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Oct. 18, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:24
20241018_is-wwes-vince-mcmahons-legacy-destroyed-with-speci
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Vince McMahon's Dark Legacy 00:01:24
Well now a sensational Netflix documentary has cast doubt on Vince McMahon's career and legacy.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't care about you.
He didn't care about your family.
He put all those females in a situation where they could not say no.
They probably put their own self-respect on the back burner because ultimately that's what you want to hear from the bosses of all bosses.
As soon as I came through the curtain, he was there and he was there to let me know just how mad he was at me.
Well look in classic WWE fashion it's time to introduce to the uncensored ring a surprise guest.
I called you in 30 years ago.
That's what I'm trying to tell you is if you looked at it fairly this guy's delusional.
Guys, that was a good run-in, Piers.
Vince McMahon is the dynastic powerhouse behind the biggest sports and entertainment franchise in history.
World Wrestling Entertainment, WWE, once a regional patchwork of modest family entertainment, is now a global juggernaut worth $6.8 billion.
It merged with Dana White's UFC a year ago.
Some even credit Vince McMahon and WWE with teaching a certain political heavyweight about bombastic timing and how to work a baying crowd.
I'm taller than you.
I'm better looking than you.
I think, I think I'm stronger than you.
The Billion Dollar Empire 00:15:43
Ow!
And I'm here to challenge you to a match in WrestleMania.
What?
Oh, I got it.
It's the battle of a billionaire.
That's right.
Well, now a sensational Netflix documentary has cast doubt on Vince McMahon's career and legacy, airing claims about ruthless practices, the steroid culture, and according to one recent lawsuit, depraved and humiliating acts.
Many say he couldn't decipher himself from his pontifical on-screen personality.
The question in all this, though, is a bit like the wrestling itself.
Where is fact and where is fiction?
A question that McMahon himself struggles to answer.
The lines of reality are very blurred in our business.
The individual loses all sense of who they really are.
My name is not Vince.
My name is Mr. McMahon.
Well, to debate the Ultimate Showman's ultimate legacy, we've invited some of McMahon's biggest supporters and biggest critics into the uncensored arena.
Marvin Hoffman is a former WWE star and now YouTuber, Jonathan Coach Coachman, was a WWE announcer and is now an elite sports analyst and host of Behind the Turnbuckle.
Vince Russo was the head writer during the infamous Attitude Era of WWE.
And Charlie Olnott, an ex-WWE backstage interviewer and now host of Outkick the Morning on Outkick.com.
So welcome to all of you, a very high-powered panel for what is a very high-powered saga in many ways.
Jonathan, you work very closely with Vince McMahon for a long period of time.
How accurate is this new series that's come out about him?
Well, I think it's fairly accurate, Piers, and thank you very much for having me on the show.
It's great to see all the other guys and ladies that I worked with.
I think it's accurate, but I think also that when you're talking to people like us who've been inside, I spent a total of 13 years in the WWE and also my character on camera was Vince's assistant.
And I think that though the term softball came to mind.
I know Vince was very upset that it was a hit piece.
I didn't find that at all.
I think it was fairly accurate when you talk about the time we spent on the road, the things he made us do.
And I think the overriding sentiment, Piers, that came out of that was the fact that none of us, at least not with me, did I ever feel like I could say no.
And I only said no one time in my entire 13 years with Vince.
And when I look back on it now, that's one of the things I regret the most.
But as far as accuracy, I think it was accurate, but I certainly don't think they went far enough as far as all the things that he made a lot of us do.
Okay, so what is the real Vince McMahon like?
For those who don't know him, you know, in the documentary, you can see a hardworking, very committed, passionate, very successful business brain at work.
You can also see a ruthless, egotistical, depraved monster who pretty much screw anyone, including his own family, to get what he wants.
So from your perspective, Jonathan, where's the truth?
I think there's a little bit of both.
I saw Vince McMahon that I would deal with him when we're shooting skits or shooting a lot of things.
And he was a very nice man and he would do things very quietly to take care of a lot of guys that were getting older that couldn't make a living on their own.
