Impartial Interview About Vince McMahon - Inside
On Tuesday night at 7p.m. ET, ESPN's newsmagazine E:60 will feature what looks to be an intriguing, in-depth profile on WWE chairman Vince McMahon.
Correspondent Jeremy Schaap received unprecedented access behind the scenes and spoke candidly with the promoter about his wrestling empire, being physically abused as a child and Chris Benoit among other subjects.
The piece also includes him speaking with current WWE superstars such as John Cena and Shawn Michaels as well as previous stars including Hulk Hogan and Bret Hart as they share their thoughts on McMahon.
Recently, I spoke with Schaap about the piece, him getting to know the real Vince McMahon and what people can expect when they watch E:60 Tuesday night.
You can also view a trailer of the piece by clicking here.
When you were around Vince McMahon, what was the first thing that stood out about him, especially in the atmosphere backstage?
I guess what’s most remarkable about him to me – and I’ll admit I’m not someone who know a lot about pro wrestling or WWE, it’s not something I grew up watching or spent much time thinking about – but how utterly in control the guy is. I mean, how involved he is at every level of what’s going on. It’s just amazing. The guy is 63 years old and has been doing it for so long who spends the vast majority of his time on the road, four shows a week, 52 weeks a year. It’s something to behold. He’s obviously a very bright guy and that’s clear when you spend some time around him.
Do you find that he gets a little defensive around mainstream media when it comes to what he does for a living and promoting pro wrestling?
You know, I didn’t experience that because maybe he’s mellowed a bit over the years. We did not go into this piece trying to do some of those pieces that have been done in the past where it’s just grill Vince McMahon, put him on the spot about this or put him on the spot about that and a lot of that has been very valid over the years. I think we went into it with an open mind about who he is, what he’s built up and a lot of it was approached really as a piece about the cultural phenomenon that he’s created as well as a business piece. The man is one of the most successful businessmen in entertainment period over the last 30 years. What he’s created – the wealth that he’s built from scratch for himself and his shareholders. It’s pretty remarkable when you consider that when he took over the business in 1983, it wasn’t very healthy, he preceded to drive everyone else out of business over the course of the next 20 years and built himself an $800 million company. It’s pretty remarkable.
And I think the thing that really stands out too which you talked about is how he’s got his hands all over everything. He’s 63 years old and the guy doesn’t look like he’s going to slow down. He’s been doing this for so long you would think there would be a burnout factor at some point but I don’t really know if there is when it comes to Vince.
It doesn’t seem that way. I was talking to Hulk Hogan – we interviewed Hulk Hogan who has known him for a long, long time and worked for his father as well, Vincent J. McMahon – and he said all the years he’s been around him, in 30-plus years, he’s never seen him tired, he’s never seen him break down, he’s never seen him cry. He thinks he just goes into the bathroom every once in a while and changes the battery in his arm. He’s one of these guys who is very passionate about what he does as is often the case when you build up your own company this way and you identify so closely with yourself personally. And I think he takes a lot of pride in it and justifiably so. There are a lot of things to criticize about the world of professional wrestling, just as there are in the world of professional baseball or the world of professional football. But when you go to these events and see the adulation of the masses, the way the people react to this, the fact that they still get these incredible ratings week-in and week-out, obviously he’s doing something right in terms of the fans of his product.
Since you got to be backstage, you got to see of the creative meeting and the writers doing their thing. You talk about Vince’s passion for his company – what kind of affect does that have on others? He’s so full throttle and is unique in that way but he expects everyone else to live up to that and some people simply can’t do that.
There’s no doubt about it. He’s a demanding boss. I think he demands a lot from his performers, he demands a lot from his production team. My understanding is that the rewards are pretty great too. The guys get paid a lot of money. They sign big contracts. The people who work throughout the company, at least those who would talk to me, seem to express a lot of satisfaction about the conditions there. I’m sure as in any company you’ll find people who disagree with that. He is a demanding boss but one thing everyone said – people who are fans of his and people who are critiques of his – he will not ask his performers or his employees at any level to do anything or work any harder than he works. That’s pretty much what he expects from anybody.
When you’re at these meetings and you see the writing team and the process they go through which involves some wrestlers as well, is it a situation where people are almost afraid of him when they are reacting to things or is it that they don’t mind thinking outside of the box?
I didn’t get the sense that they fear him. I think in any creative environment that would be a recipe for failure if the people you’ve hired make contributions that are not – do not feel to say what they really think. I think he respects the input he gets from the wrestlers themselves, from the writers, from the directors and producers and he’s not the guy you see in the ring as a performer. Mr. McMahon is not Vince McMahon. There are a lot of similarities. There’s a lot of fieriness there and there’s certainly a bigger-than-life personality in both. I’ll tell you what’s interesting. I spent some time with him – we were just having a meeting in his office in Stamford and he couldn’t have been more pleasant. He couldn’t have been more cordial. As we were sitting there, his wife’s nomination for the State Board of Education in Connecticut, the debate about it came to the floor of the state legislature. He said “oh, I’m really sorry but I have to watch this”. So we sat there for an hour listening to the legislators in Connecticut debate the merits of his wife as she was nominated for the State Board of Ed. which is non-paying position but she was nominated by the Governor. For an hour, these people he doesn’t know are criticizing his wife and criticizing him and criticizing his product, criticizing pro wrestling and then there’s other people getting up and supporting her nomination. He sat there and didn’t react at all. He took it all in just like a businessman with his glasses on, very studiously. He’s not throwing chairs across the room. He didn’t express any kind of dissatisfaction about anything that was going on. At least he didn’t express whatever was underneath. Who knows. It was a very interesting thing to see. His advisors, his top lieutenants were all there and they were getting upset on his behalf and she eventually was approved and now sits on the State Board of Education. It’s a different kind of window into who he really is.
