Vince McMahon controls wrestling history in order to control all of wrestling
With WrestleMania 39 set to kick off on April 1, and Polygon contributor Abraham Josephine Riesman’s new book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America set to enter the ring on March 28, we’re spending the week grappling with pro wrestling — and everything it’s shaped. Riesman kicks off the short series with a look at McMahon’s unshakeable presence in the arena.
Professional wrestling buries its history with ease and enthusiasm.
It happens in the ring: An evil character suddenly does one noble act, becomes a good guy, and all past sins are forgiven by the crowd (until the next moral flip). It happens behind the scenes: “Documentaries” produced by World Wrestling Entertainment will wax poetic about a wrestler’s triumphs and never mention his domestic violence charges. There is no equivalent of ESPN Classic for wrestling; most matches held before the 1980s may as well not exist, as far as average viewers are concerned. The industry exists in an eternal present, with only a hazy sense of what came before.
This is all by design.
Vincent Kennedy McMahon, the newly reinstalled executive chairman of WWE and the single most important man in pro wrestling for four decades straight, is one of the more deft manipulators of reality in the history of popular entertainment. There is the standard manipulation of the viewer that comes with the territory; pro wrestling is, after all, only a legitimate sport in the way the Harlem Globetrotters are a legitimate basketball team. But there’s another layer.
Ever since 1983, when McMahon took control of the World Wrestling Federation from his father, he’s manifested Orwell’s dictum about those controlling the present controlling the past. He owns the tape archives of
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