Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Vince McMahon, History's Greatest Monster

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Robert is joined again by Sean and Tom to continue to discuss Vince McMahon. Behind the Bastards is once again funding the Portland Diaper Bank! You can donate here to make sure families suffering financial hardship have one less thing to worry about: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ah24n-btb-fundraiser-for-pdx-diaper-bank?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Between April 1971 and September 1972, six young black girls were snatched off the streets in Washington D.C. This child was laying on the side of the road. The person said, I murdered your daughter. The killer believed that he may have been seen. I will admit the others when you catch

me if you can. Sign Freeway Phantom. Listen to Freeway Phantom on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, we're stepping behind the scenes and the drawing boards of this team to experience the life breathed into the Bridgerton prequel. Listen to the leaps executive producer and series director Tom Verica took to capture the feeling that puts that lump in your throat. And you've got to catch creator Shonda Rhimes. She's dropping gems, diamonds, and mics. You can listen to Queen Charlotte, the official podcast every Thursday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Robert Evans here, and we'll get to the Vince McMahon episodes

in a second. I wanted to let you all know that for the fourth year in a row, we are doing our fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. Behind the Bastard supporters have been helping to fund the Portland Diaper Bank since 2020 and bought millions of diapers for people who really need them. So if you go to GoFundMe and type in BTB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank, or just type in BTB Fundraiser Diaper Bank GoFundMe into Google, anything like that, you will find it. So please, GoFundMe, BTB Fundraiser for Portland Diaper Bank, help us raise the money that these people need to get diapers to folks who need them desperately. All right everybody, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. We're gearing up for a really intense

match today. In one corner of the room, we have Shawn Baby, the famous guy on the internet, and on the other corner, by God, it's Tom Reiman with a steel chair. Oh, the cream of the crop rising to the top, the cream of the crop. I don't know why I had to pick one of you to be the I didn't know I was gonna bring this energy, but let me get into it. Grab the bones of your enemies and use them to power the thrusters that takes the warrior's rocket to the top of the bastards. Well, that was great. This is Behind the Bastards podcast that is inconsistently opened, but I appreciate the edge that you both lent to this. We are coming in hot in part two of the Vince McMahon series, the episode where we finally talk about Vince

McMahon. I hope you're all now caught up all of our people who were not coming in as wrestling fans, and I also hope that our wrestling fans learned a thing or two. In our last episode, before we diverted to talk about the Von Erich family, I kind of left wrestling in the 50s and 60s when the NWA and television had started to turn it into a big business with seriously big money for the first time. Now, today, pro wrestling salaries are pretty pitiful. I think the average is like 52,000 per year, which may sound good for you if you're making like 35 grand a year, but you have to remember your job does not entail getting a head injury every single night. So it's it's really you have to cut some dollars off of that salary, which is not wildly, you know,

crazy anyway. Yeah. Picture this, you live on a bus, you pay eight grand a month for for painkillers and steroids, you get hit in the head of the chair seven times a day, and any tiny mistake will get you fired. Yeah, making making an average American middle class salary for collecting TBI's like kids in the 90s collected pogs. And by the way, you have no retirement and no retirement. Absolutely no benefits whatsoever. Your retirement is dying at 37. Yeah, that's your pension is you're not going to make it to 50. You're secure in the knowledge that you're not. I mean, what are the saddest? What are the saddest moments in kind of pro wrestling history is is my hero, Rowdy Roddy Piper, when he was like 60 or 61, gave an interview where he was like, look, like I'm out of

cash, you know, between the medical bills and everything. Like I don't have any of the money left that I made during all of those years that I was one of the biggest stars in wrestling. You know, I'm Canadian, I have a pension, but it doesn't kick in till I'm 65. And I'm not going to make it to 65. Like it's a bleak bleak interview to watch. Yeah. Anyway, that's the way things are now back in the day. And this kind of period where we're having the first real big height of wrestling and television kind of coming together, wrestlers were paid reasonably well. Now they're destroying their bodies probably at a faster rate, right? We know less for one thing. Like we didn't know what we know now about steroids. So it was kind of impossible to do them without

destroying your heart very rapidly. Nowadays, you can't like, you know, all these like celebrities who are on steroids for movies and stuff aren't doing the same thing to their bodies that like the Von Erick kids were. Which is not to say you should do steroids listeners. It's just, it's less toxic now. If you are going to do steroids, do them today, not in 1958. Yes, don't do steroids if you can avoid it at all. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know. Pick up Jose Konsekos book juice. When you do enough steroids, you visit the future. But in those days, and kind of this first big wave in the 60s, most pros were compensated pretty well. That is to say they were making what people at the time would have considered pretty good money. This is one of the reasons

why wrestling never unionized. We'll talk a little bit later about another reason why it didn't unionize, but kind of at the beginning of its rise to prominence, a lot of guys would be like, well, we're making great money. Why do we need to unionize? The answer to that is because Vince McMahon will inevitably come along into your industry. When you said the other reason they didn't unionize, I'm like, he's talking about Vintuch Van. Yeah, absolutely. But that comes later. So he's on his way like Thanos. Yeah. So television caused wrestling to go mainstream and TV execs during the golden age of TV loved it because wrestling not only did it get a lot of eyeballs, people are always

wanting to watch wrestling. It's incredibly cheap to produce, right? You don't need a ton of blocking. You don't need, you know, special effects people. You don't need the same kind of, you know, stars that you have to have for a drama or something. You need a ring and huge men who are willing to hurt themselves for money, right? It's its own like source of profit, like the ticket sales and yeah. Yeah. And sir, I'm just saying you could theoretically make money on a wrestling broadcast before it even gets on TV. Yeah. And we're getting to that. That is what people eventually figure it out. And one of the first people to realize kind of how profitable television could be for wrestling was Vincent James McMahon, the father of our Vince. He was born on July 6, 1914,

was sports promoter named Jess McMahon in West Harlem. Now, over time, Vince, we'll call him Vince senior for the purpose of these episodes, and we'll call our Vince Vince Jr. Otherwise, it's going to get way too complicated. Over time, Vince senior's father and older brother got really into boxing promotion. And, you know, Vince senior eventually follows his dad as a promoter. In 1931, his dad noticed that pro wrestling seemed to be a growing concern. People are really getting into this kind of thing a lot more. So he decided to promote a match and he wound up thinking it might be a good business. For the next 15 years, Vince McMahon senior's father worked in both boxing and wrestling, booking matches all throughout the greater New York area. He expanded

his business to DC and sent his son to run his office there. Vincent senior was on a swell path until, you know, World War Two happened. That whole that whole shebang and he had to go overseas for a couple years in the military. It was during this period that he met up with a young woman named Vicky Hanner. By 1943, Vicky was pregnant with his child. This is going to be our Vince McMahon. Vicky was married to another guy at the time. And while they did file for divorce before she got pregnant, or while he filed a divorce petition against her before she got pregnant, she didn't like do anything with it. And so the divorce didn't go through until 1947. She and Vincent senior, while kind of in a bigamist relationship, moved to New York,