And you can't walk into a bank after you've been a WWE superstar and ask for a job.
The other part of Vince, though, is he doesn't care.
He doesn't care about you.
He didn't care about your family.
He didn't care about, there was one time, Piers, that I was home on Christmas Eve and I got a call to fly back to Connecticut from Kansas because Vince wanted to shoot a skit to be in the show on Monday so then he could spend time with his family.
And though you talk about the regrets, that's the Vince that I think I remember the most is as long as it was good for him and good for the company, he didn't care about the fact that if we were with our parents or with our kids or with our families.
And I think you'll get that sentiment across the board.
So I think it's somewhere in the middle.
But certainly as I look back, a guy that I used to respect and I used to was incredibly loyal for, I would never be that guy today for him.
No chance.
Interesting.
Vince, I mean, you were one of the writers, obviously.
You helped blur that line between fact and fiction.
My sons were very into WWE for a few years and I took them to a few of the events and it was incredible entertainment.
But I did have to explain to them that, you know, you realize this is not real.
But then to a degree, it was real and that people were being thrown around.
They were entertaining.
It was highly choreographed.
They were all well-trained and everyone was earning good money.
And what seems to have unraveled since is that behind the sort of family entertainment vibe that it was generating was a lot of stuff that was certainly not conducive with family entertainment.
What's your perspective on it?
Well, you know, Piers, I will tell you one thing really bothered me when I left.
And to back up, coach, you know, I was the head writer during the Attitude Era.
We were very successful during that time.
The reason I left Vince was because I was looking to relocate my family because I was putting in so many hours.
My wife was raising my kids by herself.
And Vince McMahon looked me in the eye and said, Vince, I don't see what the problem is.
You make enough money not now.
Hire a nanny to raise your kids.
Those were his exact words.
I was on the phone with WCW the next day because I was no longer going to work for a man like that.
He showed me his true colors.
But when I was writing The Attitude Era and what the attitude era was all about, Piers, was blue collar versus white collar.
That's what it was all about.
Stone Cold Steve Austin, Vince McMahon.
Austin was telling McMahon every single thing a blue collar worker would want to tell his boss.
Well, when I left, all of a sudden there was a shift.
And that shift was all of a sudden, Vince is on camera with all these beautiful women making out with them, kissing them, groping them.
They're groping him.
Now, Piers, you got to understand something.
And everybody here will understand this.
As a writer, I could have never written any of our female characters in that position because they couldn't have said no.
They would have had to say yes because it was with Vince McMahon.
And they would have thought if they didn't do this, they were going to be fired.
So when I saw this type of behavior after I left, it never sat well with me.
Now, I don't know if that came from Vince or the writers, but like I said, he put all those females in a situation where they could not say no because they may have felt like their job was on the line.
Okay, well, Charlie, you are the female of this panel.
What's your view of Vince McMahon?
Who is the real Vince?
So from my perspective, I didn't always get such a clear look at who Vince McMahon was.
I didn't have to be in the writers' meetings like a lot of people did.
I basically would show up to work, be given a script, say, this is what you're doing.
And I would generally communicate with other people on the writing staff and my bosses, which mainly included Michael Cole.
He was the main one.
If I had an issue, I would talk to him rather than directly talking to Vince.
But what I will say is that even in my position where I wasn't interacting with Vince on a regular basis, I think like everybody else, I always aspired to get validation from Vince McMahon because when you did cross paths with him in the back of the arena or in the hallway, if he would say something to you, it would mean something, even a simple hello, because Vince a lot of times wouldn't even address you.
And if he would address you, it means he either found you were doing something correctly or he liked how you were going about things.
And especially when you got a good job, that was like, oh my goodness, Vince just told me, good job.
What did I just do that I need to now replicate each time moving forward?
So I would say there was a lot of pressure there, even though I didn't talk to him a lot.
When he did speak to me, it definitely resonated.
And I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing.
But I definitely think that's what happened with a lot of the people in the company.
And especially these people that were put in situations that were maybe more uncomfortable than others.
If they were getting this validation from Vince in those situations, they probably put their own self-respect on the back burner because ultimately that's what you want to hear from the bosses of all bosses at WWE.
