The End of Vince McMahon's Career
Not with a bang but a whimper.
At 77 years old, Vince McMahon announced his retirement on Friday, handing over control of World Wrestling Entertainment to his daughter Stephanie and former sports agent Nick Khan, as co-chief executive officers. Vince likely remains a controlling shareholder of the WWE, but is no longer Board chairman. With his daughter in charge, WWE’s stock closed flat on Friday and investors will likely believe, absent contrary evidence, that the entertainment juggernaut with a vast video archive, lucrative TV deals and standing, well-paid visits to perform for Saudi Arabia’s dictators can endure profitably.
Vince did not create the WWE. He inherited the company, once known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation, from his father. But Vince took wrestling national and changed the company from a combination circus/sports promotion into something more resembling Disney.
When Vince took over, the United States was a far more regional country than it is now. The post World War II economy has rewarded scalability and uniformity. Chain stores and restaurants replaced local offerings. Now, online interface and home delivery matters most, further eroding regional differences. In this era, Vince McMahon took his father’s regional professional wrestling company and turned it into a national entertainment company. In the process, he killed regional professional wrestling.
Wrestling was once as regional as a state fair. A roster of performers would work in a territory, telling their stories and building local celebrity, to be visited by the world champion of the National Wrestling Alliance, generally a bad guy who would show up in a local market to give the homegrown hero a shot at glory. Matches were not broadcast nationally or seen on the internet. So performers who traveled from spot to spot, whether they be champions like Ric Flair or special attractions like Andre the Giant or Bruiser Brody, were known by reputation and hyped by promoters. What became the WWE was this kind of promotion, focused on the northeast, with Madison Square Garden as its mecca. The WWWF was home to working class immigrant champions like the great Bruno Sammartino – a New York hero for a New York crowd of Italian Americans.
Vince changed all that by bringing the WWF to national TV and using that platform to kill the territories. When The Middlebrow was a kid, four times a year, WWF’s Saturday Night’s Main Event showed up on NBC four times a year, temporarily taking the Saturday Night Live spot. Sammartino gave way to Hulk Hogan, the “real American,” as his entrance music claimed. If Bruno aimed squarely at a crowd of urban strivers, the Hulkster was an ideal for every true, orange-skinned American with a receding hairline. The Hulkster was a phenomenon, brought to national attention by his portrayal of Thunderlips in Rocky III and then turned into a superhero by Vince.
Ric Flair was the playboy of the south, Jerry Lawler the King of Memphis wrestling and the von Erichs were Dallas’ favorite sons, but McMahon made his wrestlers into national icons. This is where Jesse Ventura and Roddy Piper launched mainstream acting careers and where later we would get The Undertaker, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, John Cena, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, and other breakthrough stars. Heck, Ric Flair went from famous in the wrestling world to icon of styling and profiling as much through his association with the WWF than from the regional accomplishments that defined much of his career.
Vince, who worked as an announcer during the 80s wrestling boom, eventually became the on-air owner of the company, portraying himself as an evil, body building billionaire, finally becoming an in-ring performer (his childhood ambition, denied him by his father). But his retirement has no storyline to it. Instead, he was forced out of the executive suite by sex scandals and a board investigation that seems likely to reveal that he used his position in the company to solicit sex from women employees, including talent, and then used company resources, not just his own money, to cover it all up in non-disclosure agreements. It’s a banal ending for a guy involved in so many over the top stories highlighting corporate and executive misbehavior and abuse of power.
Vince definitely brought wrestling to a larger audience and made huge, mainstream stars, took his company public and made himself into a billionaire. But he also killed the regional character of the sport and made things blander as he went.
What Vince did to the WWE is akin to what Rudy Giuliani did to Times Square – he made it more accessible and brought it to a wider audience, but he killed its oddities, grit and outright heresies along the way. Being on worldwide television, selling streaming subscriptions, lunch boxes and toy title belts means no blood, no long, classic matches like the types worked by Flair and Ricky Steamboat back in the day and fewer of the verbal and physical improvisations that made pro wrestling great.
Better informed wrestling historians can tell the tales of how Vince killed, bought, and absorbed his regional competitors, often purchasing decades of intellectual property at distressed prices along the way. Some of the changes were inevitable without Vince. When cable took the place of local broadcasting, many industries went national. The same forces that killed Mid-South Wrestling also killed local newspapers and are slowly turning New York City’s bodegas into 7-11s.
The trend in American life continues towards national conformity and uniformity. That’s what Vince did to wrestling.
As for the WWE, folks have speculated for years that it is a takeover target in the contiuously consolidating media/streaming/entertainment industry. Wrestling has not traditionally been a great fit for larger corporations but a buyer like Disney that has built a portfolio of intellectual properties that span then childhood memories of generations could make it work. WWE is also an easy acquisition in a time when regulators are looking more carefully at proposed deals. It’s just wrestling, after all, on the low end of middlebrow.