where they had their first son, Roderick James McMahon, who is our Vince McMahon's older brother out of wedlock on October 12th. The couple were married in 1944 while Vicky is again still legally married to her first husband, which means that Vincent might technically qualify as a literal bastard. Although the timing here is a little fuzzy. How often does that happen? Very rarely. Most of our bastards are born within the bounds of holy matrimony. Born into ethics is what Vince McMahon is. So in August of 1945, Vincent senior was honorably discharged. And a few days later, their second son, Vincent Kennedy McMahon, that's our Vince McMahon, was born in North Carolina. I'm sorry. The Vince McMahon's

here. It is a little complex at this point. I don't buy it. They found him in the forest. They pulled him out of a bush. Yeah, he was a tuber. He was in a pod. Yeah. Yeah, he's in a tuber with like, I don't know, the guy who owns the Knicks currently pulled them both up at the same time. So Vince McMahon, our Vince McMahon, Vince Jr. was baptized in a local Catholic church, which Ryseman notes would be the only real influence that Vincent senior had on his son for more than a decade, right? Because his family's Catholic, he makes sure the kid gets baptized in a Catholic church. And then he and Vicky split the fuck up. And we don't really know why, but Vicky has a lot of husbands. So this is like not a not an uncommon thing for her to like get married to a

guy and then for them to split up for a while. Given given what we know happens in the future, it's we could blame this on Vince McMahon. Yes. And I think it is generally fair to blame the child in incidents of divorce. I think we can all usually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the official stance of this podcast. So Vicky gets together after Vincent senior leaves with a guy named Leo Lupton Jr. Leo was a high school dropout and an electrician who had already abandoned one family before he got married to this family in 19. Again, these are honestly, these are my people, right? This is this is the American, the heartland classic American dirtbag. Listen to the almond brothers leaving his family in the rear view mirror. That's his hobby is leaving families. It's

an art form for some abandoning his family. Good stuff. So he abandons his first family in 1940. And it's it's very funny. So before he meets Vicky, he abandons this first family, a wife and a daughter. And he gets like charged and convicted for this and his sentence for abandoning his family. He has sentenced to quote two years on the roads. What does that mean? You're exiled from the cities. I don't know. My guess is like realistically, probably some sort of like hard labor on the highway system. But that that is a Cormac McCarthy ass sounding punishable. Judges like. Two years on the roads. God, the forties were funny. I mean, I guess some unfunny stuff happened, but it was mostly a laugh. So the earth would be your pillow

in the sky shall be a blanket. Sentence to. Honestly, we ought to be doing that now. Like when we had the big financial crash in 2008, all those bankers, you got to be a hobo now. You got to go wander with a spindle. No more than two nights in the same city. God, what a cool sounding punishment. So he finishes his time on the roads and gets together with Vicky after she breaks up with Vincent senior. They get married in 1947. This is her third marriage in six years, which is honestly pretty impressive for now. Those are some numbers. I'll give it to her. So Vince McMahon, our Vince McMahon, Vince Junior is a professional liar and a fabulous in another era. He would have been a carnival barker. And this is a problem

for us because he's been pretty good over the years at doing his own PR. What a in this era, he's a carnival barker. Yes, he's the most carny son of a beast. He does have strong carny energy. He's been doing his own PR for quite a while, and he's given a couple of remarkable interviews where he goes into honestly startling detail about his father and his own childhood. Although you can't ever trust anything he says entirely. Like you have to go over this kind of stuff because number one, even if he's lying, it's fascinating that he would say some of these things. But you always take it with a grain of salt. So one of the two really good interviews we have where he talks about his early life is a feature with New York magazine

titled Beyond Fake and written by veteran journalist Nancy Jo Sales. The other is an interview in Playboy magazine with an unnamed reporter who sounds like the kind of dude you'd expect to find wrestling interviewing wrestling promoters for Playboy magazine. And unfortunately, the Playboy interview was the one where he gives us the most detail about his childhood. It is worth noting that this interview was conducted as part of a promotional campaign Vince was doing for the XFL, which was supposed to be an ultra violent football league with no rules and wound up collapsing inside of a year because all of the athletes were hoping to get hired by the NFL and none of them wanted to suffer life altering injuries in the XFL.

So Vince is very much in macho mode while he's doing this piece. He's trying to sell himself in order to sell the XFL. As a result, for example, he starts this interview by talking about how he doesn't feel pain, which is why he's so good at taking hits in the ring. Later in the interview, he calls his stepfather, Leo Lupton, a real asshole who, quote, enjoyed kicking people around. Playboy asks him, your stepfather beat you and Vince nods yes, quote, it's unfortunate that he died before I could kill him. I would have enjoyed that, not that he didn't have some redeeming qualities. He was an athlete, great at any sport, which I admired. And I remember watching the Jackie Gleason show with him. We used to laugh together at

Jackie Gleason. Jesus. I like the idea of going through masturbating to a magazine and getting to the story and being like, hmm, it only makes it hotter for me and for me to be honest. You gradually stop masturbating as you're eating. Yeah. After a solid hour with this ball draining, come mag, I was happy to see Vince McMahon's face and let me know I could rehydrate. A very alluring story, Mr. McMahon. Thank you. So this interview- I wish I could have killed my dad. Say it slower. Say it slower while you choke me. Everyone gripping their dick really appreciates it. So one of the great things about this, like that's an objectively insane thing to say. Like, it's unfortunate he died before I could

kill him, but at least we used to listen to laugh at Jackie Gleason together. Like that's nice, right? That's interesting to tell Playboy. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot there. And the interview, like honestly, low key, the interviewer here is also a bastard because after he says we used to laugh together at Jackie Gleason, the Playboy journalist says, Lupton was an electrician. He hit you with his tools, didn't he? A pipe wrench? What the fuck? What the fuck? Vince says, sure. Sure, why not? And then Playboy guy says, he hit your brother too. And Vince says, no, I was the only one of the kids who would speak up and that's what provoked the attacks. You would think that after being on the receiving end of numerous attacks, I would

wise up, but I couldn't. I refused to. I felt I should say something even though I knew what the result would be. And that's like, you know, again, obviously, he's he's in part doing this to like mythologize like this. I'm like, this is like in context, he starts with being like, I'm tough, I don't feel pain. I learned how to not feel pain because my dad beat me. He beat me because I wouldn't stop mouthing off, right? Like this is both possibly parts of this. I'm sure parts of this are true. And also, he's telling you this because he thinks it makes him look cool, which is this like just an undeniable aspect of this Playboy interview. And then his story is just getting completely poisoned by this interviewer. And this interviewer is a piece of shit. You

don't want to say no to this, but like he hit you with the tools, right? Maybe he hit you with a wrench. So Vince claims the physical abuse started when he was six and continued for the next half decade or so, at least when the Playboy guy tells him that's an awful way to learn how a man behaves. Vince gives this line. I learned how not to be. One thing I love is a man who will strike a woman. There's never an excuse for that. Now, hold on to that for a moment, folks, because we'll be talking about this a little later. Oh, oh, boy. Yeah. Leo went on to have a son later in life. Leo Lupton, his stepdad. And this son went interviewed by I believe it was Josie Reisman, who interviewed his son, who is like Vincent, our Vincent's half brother. This guy says,