I mean, it was a very sort of high tosterone environment, wasn't it?
Very macho.
In your time there, did you feel that it was all consensual in terms of the way women were treated?
Later, of course, it emerged that Vince McMahon paid off a number of women millions of dollars to settle lawsuits.
Did that surprise you?
Or was he the kind of character where actually that was not that surprising?
What I've always said is if you do not have a thick skin, you do not belong working in the WWE.
I do find that to be the case in a lot of areas in television.
I think as a woman, you must have thick skin.
Were there many instances where I probably could have gone to HR over something small or even something that probably had a little bit more oomph to it?
Yes.
Was I the person to do that?
No.
Now, I'm not saying that I was, you know, mistreated in any certain sort of way, but there were definitely things that went on at WWE that if an outsider were to get a glimpse on the inside, they would say, what is going on here?
How are people working in these specific conditions?
But it's just one of those things that you kind of went with.
You were working with the WWE.
I'm interviewing men who are wearing nothing but like tiny little speedos on.
So it's kind of like the job that you sign up for.
Okay, Marvin, you were sacked by Vince McMahon.
He obviously had a ruthless streak, like many successful business people.
What's your view of him?
Well, Vince, I echo everyone's sentiment so far.
And just like Coachman said, he said no to Vince one time in 13 years.
I never knew saying no was an option.
When Vince said something, it was pretty much law.
I got under his, I got on his bad side one time, and it was right before we were getting ready to go on an extended break.
And an extended break for wrestlers might be an additional two or three days at home.
But it was right before one of these breaks.
I had an average match.
It wasn't a stinker, wasn't a horrible match, but just wasn't great.
And as soon as I came through the curtain, he was there and he was there to let me know just how mad he was at me.
And he told me during your time off, you need to decide if this is the place you want to be.
Now, there's that side of Vince, but there's also the side of Vince where after a three-year battle with cancer, the night my mom passed, I didn't get a call from his secretary.
I didn't get a call from his wife.
I got a call from Vince telling me exactly how just how sorry he was for my loss.
So it's good and bad with the man.
What do you think the general view, Maven, is of this?
I mean, there's so when I watch the documentary series, depending who you're listening to, a lot of the bigger stars talk quite fondly of him, you know, and yet we know there's been a slew of scandals around it.
We know he's effectively been pushed off the scene for now anyway, no longer has the family ownership that he had, etc.
Is it right that he's being depicted as a kind of villain now?
Or do you think that's been overplayed?
Well, I'll answer your first question, obviously, first.
The stars who have a fond view of Vince, Vince is a very transactional individual.
If you're making him money, if you're making him money, and a lot of these stars were making him millions, he loves you.
And you talked about me getting let go by Vince.
And I agree.
When you see Vince backstage, he'll ignore you.
If you mean nothing to him or nothing to his show, he'll pass you by and won't give you the time a day.
But Vince made his bed.
And he's unfortunately now lying in it.
I know that there's probably more to come.
And like most people, I'm simply sitting back waiting for whatever is going to unearth itself.
Well, you guys obviously were all on the inside.
I guess that the person who could be best described as Vince McMahon's nemesis was the New York Post journalist Phil Mushnick, who's been running a slew of exposé about bad practices at WWE.
I want to give a little clip of an example of what I'm talking about.
I don't know why as Vendetta.
They really didn't want to look.
They didn't want to know.
I guess me.
I don't know why.
Because he's a dirtbag.
Vince is guilty of aiding and abetting the Ringboy scandal.
At best, he's guilty of rank neglect.
Vince was the biggest guy in cable TV.
Nobody wanted to look a little deeper.
Why isn't these things page one?
Millions of kids worship these guys, and they're dropping dead.
Where's the news?
Again, McMahon seemed to escape that.
Jonathan, what's your view of Mr. Mushnick and all his exposes?
Well, I think when you write for the New York Post, and I came in long after a lot of the things he was just talking about that in the documentary, but when you write for the New York Post and your entire job is to write negatively about somebody, he knew that writing negative.
