Today, Explained - Wrestling with Vince McMahon

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

The CEO who turned World Wrestling Entertainment into a global brand has retired after nearly 40 years, amid allegations of sexual assault and infidelity. Journalist Abe Riesman explains the rise and fall of Vince McMahon. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the spring of 2021, a polling firm called around 30,000 Americans to get their thoughts on celebrity presidents. The favorite, Dwayne The Rock Johnson. If you smell what The Rock is cooking. Nearly half of Americans would approve of Johnson as president, according to a new survey. The Rock took this news humbly. If this is what the people want, I will do that. He became a household name along with Stone Cold Steve Austin, John Cena, Andre the Giant, as a professional wrestler. And the guy who got them there, Vince McMahon.

Over 40 years, World Wrestling Entertainment's chairman and CEO built a billion-dollar company on male aggression and sparkly outfits. Then last month, the wall street journal reported that McMahon paid millions of dollars in hush money to multiple women to cover up allegations of assault and infidelity ahead on today explained is Vince McMahon finally pinned. Bet MGM authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with Bet MGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about Bet MGM.

Download the app today and discover why Bet MGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. And once upon a time, the early 1990s, I was a rabid fan of world wrestling entertainment. I loved a clothesline. I loved a pile driver. I loved Rowdy Roddy Piper. Abe Reisman was also a fan. Abe is a journalist and author of the forthcoming book, Ringmaster, Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. Abe, who is Vince McMahon?

Vince McMahon is the longtime owner and the overlord of World Wrestling Entertainment, or what was once known as that, now it's just WWE. You and God versus me, Vincent Kennedy McMahon, and the product of my semen is my son's share. The short version is he's the guy who runs more wrestling and has run more wrestling in America than anyone else. I've got an insatiable appetite for life,

and I want more, more, more. WWE is a massive corporation. It's a billion-dollar corporation that is not just about wrestling. It's a multimedia empire. They create content for a wide array of mediums and audiences. Welcome to McMahon's Million Dollar Mania. Vince McMahon is a very powerful man. And that's often underestimated because wrestling isn't taken seriously.

When did Vince McMahon become the chairman and CEO of WWE? You know, the titles sort of change somewhat arbitrarily. But it's almost like the titles don't matter nearly as much as the fact that just everyone knows Vince is in control. And he has been since 82, 83, when he started taking over from his father. Specifically, the thing he spends his most time on is creative, the actual stuff that gets performed. Now, a lot of CEOs or majority shareholders, whatever,

would sort of stay out of the specifics. Bob Chapek at Disney doesn't get too in the weeds with approving every single line in every single Marvel movie script. But that's what Vince does with his own product. The hype leading up to the match is very carefully choreographed. Vince McMahon literally looks upon that hype the same way the producer of Dynasty or Dallas looks at his screenplay.

He retains an enormous amount of micromanaged control over what goes on in his programming. He's the promoter. That's the term from wrestling, is promoter, the person who owns the promotion, the organization where the wrestling happens. And that's unambiguously been Vince since the early 80s. In the wrestling business, it's two or more individuals going out

to the ring, wrestling, having a little bit of applause or what have you from the audience, and it's time to go home until the next match. That's not really what we do. We're in the sports entertainment business, and there is a huge philosophical difference. I wonder if this was a succession type situation. Was it always guaranteed that, like, this was going to be the family business? Well, it was not guaranteed that Vince was going to inherit the family business, for sure, because he didn't. He had to buy it from his father. My dad was talking about selling out, and that frightened me. So I knew there was just some way I had to get my hands on this company.

He did a series of what are called balloon payments over the course of four quarters between 82 and 83, June 82 to June 83. He had to pay about a million dollars to his father and his father's co-owners of what was then the Capitol Wrestling Corporation. Vince Sr. had a lot of difficulties with Vince Jr., for lack of a better term. They had a lot of differences, both in personality and business approach. And Vince always says, I knew my dad wouldn't have really sold me the business had he known what I was gonna do. Aha. What was he going to do? What was the big change?

