--:-- Noelle King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noelle King: 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 Johnson as president, according to a new survey.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
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--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: Ahead on Today Explained, is Vince McMahon finally pinned? Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try betterhelp.com slash explained? Absolute truth. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. The one is not me, guys. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash explained. That's betterhelp.com slash explained.
--:-- Noelle King: 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 piledriver. 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 Reisman: 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, Shane.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: Welcome to McMahon's Million Dollar Media. Vince McMahon is a very powerful man. And that's often underestimated because wrestling isn't taken seriously.
--:-- Noelle King: When did Vince McMahon become the chairman and CEO of WWE?
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: Specifically, the thing he spends his most time on is creative, the actual stuff that gets performed.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: I wonder if this was a succession-type situation. Was it always guaranteed that, like, this was going to be the family business?
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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 Capital Wrestling Corporation.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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 going to do.
--:-- Noelle King: Aha. What was he going to do? What was the big change?
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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 in a controversial offensive worthy of a military commander.
--:-- Noelle King: 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
--:-- Abe Reisman: And Vince goal was to sort of smash up the smoke room of old wrestling and take over.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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 a near monopoly status. And in 2001, he had no more major competitors. His vision came true.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: The first WrestleMania in 1985 was a big risk. Look at the stare of the champion against the challenger. The irresistible force meeting 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.
--:-- Noelle King: Where did women fit in all of this masculinity?
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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 screwjob.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: Appears that the referee has made a three count. And Wendy, the champ, look at that. It is Nola. It doesn't happen very often, but Wendy Richter was the victim of a screw job. She lost the belt. Wendy scoops her up for the backbreaker. However, I think this match is over. And she walked out and never came back.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: So you ended up with this situation where there are 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 but are not wrestlers.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: Elizabeth, look into the video scope right there. Yes, look into the video scope 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. You want to ask her a question? You've told me I can't talk to her, Randy.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: When I started watching in the late 90s, oh, my God, the misogyny was horrific, And anyone will tell you that.
--:-- Noelle King: 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?
--:-- Abe Reisman: Michael, when I'm in my bra and panties, I always come out on top.
--:-- Noelle King: 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 so little you can do to fight Vince McMahon in the wrestling world He extremely powerful
--:-- Abe Reisman: So there been some positive developments as of late but for a very long time it was a really and that 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
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--:-- Noelle King: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio? Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Abe Reisman: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model. According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up. And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Noelle King: You'll see all your relationships in a fully fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data. And they say you can build AI powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Abe Reisman: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal and so much more. You can go to attio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Noelle King: That's attio.com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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?
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: So what's the referee doing there? Well, the referee's part of the story. What is her affiliation here with Alex Snow? Why is she protecting? Oh, there it is. Wait a minute. This was a sucker job the whole way.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: The referee's 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: And she pretty quickly gets a big bump up to being a referee at like a match at Madison Square Garden.
--:-- Noelle King: And the reason was at the time, Vince was executing this storyline in the WWF that was ostensibly pro-women's lib.
--:-- Abe Reisman: Shmoola, 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 Cindy Lauper getting involved as a manager for Wendy Richter.
--:-- Noelle King: Cindy 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: Not even to referee, but to get an audience with Vince and ask if she could get more work.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: He says, we'll just sit and talk here. I didn't think much of it. I got in the limo with him.
--:-- Noelle King: Vince started talking about magazines. Next thing I know, Vince McMahon is unzipping his pants.
--:-- Abe Reisman: And according to her, that night, Vince raped her in his limo.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: And if I didn't satisfy him, I was blackballed. That was it. I was done.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: So she didn't say anything. And then shortly after her father died, she gets a call from Geraldo Rivera's team.
--:-- Noelle King: And sure enough, she appears on Now It Can Be Told and the Geraldo Rivera show to lodge this accusation.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: And he just sat back and had this big smile and this big grin and just started laughing at me.
--:-- Noelle King: What 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
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: It was a lawsuit that scared her, and she basically disappeared for 30 years.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: By the late 90s, he's appearing as the character Mr. McMahon. What else is going to happen here? What is this? It's Mr. McMahon! And Mr. McMahon's whole deal is that he's the ultimate heel. He's just a terrible person who'll do nothing, will stop at nothing in his pursuit of power and victory.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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. the 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 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 strut that he does.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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 in what we call the WWE Signature. Those four words are then, now, forever. And the most important word is together. Welcome to SmackDown!
--:-- Noelle King: 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?
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Abe Reisman: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: An update to today's show. On Friday afternoon, Vince McMahon tweeted, quote, at 77, time for me to retire. Thank you, WWE Universe. universe, then, now, forever, together.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's show was produced by Hadi Mawajdeh, also a longtime 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 Efim Shapiro.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.
