The wrestling world is buzzing about the “Mr. McMahon” 6-part docuseries, which debuted on Netflix this week. The docuseries delves into McMahon’s personal life as well as his professional accomplishments and the blurring of the lines between his “Mr. McMahon” persona and the real person.
On the most recent “Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, Matt compared Vince McMahon’s creative mind in 1998 to 2019 when he left the company.
“I felt like he was very much on the pulse (in 1998) He had a much better feeling of the audience and what was current in pop culture and society and whatnot. I just feel like you fast forward 20 years to 2019, he just doesn’t have that same connection that he did in the late 90s and early 2000s. That’s what it seemed like from speaking with him. There were times where he still had ideas that ended up being and sounding kind of crazy, but they would still work sometimes. I know there were times where I talked to him with me and Bray, and he kept saying, ‘You guys can be something so special. You can be so special, but with what you’re doing, you have to really stand out, and you have to be a certain way, and you have to carry a certain dynamic with these personas you have’ and whatnot. He never went into the specifics of what it was, but then like, at the end of the day, we both thought we shouldn’t be wrestling on TV. For four or five weeks straight, we had matches that we won in like three or four minutes on TV. I’m like, ‘I don’t think this is doing anything for us. It’s not doing anything for our opponents. We’re much better if we have some remote vignettes and we tell stories or whatever else and there’s someone who wants a shot at these titles, and then eventually we build this big match by whatever happens. You get heat on us some way or whatnot’, but he kept saying, ‘We need to be a certain way, these characters, this can be huge if it’s done right’, but then he ended up putting us out there, two very gimmicky characters who need vignettes and remote location shootings and stuff to stay unique, I feel, and we were just being put in four minute matches where we’re just beating up somebody pretty quick and hitting our finish and winning, and I don’t think that’s doing anything for anyone. I just feel like later on, towards the end of the 2010s, he just wasn’t as connected to what was current in culture and society.”
On all the controversy surrounding Vince McMahon today:
“It’s awful. Anytime someone does something terrible like that, especially if it is a criminal sexual act, it’s awful. I’ll say that right up front. Just the fact that Vince was the one that was responsible for giving us an opportunity, and someone I worked with much a lot over the years, and was one of the people who was responsible for giving me this great life, and really giving me the opportunity to kind of get it ahead in life, financially and whatnot. So I mean that part I will be appreciative of, but also I think in society, if you do bad and terrible things, you also need to be held accountable for them.”
On how that makes him feel on a personal level:
“It makes me feel very conflicted about Vince. It’s one of those things where you wish you didn’t have to feel in such a negative way towards someone, but there’s a part of you that’s going to feel that negative way because these accusations are so strong.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
