Professional wrestling was big once, more than once actually. There was a boom in the 1950s that coincided with Gorgeous George’s rise as the top antagonist broadcast on the Dumont Network. There was a boom in the 1980s when Vince McMahon cannibalized the longstanding truce agreements between territories by usurping timeslots on local networks and taking his father’s New York-based territory, the World Wrestling Federation, national, using syndicated TV and pay-per-view to build the paradigm that remains in place today. There was a boom in the late 1990s, when World Championship Wrestling lit Monday nights on fire with Nitro on cable television, causing the then-lagging WWF to up their game and turn a rout into a war into the decimated, monopolistic landscape that it remained until recently when All Elite Wrestling came on the scene. There hasn’t been a real boom period since then, even though the revenues involved in wrestling are the highest they’ve ever been. You can thank cable rights fees valuing live, original run broadcasting that does well in the 18-49 male demographic, the most fertile soil for advertising revenue, and the House of Saud, who pays the now-WWE millions upon millions of dollars to partake in their campaign to whitewash the backwards, theocratic, blood-soaked, genocidal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into something less outwardly grotesque and something with warts better hidden, a place like, say, the United States.
There is a clear reason for the stagnation in fan growth for professional wrestling. For 20 years, McMahon, who is in the news right now because he’s facing AT LEAST his third known rape allegation over his career, has molded the American wrestling industry in his image and likeness. That image is retrograde. Because of his socially regressive ideas, people got the taste in their mouths that wrestling was lewd, crass, cruel, and morally reprehensible. Because of his propaganda, people also believe that before he came along and made it what it is today, it was backwater entertainment for hicks and morons, which could not be further from the truth. While painting McMahon as the only grifter among wrestling promoters would be an outright lie, his villainy stood out, and continues to stand out from the crowd of small-time hustlers, for myriad reasons.
A territorial promoter might delay a payoff to get one more gate out of a tour; McMahon would bait and switch his audiences deliberately and never give a desired payoff. If that was his only crime, I wouldn’t have such animus for the man. As a promoter, he tore up the honor among the thief fraternity that was the territory system protected by the governing body called the National Wrestling Alliance. It was a classic grab for a monopoly. He’d sweep into the territories, gobble up the local broadcast time away from the provincial promotion, and buy up advertising time during the slots where they were able to broadcast. He wasn’t interested in a wrestling ecosystem if he wasn’t the one making money out of it. In addition to being the most ruthless capitalist among the group, he was perhaps the most unscrupulous human being who ever spent money to stage a wrestling show. An incomplete list of the things we know he’s responsible for follows here, which is probably only the tip of the iceberg of the heinous and grotesque shit he’s pulled in his life:
1. In 1983, Nancy Argentino was found dead under suspicious circumstances in an Allentown hotel room. She was dating Jimmy Snuka at the time, who had a history of ill-temper and abuse. McMahon deliberately obfuscated the investigation to the point where Snuka arguably got away with murder.
2. He is credibly accused of raping the first female referee in WWF/E history, Rita Chatterton.
3. He sat idly by and may have even facilitated the abuse of ring boy Tom Cole at the hands of wrestler Terry Garvin and announcer Mel Phillips.
4. While the abused substance with which he is most famously associated is the anabolic steroid, the wanton distribution of painkillers, or “candy” as they were termed by the wrestlers in the locker room, may have led to the premature deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of wrestlers before the age of 60.
5. He sought to have Owen Hart rappel from the ceiling in a stunt for his gimmick character The Blue Blazer. Rigging professionals refused to do the job for the price he had budgeted, so he procured unqualified personnel to use shoddy equipment to do the stunt anyway. Hart died as a result of the stunt failing due to McMahon’s negligence in a fall from height. He did not stop the show after the accident occurred.
6. McMahon attempted to rape a tanning salon attendant in Boca Raton, FL after she refused his advances in 2006.
7. In 2007, Chris Benoit murdered his wife and child before committing suicide himself in the family’s home in Georgia. McMahon dedicated the next episode of Monday Night RAW, the company’s flagship television show, to him despite the fact that there was enough information suggesting McMahon knew Benoit’s death wasn’t accidental but the result of a murder/suicide at the time the show aired. Benoit’s brain had shown signs of advanced CTE; WWE did not ban the practice of unprotected steel chair strikes to the head until after this incident occurred. For those who are skeptical of the link, you can’t fucking fake a full force chairshot to the goddamn head.
8. McMahon’s most egregious and longstanding violation of his labor is the fact that he characterizes his wrestlers as “independent contractors” despite signing them to deals that rob them of the financial rights to their names and likenesses and restricting them from working anywhere else than WWE. Despite being treated like employees, the independent contractor label allows McMahon to deny his wrestlers health insurance, among other benefits.
9. In the most recent accusation against him, McMahon was accused of having an extramarital affair of questionable mutual consent with a paralegal, whom he then “passed along” to executive VP John Laurinaitis when he grew tired of her.
The shit he pulled by castrating and bleeding the NWA out alone would make him wrestling’s greatest villain. That list above though? He should be buried underneath the highest security jail one can think of. However, much like his bestie Donald Trump, who has a close relationship with not only McMahon but WWE itself, Vince is annoyingly Teflon. Megarich people tend to escape responsibility. What’s the worst is that he flaunts everything like he knows he’ll get away with it.
Once upon a time, that wasn’t the case. He was in the deep water when the Federal Government charged him with charges over distributing steroids in his locker room in the 1980s and ‘90s. However, he beat those charges, which in retrospect may have been the second worst possible outcome for the wrestling industry. The worst possible outcome for the biz was that his father, Vincent J. McMahon, did not use a condom the night that his son was conceived. The win over the US Government gave McMahon’s ego a boost to stratospheric levels, and it was already huge at this point. He began to make myths surrounding himself, that it was his business acumen that drove evil corporate WCW off the road when in actuality, that company might still be on the air today had executives at Turner/Warner/AOL wanted wrestling on the air. WCW was still a ratings draw when it was at its nadir at the end of its run. Everything was relative.
It was the steroid trial that gives him liberty to walk out on live television sometimes twice a week and flaunt the new charges against him, as if to say to the stockholders and the people investigating him, and what’s worst, the victim, her family, and friends, that no matter what you do, you can’t touch him. That’s what makes him so loathsome. It’s the cocksure taunting of everyone who tries to take him down, when the people who really are just “trying to get him” are ones he’s wronged. He knows he’ll have people doing his PR work for him for free. Hell, the people who pay money to watch his shows live and cheer him are the biggest simps of them all.
That’s why the day he dies will be glorious to me. Yeah, the damage he has done cannot be undone without years of hard work. When even the wrestling companies that produce good content are content to operate in his wake of cruelty and chauvinism, his marks can seem indelible. However, the sheer notion that this world would be rid of the stain of his existence would be some kind of solace. I grew up a wrestling fan. I was drawn into this art by the wrestlers McMahon exploited to become a billionaire. It’s for that reason why I hope he can never know peace in this life or the next, should there be one. It’s a petty solace, but it’s the only thing I have as a wrestling fan who has seen him ravage every bit of good in this industry for all 40 years I’ve been alive.