Fears the upcoming Netflix doco on former WWE boss Vince McMahon was set to be a corporate whitewash ahead of the wrestling behemoth moving to the streaming giant have vanished, with the first trailer for Mr. McMahon dropping Friday morning.
It does not seemed to have held back from the controversy that has plagued the company as it rose to become one of the world’s most successful entertainment brands.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Netflix drops Mr. McMahon trailer.
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The six-part documentary premieres on September 25 and covers the rise and fall of the charismatic businessman who turned wrestling into a multi-billion-dollar entertainment powerhouse.
It comes months ahead of the WWE moving to Netflix next January as part of a $US5 billion content deal.
The trailer features clips of the sport’s biggest stars, including Hulk Hogan, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and Bret “The Hitman” Hart, as well comments from McMahon himself.
And not all of them are complimentary.
“People have wondered who I really am. Portrayal of me is I’m a bad guy. But no one really knows me,” McMahon says in the opening seconds of the trailer.
A few frames later, Austin notes: “He’s easy to hate”.
“When it comes to Vince, a lot of that is a character, he is going to show you what he wants you to see,” former wrestler turned WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque says.
McMahon himself admits: “I don’t fight fair”.
The Mr. McMahon trailer references the steroid scandal, dead wrestlers and McMahon’s trial during the early 1990s, as well as the more recent sex-trafficking allegations and hush money payments.
There is even footage of the late wrestler and former WWE world heavyweight champion Christopher Michael Benoit, who murdered his wife and son before taking his own life.
An autopsy subsequently revealed Benoit was suffering from depression brought on by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), because of damage to his brain sustained through repeated concussions.
The doco was first announced in 2020, two years before McMahon resigned from WWE amid misconduct allegations before returning in 2023 to sell the business to the owners of the UFC.
McMahon then left the new company in January this year when employee Janel Grant, accused him in a lawsuit of sexual abuse and trafficking her to other men.
In May she announced she would pause the suit to make way for a federal investigation.
Netflix said the doco would cover McMahon’s “transformation of the WWE from a small, regional business into a global entertainment powerhouse to the explosive sexual misconduct allegations that led to his eventual resignation”.
Helmed by Tiger King director Chris smith, the series uses material from 200 hours of interviews with McMahon before his resignation, as well as insights from family members, journalists who uncovered the various scandals and many WWE stars.
Now 79, McMahon worked for his father’s wrestling promotion company, World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) after graduating college in 1968 then bought it in 1982.
He began expanding the company, poaching talent from rival leagues, and in 1984 signed Hulk Hogan.
McMahon quickly built the brand, increasing its media presence and opening it up to an audience who would not traditionally have been wrestling fans.
First it became the World Wrestling Federation then, in 2002 after a losing a legal spat with the World Wildlife Fund, became World Wrestling Entertainment.
Although various controversies cast a shadow over the brand, its popularity boomed globally.
He even picked up high-profile friends along the way, such as former US president and current candidate Donald Trump, whom he fought in the Battle of the Billionaires event in 2007.
But at what cost did the success come?
As McMahon observes in the trailer, “the lines of reality are very blurred in our business … the individual loses all sense of who they really are”.
As to who McMahon actually is, Mr. McMahon seems as though it could answer that question.
Mr. McMahon airs on Netflix from September 25
