon is an extension of Vince McMahon but blown way out of proportion.”

Shawn: “The difference between Mr. McMahon and Vince McMahon. *laughs* Probably not that much.”

Hulk: “Exactly the same person. It’s not a far stretch.”

Bruce also says the character and Vince are one and the same, and a lot of the promos Vince cut on characters he’s had cut on him in real life. The producer tells Vince that Bruce has been on the other hand of it before, and Vince says he is very passionate and he can get out of bounds. Stone Cold says it is close to Vince but highly exaggerated, just like himself and Stone Cold. Vince says many have confused who he is and his character is and it used to aggravate him, but he realized perception is reality.

Dave calls the Austin/McMahon very good, with Brian Gerwitz appearing to say it’s what led to the 83 weeks ending and taking over the wrestling world. Eric says Vince took their formula but decided to do it better, and he did. He says DX was just the NWO, Mr. McMahon was a derivative of Evil Eric. Vince says that if Eric thinks he played it first, he didn’t play it as well so it was good for him. Eric says he wasn’t focused on creative, with NWO becoming stale while everything on WWE was new and fresh. Dave says Eric’s biggest mistake was not making new stars, while Vince was making new stars because he had to do it.

Enter Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne is here to tell us about his Bloodline, with his grandfather wrestling for Sr. and his dad wrestling for Jr. Tony tells us that everything Rock does was like his father. Dwayne debuts at Survivor Series, Bruce saying they promoted him as a third-generation superstar and shoving him down the audience’s throats. “They hated him.” Vince thinks the audience didn’t think he worked for his spot. Rock turns heels and joins the Nation of Domination. Rock told Vince he wanted the opportunity to speak on why he joined the Nation, so he was given it. Rock cuts a promo saying it was about respect and felt a shift right then. A month later, he’s the hottest heel in the company.

Vince tells Rock he’s making him champion as we see that screwjob story. Rock told Vince it was a big deal because he was the first champion of color, and Vince told him “I don’t see that.” Tony Atlas says Vince “doesn’t see black, doesn’t see white, he only sees green.” Rock calls the Attitude Era a special time because whatever they imagined, they could do as we go through various clips. Bruce calls the era “a movie” and said you saw wrestling everywhere you went. Dave says the influence was all over culture as we cut through clips of wrestlers on SNL, TRL, the Republican National Convention, and Conan. HHH says they went from guys on TV to not being able to go anywhere.

Lots more Attitude clips, from the milk truck to Too Cool dancing. Dave tells us it was the most marketable period but, well, “morals are morals” and it was rubbing some the wrong way. We get clips of a bloodbath, Terri licking whip cream off Mark Henry, and Shane being choked by a belt. HHH says it was a lot of fun but there’s a lot of stuff he questions how they ever got away with it, with clips of Blackface X-Pac and the Godfather offering his hoes. Guess who reappears? Phil Mushnick.

Mushnick says they knew they could go low, and lower, and lower and knew they could get away with it. VInce calls it a deviation of what they were doing before, and then the editing team win all the awards:

Vince: “It was still family friendly. No one got killed…”

Video clip: Buried Alive tombstone, HHH beating the tombstone with Rock inside with a sledgehammer

Vince: “… there was no rape…”

Video clip: Mr. McMahon saying, “Come on out, YOU RAPIST!”

Vince: “… no use of knives or guns…”

Video clip: Pillman’s gun, choppy choppy of Val’s pee-pee

Vince: “… so it’s still family friendly. Maybe for more of an adult family, not for young kids.”

Dave mentions Vince’s audience was still kids and Vince says they weren’t marketing to kids. The merchandise was action figures for kids, with Bruce saying the kids were embracing things they maybe shouldn’t have seen. Bruce says he would have let his kids watch it. Shawn says he was leading the charge, but now having a daughter he thinks there are times they could have been less objectionable towards women.

