Netflix’s Mr. McMahon is the docu-series we need — and deserve — right now

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

It’s an unsettling experience to watch the brand-new, hotly anticipated and much-discussed Netflix docu-series Mr. McMahon, which takes viewers on a sweeping, insider-y journey through the cultural phenomenon of professional wrestling.

It’s a work of profound (if accidental) self-revelation and a critically important rumination on the nation itself. This is the documentary that we need and deserve at this socio-political, economic and philosophical moment as a country.

You may snicker up your sleeve at that notion, but a smarter writer than me (David Roth, of The New Statesman) pointed out in an article in July unrelated to the Netflix show that, “Everything is wrestling: American public life is an extension of the nation’s most sordid sport.”

Courtesy image.

Watch even the first episode of Mr. McMahon and this will become apparent. There’s talk of cutthroat competition and unethical business moves motivated by greed and arrogance, and — above all — the unholy union of scripted violence animating media manipulation. If this sounds like the seedbed for Trumpism, remember that Donald Trump himself entered the ring, going nose-to-nose with McMahon in a spittle-spraying shouting match. Remember that Hulk Hogan today campaigns with Trump. A savvy observer might realize that Trump learned at least some of his moves from McMahon, rather than the opposite.

They call it “kayfabe,” which is an old carnival term referring to the winking acknowledgement between performers and audience members that everything they’re doing and seeing is technically fake, but pretending that it isn’t in order to enjoy the show.

Think about how weird that is — for decades we’ve had a multi-billion dollar media enterprise that supposedly showcases physical achievement but is actually a soap opera that peddles narrative fiction, steeped in serious political ideas wielded with no responsibility or reflection. Vince McMahon has been the spider at the center of the web all along.

By Episode 4, wrestling icon Tony Atlas directly connects the threads between late-20th century American culture and wrestling: 

“See, in my day, there was a good guy and a bad guy. Vince Jr. made it the bad and the worst. There were no more good guys in wrestling. The fans did not want to see good guys no more. Nobody wanted to see a good guy. … We cater to what is in front of us. You tap into that. That’s big money. So Vince said, ‘Give me some of that money.’”

McMahon demurs when he says, immediately following Atlas’ comments, “We don’t always set trends, we follow them, and back in those days it was [the] Wild West.”

However, director Chris Smith juxtaposes that dialogue with theater and performance professor Sharon Mazer’s observation that, “Some part of us really loves watching the bad guys get over. Maybe the part of us that doesn’t like the fact that we have to behave ourselves — you can’t go around shoving people, you can’t go around insulting people.” 

And Steve Austin — who is credited in the series as being among the ultimate “heels” in the wrestling business — bookends that segment with his comment that, “People live vicariously through those kind of storylines, and would love to punch their boss in the mouth. I got a chance to literally and figuratively do that most every Monday night.”

Of course, Austin is talking about punching his boss — McMahon — in the mouth, and says point blank that he is “easy to hate.”

At that point, McMahon himself claims that his villain persona is just that — a creation crafted to sell a story and build the brand. At the same time, he admits that he didn’t fight fair in his life. 

“I was good at fighting, but they would say, ‘ You didn’t fight fair. You cheated.’ Yeah. I won,” he says with a deadpan tone, going on to talk about how “it’s such a great feeling” to absorb the waves of hate flowing toward him from audiences. 

He claims to have no similarities with his “Mr. McMahon” character and his internal life. Hulk Hogan, who perhaps knows McMahon as well as anyone, says without any hesitation that he’s “exactly the same person. It’s not a far stretch.” 

McMahon has been an object of fascination (hate-fueled otherwise) for a long time, but the timing of this documentary series makes much of what he says in the film look even more suspect.

Netflix put together most of Mr. McMahon before the real-life McMahon left his job as executive chairman of WWE’s owner, TKO Holdings, in January, as the feds are currently investigating him for alleged sex trafficking and battery. The tip of that iceberg is apparent throughout Mr. McMahon.

For his part, McMahon issued a statement just prior to the series going live, writing in part, “I don’t regret participating in this Netflix documentary. The producers had an opportunity to tell an objective story about my life and the incredible business I built, which were equally filled with excitement, drama, fun, and a fair amount of controversy and life lessons. 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. The title and promos alone make that evident.”

He concluded his statement with hopes that the “viewer will keep an open mind and remember that there are two sides to every story.”

And that’s exactly what it is: A story, from top to bottom, and it’s the story of how Vince McMahon has been a kind of antipope of coarseness for two generations of Americans. As he says in an interview in the early 2000s — and featured in Episode 5 — “I’m an entrepreneur. I’m what makes this company; I’m what makes my company and this country go round and round.” 

That may be true, or it may not be true. Maybe that’s irrelevant. Stripped to its essentials, Mr. McMahon shows us that truth is stranger than fiction; but, in the U.S., fiction more often than not dictates truth.