I didn't experience any abuse. Like our dad, you know, didn't hit me. Obviously, that doesn't mean Vince isn't telling the truth. This kind of thing happens all the time. That said, like, it's also I'm trying both not to deny because it's entirely possible that Vince and in fact, probably pretty likely that he received something we would consider physical child abuse. And also every word nearly every word out of Vince McMahon's mouth is a lie and has been for like 50 years. These this is a complicated thing to keep in your head ethically. But I think both of those things need to be acknowledged. Now, I don't doubt that this was a difficult period in his childhood. He certainly reports that. And Leo Lupton is a bit of a dirtbag. So again, you know,

all of this, all of these things can be true. And while his biological dad was while this was all going on, his biological dad, Vincent senior, was reaping the sweet rewards of abandoning both of his children to focus on his wrestling career. When Jess McMahon, our Vince's grandfather died in 1954, Vincent senior took over what had become a sizable family business, one of the larger wrestling concerns in the United States, syndicates, probably a better thing to call it. So Vincent senior was known to his wrestlers as a nice guy and a world of promoters that were mostly unhinged psychopaths, right? Most wrestling promoters, most syndicate leaders are like, you know, Vaughn Eric, right? They are like just a slight step away from just being a straight up gang

boss. And some of them are literally gang bosses. Yeah, these these people are like wild men. And by the way, Vincent senior does work pretty closely with toots. Vincent senior is generally known as like he's a relatively honest one. He's reasonably good to work for. Now, this is what a lot of his wrestlers will say. I'm not sure if that's actually true, or if he was just really good at being likable while he fucked people over. And he just kind of was able to differentiate differentiate himself from the other leaders because he dressed better, and he was kind of nicer to his employees to their faces. There's some interviews that make me suspect that his reputation for being a decent guy was largely the result of kind of his marketing.

One of these is a quote from Jesse, the body ventura, quote, you could be angry at Vince senior for a payoff. You'd walk in, you'd voice your complaint, you'd walk out and you'd feel great. And yet you got no more money when he was sticking it to you. He always made you feel good while he was doing it. And Jesse, the body ventura is somebody we're going to be hearing from a little bit later as well. Fascinating man. So Vince senior was a ruthless businessman, but he was man. But he was also a team player. When the Justice Department cracked down on the NWA for being an illegal cartel and threatening independent promoters, Vincent senior tampered with a witness, threatening one of his wrestlers to change their testimony before a deposition. He's not Indian

WA, but he's an affiliate. And when they come to him being like, hey, one of your guys is going to, you know, basically testify to the government that we're operating as an illegal cartel in order to like keep the prices low for, you know, paying our wrestlers. Vince sits down with this guy and he's like, hey, man, this is the end of your career if you if you do this shit. You know, he's he's that guy. He is willing to go to bat for his industry for the owners in his industry. Good for him. Good for him. Yeah. Or maybe I'm confused. This might be terribly unethical and evil. So as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem like little kid Vince was particularly into wrestling during the years when he didn't know his biological father. In fairness, he seems to

have had a lot on his mind besides the fact that his stepdad was a violent guy. In that Playboy interview, he mentions having been the victim of some kind of sex abuse as a child. The interviewer asks him for details. And this is this journalist is the worst person to interview somebody about potentially being a victim of a sex crime. Vince's first response when the interviewer asked for details is actually pretty reasonable. He says, that's not anything I would like to embellish just because it was weird. The interviewer kind of assumes he's talking about being sexually abused by a male adult. And Vincent tells him, no, it was not from a man. And then the Playboy interviewer asks, it's well known that you're estranged from your mother. Have we

found the reason? Now, I might rather die than ask that question of anyone without an extremely good reason. But what are you fishing for trauma, dude? Like that is part of me. And I maybe I'm just kind of being hopeful. Part of me wonders if like maybe he and Vince cleared some stuff ahead of time and plant. Vince is again a kayfabe guy, right? Like he is he does this. So maybe because it is weird. It's wild to ask a guy that question and not get fucking cold cocked. Yes. Like but maybe they were I don't know. I like I really don't know. Yeah. So anyway, Vince answers and says, you know, after this guy says it's well, you know, you're estranged from your mom. We found basically insinuating did your mom sexually

like abuse you? Vince asks answers. I'd say that's pretty close. So for quite a while, everyone took that as like Vince confirming that his mom sexually abused him. That's what he wants us to believe. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to interpret that any other way. Yeah. Yeah, every Vince's man. I mean, it's just what you were saying earlier. Every interview I've ever seen of Vince seems like it's at least partially a work. Exactly. Regardless of what he's talking about. It always seems like he's performing to an extent. So it's really hard to it's it is it is extremely hard to tell with Vince McMahon because he's Vince McMahon. Now, I did some weird sex stuff with my mom. Watch the XFL.

And it's like, you know, obviously, some people will bring up, well, he took care of his mom. He like gave her money and stuff for the rest of her life, which doesn't necessarily mean she didn't sexually abuse him, right? Like family, this all this stuff's all complicated. No. Yeah. Around the same time as this Playboy interview, I think a little bit afterwards, he winds up definitely afterwards. He winds up on the Howard Stern show to promote a pay-per-view wrestling event and also to promote the XFL. Howard Stern is Howard Stern, if you're not aware. So of course, he brings up these allegations of like child molestation, saying he'd read that Vince had been molested by his mother. Now, I'm going to read a quote from Jody Reisman's book

Ringmaster relating the rest of that conversation. I didn't say that Vince countered in a tone that suggested a rising shield. That was the that was the inference. Stern's co-host Robin Quivers asked, what did she do? Vince didn't answer. Stern posited, I don't know, but whatever it was, it was not good. Vince blurted out an obviously forced laugh. Vince, you get all choked up when you talk about it, right? Stern asked, I'd rather not talk about that stuff. Vince replied, Quivers, your mother is around and you don't talk to her. Vince, not a lot, Stern. Boy, did she blow it because, man, you're a billionaire. Does she get any money from the WWF? Quivers asked, referring to WWE by its then current name. Stern interrupted the question to add, I just

realized when I said, did she blow it? That's the question. Everyone in the students yelled out a mock disapproving, oh, at the host's dick joke. Well, everyone other than Vince. Vince, I apologize. Stern said, that would be traumatic. That would be traumatic. Vince said, right. Now, that is again, fucking insane. What? That is like Howard Stern. You don't, you don't make a blowjob joke about somebody's being sexually abused when they were like six. Yeah. You just, you don't do that. That's really bad, Howard. That's so fucked up. Yeah. Like, I don't know what to say about that. I mean, I'm in the unusual position of feeling bad for Vince. I do kind of feel bad for Vince there. Yeah. That's brutal. That is out of its fucking

