MCMAHON FOR PRESIDENT??? TONIGHT??? ON RAW???
Sorry mom, not me. I was reading Bill Simmons' recap of WWE Summerslam from last Sunday, when I saw this:
Apparently this was one of those pointless backstage sketches, here showing a couple of bimbos hopping into the car before Vince stuck his head out the window and said, "hey, why not?" Well, here are a couple reasons why the first President McMahon should not be named Vince:
- There's nothing his opponents could attack him on. Jeez, where to begin? Besides spending his life in an outgrowth of the carnival industry, in which the point was to dupe the rubes into handing over their money, he then turned said industry towards excessive, brutal violence, cheap sex, and the occasional mock crucifixion. Sure, you can write that off as having his finger on the pulse of today's (or 1999's) youth, but I can assure you that specific instances more than reinforce the notion that Vince McMahon is just a terrific guy. There was the time when Owen Hart really didn't want to rappel down from the ceiling on pay-per-view with only one harness, but Vince made him do it anyway. Now, sure, Owen literally died when the harness snapped, but come on, that's no reason to stop the show. Stone Cold still had to defend the world title against Undertaker!
And lest you forget, chump, he was acquitted in that massive steroid trial.
- He knows his politics. Even after getting that terrible reputation (well, of course the past looks bad if you remember it), he proceeded to prove his naysayers wrong by setting up a storyline in which he, incidentally married to WWE's CEO in their lifelong family business, engaged in sexual behavior with all of WWE's hottest chicks, the apex, of course, being when he forced then-storyline-girlfriend Trish Stratus to come out, strip down to her underwear, and crawl around barking like a dog to prove her love for him. Did I mention this is a publicly traded company?
- WWE is still roaring ahead. Someday I'll write a great essay on how WWE (then the WWF, for those of you still confused) peaked on September 25, 2000, so instead let's note this: have you ever noticed that a lot of businessmen turn to politics when their businesses start to decline, they try to revive the business, the business keeps declining, and the candidate says, "ah hell with it, I'm running for Congress"? Craig Benson certainly did the same thing with Cabletron up in New Hampshire before being the first NH governor in 78 years to lose his bid for a second term, and even an awesome guy like Jon Corzine was fired from Goldman before dumping $70 million into a Senate race. In any case, I'll urge you to note that WWE books are no longer tearing up the bestseller lists, WWE guys are no longer hosting Saturday Night Live, Smackdown just got moved to Fridays, attendance is way down, ratings are about 60% (at best) of what they used to be, and the company's been like that for at least four years. Remember that when Vince McMahon claims to be able to get this country back on track.
- His sense of timing is impeccable. What better time to announce your presumably independent run for the presidency than 38 months before the election? If the guy had a damn bit of sense about him, he wouldn't be doing this until mid-to-late 2007 at the earliest, and probably not until 2008. I suspect he's just doing this because another WWE alum has said "we need to put a wrestler in the White House for 2008," and future first black president The Rock is otherwise engaged. Plus, as stated, his legacy falls further with each passing day, as WWE struggles to regain a connection to the buying public. He's a big conservative populist, though, so if he does run, we'll have a lot of awesome reheated Reaganaut government-bashing to look forward to.
And speaking of his sense of timing, let's note that he did take the WWF to unprecendented heights for wrestling in 2000, to the point where his chief competition became not WCW but the rest of the entertainment world. With that opportunity, he should have started sucking up to the mainstream press and entertainment figures so that pro wrestling could stay hip for as long as Hollywood. Vince, of course, needed to revel in his success, and when he did an HBO interview with Bob Costas, the two of them nearly got into a fistfight. And yet somehow the XFL failed?
All told, this will be a surprise to longtime readers -- but I may not vote for him.
Comments
My favorite McMahon quote of all time is when, barely a month after 9/11, he said: "Firefighters, they're never around when you need them." And yet no one seemed to care that he said it.
What makes the Raw after Unforgiven 2000 the peak of the WWE?
Posted by: Matt | August 24, 2005 6:05 PM
Well, as stated I'll be able to turn this into an extended rant, but Unforgiven 2000 and the Raw afterwards marked the start of three declines in the WWF:
1. This is when they moved to TNN, then the Nashville Network and now not so much. Ratings dropped like a full point in a week, maybe because of reasons #2 and 3, but this is where we start.
2. Stone Cold Steve Austin came back. I actually thought this would wind up being a bigger problem than #3, but now it's debatable. In any case, a WWF that was going full speed ahead put everything else on hold and became singularly focused on Stone Cold for the next year and a half. I would argue Stone Cold was no longer at that extreme level of popularity - everyone still loved him, but by that point the fans weren't looking for the Stone Cold Steve Austin Show.
3. Triple H beat Kurt Angle at Unforgiven. As you recall, they spent the better part of 2000 slowly building up the HHH/Stephanie/Angle love triangle, finally blowing it into the open with the Rock-Angle-HHH triple threat title match at Summerslam, naturally leading into an HHH-Angle singles match at Unforgiven. Even besides the Stephanie story arc, they also had HHH's meticulously planned face turn: after finally becoming a megaheel by being the center of the company for the first six months of 2000, HHH started focusing on his opponents, instead of taunting the fans, starting with his Fully Loaded match against Chris Jericho. (And trust me when I say this is how mega face turns are supposed to work - Rock says as much about his 1999 turn in his "autobiography.") So after Jericho, having a triple-threat match against a heel and a face gave HHH a perfect month-long delay to further his face turn, and by the time he faced the heel Angle at Unforgiven he was getting solid cheers. Given the Stephanie love triangle angle, the Angle-HHH match at Unforgiven should have ended with a pretty clear Angle win, presumably with Angle leaving with Stephanie, to make HHH the sympathetic face. But HHH won, either to protect his character (unnecessarily, of course) or to protect his burgeoning real-life relationship with Stephanie. In either case, it killed the hottest storyline they had, and it was the first time they started relying on backstage drama to interfere with storylines, a trend that has unfortunately continued to today.
So, that's when WWF peaked. Fair?
Posted by: Terry | August 24, 2005 11:49 PM
That makes sense to me. I remember being disappointed when HHH won that match against Angle. That pretty much killed Angle as a serious main eventer for a while, and cemented HHH as the main heel forever. Adding on to all that, I always thought that the WWE began its decline in earnest when they turned Austin heel at Wrestlemania, and then had HHH and Austin as best friends for a while.
Posted by: Matt | August 25, 2005 8:32 AM
Fools, any idiot knows the real decline of WWF began whenever it was that Steve "Main Event" Blackman was callously released.
In related news, birthday appearances by Steve Blackman are available for purchase on teh e-bay; current bid is at $7 and half a box of Chicken McNuggets (resigned utterances of "Party Time!" catchphrase extra).
Posted by: galvin | August 25, 2005 4:06 PM
Party time has never come so cheap!
Posted by: Harrison | August 25, 2005 9:24 PM