Hang on, I write for the New York Post, and that's not my directive.
I'm a columnist.
No, no, no.
I'm a columnist in the New York Post.
No one tells me to be negative.
I can write what I like.
So I would take issue with that.
But in the 90s.
Okay, well, I'll say back in the 90s when he's writing about that, he found, I'll say specific to this then.
I apologize to you, Pierce.
But he started writing about this.
And these are things that people will resonate with, that they'll latch on to.
And I will tell you this, that in my entire 13 years of being in the WWE, I never saw Phil Mushnick even try to come backstage to see what the atmosphere was like.
I never saw him ask to have a sit down with any of us.
And I think that sometimes when you're a journalist, especially and you're trying to sell newspapers and you're trying to sell your column and you know that people need to read it for you to keep that, I think that's where Phil has always fallen on.
And he's the one guy, because I love a good back and forth.
I love a good and a bad.
And I would never sit up here and completely defend Vince.
But I will say that Mr. Mushnik in particular, because we used to talk about him all the time, because it seemed like every other article that he would write was something about Vince, something about the WWE.
And there are a lot of good things that I got out of the WWE.
I have two beautiful children that without the WWE, I wouldn't have today.
I have the talent that I have, the way that I do my job, I got by learning in the WWE.
So every article, I don't remember anything that Phil ever wrote that had one positive thing to say about the WWE or Vince.
And if you're that kind of a writer, I don't have a lot of respect for it.
Fince, would you agree with that about Phil Mushnick?
I have to jump in here because I've got a personal story.
Phil Mushnick's Accusations 00:04:09
And I guarantee you, Mr. Mushnik does not remember this.
I never forgot this.
In 1991, when the steroid trial was going down and Vince McMahon was facing jail time after he was found innocent of all charges, Vince and the WWE had a steroid symposium where they were going to change policies and the media was invited, including Phil Mushnik.
I went to that steroid symposium because I was meteor at the time.
I recorded the entire symposium.
Phil Mushnik, who made a living out of burying Vince McMahon, was invited, did not attend.
Not only did he not attend, he wrote a story in the New York Post the following day filled with untruths.
How do I remember that?
Because I got on the phone with Phil Mushnick and I said, bro, and I was not working for the WWE.
I was a journalist.
I said, bro, you are full of crap.
I have every word that was said on this tape recorder.
He didn't say some of the things that you said.
So again, as a journalist, I asked the question, what kind of a journalist are you if you're not going to go to a symposium you're invited to and then you're going to report on it with false information?
From that point on, Phil Mushnik had zero credibility with me.
Okay.
And Charlie, your views of Phil Mushnik?
Well, I was not a part of WWE when Phil Mushnik was really doing most of his dirty work.
But what I will say is just by garnering a lot of knowledge throughout the course of the documentary, it seems like he was the type of guy.
He definitely had it out for Vince.
He would throw whatever he could at the wall, see what stuck, because ultimately there were going to be certain things that stuck.
I'm sure there were certain people who would side with a guy like Phil and say, yes, I can back up your story.
But then there's other people who would have the complete opposite to say.
So Phil just seems kind of like one of those dirty journalists who, no matter what, his goal was to bring down Vince McMahon.
And I believe that, yeah, Vince, he definitely played the bad guy well.
He said in the documentary we all heard, there's nothing I wouldn't do for this business.
I regret nothing in my life.
So when you say things like that, it makes Phil's job a whole lot easier.
But judging by what Phil said, I mean, there were definitely upsides to Vince McMahon, and I think a lot of people have explained it well.
I do think that ultimately it was about Vince and his bottom line, but there are lots of stories about Vince really taking care of his people.
And I also got to know that side of Vince as well.
Not personally necessarily.
I wasn't ever looking for personal favors from Vince, but from people that I was close with in the WWE, I heard those things.
Okay, Maven, any thoughts yourself about Phil Mushnick?
Yeah, I think Mr. Mushnick had Vince in his journalistic crosshairs.
I think he found an easy, easily attainable target, someone he could go after, someone who was big enough, large enough, ran a large enough company, a worldwide company.