mind. That is bananas. That happened. Yeah. It's something else. So in that Playboy article, Vince went into what I would describe as a baffling degree of detail about his early life, just outside of the stuff we've already talked about. At one point, the interviewer asks him when he lost his virginity, which is at least kind of a normal Playboy question. Although, it's weird to ask that after he has talked about being sexually assaulted as a child. It's, I kind of get the feeling that both men do not consider being molested to be the same as losing your virginity, which actually kind of, I mean, I think you could argue makes a degree of sense because they're, they're talking about having a consensual sexual experience. Yeah,

that makes total sense. Yeah, that makes, that makes sense. In the spirit of the question, I would not count it right. Yeah. Right. Anyway, his response here is still one of the most baffling things I have ever seen a man admit to in a public forum. And this is him again, talking about losing his virginity. That was at a very young age. I remember probably in the first grade being invited to a matinee film with my stepbrother and his girlfriends. And I remember them playing with me, playing with my penis and giggling. I thought that was pretty cool. That was my initiation into sex. At that age, you don't necessarily achieve an erection, but it was cool. And around the same time, there was a girl my age who was, in essence,

my cousin. Later in life, she actually wound up marrying that asshole Leo, Leo Lupton, my stepfather. Boy, this sounds like tobacco road. Anyway, I remember the two of us being so curious about each other's bodies and not knowing what the hell to do. We would go into the woods and get naked together. It felt good. And for some reason, I wanted to put crushed leaves into her. Don't know why, but I remember that. I don't remember the first time I had intercourse, believe it or not. Now, well, if you're counting leaf stuff, if we're counting leaf stuff, then we're getting leaf stuff. Then I guess that six. I guess first grade. It's one of those things. Look, I actually can definitely say I have had. There's something about that.

There's stuff for like a scarecrow. I don't think it's uncommon for little kids to like play around with other little kids sometimes. And sometimes like sure. Talking about it in this way is nuts. That I feel confident saying. If one of them says, I want to stuff leaves inside you, now you've got a problem. Now this is outside. Yeah. The acceptable level of like discovery and weirdness that all humans go through. Yeah. Yeah. This is. And I think, again, the weirdest part is talking about it in the context of losing your virginity to playboy. Because honestly, both of those stories, one is like you're with your stepbrother and they like play with your penis for some reason. And one is you're playing with another little kid and

like stuff like leaves in their underwear. Neither of those is sex. I don't think like neither of those is consensual sex. Neither of those is even intercourse. Like I don't know. I don't know why you bring that up at all in this context. I guess I'm like Vince's weird brain. He was just like there's there's okay. It's like in his weird brain, he might have thought like, oh, they mean that the first time that I, you know, I might have my penis flicked around. But they also like there's it reminds me of like the kind of weird boasting kids would do when they're just hitting pubes like, oh, yeah, I had like I had sex in second grade or yeah, exactly. It's all bullshit. So it's like there's a weird component of that to it as well. Like he's trying to seem cool by saying

he had sex as young as possible. Yeah, these are like, these are both like stories. I don't know if you were a major figure and decided to write your autobiography, you might, if it was a particularly honest autobiography, tell a story like that when talking about your early childhood, like saying it in like, I don't know, a fucking Playboy interview as sort of this is how I lost my virginity is is bizarre. If you want to explain a way like a leaf fetish or some like really strange thing you got caught doing like, well, I guess you got caught fucking a tree. Yeah, here's why I fucked trees. Yeah, they caught me naked in a compost bin. But let me explain why my stepdad, he got sentenced to two years on the road. He fucked a lot of trees and I think that rubbed off

on me. Oh, wait, I didn't mean that. Speaking of rubbing off, you're gonna fuck that book. Watch the XFL. Trees and paper is basically trees. Yeah. I think it's fair to say that's the other thing. He's doing this interview to promote his weird arena of football. To promote the XFL. He talks about stuffing leaves in another child's underwear. The XFL really was like this violent, insecure, like man's man version of football. And here he is telling these fucking intimate, like, dark sexual stories. Desperately intimate stories. These stories that like, these are the kinds of experiences that you do your best to like not. I don't know, it seems like. Yeah, these are the kind of experiences and like, if you have, I mean, I guess there's, I mean,

just statistically, some of the people listening will have similar experiences, nothing. Sure. Wrong with this. But like, these are the kind of things you would, you know, a close friend when you're, you know, bearing your soul some night, you know, or somebody that you're in a romantic relationship with when you've built up a degree of trust, right? Playboy magazine, like fucking Gitmo couldn't get me out of this out of me for a public forum. This story is probably on the same page as a grotesquely sexual cartoon. Or an ad for camel cigarettes. Right. This is a picture of Joe camel in a fucking leather jacket. Yeah, it's, it's, it's something the fuck else is for what it is for goddamn sure. It is something the fuck else. And you know what else is something else,

guys? These products and services, these products and services beat me to it. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing ads love more than being featured right after talking about Vince McMahon's bizarre admissions of sexual abuse in Playboy magazine. So here, buy some shit. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University. And I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new

senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all new story of Betrayal. Ashley Lytton was helping her husband set up a business Venmo account when she discovered a terrible secret. I scrolled down and that's when I saw a hidden folder and I opened it. What the hell did I just see?

I was scared that he was coming home. What Ashley discovered that day was a secret so dark she feared for her life. She was like, oh my god, I got to get out of the house. He's going to find out that I've seen this. He's going to come kill me. Listen to season two of Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Between April 1971 and September 1972, six young black girls were snatched off the streets in Washington DC. It took four murders before the police finally realized that one person was responsible. I will admit the others when you catch me if you can. Signed freeway fan.

This child was laying on the side of the road. It appeared that she was probably either dragged out of the car or thrown out of the car. The person said, I murdered your daughter. The killer believed that he may have been seen by the mother. That guy is, he's out of sync with even the worst people. I thought that they would catch him. I thought it was just a matter of time. Is it possible that the killer is still alive? Listen to freeway phantom on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back, boy. That's going to make life easier for the ad sales team. So as a rule, when Vince talks about his childhood, his early memories focus around his stepfather, Leo. Even his only young memory of

his biological father involves Leo. Vincent Sr., when when Vince was a little kid, only visited him once. And Vince Jr.'s memory of the event was just that he was scared of Leo, right? He was scared of how to react in front of his biological father because he was worried about how Leo would react. Again, if Leo's an abusive guy, it makes total sense. Outside of this moment, Vince was completely separate from his biological father and from the big man family until the age of 12. One of his childhood friends recalls that he and his brother did not even know how to pronounce the name McMahon properly. Now, they didn't have a lot of money when they were, you know, living. How many options are there? Like, McMahon? I think it was McMahon or something like that,

is how he said it. Yeah. Now, they didn't have a lot of money, you know, in the time when he was living as Vinnie Lupton. And Vince and his family kind of lived in a bad part of town. There were hints of normalcy in their life, though. Vicki volunteered with the local Boy Scout troop that Vince was in and acted in community theater productions. Unfortunately, one of these was a 1953 production of On Stage America, described by the local paper as a minstrel show with a modern patriotic twist. Vince Jr.'s mother was in the Piccinini chorus. Josie Reisman writes that this was presumably in blackface. And I suspect she is correct there. Yeah. To the listeners, everyone who knows what that word means is dead, but that's a really racist word. Yeah. Don't use it.

