Review: Netflix's 'Mr. McMahon' docuseries

There’s a cliché that history is written by the winners. And in the world of pro wrestling, that’s made Vince McMahon one hell of an author.

Dating back to WWE’s purchase of WCW in 2001 — if not further back than that — McMahon has largely controlled the narrative when it comes to pro wrestling’s modern history. Between such content catering to a relatively niche audience and WWE owning its own tape library (as well as WCW’s and ECW’s), the reality is that most of the mainstream accountings of the industry’s last 50 years have been WWE productions.

That led to natural — and earned — skepticism when WWE announced in 2020 that it had reached a deal with Netflix for a docuseries focused on McMahon’s life. At the time, our headline regarding the project read , “Bill Simmons partnering with WWE on Vince McMahon documentary series for Netflix, but will it just be a PR puff piece?”

Four years and several twists and turns later, we finally have our answer.

Finally hitting Netflix’s library on Wednesday morning, Mr. McMahon isn’t perfect, nor could it have been considering the circumstances of the project’s production. But the six-part docuseries is anything but a puff piece and provides one of the most critical looks at McMahon’s legacy that a mainstream outlet — let alone one with a business relationship with WWE — has ever provided.

Mr. McMahon begins by acknowledging perhaps its biggest flaw: that most of the interviews conducted for the series — including with McMahon — were done before the multiple of allegations of sexual misconduct that ultimately led to his ouster from WWE were first made public. The first episode addresses the allegations via interviews with the Wall Street Journal reporters who broke the story, which casts a shadow over the remainder of the series.

“I wish I could tell you the real stories. Holy s**t, I don’t wanna tell you these stories,” McMahon later says. “I don’t want anybody to really know me.”

In a different context, this might have been a cute line, furthering the notion that McMahon is a man of mystery. But knowing what we already know is still to come, it’s a chilling warning.

That creepiness is omnipresent throughout the series, even though the most recent allegations against McMahon don’t resurface until the sixth and final episode. Admittedly, it feels trivial to move from such heinous accusations to lesser controversies like Vince going against his father’s wishes and eradicating pro wrestling’s territory system. But there are enough controversies that the creepy feeling never truly disappears.

The Ring Boy scandal , Rita Chatteron’s rape allegation , the steroid trial , Owen Hart and Chris Benoit’s deaths — they’re all there. And that’s to say nothing about the wrestling-related controversies, like the Montreal Screwjob and WWE’s more racist and sexist angles under McMahon’s watch.

Not every topic is given the full attention it deserves and the subject of Hart’s death and WWE’s role in it seems especially rushed. But make no mistake, this isn’t a docuseries where McMahon gets the last word; more times than not, his remembering of events are quickly contradicted by the likes of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter ‘s Dave Meltzer or The Ringer’s David Shoemaker.

There are also instances in which McMahon’s own statements are damning enough, as was the case when he discussed Chatterton, a former WWE ref who had accused him of rape in 1986.

“When you’re accused of this and accused of that, and there’s this deluge of things, ‘You’re this, you’re that.’ One of the things was an alleged rape, that never happened,” McMahon says in the docuseries. “Once you’re accused of rape, you’re a rapist. It was consensual, and actually, had it been a rape, the statute of limitations had run out. It’s all kind of crap like that, that people are digging up and trying to find something on you.”

McMahon and Chatterton reached a multimillion dollar settlement regarding the matter in 2023.

Admittedly, some of the series feels disjointed, with the segments focused on WWE’s on-screen product often falling flat. While a deep dive focused on Shane McMahon’s daredevil-like stunts might help illustrate his unique — if not damaged — relationship with his father, there’s no reason the series should have spent more time on that than controversies like the circumstances surrounding Hart’s death during a WWE show.

That’s likely a product of the multiple wrenches that were thrown into the project’s production, which started in 2021. In the time since, McMahon has resigned amid accusations of sexual misconduct, pulled off a power play to return the company and orchestrate a merger with UFC, only to resign in disgrace (again) in early-2024 following a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting and trafficking a former WWE employee.

These last three years — which are perhaps the most critical to McMahon’s legacy — are crammed into the series’ final half-hour. And while hardly ideal, there are no punches pulled, with even the episode’s opening scene portraying the 79-year-old as a sexual deviant.

“I have not two different brains. I have, like computers in my head and sometimes they work against me,” McMahon tells the interviewer during a conversation that took place in 2021. “I have one computer talking to you right now. And there’s another one going on with me thinking something completely different.”

What is it?

“Something having a lot fun and it’s involving sex,” McMahon says.

Pro wrestling documentaries have often thrived on giving viewers a place to experience nostalgia, which is likely why most have been willing to overlook the journalistic shortcomings of WWE’s self-produced version of history. But it says a lot about the depravity of McMahon — and the series’ willingness to explore it — that such nostalgia is often one of the weaker parts of the docuseries. It also says a lot about the state of sports documentaries (and journalism in general) that a project with such obvious flaws could be considered one of the stronger pieces of mainstream wrestling journalism.

Having declined to continue his participation in the project following the initial allegations of sexual misconduct in 2022, McMahon’s voice is largely absent from the series’ most important segment. Instead, his former right-hand man, current WWE executive Bruce Prichard, is left to defend his former boss, claiming he’s not an “a**hole,” only to have such defenses rendered irrelevant when the sex trafficking lawsuit is made public two days later.

In many ways, it’s a fitting sendoff for McMahon, who spent so many years evading mainstream scrutiny, only to have the consequences of his actions come crashing down on him. And for once, he doesn’t get to have the final word.

The post In Netflix docuseries, Vince McMahon finally doesn’t get to control the narrative appeared first on Awful Announcing .