Vince's plan, and he executed it, was to take over wrestling. Vince McMahon, working with his wife Linda, begins building a national and international brand for wrestling. In the process, he will nearly decimate the existing wrestling establishment working with his wife Linda, begins building a national and international brand for wrestling. In the process, he will nearly decimate the existing wrestling establishment in a controversial offensive worthy of a military commander. At the time, wrestling was a regional art form.

You would go to wrestling in your hometown, and the wrestling there would be run by a promoter who only operated in that region. And Vince's goal was to sort of smash up the smoke-filled room of old wrestling and take over. Now, there was going to be an earthquake in wrestling, already was anyway, with the advent of cable television. So something would have happened to break up the territory system anyway. But the fact is, Vince was the one who was able to capitalize on it. Vince was the one who had a vision

of taking this existing system and replacing it with his own. And for the most part, he did. It took a while to get to near-monopoly status. And in 2001, he had no more major competitors. His vision came true. I should say, there are a lot of factors in which he got lucky. There were so many ways in which this could have not happened.

But you read his story, and it's just, he's lived this charmed life in many ways, where, like any conquistador, he benefited from internal divisions among his rivals, from random happenstance. The first WrestleMania in 1985 was a big risk. Look at the stare of the champion against the challenger. The irresistible force beating the immovable object. Look at the size of the giant. It almost did not become the hit that it was,

but these little things kept happening that were just lucky. Where did women fit in all of this masculinity? Every woman in professional wrestling wants my belt, but I want it too. And I had to fight inch for inch to get this, and I'm not about to lay down on my back and let someone cover me. I thank you very much. Oh, boy. That's me taking a big sigh and puff with my vape as a lady. Because let me tell you, it was not great.

It was really hard to be a woman in wrestling. Today, it's a little easier. You guys want to see women fight? Tonight, they're fighting. What an impact! WWE has really made strides in recent years to have a robust women's division, but that is a very recent development, all things considered. In the 80s, there was this brief moment where it looked like women's wrestling might,

as they say in wrestling, get over, be successful in America. There was a wrestler named Wendy Richter, Wendy with an I, who was very talented and became the women's champion of the World Wrestling Federation. And a lot of things have changed since then. I won the championship belt. Cindy Lauper's my manager, and I've learned a lesson, a good lesson. And long story short, Vince decided to execute what is vulgarly known in wrestling as a screw job. She had a choreographed end to the match that was planned, and Vince changed the plan without telling her. Spider going, oh, small package. Nicely executed. Whoa, was that close. What was that?

None of these things are legitimate athletic competitions, but sometimes you get surprised when a promoter decides to screw you. Appears that the referee has made a three count. And Wendy, the champ, look at that. It is Moolah. It doesn't happen very often, but Wendy Richter was the victim of a screw job. She lost the belt. Wendy scoops her up with a backbreaker. However, I think this match is over.

And she walked out and never came back. And that's indicative of what was going on then, which was there was this sprout of women's wrestling in America. And then Vince kind of just stamped it into the ground. You then have like 20 years of a real desert for women's wrestling in America because Vince was kind of the only game in town and Vince was not interested in women's wrestling. So you ended up with this situation where there were very few women working for the WWF. The ones who are, such as Wendy Richter, are very disgruntled. And that's just sort of the beginning.

Because after that, you get this real Madonna horror complex, if you'll forgive the phrase, where you have the only women that are available tend to be, quote unquote, managers. Just sort of people who are supposed to be there and kind of participate in the action, that are available tend to be quote unquote managers, just sort of people who are supposed to be there and kind of participate in the action, but are not wrestlers. They just accompany the wrestlers. And you would have ones that were like Miss Elizabeth, who I'm sure you'll recall, the Macho Man, Randy Savage's wife. Elizabeth, look into the video scope right there. Yes. Look into the video scope and say how proud you are to be the manager of the Mach and see how proud you are to be the manager

of the Macho Man. I am proud to be the manager of the Macho Man. I want to ask her a question. You've told me I can't talk to her, Randy. I've told you that from time to time. Miss Elizabeth was the Madonna. She's supposed to be this perfect, virtuous woman who would never do anything bad, nothing nasty or untoward.