So he knew whenever he wrote anything, it was going to garner attention.
And I'm not saying everything he wrote about Vince was incorrect.
Hell, it probably wasn't.
A lot of the stuff he wrote was accurate.
But there's a lot of things that you just don't see on the day-to-day operations when you're working with someone on 365 days a year.
And I just don't think Mr. Mushnik was ever looking for anything good out of Vince.
He was only looking for the bad.
Okay, well, look, in classic WWE fashion, it's time to introduce to the uncensored ring a surprise guest because flying in off the top rope, hopefully not with a steel chair, is the New York Post legendary columnist and Vince McMahon nemesis, Phil Mushnick, who's been listening to all of that.
Phil, welcome.
Exposing the Pedophile Ring 00:04:03
Thank you.
You've been called a few things.
Called a few things there by your fellow panelists, Phil.
Do you want to respond?
Well, the first thing I'd ask, Piers, is: can any of your panelists name one thing, one thing I wrote about McMahon, the WWF, exposing a pedophile ring on McMahon's watch?
Somebody who was a Desagrusso, I got two kids.
How about the kids who were sexually abused who didn't have parents?
And they were all in McMahon's purview.
There were CDs right there.
I'm going to stop you right there.
A lot of what you're doing.
No, no, don't stop me.
No, but how can I stop you surprisingly?
You brought up my kids.
You're a sellout.
You're a sellout.
You have no moral fiber.
See, and Piers, this is what I'm talking about.
I've never met this man.
I've never met this man.
And he said, I have no moral fiber.
He doesn't know.
He wanted proof.
Coach, he wanted proof.
I just wanted to prove that.
How come I called you out?
I called you out 30 years ago when you made it up.
You never stopped, Phil, 30 years ago.
You're going to sit there and say we're going to be a guy because maybe you're CEIO, bro.
Maybe we talked a lot.
Maybe we talked out of the chair, bro.
You reported on stuff that was not.
Don't call me bro.
I'll call you whatever.
I'll call you a liar then.
How about that, bro?
I'll call you a liar.
You reported on yourself out.
Never said.
I recorded no credibility.
You went in.
You used to be a gay.
You were never said.
Yeah, what?
What, bro?
I was one.
I'm going to be one.
I used to be, bro.
You're going to let me speak.
Go ahead.
You're going to let me speak.
Go ahead.
Did you once let pro wrestling?
Did you run once?
And weren't you very, very anti-McMahon, right?
I got the copies of the whole lie.
Show us the copies right now, Phil.
Show us the copies right now.
Anti-McMahon.
I was there.
I was a fair.
That's why I went to the symposium to hear his side of the story because guys like you were burying him.
So all I was, there's got to be another side to the story.
That's why I went and you did it, Go, because you didn't want to hear the other side of the story because you had to sell newspapers, bro.
You're the fraud.
And you embarrassed me.
I can't.
I'm going to call myself a journalist.
Okay, let me jump in as a good referee.
Good referee Wood.
I just woke up.
Piers, Piers.
Phil.
I woke up one morning and I was covering mainstream sports and I decided to fabricate all these fantasies about the WWF.
I didn't even watch it.
I could see where it was going.
The steroids and the Prurian content, I could see it was getting really ugly and really vicious and just sexually inappropriate for anybody.
And I just decided I'll make some stuff up.
Or did I get calls from ringboys?
Piers, can you give me a second?
I'll tell you how my inclusion began.
I read in the New York Times two paragraphs.
Hulk Hogan was going to be dismissed from the Dr. Zahorian drug trial, Vince's wrestling doctor, because it might be injurious to his public image and career.
And I'm saying, what kind of...
But his career is built on take your vitamins, say your prayers, and suddenly he's exploding on drugs.
You can see it.
The Steroid Symposium Truth 00:03:53
It was obvious, except maybe to Russo, that he was on steroids.
Let me ask you, Phil.
Let me ask you, Phil.
And then the letters came.
They had never read anything like that in the mainstream media, and they all read, you don't know the half of it.
So I didn't decide to throw away my...
No, Phil, if you want my opinion.