There's no other assumption you can make based on that word. Yeah. If you see that word written somewhere, it's like, if you see that word written somewhere, whoever wrote it almost certainly has a Confederate flag in their home. Right. It is referencing the most racist thing you've ever seen. Yeah. If you see it somewhere. Bad stuff. So that said, really common stuff for the day, right? This is not like fringe shit in North Carolina in the period of time in which she's acting in this, which doesn't make it right. I'm just, you know, trying to add context. He grows up in a pretty racist place in time. Vincent's elementary school was segregated, further back up that point. And his sixth grade class had just 32 students. In an interview with Playboy,

he describes himself and his friends as the roughest kids in town, constantly getting into fights and scrapes. He claims that he was totally unruly, that he refused to go to school and broke the law constantly without ever getting caught. Worse than the whites. That's what they called me. And again, he's talking about himself when he's like 10. In one interview, he led out a potentially revealing statement saying that he felt as a kid that he wasn't as bright as the other kids. And so he defaulted to physicality as a result. That sounds like it might be like an honest admission of insecurity, but there's reason to doubt all of this. Reisman notes, quote, however, the picture that emerges from those who knew him is surprisingly of a kind kid who made

friends with ease. He was, from what I can remember, fairly popular. And he was liked by the girls as well as the boys, recalls classmate Shell Davis, who became the boy's best friend in town. Most everyone knew him, liked him, that sort of thing. Vinny was not a loud or abrasive child. Rod's best friend from the period, James Fletcher, says that despite encountering Vinny at some length, the younger kid didn't make a big impression. That said, as Davis puts it, Vinny was more extroverted than introverted. Not a showoff, but very sociable, very friendly, very outgoing to his peers. So again, he kind of as a as a preteen and as a teen, he kind of portrays himself as this like violent, unhinged badass. But everyone knew him was like, he was really nice. Yeah, got along

with everybody. Yeah, it's every stage of his life that he's telling a story about to Playboy sounds at least partially made up. And it is. Maybe he was a 10 year old badass. Maybe he might have been. Maybe all these people grew up so scared of little Vinny that they're like, if Playboy interviews me, I'm going to tell him that he was a fucking 10 year old in town that'll cut your goddamn neck. He was like, if 30 years from now, someone comes up and starts asking you questions about my personality at this point in time, you better tell him I was sweet. It's a little Vinny's out here smashing people's knuckles with a hammer. So when he's around 12, his stepdad moves Vincent senior Vinny Lupton and the family to Craven County. Now by this point, Vincent seniors business

had expanded to control much of the wrestling in the northeastern United States. He was one of the biggest promoters in the country regularly booking sold out events in Madison Square Garden. Vincent junior had no idea of any of this until Vincent seniors new wife Juanita pushed him to reconnect with his first biological children. So basically his I don't know what technically she would be to him, I guess technically nothing but like his biological dad's wife. It's you know, when his kids are like 12 and 13 years, his first biological kids are 12 and 13 is like, hey, you should like talk to them like you should have some sort of relationship with you, which is a very nice gesture to be honest, like that's very sweet of her. So the two finally

meet when Vincent is 12 years old. He later told New York magazine, I saw my dad and I just immediately fell in love with him. He saw his father as big and handsome. And while he says they knew that making up for lost time wasn't possible, both of them put a lot of effort into developing a belated relationship together. And the easiest thing for them to bond over was wrestling. Quote, he would take me to shows at the old U line arena in Washington. And I remember the crowd response and those larger and than life individuals. The passion was just so strong. I just knew that I wanted to do that as soon as I saw it. This is the stuff that Vincent has been most consistent about over his childhood that he just kind of is immediately enthralled by his

father is kind of obsessed with him. And there's also people who are not Vince kind of say this. And Vincent's seniors family, like his kids are like, you know, we were friendly to him. We thought it was good that dad was getting a relationship with him. He was a little odd. And kind of everyone says that about Vince around his his bio dad that he's he's kind of peculiar. And for the record, Vince senior is going to find his son's obsession with him and with wrestling to be a little strange and not strange and like it's weird that a kid would want to connect with his bio dad. But he is super focused on wrestling in particular. Imagine being Vinny at this time, though. It is weird. Like that's a lot for a kid to deal with. You've got a history

of abandoning your families. And then here comes your kid's biological dad. And he's like a billionaire with his own wrestling company. You're like, you're that's that rage is going to get internalized. That jealousy that couldn't have been good for an already weird Leo love. Yeah. So Vincent immediately wanted to be a wrestler. And his his bio dad, Vincent senior tries to put to quash this, right? Like he's very from the beginning, like, no, man, you do not want to be a wrestler. He initially tried he born some that like wrestling has wild ups and downs. The market's not reliable. You know, sometimes I'm doing well, but sometimes I'm barely floating by. You would do a lot better. You'll be a lot happier if you just find a safe government job that gives you

a pension. But Vince listened to that about as well as you would expect a child being told that delivering mail is a better future than wearing spandex and punching dudes dressed as shakes would listen, right? Easy. He's like, yeah, having a pension is the smart thing. And he's like, but I want to fight people for a living. You make that choice 10 out of 10 times. Absolutely. Absolutely. Not surprising as a kid that he is so focused on this. Paper round. I want to drop kick someone. So in the summer of 1959, when Vince was 14, he met the man who would become his childhood hero, a wrestler named Dr. Jerry Graham. Vince recalled he had peroxide at hair and wore her red riverboat gambler type shirt. He had a 1959 blood red Cadillac convertible. Washington, DC, that summer of 59,

I'd sneak out of my dad's office and go riding around town with a good doctor. And oh my God, he would light cigars with hundred dollar bills, run red lights, curse anybody he wanted to curse. And I just thought he was the coolest guy. He was a wild man. He would do anything he wanted to do. Robert, this guy is cool. This guy is in fact kind of cool. Would you grab us a picture of this guy? Dr. Graham, pretty cool guy. Now, the story about him lighting hundred dollar bills on fire is one you'll find in every recollection Vince has of his childhood. As with everything Vince says, it may or may not be true. Given things that we know for certain about Dr. Graham,

though, I'm going to say that's probably true. That's kind of a bargain to get everyone who meets you to tell that story like your whole life. It's $100 to get everyone to think. Yeah, that's a deal. I think people should start doing it. So I think it's worth noting that Jerry Graham was an incredible dude in his own right. During World War II, he lied about his age to enlist in the 82nd Airborne and fight Nazis as a paratrooper when he's like 15 years old, something like that. Maybe 16. He is too young to be doing that, but he doesn't. You're in that blood red Cadillac. If you know much about the 82nd Airborne, the 82nd Airborne like a unit in the eights. Yeah, he looks fucking cool as hell. It's just astounding. And Dr. Jerry Graham exits World