And then on the other end, you have, like, the sensational Sherry, who is this supposed to be this wicked temptress. I am here for a reason, and that is to find a man that can fulfill all of my needs. It's this very boilerplate vision of what it means to be a woman, and it was really dominant. When I started watching in the late 90s,

oh my God, the misogyny was horrific. And anyone will tell you that. Stacey, Thursday on a special Thanksgiving edition of SmackDown, you challenged Trish Stratus to a gravy bowl match and you lost. So why do you think tonight you can beat Trish Stratus for the women's title in a bra and panties match. Michael, when I'm in my bra and panties, I always come out on top. It was just these women were put up there to be humiliated, and many of them were very upset with it. But what are you going to do?

There's so little you can do to fight Vince McMahon in the wrestling world. He's extremely powerful. So there's been some positive developments as of late, but for a very long time, it was a really, and that's not even getting into all the things that happened behind the scenes. There are plenty of terrible stories of female wrestlers and referees and just other women involved in wrestling being abused or harassed or assaulted and even raped behind the scenes by people involved in wrestling, including Vince. Vince has been accused of a lot of things that are terrible for women. Coming up after years,

some of those terrible things are coming to light. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10

grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling

Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames dot com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. I enjoy destroying lives. Today Explained, we're back with Abe Reisman. Abe is a journalist and author of the forthcoming book, Ringmaster, Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.

So Abe, as you've described it, McMahon builds this world of hyper-masculinity. Women get almost no respect, but he's playing a character, or so millions of people assume. And then you start looking into an allegation from 1984. What happened? Rita Chatterton became the first female referee in the WWF in 1984. Referees have a weird job in wrestling because it's not actually a legitimate athletic competition,

so what's the referee doing there? Well, the referee is part of the story. What is her affiliation here with Al Snow? I don't know if she protected him. There it is. Wait a minute. This was a sucker job the whole way. Boy, she's got Teddy Long turned the wrong way. Don't blame Teddy Long, ladies and gentlemen. Look at this face first goes D'Lo. The referee is the person who slaps the mat three times for a three count when somebody pins or accepts the submission when somebody's in a submission hold. You know, all of this stuff that's sort of key to the illusion of the match. And Rita trained to be a referee. So Rita started doing shows for the WWF that were assigned to her by the New York State Athletic Commission. And she pretty quickly gets a big bump up to being a referee at like a match at Madison Square Garden.

And the reason was at the time, Vince was executing this storyline in the WWF that was ostensibly pro-women's lib. Schmula, Lanny Carr, you better watch out because these are powerful words because this is a powerful woman and I'm a powerful manager now. You'll recall this where you have Cyndi Lauper getting involved as a manager for Wendy Richter. Cyndi Lauper, tell me about this lady to your immediate left.

She's the champ. She's strong. She has new ideas, new purpose, and new meaning. And she's going to give a jolt to women's wrestling like never before. Rita gets this call from Vince McMahon in 1984 saying, hey, we want you to do a bunch of stuff for us, because that's what they were highlighting was, you know, we're, they wouldn't have used the word progressive,

but, you know, we're a company that cares about women. And long story short, Rita worked as a referee for the WWF for a couple of years. And then in 1986, she went to a TV taping, a series of matches in Poughkeepsie, New York, to go get an audience with Vince, not even to referee, but to get an audience with Vince and ask if she could get more work. Vince's driver got out and opened the door, and I thought Vince was going to get out. But instead, Vince said to me, no, Rita, come in here. He says, we'll just sit and talk here. I didn't think much of it. I got in the limo with him. Vince started talking about magazines. Next thing I know, Vince McMahon is unzipping his pants. And according to her, that night, Vince raped her in his limo.