Phil, if you want my opinion, I think you're an excellent reporter who's been doing excellent reporting.
I guess the question is, as the panelists said before they knew you were coming on, whether you had a vendetta against Vince McMahon.
He called you once on Monday Night Raw a self-righteous, egotistical, miserable son of a bitch.
So there clearly was no love lost on his part either.
But what is your genuine view?
Do you think I don't know that's a work?
Of course, but my question was...
That's a work.
Of course, but my question for you is...
This is what he does.
No, of course, of course.
It's a kind of Trump-style trash talk.
But in terms of your perception of Vince McMahon, it's quite hard to work out from the documentary and from everything I've read and gleaned where the villain begins and ends and where the showman who sort of blurs alignment between fact and fiction begins and ends.
How bad a person, in your opinion, is Vince McMahon?
My empirical knowledge, my knowledge based on research, based on interviews, and interviews with really good people.
I've met some wonderful people.
Bruno San Martino was one of the most noble people I've met because he told the truth.
But based on what I know of Vince McMahon, he's the closest thing to the fictional character Hannibal Lecter I've ever met.
Wow.
A serious work.
I think he's that sick.
Really?
I think he's a sociopath.
Yes, absolutely.
What do you do when you make jokes on the air, as the future governor of Minnesota did, Jesse Ventura, about all the pedophiles that were being indulged, transported, and all the kids that would show up from city to city?
They had no parental restraints.
They were coming from foster homes.
They were easy pickings.
They were easy prey.
And it happened on McMahon's watch.
And it happened in everyone's watch.
And you, Vince Russo, who used to kiss his, who used to be anti-McMahon, then you started kissing his ass because he got paid.
And you're like everybody else.
You're not going to sit there and lie without me talking over you.
You're a man.
Who's Dr. Morrow de Pasquale?
I was never a McMahon ever.
I've reported the truth and the facts.
You did not go to the steroid symposium because you had character.
I didn't want to hear his side of it.
Did you go, Phil?
Did you ever?
No, no, no.
You're not ready.
Did you go?
What?
You had a lunch date, bro?
Did you go, Phil?
Who's Dr. Mauro de Pasquale?
Who's Dr. Mauro de Pasquale?
That was the person he had present at the steroid symposium.
Yeah.
And what was his specialty?
What was his specialty?
I guess he was a con man, Phil.
I guess he was an actor.
His specialty.
He was from Canada.
His specialty was how to teach athletes to beat steroid tests.
So that wasn't you guys.
Why didn't you go to the symposium and say that?
Because I was way ahead of you.
Okay, let me bring in.
Okay, hang on, please.
Hang on.
Let me bring in Maven who wants to say something, I think.
That was a good run-in, Piers.
Admitting Personal Steroid Use 00:05:44
And in fact, I did know Mr. Mushnick was going to be on here.
The only question I would have for him, and I'm not going to impugn his life work.
The only question I would have for him is, have you ever met Vince?
Have you ever sat down with him?
Have you ever traveled with him on the road?
We've spoken to him.
I'll never say.
I'll never say everything Vince has done has landed, and I'll never say he didn't have bad ideas.
He certainly did.
And some of the things he did was, you know, was just plain out evil.
But to say he's sadistic, I mean, why was any of it, though?
Why was he seen?
I've heard not seen out.
I've heard nothing.
Why was it plain if he was plain out evil on occasion?
Why are you telling me that, oh, I got him all wrong?
Because here's what I do.
Everything you talk about, Maven, and I'll jump in real quick.
Everything you're talking about, Phil, happened before four of us were there and 30 years ago.
And we're trying to give an equal, and we're admitting, all of us are admitting that everything he did was not good.
But you haven't brought up one thing that happened after 1999.
Well, in 1999.
Okay, but here's an interesting point.
I wasn't covering.
Let me ask you, Phil.
Phil, you one of the.
Let me just jump in a moment, Phil.
Phil was one of the first journalists to expose the widespread use of steroids in WWE.
Vince McMahon was acquitted in 1994 for distributing steroids and wanted conspiracy to distribute steroids.
