The head honcho of the WWE, Vince McMahon, has seen it and done it all in professional wrestling over the past 35 years. With stories about him filtering around the web and in books, he could easily put Forrest Gump to shame.
However, the DVD that documents his exploits in the business, “McMahon†does little in shedding any extra light on his story. Thankfully, there are slews of extra features that add more depth to the overall package that make it a decent purchase.
The second disc, filled with classic matches featuring him, are a blast, especially those with Stone Cold Steve Austin, that still rank as some of the most entertaining in the sport. Having access to all of those alone makes the set a worthwhile one.
Nonetheless, when it’s all over, this collection falls short of lofty expectations.
Aside from showing McMahon’s softer side [seeing how elated he is while holding his first grandchild is a rare treat] and having him discuss how he got his feet wet in his father’s company [the company that he would eventually take over and turn into a media beast] the DVD rehashes much of the history that is explained in others like it. For instance, most wrestling fans today are familiar with how McMahon consolidated all the wrestling territories in the ’80s to create his empire. In order for this to be fresher material, the WWE needed to get more in-depth by conducting rare interviews in addition to having McMahon be more candid than ever.
Sadly, this is not the case here.
While the interviews with Greg Gagne, Les Thatcher and Dusty Rhodes do a great job of showing how McMahon’s conquest has changed the industry forever and reduced its quality, more of this could have been incorporated into the overall package. It would have been nice to see Harley Race’s take on the consolidation, especially considering how involved he was in wrestling in the St. Louis area and how he later went to work for McMahon after the company he owned folded.
The same thing goes for the Monday Night War section of the DVD, which could have benefited by having more interviews and less of the same discussion that was essentially on the Monday Night War DVD the company released a few years before. Again, this isn’t a huge problem for anyone that doesn’t own these DVDs, but for hardcore fans that have amassed a library of WWE content over the years, this compilation may miss the mark.
Aside from the lack of new insight, the DVD is a fun one that shows the inner workings of the McMahon family. Here is easily the best part of the documentary and one that shows the softer side of the family and its patriarch. The interviews with Stephanie, Shane and Linda McMahon also do a better job of uncovering a more sensitive side of Vince. This added much needed emotion to the compilation. The only problem is, most of the time, the older wrestlers interviewed say the complete opposite, making you wonder what the truth really is.
Definitely not the kind of feeling you want to have when watching a documentary about someone.
If the viewer was allowed to know why these people felt this way about him, this set would have been one of the best the company has ever released. Instead, it serves as surface scratcher that entertains due to its amount of content, rather than the overall quality of it.
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