War II. Basically, a pile of muscles and trauma. He's got so much mass. There's so much mass. He is a huge dude. He has the body type of like a fucking beach ball made of steel. I don't know how else to describe it. You wouldn't want to get into a fight with this fella. You're not going to lose your weight. I don't even know how to grab. Yeah, exactly. He's just stout. His body type is a fucking esco barricade. So he leaves the war traumatized as all hell. And a lot of the behavior Vince witnessed was not just a result of him being a cool dude, but a result of chronic alcoholism, which was itself self-medication for lifelong depression. Now, the highlight by his own admission of Dr. Graham's career occurred two years before he met Vince in 1957, when he was

scheduled for a big exhibition match in Madison Square Garden. And this is maybe the greatest riot in pro wrestling history. Have you guys heard this story, the 57 riot at Madison Square Garden? No. Oh, man. Oh, this, you're going to love this one. So Dr. Graham is a heel, right? I mean, look at that guy. That's a fucking heel. Because he's cool. Because he's fucking cool as hell. Now, actually, we are about to talk about some racism, but you know, whatever. So Graham is paired up in a double match alongside his fellow heel Dick the Bruiser and against some Canadian guy and his partner, who is a Puerto Rican wrestler named Roka. The garden is packed with almost 13,000 fans. Thousands more are turned away at the door. The crowd gets amped up and you

have to assume they're also drunker than any group of people today could possibly get. In an interview that he gave later in life, Dr. Graham said this about how the night went from a normal wrestling match to something decidedly less kayfabe. He claimed he could smell the riot coming. Quote, I knew the timing was right. The Puerto Rican people had never seen blood on Roka. And I hit him in the eye, split his eye and they went insane. So this was not something that they had planned before him like busting that guy's eye open was not planned. And this makes Roka very angry, understandably. And they start fighting for real and actually beating the shit out of each other for real. Now, the match had been meant to end in two straight falls. But Graham charged Roka

when he wasn't supposed to because Roka had been hitting him. And Roka did that because he'd split his eye anyway. The fight between them can like keeps going on like it doesn't end when it's supposed to. And there's a curfew on wrestling matches in New York at this point at 11 p.m. But 11 p.m. rolls around and these guys are still beating the absolute shit out of each other. So the ref calls the game for the baby faces for Roka and his partner. But this just makes the crowd angrier. Graham and the bruiser continue beating the piss out of Roka, even though the match is well past where it was supposed to have ended by this point. In a write up for Life magazine by Herbert Bream, who was there noted quote, as the crowd roared Roka seized Graham and

began bashing his head against the ring post. This also produced real blood. Garden police tried to come to Graham's aid, but they could not cope with the mastodons. And I'm going to show you a fucking picture of this because it's one of the most insane examples of in ring violence I've ever seen. This is him. This is Dr. Jerry Graham getting his head smashed in against the steel like pillar of the fucking ring. Sophie. Fantastic. He is bleeding a lot. So these guys are clearly in on it. Like he's letting him bash his head into the ring like they're I think there's a mix of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a little hard to tell. There's definitely points at which like this is not how they planned it initially, too. Right. So it is

like I would get the idea that like, you know, when he busted his eye open, he lost his temper. But then, you know, they they're still, you know, wrestling pros. They're not. Yeah. It's hard to see. Yeah. It's like the lines here are blurry. Right. But he's got him from the inside of the turnbuckle. He's got his head against the ring and he's pushing it. And his hands are like not guarding his face or not trying to get away. It's very much like you'd expect a wrestling spot to go. But but also that next picture is he is bleeding quite a lot leaking out the front of his face in the next picture. It's worth relating what Graham later said about that moment. Of course, he retaliated. Ran my head into the post and blood was flowing like water. An old time jubilee

right there in Madison Square Garden. So after Graham gets his face bashed in, Bream's coverage for Life Magazine continues, quote, the crowd had been lively, throwing paper cups into the ring, but not abnormally demonstrative, now stimulated by what was probably the first honest competition they had ever seen. Some hundreds surged forth towards the ring. So Roka keeps beating Graham while fans broke down chairs and grab gathered bottles, hucking some at the wrestlers and using others to charge the wrestlers and attack. Unfortunately for them. And this is mostly like Roka's fans who are like charging into the ring to attack Graham and his partner Dick the Bruiser. Now, unfortunately for these random wrestling fans who are charging with pieces of

chairs and bottles, Dick the Bruiser before being a pro wrestler had been a lineman for the Green Bay Packers. Now, I am sure somewhere there exists a kind of dude you want to fight less than a linebacker turned pro wrestler, but I don't know what that kind of dude might be. Dr. Graham describes what came next. My partner Dick the Bruiser was picking up and throwing Puerto Ricans outside the ring like a farmer picking potatoes. Then New York's finest had to move in. They brought in the cavalry to close the fans down. And that dolly was the biggest thing I ever experienced in my career. I was fined $3,000 for inciting a riot, but it was the first time they ever saw blood on the Latin Roka. So that's the same thing to say. He was throwing Puerto Ricans like potatoes. What a wild

thing to say. I love how credulous he was too. Like they're witnessing the first real brawl. This was no longer a... It is such a fifties moment. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or, can we create new senses for humans? Or, what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the

planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of Betrayal. Ashley Lytton was helping her husband set up a business Venmo account when she discovered a terrible secret. I scrolled down, and that's when I saw a hidden folder, and I opened it. What the hell did I just see?

I was scared that he was coming home. What Ashley discovered that day was a secret so dark she feared for her life. She was like, oh my god, I gotta get out of the house. He's gonna find out that I've seen this. He's gonna come kill me. Listen to Season 2 of Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Between April 1971 and September 1972, six young black girls were snatched off the streets in Washington, D.C. It took four murders before the police finally realized that one person was responsible. I will admit the others when you catch me if you can. Signed freeway fan. This child was laying on the side of the road. It appeared that she was probably

either dragged out of the car or thrown out of the car. The person said, I murdered your daughter. The killer believed that he may have been seen by the mother. That guy is, he's out of sync with even the worst people. I thought that they would catch him. I thought it was just a matter of time. Is it possible that the killer is still alive? Listen to Freeway Phantom on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back! So, the riot of 57 at Madison Square Garden only ended because Roka addressed his fans in Spanish and begged them to stop. At the end of it, two officers were injured, 300 chairs were destroyed, and Dr. Jerry Graham's $500 sequined purple robe was stolen, which is the real tragedy.