He addressed Phil Mushnik directly afterwards.
We've got that clip.
I was constantly amazed at the utter lack of ethics of some of the good guys involved in my case, all of whom had demonstrable ties to Mr. Phil Mushnick.
I watched the good guys lie to the media, lie to the judge, lie to the jury.
I watched the good guys get caught because they tried to pressure my alleged co-conspirator into changing his prior sworn testimony.
I watched as the good guys were forced to admit that they had destroyed evidence.
And I saw the ultimate impact of the truth when the jury acquitted me and the World Wrestling Federation without us even having to put on a defense or call even one witness.
Phil, I mean, there was obviously no doubt that a lot of them were on steroids, right?
So were you surprised when McMahon was acquitted?
Why do you think that happened?
And do you give him any credit for what he did afterwards?
He's cleaning it up.
I firmly, Piers, I believe that he was prosecuted in the wrong jurisdiction.
Had he been prosecuted in Stanford, Connecticut, where all the drugs from Dr. Zahorian were delivered to McMahon, who admitted to using steroids, but he said he did them legally.
Now, if he did them legally, go down to the corner pharmacist and get your steroids.
Don't get them from a guy who's doing four years in prison in a federal prison.
That's exactly what I did.
Mr. Mushnick, that's exactly what I did.
I have openly, openly on my channel, admitted steroid use during my time in the WWE.
And no one from the WWE made me do it.
I did it all on my own.
And I did exactly what you said.
I got a doctor's note.
I got blood work done.
And I did it as safely as I possibly could, knowing full well what the ramifications later in life might be.
Under what premise?
What was your premise?
What was the premise for getting?
Under the premise that I wanted to, under the premise that I was in the big boys, the league with the big boys, and I needed to look the part.
It was completely 100% my design.
Vince or no one told me to.
I know, but there was a was there, was there not the presumption within the industry that if you wanted to get anywhere, you had to be roided out?
The old expression was, let me die big.
I could name it.
So why did you take the guys I worked with that did?
If you didn't need the steroids, why did you take the situation if there wasn't any requisite?
Vanity.
Because I wanted to look at the knowledge of what goes on in that industry.
It wasn't just because I wanted to bring in Jonathan, Max.
Let me bring in Jonathan.
I got cosmetic surgery.
Let me let Jonathan speak some.
Industrial surgery.
Jonathan.
Phil, you've got to move past 1995, Phil.
And we can have an honest conversation.
I started in 1999.
Phil, please.
Who is it?
Mr. Jonathan.
Not one time.
Not one time.
Not one conversation.
And I, and of this panel other than Vince, I was physically next to Vince more than anybody during that time from 1999 through 2008 through my character work on the show and also because I hosted a lot of press conferences.
We were on his jet together.
We were flying all over the place.
And not one time, Phil, not once have I ever heard a conversation about steroid use or you need to use steroids.
And I'm not saying that guys didn't.
They've openly, like Maven just said, but it's not something we sit around.
You mean you're not blind?
No, we talked about it.
Yeah, because I was blind.
But you're not blind.
But Phil, I'm telling you, it's not talked about.
And you just said, is it well known that you've got to do it?
Trump and McMahon Skills 00:04:20
No, it was not.
And that's what I'm trying to tell you is if you looked at it fairly, instead of always looking at the negative, you would understand that guys have their own brains.
And if they chose to use it, that's what they did.
Nobody ever made it.
No, how many in 1999?
How many of McMahon's?
Phil.
Oh, my God, Phil.
You stuck in 1992.
How many of McMahon's wrestlers didn't make it to 50 years old?
How many died of drugs?
Too many.
Yeah, too many.
Is it irrelevant?
I didn't indulge.
I didn't indulge too many.
I didn't suffer.
You did.
Oh, my God.
I sat next to you.
How come those people were in a room writing TV, one on one of the man?
Hundreds, hundreds of days I spent.
Never once did Vince McMahon say, oh, we're not going to push so-and-so because of his body and he's not on steroids.
This guy's delusional.
This is what I said at the beginning of the show.
Everything out of his mouth is negative about Vince.
