Mr. McMahon – Episode Five – “Family Business”

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

We’re on the downswing of the Mr. McMahon discussion cycle already, so let’s start getting through the end of this series. Our last episode ended with talk of the envelope continuing to be pushed, questioning when enough is enough. Perhaps episode five will be when we hit enough! Probably not though, since episode six exists.

Earth-destroying netflix kaboom

Paul Heyman’s voice starts us, telling us that this is a Shakespearan tale with Vince rebelling against the first twelve years of his life. Escaping that abuse has been his life’s pursuit, creating an atmosphere where he is untouchable and in control of his own destiny. David Shoemaker tells us that we only know what we do about Vince’s upbringing because of things Vince has told us. Vince tells us he isn’t big at looking backwards, not because he’s afraid of what’s back there though it was difficult and included infighting and incest. He says to get rid of anything back in your past – “throw it the fuck back there and go forward” – as we flash through numerous scandalous things that have happened in the last few decades.

Episode Five: Family Business

We start with my personal favorite shot of the series, all the ladies at a monitor watching Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair at Mania. Give me more of THAT footage, WWE Vault. Shane McMahon walks through and greets his sister in Gorilla as we get a voiceover of a television host, promising Shane and Stephanie talking for the first time about their lives in front of the camera. This takes us to that footage, with the interviewer asking what it was like growing up as a McMahon. Shane snickers. We go to nowadays, with Shane saying growing up as his son was growing up in an interesting world. He always wanted to be in the business as we see footage of him taking Hacksaw Jim Duggan’s King robe, refereeing a match, and ringside with Tony Chimel. This leads to 1998, with the McMahon men in the ring. Shane says he played a stop for others on the way to getting to Vince and he loved it.

Then Stephanie comes in. She says it was larger than life as a kid, the most exciting thing to be a part of. We go to her becoming a character in 1999, as she joins Test. HHH says it escalated incredibly fast, mentioning the marriage to Test. There was no ending written to the story, so he presented the idea of spiking her drink and getting married to her. Vince loved it. Steph laughs at the “consummate the marriage” line. HHH says the crowd turned on Stephanie and chanted “slut,” and Vince made the dollar sign signal to Hunter backstage. Vince says the audience was participating and Steph became a great heel who was willing to do anything. She echos that, saying she was on board to do anything and now she looks back shaking her head. The interviewer asks her if she feels it was weird her dad was having her do it, and she says yeah, some of it was weird “but it was a different time in our business.”

HHH says the family part is the craziest part of his career, discussing the McMahon-Helmsley era. He was with her every day and they got to know each other. Steph says her dad pushed them together, with Vince telling her she should find a real man like Triple H. Vince says Shane was against it, and Shane tells us “storyline 101, don’t date the wrestlers.” HHH recalls Vince suggesting they have their actual wedding on pay-per-view. Steph shot it down, and Vince told her she was selfish. Then HHH recalls Vince booking himself vs Steph in a street fight six days before their wedding.

Steph says that Linda told Vince that if she had a black eye before the wedding, she would divorce him. You know, compared to the many other reasons to divorce him (though Linda is a pretty shitty person herself, in retrospect). Steph made it through the match without an injury. HHH calls it “full on craziness.” Dave Meltzer tells us the kids became super popular performers. The interviewer asks where Linda was during all of this, and Dave says she was a part of it. Bruce Prichard tells us there weren’t a lot of titles when he came on, just that Vince was the boss and Linda was the second boss. Linda handled the business side, while Vince handled creative. Vince recounts his mom introducing him to Linda when he was 16. Linda joins us to say Vince had a bad-boy reputation in high school and she was the exact opposite and she liked that. She was 17 when they got married – Vince: ‘very, very young” – and he promised her there would never be a dull moment. This leads into clips, of course, of her kicking Vince in the balls, being Stunned, and being slapped by her daughter.

Steph says her mom never wanted to be on television and she hated it. Linda says she is the least comfortable on camera and not nearly as good as the others. hThis is correct. Vince says she wasn’t a good actress but he told her we could use her as a character. This leads into the footage of Trish wheeling her out in a wheelchair. Trish joins in and says she came in as a fitness model. She says the female role in 2000 was “overtly sexual” and one of her first storylines was being paired with Mr. McMahon. She says the story wasn’t quite pitched to her the way it ended and it took some interesting turns. Vince laughs as he talks about kissing Trish in front of his wife while she was in a wheelchair, which he says he did because it showed how despicable he was. Yeah, it certainly did that. Linda says you have to evoke emotion, and everything should do that. Vince tells the narrator that the family didn’t have an objection about the Trish affair.