Rock says they kept going over the line. Dave says it was exploitative of women, but the audience was teenage guys as we see clips of Rock telling Chyna she looks good on her knees, Jacqueline in the bikini. Trish says Attitude Era women were eye candy, not wrestlers, and calls Sable the pioneer of WWE Divas. Trish says Sable was sexy but also athletically good on the show, which is often overlooked. Trish calls the era a reflection of the real world, with Bruce saying he wouldn’t suggest bra and panties nowadays, but that’s what was on television at the time. Vince says they followed what was going on in the television industry, noting that women were often the highest rated moments of the Raws. Steph says they served their audience, maybe taking it too far in some cases as we clip through things like Sable and the handprints, Boss Man hanging from the cell, and Goldust in blackface.

HHH says looking back it was crazy, “maybe we shouldn’t have done that and it was so inappropriate or… it was. And who is worse, the guy who did it or the people who loved it? I dunno.” The guy who did it, Hunter. We’re introduced to Owen Hart. Vince met with Owen, with Vince saying Owen said he wanted to stay after the Bret situation. Bret appears to say nothing was the same when Owen stayed, with Owen thinking Bret was mad at him. Bret says they humiliated Owen’s character to get back at him. Vince: “The hypothesis that we would do something against Owen because Bret left only speaks to Bret’s ego. Why would we do that? We don’t care about you. You left.” AH yes, Vince McMahon, a person famous for not holding grudges or doing humiliating storylines about people he felt did him wrong. He would never do that.

Owen ends up in a storyline as the Blue Blazer, a “clumsy oaf hero” as Bret calls it. The producer mentions May 23, 1999 to Bruce and asks if he can talk about that day. “That was Owen.”

Over the Edge. Jim Ross sends things to an interview, saying we had big problems as he does. Bruce explains the stunt planned as does Vince. Bruce hears someone say, “Owen’s in the ring” in his headset and wonders what the hell he is doing. Bret was flying and could feel something bad happening. We see Jim Ross announcing that the Blue Blazer, Owen, was in an accident in the ring. Vince: “Thank god for the audience that we were in a blackout, so the audience didn’t really see it.” Vince wondered if Owen could be alive at the time. Bruce recalls Jerry Lawler coming back and telling him he thinks Owen was dead, but Bruce wondered how he could even say that. An officer pulled Bruce and Vince aside and let them know they pronounced him dead, then JR and the King announce to the viewing audience that Owen had died.

Vince had to make a decision if the show goes on. Had they seen it you shut the show down, but he says they didn’t really see it and Bruce notes you can’t really announce it to the live crowd. You could, of course, announce it to the crowd. Vince: “Those people came to see a show, they didn’t come to see somebody die. Me as a businessman, it’s like, well okay, let’s continue on, let’s continue the show.” We watch Jeff Jarrett try to cut a promo and Dave says they should never have continued the show, as we see the wrestlers compete with Owen’s blood on the apron. Vince says there are a lot of negative comments about the show having to continue, with Bret feeling like a brother should. A clip of Bret on a news show sees Bret saying that if it was Shane “splatting on the mat,” he wouldn’t continue the show. Vince: “Had it been ME, not just my son, had it been me who had been splattered on the mat as Bret said, I would want the show to go on so get me out of there, you know, and let the show go on.” “To this day I would.”

Bret tells us it was hard to take at the time and he almost questioned then if Vince murdered Owen to get back at him. They settled a lawsuit with Owen’s wife and then learned the apparatus was defective. WWE sued the manufacturer, with a police officer calling Bret and telling him there was nothing criminal there. Bret said then he felt it was an accident and then forgave Vince. He says he had plenty of reasons to have a problem with Vince, but on a professional level.”

Taker says they’re all pushing the envelope now, as we see Hell in a Cell, with nobody saying things were too dangerous. “At some point, enough is enough.” We see clips of lots of stuff happening in quick succession, ending with a clip of Chris Benoit crying as we fade to the end sequence.

On-screen graphic: “In 2000, Martha Hart settled her lawsuit against WWE. In 2003, WWE settled its lawsuit against the manufacturer of the harness used in Owen’s accident.”

Another episode down. This one again feels more like a “History of WWE” doc than necessarily a “Vince McMahon doc,” but they’re so intertwined especially in the late 90s period that I get it. I appreciate them calling out that some of the things they were doing were offensive, though I shook my head at HHH’s end reasoning, the retro clip of Stephanie questioning the timing of the Tyson hiring and, of course, the Owen remarks.

Next up, episode five: “Family Business.”