When I couldn't complete his desires, he got really angry, started ripping off my jeans, pulled me on top of him and told me again if I wanted a half a million dollar a year contract I had to satisfy him and if I didn't satisfy him I was blackballed that was it I was done afterward according to Rita she contacted a lawyer the lawyer told her because she had showered and not called the cops immediately it was going to be a really hard case because Vince was very powerful and wealthy and she wasn't. So she didn't say anything. And then shortly after her father died, she gets a call from Geraldo Rivera's team. And sure enough, she appears on Now It Can Be Told and The Geraldo Rivera show to lodge this accusation. The very first time I met Vince, I was told that if I had any sexual relationships with

anyone in the Federation, I was done. My career was done. When Vince was said and done, Vince looked at me and said, do you remember what I told you about having sexual relationships with anyone? Well, you just did. And he just sat back and had this big smile and this big grin and just started laughing at me. What's odd is the story just sort of went away. It was something that people in wrestling sometimes knew about, but wrestling forgets its history very easily, readily, and often. At the time, did Vince McMahon have to answer? He did. And he answered by suing her and Geraldo and Geraldo's producer. And that scared her into silence to a certain extent. It was a lawsuit that scared her and she basically disappeared for 30 years.

And that was about as far as it got for a long time. One of the reasons Vince was able to beat these accusations for the most part, or at least have them kind of roll off his back, was especially as time went on, Vince started to portray himself as a heel. By the late 90s, he's appearing as the character Mr. McMahon. What else is going he's the ultimate heel. He's just a terrible person who will do nothing, will stop at nothing in his pursuit of power and victory. And that really works for Vince. And then in June of this year, the Wall Street Journal reports a big story about McMahon, and it's kind of a bombshell. A paralegal who'd worked for the WWE,

a friend of hers, reached out to the WWE board and said, my friend had this sexual relationship with Vince, and he paid her to shut up about it. Out of his own money, I should say. According to the article, this was not the only hush money payment. The idea is there may be a long history of women being paid off not to talk. And we don't know what those situations are. Women are paid off not to talk for a wide array of reasons in this country. When the Wall Street Journal allegations came out, the announcement was Vince

McMahon will be stepping back, not stepping down, but stepping back as chairman and CEO. And his daughter, Stephanie, was made the quote-unquote interim chairman and CEO. And Vince, even in the official announcement about how he's stepping back as chairman and CEO, they said he'll retain control over creative. And like I said, creative is basically what he spent most of his time on anyway. So it's unclear how much power he actually gave up. And more importantly, more importantly than that,

he appeared. So the show starts, right? And no one knows what's going to happen. But what happens is the show starts and his music hits. Lyrics are, no chance, that's what you've got. Up against a machine too strong, he comes out, the music happens, he walks into the entrance, and I can't do it because it's audio, but he throws his arms wide,

and he has a big smile on his face. And he marches down the ramp to the ring with his little shrut that he does. And he gets in the ring, and he proceeds to give this weird little speech. It is a privilege, as always, to stand before you here tonight, the WWE Universe. I'm here simply to remind you of the four words we just saw and what we call the WWE signature. Those four words are then, now, forever, and the most important word is together.

Welcome to SmackDown! And that was it. Everyone who's watching goes, what was that? But that's the magic of wrestling, is you spend time watching it, and you go, what the hell was that? And you spend time going, was that real? Was it fake? What does it mean to be real or fake?

And the fact is, Vince has figured out how to use the Mr. McMahon persona to let all of this stuff slide off of him. He came out as Mr. McMahon, did that speech, and guess what? Ratings went through the roof. He appeared again on Monday Night Raw a few days later. Ratings were better than they'd been in years. People are showing up to watch this, and it doesn't matter whether you like him or not. It just matters that you're watching and giving him the ratings and viewership. Mr. McMahon, the character, which of course has become kind of his persona even in quote-unquote non-fictional scenarios,

is an armor that is virtue-proof. You can't throw virtue his way and expect it to pierce the armor. And it's unclear if anything can pierce the armor. That's what's happening right now, is we're in this weird stage where, yes, it could be that the WWE board concludes its investigation and says, look, Vince did something wrong,

and we want no part of him, but he's gotten out of tougher scrapes than this, is all I'm saying. An update to today's show on Friday afternoon Vince McMahon tweeted quote at 77 time for me to retire thank you WWE Universe then now forever together today's show was produced by Hadi Mouagdi

also a long time wrestling fan it was fact checked by Laura Bullard. It was edited by Matthew Collette, who does not like wrestling. And it was engineered by Afim Shapiro. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you