Plus all those chairs, now 300 people will go seatless. All those Puerto Ricans he threw, like a filthy Irishman picking potatoes. I want a photo shop of the crocodile hunter at the Twin Towers and Dr. Jerry Graham's sequined purple robe that just says, never forget. That's what we're fighting for. That's what we're fighting for. I'm wearing one right now. So, the riot caused such shock among the great and good of Manhattan that there were calls to ban wrestling in the entire state. Instead, they just decided to ban kids under 14 from attending live shows, which held for 20 years. I don't think kids under 14 were particularly a part of this, but... Were they the hammered ones breaking the chairs? I don't think they were the hammered people

charging that linebacker. Dick the Bruiser is kicking up the children and throwing them. Dick the Bruiser. Fucking shit. Hucking kids across the room. So anyway... Who's the Dick Bruiser? I can't. The guy who described what Dick the Bruiser is doing as hucking Puerto Ricans like a farmer throwing potatoes was the primary childhood role model for T and aged Vince McMahon outside of his biological dad. Now, for his part, Vince Sr. was concerned about this, right? He knows wrestlers. He knows Dr. Graham. He's like, boy, my son probably shouldn't be hanging out with this guy. So he attempted to restrict Vince Jr. from hanging out with Dr. Graham. So Vince Jr. developed a habit of sneaking out

whenever he was in town to see his dad. That's how you get a kid to think something isn't cool. You say you're not allowed to do it. Yeah, exactly. Don't do this. So whenever Vince Jr. is like in DC to hang with his bio dad, he would sneak out at night so he could party with a drunk, traumatized, racist giant, which probably explains a lot. Vince told New York Magazine, that same summer at a place outside of Atlantic City while my dad was away, I talked my step mom into peroxiding my hair. And of course, when my dad got back, he blew his stack. That same summer, Dr. Jerry Graham gave me my first set of weights called Health Ways. I had the red shirt, red pants. I also bought the red shoes. I think my dad was probably a little

afraid. Now, among other things, Vince definitely afraid of my red. Now, among other things, Vince idolized Jerry's toughness and his willingness to get into fistfights at literally no provocation. His own father is not like Vince McMahon. And this we'll talk about this later because he does stuff in the ring quite a bit. He's a legitimately jacked dude. Like he's very muscular. And this is the case. I mean, now he's like 90. But for most of his like career, he's like a pretty shredded fellow. His dad, Vince Sr. is not a particularly muscular guy. He's not an athlete. He doesn't look like an athlete, which is nothing to get. He's just like he's very different from how Vince is going to wind up looking. He's a hard-nosed businessman, but no one's going

to particularly fear Vince Sr. for his ability to like beat people up. Vince Jr. seems to have desired to set himself apart from his biological dad by developing the physical trappings of being a badass. That is big muscles. But since doing that is hard, he also just opted to lie about having been a badass as a kid to interviewers years later. When talking about his teenaged years, he told Playboy, quote, have a lock where he lived is right outside the Marine base at Cherry Point. There was a place called the jet driving real creative the jet because of all the military jets at the base. On Friday and Saturday nights, it was time to get it on with the Marines. It was a challenge. Most of them were in great condition, but they didn't know how to fight. I'm not saying

they were easy pickings. They got their testosterone going and they were all liquored up. Some of them are real tough, but me and my guys were street fighters. Oh my God. I like that. I like I like that he took the time to pause this story that absolutely totally happened. Yeah. To like dunk on the drive in theater's name. I used to go to a Marine funded kumite every weekend. But like, I have some notes on the name. Yeah, it's also funny that he's like, yeah, you know, you know what everyone knows about Marines that they don't know how to fight. Right. That's what they're famous for the Marines. Oh my God. When my brother came back from basic trading, he spent probably the better part of a year just pointing at objects near people and being like, I could

kill you with that thing. Yeah. Like it's just thinking they put it in their head. Like fighting is the only thing in your entire world and you need to kill everybody. I'm gonna say he's a great fighter. Like you can only teach someone so much in basic training, but I guarantee he's a better fighter than 16. Yeah, then 16 year old Vince McMahon. Vince continues his absolutely not true claims. I mean, maybe you've been through, I'm sorry, I mean, maybe you've been through basic training and you know, to operate a bayonet. That's different from sticking to somebody's eye or sitting a guy in the throat, which comes naturally to a street fighter. Everyone knows they do not teach soldiers to be ruthless fighters. They teach them to follow the Queensbury rules

when they're out there fighting. Vince McMahon has never stuck his finger in somebody's eye. Like I just don't believe it. And they can't believe you're not fighting fair. Some touch suddenly they can't breathe and or see and they realize, oh my God, am I in for an ass kicking? Oh my God. Playboy is such a liar. Playboy asks, ever come close to killing one of them? McMahon, I would like to think not very close. That's not what I wanted to do. You want to incapacitate the guy. Once you get someone down, you don't want him getting back up. You don't want him moving. So you make sure he doesn't. It's not pretty, but it was challenging and fun. Now, can we corroborate this? Can we Google hi? I was a Marine and I got my ass kicked by

Vince McMahon when I was you think if a townie beat the shit out of a bunch of Air Force or Marine dudes at a drive in movie theater, that would be in the newspaper. I will believe it. And again, it's so easy to make a believable version of this lie. Say they were Air Force guys. Nobody's in a question that you were able to beat up Air Force dudes. I could take nine National Guardsmen when I was 11. Yeah, easy. So look, thankfully, we do have a good journalist who like looked into his his life, Josie Reisman, author of the again, excellent book, Ringmaster. And her research, pretty comprehensive here, it is true that locals of Havilok often taunted and sometimes fought Marines, which is a time honored tradition of people who are drunk in towns near military

bases, right? Soldiers get into all sorts of fights. But Josie's investigation turned churned up numerous claims by locals that Vince McMahon was never a part of any of this. This is shocking. Yeah, Doug Franks, who went to high school with Vince admitted to getting into fights with Marines on occasion, but said Vince was simply too young to participate from Ringmaster. Vince was not a part of it. But he grouped up with a bunch of wannabes and we just considered him a little punk at the time. That's the best way I know to describe him. I ask if Vince and his wannabes ever got into any fights or if they just hung around. They were hanging around in their own group trying to be tough guys, Franks recalls. The only time I knew we ever got into anything was when

he broke his hand or his wrist in a fight with a boy named Harvey Helms. Neither Franks nor McCleese recalls what the fight was over, just that it was a very isolated incident. Then he walked around with a cast on his hand and his wrist for three or four months, Franks said. It was his claim to fame. Yeah. Yeah. See, he knew he was going to get his ass kicked when he couldn't breathe. I got broke my wrist on his neck and he was like, oh, I'm going to die. This is it for me. Yeah. So adult Vince would also claim decades later to have engaged in serious criminal activity as a teenager. Playboy, did you ever steal McMahon automobiles? But I always brought him back. I just borrowed him really. There were other thefts too. I ran a load of moonshine in Harlow, North