Shane says he didn’t like it, because he didn’t like anything involving his mom being done. The narrator tells Vince this. “Shane is a bit more conservative than the rest of us.” Trish says fifteen years later, it never fails that an interviewer brings up her getting on all fours and barking like a dog as we relive the video footage of that scene. Dave says it is memorable and he wishes they never did it. Trish says people want her to say it was horrible, but that’s exactly the feeling they wanted people to feel. IT WORKED. Dave says he thought the segment sucked when he saw it, but wrestling at the time was for guys “that fantasized over hot women but kind of hated them because they could never get them, so seeing hot women demeaned was kind of cool to a lot of those guys. It’s a very ugly way to say it, but that’s exactly what it was.”

Trish says she knew it would be controversial, but she knew the comeuppance would come at WrestleMania. Steph tells us about the Mania X-7 match, with Vince mentioning it was Trish in one corner and Linda in the other. Shane talks about his nerves before the match, having never raised a hand towards his father – “it’s always been one way.” Shane says he was panicking before the match about not being able to hit his dad. Vince hit Shane a few times and Shane realized it might be easier to hit back than he thought as we flash through the match. Trish says her “WrestleMania moment” that year was standing up to Vince and she did not hold back. Linda stands up and Vince laughs about her kicking him. “The audience loves it when it looks like it is real – sometimes it is real.” It was one of the more fun Mania matches just because of how insane it was.

Dave says anything that makes Vince business is open for him as we watch video of him in-ring talking about divorce and finding a new Mrs. McMahon that can keep up with his sexual prowess. Bonnie Hammer of USA says that Vince was a master of blurring lines, starting things that started with a piece of reality and taking it to where you didn’t know what to believe. We talk about Sable, with Dave calling her a ratings draw and one of the most underrated performers they had. He’s right. She left and sued the company with $110 million lawsuit involving sexual harassment. She goes on the Tonight Show and tells Jay Leno that they made her do things she didn’t want to do. In archival interview footage, Vince says he didn’t ask her to do anything degrading at all. The modern day producer asks Vince about Sable, and he says he doesn’t remember much about the lawsuit. “All I know is she came back to work, so.” And they made the lawsuit a storyline, with Stephanie telling VInce with Sable standing there. The producer asks Vince about Sable having a storyline when she comes back having an affair with him. “With me?” The voice of Paul Heyman, who was apparently there when Vince did the interview – which is sketchy – says “Storyline!” and Vince laughs nervously. Ick.

The producer asks Vince about his 2001 Playboy interview where he talked about having different affairs, asking Vince why he would even go there in the interview. Vince says he was trying to be straightforward and not playing a character, giving the honest reaction to the questions being asked. On screen, we are shown Vince saying, “The sex was terrific, but from an emotional standpoint, I regret it.” Playboy asks, “Did you change?” and Vince replies, “I learned about the ramifications of a sexual relationship, if you’re married.” The producer asks Vince if some of the storylines involved things in his life, and he says nothing was related to events in his life.

Paul Heyman says Vince has had one monogamous relationship in his entire life and that’s the business that he’s built. “Vince doesn’t own the business. This business owns Vince McMahon.” Paul says if that hurts anyone else’s feelings, those people be damned. October 2000, WWE goes public and sells stock. Vince says going public made them legitimate but it was simply business. The amount of money available to the company allowed them to go into the casino business, the restaurant business, and be able to move the money around.

July 31, 2000. We go to Nitro with Kidman and the Franchise in a Viagra on a Pole match. Brian Gerwitz remembers laughing at WCW in 2000, with Bruce calling it a long, slow decline and it felt like WCW wasn’t trying. Booker T says you can’t win a war with the wrong people in the war room, saying Eric Bischoff did a lot right but a lot wrong. Bischoff is here to say people had no idea what was really going on behind the scenes. Boy, I hope we get 8,000 series and podcasts to tell us in extreme detail what was going on!

Bischoff says things got bad because of the AOL-Time Warner merger, with executives telling him how to produce wrestling that had never watched the product. He says wrestling was low-brow entertainment and they didn’t want them. Meltzer calls wrestling a crutch for them, but when it became a big money-losing company they wanted to sell it. Shane says Vince got a call asking if he wanted to purchase it. Bruce tells us that in about three days, the entire landscape changed. Vince says he often thinks about Ted Turner saying he will squish them like a bug. As always, Vince thought too much about Ted Turner, who in turn probably almost never thought about Vince. Dave says Vince bought the company for $2.5 million as we watch video of Vince, Stephanie and others celebrating on the plane ride when they bought the company.

