McMahon, Vince

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    How Stingy Boomer Parents Became the Best TV Villains

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    Older Americans hold an outsize share of the nation’s wealth and power. Television loves watching their children scramble for a taste.Plots about inheritance and succession are not a new phenomenon. The form could hardly be more familiar: Take an empire-straddling lion-in-winter, throw in some desperately competing heirs and watch as the shifting allegiances and loyalty tests devolve into bedlam. The Gospel of Luke gives us the parable of the prodigal son, in which one child does his duty and the other squanders his inheritance. Shakespeare had King Lear go mad after disinheriting his youngest and being betrayed by his older daughters.Still, even by the accustomed standards, recent television feels utterly awash in succession-themed stories. “Empire,” “Yellowstone” and “La Maison” all hinge on the promises and prevarications of parents and their offspring. On HBO alone, we’ve had “Succession” (children vying for control of a media empire), “The Righteous Gemstones” (children vying for control of a religious empire) and “House of the Dragon” (children vying for control of the family dragons).Neither is this trend reserved for fiction. Two recent documentaries revolve around an emergent archetype in succession stories: the crusty, vainglorious old man whose megalomaniacal allegiance to his business empire supersedes his capacity for common decency.Released in September, the six-part Netflix documentary “Mr. McMahon” explores the legacy of professional wrestling’s most consequential overlord, Vince McMahon, who took over the hardscrabble World Wrestling Federation — previously owned by his father, Vince McMahon Sr. — and transformed it into a global juggernaut. By the 1990s and 2000s, World Wrestling Entertainment (having changed its name in 2002) was drawing huge ratings by dramatizing McMahon’s dueling with his two children, Stephanie and Shane, who both desired, in the W.W.E.’s story line, to compete with and succeed their autocratic father.Professional wrestling is, famously, a strange admixture of reality and fiction; its in-ring beefs are often exaggerated versions of offscreen animosities. “Mr. McMahon” reveals the extent to which the McMahons’ televised rivalries were true to life. Shane, in particular, butted heads with his father around the height of what is known in wrestling lore as the Attitude Era. The two men ended up battling each other at WrestleMania 17 in 2001, following weeks of onscreen drama regarding the future of the W.W.E. The ensuing “street fight,” as it was billed, turned nasty as the father peppered his son with actual punches, rather than the usual pulled shots. It is unpleasant to watch and hard to turn away from.The wealth hoarding of older generations may be the lurking subtext of all these plots.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ole Anderson, Original Member of Four Horsemen Wrestling Team, Dies at 81

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      The professional wrestler fought alongside Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard. He later spoke out against the commercialization of the sport.Ole Anderson, a professional wrestler who starred as an original member of the Four Horsemen team in the 1980s and was later critical of the sport’s corporate greed, died on Monday. He was 81.The Carter Funeral Home in Winder, Ga., said that Mr. Anderson had died at his home in Monroe, Ga., and that he had “passed away peacefully.” The funeral home did not share a cause of death.World Wrestling Entertainment, known as the World Wrestling Federation when Mr. Anderson wrestled, said in a statement on Monday that he was known for his “hard-nosed style and gruff demeanor.”Mr. Anderson wrestled professionally from the late 1960s through the 1980s, after training under Verne Gagne, a member of the W.W.E. Hall of Fame.Through the 1970s and early 1980s, he was a member of the tag team known as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, which over the years included Gene, Lars and Arn Anderson, who called themselves brothers and were popular around the Midwest. They were part of regional circuits like Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling that were united under the National Wrestling Alliance, which regularly crowned them tag-team champions.In the 1980s, Mr. Anderson teamed up with Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard to become the Four Horsemen, who went on to dominate the N.W.A. and later World Championship Wrestling, which competed with the W.W.F.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vince McMahon Steps Down From W.W.E. Amid Misconduct Investigation

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      Vince McMahon, a longtime executive for World Wrestling Entertainment who led professional wrestling from a sideshow curiosity into a mainstream phenomenon, has stepped down as chairman and chief executive while the company’s board investigates allegations of misconduct against him, the company said on Friday.Stephanie McMahon, his daughter, will take over as interim chief executive and chairwoman, the company said in a statement. Mr. McMahon will remain involved with W.W.E.’s creative content and “remains committed to cooperating with the review underway,” the company said.“I have pledged my complete cooperation to the investigation by the Special Committee, and I will do everything possible to support the investigation,” Mr. McMahon said in a statement. “I have also pledged to accept the findings and outcome of the investigation, whatever they are.”Mr. McMahon briefly appeared on “Friday Night SmackDown” at the beginning of the show. He stepped into the ring to applause.“I’m here simply to remind you of the four words we just saw,” Mr. McMahon told the crowd, referring to the W.W.E. signature at the beginning of the broadcast. “Those four words are ‘then, now, forever,’ and the most important word is ‘together.’ Welcome to SmackDown.”Mr. McMahon then dropped a microphone and stepped out of the ring, high-fiving fans as he left.On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. McMahon agreed to pay a secret $3 million settlement to an employee with whom he was said to have had an affair, and that the board had been investigating since April. The investigation unearthed other nondisclosure agreements involving claims of misconduct by Mr. McMahon, The Journal reported.A lawyer for Mr. McMahon told The Journal that the employee had not made any claims of harassment against Mr. McMahon and that he used personal funds to pay the settlement.Far from an anonymous executive, Mr. McMahon is among the most recognizable faces of professional wrestling, adopting a swagger-filled public persona who is often at the center of the on-screen action. Since taking over his father’s wrestling company in 1982, Mr. McMahon has presided over its ascent into a cultural giant, with more than $1 billion in revenue in 2021. W.W.E’s programs are aired in 30 languages and are distributed through NBCUniversal and Fox Sports, among others.The company said it had hired independent legal counsel to conduct the investigation, and would also work with an independent organization to review the company’s compliance program, human resources function and overall culture.Jesus Jiménez More