I think he is very passionate about his talent and can be very defensive when it comes to how his product and his people in his company are covered. One of the things you talk with him about in the piece is Chris Benoit. I’m interested about what his reaction has been because we really haven’t heard him speak much about that subject and how his company cam under so much criticism.
Yeah. He described it as the darkest day in the history of this industry when Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son and then himself. He has no explanation for exactly – and I don’t think anybody could – what snapped. Chris Benoit was, by all outward appearances, a fairly normal guy. He didn’t have any history like this and he commits two savage murders and then kills himself. There probably is no way to explain it. It’s interesting though when something as horrible as that happens, how much of the criticism really redounded to McMahon personally in a way that doesn’t happen in other industries, in other sports. For example, Rae Carruth, the Panthers wide receiver, he murdered his pregnant girlfriend. As horrible as that was and one of the worst things you can imagine happening, I don’t remember people blaming Paul Tagliabue or the owner of the Panthers. But because Vince McMahon is so visible, he is so much the face of the WWE and its small little world, there are fewer performers, etc. He takes a lot of personal blame with behavior of, or misbehavior, of the people that work for him. Whether or not that’s fair is one question. Whether or not he’s held to a different standard, I think it’s clear. I think he is held to a different standard.
You talked to a lot of the performers as well, guys like John Cena, Shawn Michaels and others including Vince’s daughter Stephanie. What do they say about Vince the man?
Well, you have to remember that these are people that the three people you mentioned in particular, he has made rich. He has made famous. John Cena is a guy they plucked from utter obscurity. He was working at a gym in Southern California. Now he is a movie star. When he walks into an arena filled with 25,000 people or 73,000 people as the case was this past week (at WrestleMania XXV), it goes insane. They respect Vince McMahon for his business acumen and I think for his humanitarianism. It’s an interesting thing that WWE continues to be in many circles kind of a pariah. There are certain people who laugh at it or denigrate it which is fine but mainstream America, I think, loves this product and that’s evident in the ratings. It’s evident in the fact that who was the title sponsor at WrestleMania XXV? The United States National Guard. So whatever image issues its had, certainly the U.S. military doesn’t feel that way for whatever its worth. McMahon has done a lot of stuff in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s a pretty big philanthropist which is to say he’s not just a businessman. He’d certainly be the first to admit, and he should be, that there have been issues in his empire over the years with steroids, recreational drugs, the emphasis on the sculpted, chiseled physiques. They put pressure on people to take steroids. It’s not entirely a pretty picture. But the people he has made rich and famous, I think they respect him.
You mentioned how you spoke with Hulk Hogan in this piece and others who have praised Vince and he made them a lot of money. Was there any thought to speaking with others who are not with the company because while there are people who give credit to Vince for all he has done in the wrestling business but there are others who think he is evil and the scum of the earth?
Oh, there’s no doubt about that. We talked to people like that too. Bret Hart is interviewed in the piece and certainly there is no love lost there. He’s probably the single most vocal critique of Vince McMahon and has virtually nothing nice to say about him. He describes him essentially as a user, somebody who uses the performers and discards them when it’s convenient and I think there’s a lot of former wrestlers who share the sentiment. We interviewed Roddy Piper who for a long time expressed a lot of anger at Vince McMahon personally; at the system in general. He’s kind of come around now. He’s taking part in WrestleMania. We interviewed Mike Mooneyham who has been covering this longer than anybody and helped write an unauthorized biography of Vince McMahon and takes him to task for a lot of the things that have gone on in the WWE and before that the WWF. It’s not always a pretty picture. But I think it is interesting how McMahon has – he’s held to a different standard and I think in a lot of interviews he’s treated with less respect or forwarded less respect and rarely given the benefit of the doubt whereas other people in his position as CEO’s of big companies are treated more cordially.
In following him over the years, I’ve seen him become more and more defensive with the media. He sees more people attacking him and he probably thinks I’ve got a legit business, I’ve got an amazing business right now and yet you come after me for faults. Yet I don’t see you going after other people when he just wants treated the same.
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think our interview is very different and it revealed a different side of him. I didn’t go into it and put him on the defensive. We asked him the tough questions – you have to ask him the tough questions and he addressed them but he didn’t get defensive or angry as you’ve seen him in previous interviews because he understood we were approaching it from a perspective of giving him a chance and treated him with the respect that you would treat Paul Tagliabue or Roger Goodell now or Gary Bettman or George Steinbrenner. I’ve seen George Steinbrenner interviewed over the years many times – not recently of course because he has not been well – but George Steinbrenner is a guy who, with all due respect, is a felon. A guy who was kicked twice out of major league baseball, once for committing federal felonies, once for hiring a known extortionist and ex-con to dig up dirt on his best player Dave Winfield and yet, have you ever hear anybody interview George Steinbrenner on TV or in a press conference or any situation as rudely as sometimes Vince McMahon has been treated?
No.
No! So, I think he deserves to be treated with at least the same amount of respect as other people.
I’m sure you got to watch at least a part if not all of WrestleMania. Did you walk away from that as a fan?
I appreciate the spectacle of it. As somebody who hasn’t seen a lot of it until I did that story, I turn it on and say “oh my God this is so over the top – I can’t believe it”. It’s like the reaction you get sometimes when you flip through the channels and you see one of the daytime soap operas. You can’t believe – did they really just say that? Is that what they’re doing? It stuns me. I don’t know if I’ll be spending every Monday night now watching Raw but certainly when I flip through the channels, I’m sometimes compelled to stop to see what are they going to do next.
Source: OS
