Thank You Vince McMahon

 The timing on this post couldn't be any worse than what it is. In the heat of a sex scandal I suppose I will be accused of honoring a man that committed adultery on his wife while taking advantage of other women. Believe me, I do not condone those acts. I don't overlook them.  What I am doing right now is recognizing in spite of all the wrong that Vince McMahon may have done, all of the right that he did too.  

Wrestling at many levels has been and continues to be a huge part of my life. I run my own collegiate wrestling website & I'm fairly successful with it. I'm not getting rich off of it by any means but I have a decent following & it helps me cover a few bills here and there. None of that would have been possible without Vince McMahon. 

If you go back to the very beginning. The root of my love and passion for wrestling, it all starts with my early interest in the WWE all the way back in 1989. That's when I saw my first WWE professional wrestling match & that's when I fell in love with professional wrestling.  This of course led to getting involved in amateur wrestling.  So yes, as much as amateur wrestling has been a huge part of my life for nearly all of my life, I owe a thank you to Vince McMahon. 

Here's how I'll remember the good that he did....

If I had to pick my very favorite memory of Vince McMahon, this interview with Andre The Giant in 1979 would have to be it. It took place a good 6 years before I was even born, but with syndication and reruns I saw it many times while growing up. I love it both from a fan point of a view and from a worker point of view. It was clear to tell that McMahon had a deep respect and admiration for Andre. Yes, he was a shrewd business man who saw $ signs left and right when looking at Andre, but I also think he appreciated Andre enough to pay him well and treat him fairly.  If there is a darkness and a light within all of us, I think it was this moment when McMahon's light shined brightest. 

I'm probably the only person alive who would say this, but I enjoyed Vince McMahon the most when he took on the role of simply being a play by play color commentator. I remember being so confused during the news of the steroid scandal back in the early 1990's. I remember wondering why in the world Vince McMahon was standing trial? Where was Jack Tunney? Why wasn't he being questioned? Why was all this pressure being put on Vince McMahon who was nothing more than a commentator?  A lot of people act as if they've always known that Vince was the owner/operator of the WWE, but I think quite a few were like me.  I think that back when he played it off as if he were nothing more than a commentator, that most were unaware that he was the head of the WWE. It took my Dad explaining it to me back when I was 7 years old or so, to understand what was going on. 

Looking back now, I think it was brilliant. It's exactly how I would handle such a business, if there be any other business like professional wrestling. Blend in with the rest of the crowd. Create the illusion, feed the mystery. To me it's no different than a writer who takes on a pseudonym. I began watching professional wrestling in 1989 and I followed it like a hawk up until late 1997. Those eight years were a very magical time for me, especially the first four.  I realize that professional wrestling had but no other choice to change, but from a fan perspective I miss those days. 

I was never a huge Attitude Era fan. There were moments I appreciated about the Attitude Era but my love for the WWE will always be the decade most refer to as the Hogan Era. With that said, I understand that times were changing and that the WWE had no choice but to evolve. I admire Vince McMahon's ability to see and recognize that changes needed to be made. He was essentially going through the exact same thing that he had put all of his opposition through 10 years prior. He knew he had to study what they had done and see where they had gone wrong. When he started to take the talent of the AWA for example, he saw how owner Vern Gagne wanted to keep doing everything as he had always done it. Gagne wasn't willing to change with the times & as a result it cost him his livelihood. It cost him his business of 40 years. McMahon knew better than to let that happen. In the mid 1990's, WCW was snatching all of the WWE's top talent. Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage & the list goes on. At first McMahon tried to attack his former talent for their age, but that wasn't working. As he was about to lose Bret Hart, that's when he got creative and realized that the WWE needed a whole new overhaul. This is when we started seeing the roots of the Attitude Era. Goldust, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H. It all began to form. I feel sometimes that things went too far. The hypersexual tone, the perverseness, the inappropriate innuendoes. It wasn't for me, but I respect and understand why it came to that level. McMahon not only kept the ship from sinking, he brought it into harbor early.  

It was way past due, but as the saying goes, "better late, than never."  I'm always going to respect that Vince McMahon let Bret Hart get his revenge match. I wish it would have been sooner, when the two could have really executed a beautiful, brilliant match, but nonetheless on principle alone I'm still glad it happened. Justice is rarely served in this world. Most of the time people are wronged and that's usually the end of it. I suppose that's why vengeance is referred to as "so sweet" when it actually does happen. Watching McMahon get put into the sharpshooter was a glorious moment not only for me, but for millions of other fans too. 

As much as one can learn from Vince McMahon's successes, I think there's a lot to be gained from studying his failures too. Sink or swim, McMahon was never afraid to roll the dice. He owned the craps table all night long when he continuously rolled sevens with WRESTLEMANIA. He took a huge risk in completely changing the image of professional wrestling back in the early to mid 1980's & then he did it again in the late 90's. All of those ventures paid off, but he had some other ideas that went straight into the toilet.  I don't know what in the Hell he was thinking with the World Bodybuilding Federation. I think most people appreciate a good physique or at least the amount of hard work it takes to obtain one. It's no joke that even though Bobby Eaton can work circles around The Ultimate Warrior that most fans would rather see the Warrior's physique than they would Eaton's.  Yet to think that people were going to want to sit and watch videos of men and women posing all day was a humorous as it sounds. The XFL was another venture that McMahon got into that at least upon its initial run didn't work out. It just goes to show that sometimes people have their niches. They have certain things that they are good at and certain things that they are not. Professional wrestling was McMahon's specialty. It was his calling. Very few of us ever meet up with what it is that we're supposed to be doing. Even those of us that do, the circumstances and resources available to us don't always match up as they should. They did for Vince McMahon. 

He wasn't always nice about it. He was cutthroat, cutnut, and in many ways absolutely ruthless. He wanted to be number one. Lies, manipulation, trickery, he stopped at nothing to achieve his goals. Are those characteristics admirable? No, but what they are is revealing. It makes one question if it is possible to reach the heights that Vince McMahon did by playing the game fairly. Can you walk out a winner if you're honest, genuine and sincere?  I think McMahon had these qualities as well and that he did display them at times. I question if the darker side of him was inherent or if he realized at a young age it was the only way to get ahead? 

What I do know is that I fell in love with professional wrestling back in 1989 and it had a significant impact on my life. It gave me  a lot of joy for a period of 8 years or so of watching it on Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays. It's how my Dad got me to start reading with various magazines that he would buy me. It was toys. Video rentals. You name it.  Then it became getting involved in amateur wrestling & falling in love with that. Then it became 6 years of actually doing professional wrestling. Now it's me running my own collegiate wrestling website.  So yeah, I owe Vince McMahon a thank you. Indirectly he's been and will continue to be a big part of my life. Thank you Vince McMahon.