Carolina in a 1952 Ford V8. That was a badass car at the time. Damn. This is all very cool. Yeah. Absolutely. Definitely true. We jumped over a bridge in the middle of it. It's freezed and then it said, how's Vince McMahon going to get out of this one? And then after the commercial break, I landed it. The fucking cops didn't rate in the fucking water. And anyways, I lassoed the two mountains together and that's how we made the Mississippi River. Yeah. The cops had a nickname for me called me Smokey. My partner was the bandit. That's what that movie's based on. Except in real life, there was more karate, more eyeball karate. Hill of a lot more eyeball poking. So Vince says that the cops eventually caught up to him for

all his bootlegging and that's why he was forced to attend a military school. Now, the bootlegging, I have a cousin who got in trouble for stealing cars and was made to attend a military school. Stuff like this still happens. At least, I mean, it happened 20 years ago. I don't know if it still happens today. But for Vince, I don't believe this is true. Vince's claim is that the cops gave him a choice between like military school in jail. And since his mom was broke, Vincent senior paid for him to go to military school. This is again, a lie. In other interviews that he gave earlier, his story is a lot more realistic. He claims that his school had to integrate while he was in 10th grade. This caused tumult and perhaps due in part to

being racist. Vince no longer liked it at his school once it was integrated. His grades and behavior were bad enough that the administration decided to kick him out. So military school was one of his only options. This wound up being what ultimately made him. He later recalled, I had no reputation, so it was a new beginning, a great chance to start over and create a new reputation. And so when Fishburne military school in Waynesboro, Virginia started its 1962 school year, a new student entered its 11th grade class. The previous year, Vince had been known as Vinnie Lupton. But at Fishburne, for the very first time, he started to go by a new name. Vince McMahon. So this is tough guy, laser duck. Yeah, he has so many better names than Vince

McMahon. You could have been Dick the bruiser. Come on, man. Uh, now that is my name is Ninja Karate had lots of sex. Yeah, they call me the eye gouger for short though. Marine Bain is my other nickname. My nickname is doesn't put leaves in his cousin. Oh, hi. So this would be a good, this is a pretty good breaking point to end on this episode. But I feel like I'd be doing everyone a disservice if I did not provide a coda for the epic story of Dr. Jerry Graham. And I'm going to ask you guys to strap yourselves in for this one because we're about to go on quite a ride. So despite being a wild man in public, Jerry Graham was also a mama's boy. And in 1969, his mother was admitted to a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. He called the doctor

immediately as soon as she was admitted and told him he would hurt or kill the man if his mother died there. Now, this next book comes from a book by another wrestler superstar Billy Graham. And I'm going to quote from it now. When she died later that day, Graham showed up at the hospital with his 12 year old son wielding a hunting knife and a sawed off shotgun, a tearful Graham shoved down a nurse and tossed a security guard across a hallway, hoisting his dead mother's body off a gurney and draping it over his shoulder. Another security guard rushed forward and Graham knocked him down and dragged him across the floor while still holding the corpse with his other arm. My brother Vance, a police officer in Phoenix at the time, vividly recalled how squad cars were

called to the hospital surrounding it and blocking off the streets nearby. Eventually, cops stormed the hospital and arrested Graham, who screamed incoherently and pounded on the patrol car doors as he was taken into custody. So that's a hell of a thing. Fucking Christ. That's a hell of a thing. What? Yeah, he stole his mom's body from the hospital. Like forcefully.

With a shotgun and a hunting knife FN, his 12 year old son. And again, he could have just got her to that discredited veterinarian. They could have brought her back to life. Not the same as she was. No, something different. These are these are the kind of stories that make wrestling amazing because you don't get this from the NFL, right? You don't get this for this is a wrestling story.

Oh, you were right about that guy being cool. That is a pretty cool thing to do. We can only hope to have someone who will break into the hospital when we die and just to ride our body into a gun fight. Corpse Jackass. Like fucking Bigfoot trying to reclaim his wife or something. Throwing security guards. Just yeah, crashing through this hospital.

What an amazing man. Pure engine of chaos. I'm taking her to hell myself. I'll see you there. Now, it was a knife in his teeth. It is. It is worth noting and sad to note that Graham was broke by this point, possibly as a result of burning all those hundred dollar bills.

He had sent his mother some of them. Yeah. Well, he had sent his mom money for decades as a savings account. And when he died, that's why he needed the body. Unfortunately, when she died, she had about a half a million dollars of his money. But unfortunately, she gave all of it to the Baptist church. Dr. Jerry, when he found out, spent the rest of his life with a vicious hatred of religion and died in 1997 of a stroke at age 68, which is a lot longer than I expected Jerry Graham to live.

Yeah, he beat the odds. He beat the odds. Both for wrestlers and just general maniacs. Yeah, both for wrestlers and people who steal a corpse from a hospital at shotgun point. Anyway, that's that's part two. I'm glad we ended on a happy one. What a tail. What an amazing guy.

Yeah. You know, some people aren't you can't qualify them as good or bad. They're just incredible. And Jerry Graham is incredible. They're just they're just awe inspiring. No, no, no positive or negative connotation of it. Just general awe. Yeah, I'm glad we don't have more of him, but I'm really glad we have him.

Yeah, yeah, it's like it's like when you see T. Rex's skeleton, you're like, that was cool. I'm glad it's not still here. But yeah, yeah, you make it through like a really insane thunderstorm and you're like, well, that was amazing, but I don't want to go through that again. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to avoid repeating this experience. Oh, good stuff. This is the end of part two. You guys want to plug your plugables here?

Hell yeah. I'm doing the very last comedy website on the Internet with my partner Robert Brockway. That is start sadly close to true. Oh, yeah, we started as a joke and we're like, no, this is true. But it's true. It's just like actually true. It's like the golden age of Internet jokes, we got text and pictures. Join our Patreon at patreon.com slash 1900 hotdog.

It's the best. We're very proud of it. You should be. It's very, very fun and cool. Now, Tom, you also have some fun and cool things to plug. I have a thing to plug in anyway. Anyway, I got a podcast network, Gamefully Unemployed that I started with David Bell, our friend and former crack co-worker.

You can check that out at patreon.com slash Gamefully Unemployed. And also we have free episodes that you can get for free. So check. Hell yeah. Check that out. Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. Well, check all that out. I have a novel.

It's called After the Revolution. Type it into whatever website you buy books from or, you know, like Dr. Jerry Graham, grab a 12 year old, a shotgun and a hunting knife and find your way into the nearest Barnes & Noble. And, you know, steal that book like your mom's court. I don't know where I'm going with this. Sophie, do we have anything else? No, we're done. Okay.

The episode's done. Perfect plugs. Right, sick. Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media. For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart.

I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Between April 1971 and September 1972, six young black girls were snatched off the streets in Washington, D.C. This child was laying on the side of the road.

The person said, I murdered your daughter. The killer believed that he may have been seen. I will admit the others when you catch me, if you can, sign Freeway Phantom. Listen to Freeway Phantom on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, we're stepping behind the scenes and the drawing boards of this team to experience the life breathed into the Bridgerton prequel. Listen to the leaps executive producer and series director Tom Verica took to capture the feeling

that puts that lump in your throat. And you've got to catch creator Shonda Rhimes. She's dropping gems, diamonds, and mics. You can listen to Queen Charlotte, the official podcast every Thursday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.