Shane says it was done very quietly from a corporate level, but the way the fan base was told live on air. We go to the live Nitro broadcast, opening with Vince McMahon announcing that he bought his competition. Vince said he wanted two live shows on different networks to cross over. Vince says the audience was shocked that they could pull it off. Eric was tempted to watch it but couldn’t, saying it was like finally admitting that he was really beaten. Vince says he expects to win, so it isn’t the huge euphoria you’d think as he’s on to the next thing. Gerwitz says Vince needed a new challenge, like starting a football league. Enter the XFL.

Vince announces his new football league. Vince says he didn’t know much about football, but it was an opportunity to play football when the NFL was not. Shane says Vince’s idea was to take the sport and put a WWE spin on it, with Vince saying you can make characters out of everybody. We watch clips and Vince tells us the first week of ratings were huge, him feeling it was a success. Gerwitz said people wanted to see it, but what they saw was poor quality playing. Bob Costas tells us the football was not of high quality, but it was the WWF sensibility surrounding it – “I thought it was just head-bangingly stupid and crude.” He says everything has its place and if there is some wit surrounding it, “I don’t give a fuck – but this had none of that.” The press tears up the XFL which leads us to the lowest ratings in the history of American prime time television. That leads to Vince appearing to be interviewed by Bob Costas.

Costas tells us that he told Vince in the green room there would be tough questions and Vince was fine with it. We watch Bob ask tough questions about ratings, Vince tells us he thought it would be XFL questions and friendly but Costas kept baiting him. Vince says Bob “got him” and Vince gets angry. Vince says he got closer and closer and internally questioned how it would feel to choke out Bob, and Bob wonders if the Mr. McMahon character came out during the interview and maybe that’s why he got angry. Vince says he was an idiot and should have seen it coming. The XFL ends after one season. Bob says it wasn’t a good product.

Bruce says it was not a good time with bomb after bomb as we cut to Dan Rather announcing that WWF can no longer be WWF. Vince says the name change wasn’t good, but you can’t do anything about it. Vince talks about letting failures go as news headlines flash about the name change and WWE NY closing. Dwayne Johnson recalls Vince pulling him aside and asking about the idea of Hulk Hogan coming back, with them headlining WrestleMania. Dwayne said he loved it – of course. Hulk is here to tell the truth as always and says they didn’t talk about their paths. Vince says he wished he could have choked Hulk, but you can’t hold grudges. Dwayne talks about his goosebumps, which is one of his five talking points in life, and says he loved the Mania moment. Gerwitz says it was iconic and Vince said he didn’t know how the audience would react. The audience goes opposite and cheers Hulk and boos Rock. Dwayne says he had to shift on the fly and “nuance my way through the match.” The producer asks Hulk if he thinks Vince ever trusted him after going to WCW, and he says he probably has more now that he can’t wrestle again. Gerwitz says Vince will always bring people back, even enemies and people that would sue him.

Dave says Vince likes working with people who have knocked him because it is a challenge. Vince says his personal feelings have never gotten in the way of doing business as we see Bret return, beating Vince at Mania. “I’m in business and business comes first.” Dave says the biggest period was 1998 to 2002, and then the whole business went down without competition. Wrestling became less interesting. Steve Austin says he was frustrated with the creative process, with Vince saying Steve would tell him he didn’t like it. Steve tells us things weren’t good with Vince at the time, but he had a lot of injuries too and maybe it was time to ride into the sunset. Gerwitz remembers Rock leaving as well and that both top names were gone in 2004, so it was time to make new stars.

We go to the Raw segment with RUTHLESS AGGRESSION. John Cena is here to talk about ruthless aggression. Maybe we can make a Peacock series out of this! Cena says that three days after the speech, one person spoke up for him to get a match and the Kurt Angle match happened. He also says, “RUTHLESS AGGRESSION,” a clip we have seen far too many times. We watch clips from this era of guys like Eddie Guerrero and Brock Lesnar, Chris Benoit and Batista. Cena said it was a phase of realism and he had to be John Cena, and it was uninteresting. He knew he was on the way out and wanted to have more fun on his way out. He rapped on the bus and shredded everyone, not knowing Steph was on the bus. She asked if he wanted to do it on television and he thought, “Fuck yes.” Cena starts rapping. Vince says “bingo,” realizing it was different and he liked it. The audience loved it. Cena thinks the audience reacting to you is when you get Vince’s attention, which started their relationship. He thinks Vince taught him a lot about the business, with Vince helping him craft into the character as Vince did with Mr. McMahon.

Vince says when he thinks about doing something, he goes and does it. We run through clips of the Kiss My Ass club and mocking God. The producer asks HHH if there was ever a point he got the script and thought it was too far. HHH:” Yeah! And then Vince would make me do it anyway” and we see Katie Vick. Trish says, “There was a bit of a concern amongst performers that if you didn’t do what you were asked, you would get punished and yeah, it did happen to some on occasion” – Trish points to herself – “sometimes.” She recalls being champion and there was a scene where she would be making out with a female, something her character wouldn’t want to do. She lost the championship to Mickie James the next week, saying she isn’t sure it was a coincidence. Stephanie tells the producer she remembers things she said no to, but “I’m not going to tell the one.”

Vince immediately pops up laughing, saying one of his storyline ideas was that Stephanie became pregnant and he was the one who impregnated her. “That one didn’t make it.” HHH says that Stephanie has Vince the boss, Mr. McMahon the character, and Vince the dad and it is hard to separate the three. She tells us she calls him Vince in business and dad at home, and as a boss he can be hard. Gerwitz says he’d be tough on them, telling them their ideas sucked. Shane tells us Vince was tough on him growing up and still is today.

Vince says he was harder on his kids than anybody else because he wanted them to be better than anyone else. “Your last name is McMahon so step the hell up.” Steph says he was easier on her than Shane for sure, but she didn’t challenge him the way Shane did. Shane says a lot of people don’t know the internal dynamics of the family in real life, wondering if it is really as cutthroat in real life. He says we don’t pull back the curtain all the way, and to let people talk about it. Bonnie Hammer says she could never tell where Shane really fit in over the years, but she felt he was the black sheep and she never knew the story behind it.

Dave tells us Shane wanted to be the next McMahon, with Vince selling him the company. Shane talks about UFC having financial problems and coming to WWE trying to sell. Shane told Vince they could grow the brand and they have everything ready to go, calling it plug and play. Vince says he didn’t like their business model, because in WWE you could create characters like Disney and use them forever as we watch clips of Undertaker evolving from original deadman to biker deadman. He compares that to a boxer or UFC fighter, saying that once they’re hurt, the career is over. “We’re in show business and that’s a sport.” Vince passes on purchasing, and Shane says hindsight is 20/20 and it would have been an amazing investment. Vince says Shane wants to take credit for the idea of buying UFC and Shane should have taken his money for the investment.

Heyman recalls a creative argument the McMahons had, with the two disagreeing. He says once things escalate with Vince, they escalate really fast. Vince told Shane “Not while I’m alive. Vince, who was eating something, took his knife and handed it to Shane.” He pointed towards his heart and told Shane to stick the dagger right there, because that’s what you have to do. He tells Shane he isn’t man enough to do it. He tells Shane otherwise, he is going to have to buy the company and “if I don’t get out of your way, be prepared to get rid of me the way I’d have to get rid of my father when he wasn’t doing things my way at all.”

Shane leaves the company, saying it was a hard decision but his dad was strong at the helm and it was time to try other things. Vince says Shane left because he wanted to take the chair but it wasn’t his company. He says they were opposed on everything and grew apart. Shane says Vince is the boss, and he could either stay and watch them implode or step back so he did. He thanked him, gave him a hug and that was it. Vince: “Everyone has to understand their place.” He says Shane didn’t have the vision as someone who has grown and created the business. Vince says he would advise others to not bring their family into the business because somewhere, it is going to explore.

New clips play of sex trafficking abuse. We end with a shot of Vince smiling and a newscaster saying that this scandal is going to shock everyone.

On-screen text: “In 1999, Rena Lesnar (Sable) settled her lawsuit against Titan Sports (WWE).”

This episode? This episode was a lot. For me, the first half was especially hard. To this day, the Trish “bark like a dog” angle is one that just repulses me and I just can’t do it. It’s also not a great feeling when the documentary shows things like the Sable story, with her leaving for sexual harassment and then finding her way back, only for it to be thrown into a storyline to probably shove it all in her face. And knowing all we’ve learned about Vince since then… ugh. It’s a tough watch in retrospect.

The Shane stuff is hard as well. It’s not as shocking, really, as both Shane and Steph have shown at times to have a little more of a decent(ish) head on their shoulders compared to their dad, but I’m glad he got out when he did. Of course, he’s about to be having sixty minute matches with Tony Khan if what I’ve read is true.

It all leads to the final episode. I’m sure it’ll be pretty heavy, as we haven’t covered Benoit yet and we have Vince’s end – and return – and second end to come. Stay tuned, I’ll be back to wrap up the series in a few days.