I spent hundreds of hours with the man.
Never one time did he say, bro.
Let me just hang on.
Hang on, Donald.
I don't suggest that.
Don't all talk over each other, please.
I want to just talk about it.
Hang on, please.
Hang on.
I want to talk to Charlie.
He's been very quiet.
I don't suffer a pen.
Hang on, Phil.
I want to talk to Charlie.
One of the things, Charlie, that's come out of all this, of course, is the link between Donald Trump, the former president, the guy who might be president again in the next three weeks.
I want to show a clip between Trump and McMahon because Trump was a regular attendee at WWE.
Take a look.
Charlie, when you look at Vince McMahon and look at Trump, do you see a lot of parallels between them character-wise?
That they often blur fact and fiction, that they're very bombastic.
They're showmen.
They believe everything's transactional and so on.
Do you think they were kindred souls?
Yeah, I say yes, but I also say that in a positive sense because I think there is a lot of showmanship involved with both of them.
I think they are both what you would consider to be the ultimate types of businessmen, right?
They know what sells.
They know how to entertain.
They know how to engage.
And I think they also recognize talent in other people that then they're able to uplift those around them to also be larger than life.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities.
And I think that Trump probably, when you look at him now and how he addresses people and how he runs his rallies, I probably think he did pick up a couple of those skills from Vince McMahon in the WWE.
And I definitely don't see that as a bad thing.
So got a new fan base from being in the WWE as well.
Right.
And Phil, I think you actually tried to warn Trump off McMahon, didn't you?
On two occasions, I called Donald, who I've known for years.
He even tried to get me fired back in 1988 when I was writing about boxing and his negative inclusion in exploiting the boxes to promote Trump.
Thank you, Mr. Trump.
Come to my casino.
And he wasn't a sportsman.
I referred to him as sportsman Trump.
He would introduce the celebrities at Ringside and ignore the former world champions who were there.
And I thought that was horrible.
But I called him and I said, Donald, I have four.
He had just run the Miss Universe contest and he got rid of the winner because she was on alcohol and drugs.
And he played this noblesse oblige man and he was going to take care of that.
He was going to clean up that pageant.
I said, Donald, I said, I have four boxes that I'll deliver them to you.
WWE's Celebrity Shift 00:07:01
I'll get a truck.
I'll deliver them to you.
With all the FedEx records of the steroids and the opioids delivered to McMahon, the wrestlers, Hulk Hogan, from Zahorian.
And I will give them to you, you don't want to be involved in this.
You don't forget about the lascivious stuff.
What did he say?
He knows he's the smartest man on earth.
No, don't you worry about it.
I'm going to give the money to charity.
I said, how much do you need to give the charity?
Oh, about a million dollars.
And I said, well, I hope to see the ceremony where you present that big styrofoam check for a million dollars.
Because if you were going to give a million dollars to charity, we'd all know it.
And Phil, just where are we now with this?
This documentary's come out.
Everyone's been talking about it, watching it, debating it, and so on.
Vince McMahon, since the merger of WWE with UFC, well, he's now a minority shareholder.
The family's lost control.
He's worth billions.
We don't know.
I was going to ask you, you're plugged in here.
What is the reality of his control over it still?
I'm not plugged in.
I'm not plugged in.
Piers, I'm not plugged in.
I never wanted to be plugged in, and I'd love to be unplugged.
But I got it in.
I made my journalistic bet here, and it's followed me, and I'm proud of what I've done.
Very proud.
For another newspaper, not a tabloid, I would have wanted Pulitzer for this.
Right.
My question really was, where are we now with Vince Vermont?
Is he done with WWE or do you think he'll make some people believe a big comeback and take control again?
I don't think he has to wear a title on a piece of stationery.
I think he'll always be, if not omnipresent, certainly present.
People like that don't go away.
You can't.
Well, also, why would he come back?
Because WWE is doing so well without him.
They're breaking attendance records.
They're selling record numbers of merch.
They are building up stars like they've never before.
So why would yeah?
Why wouldn't he come back?
You tell me, you're a female.
No, I said, why wouldn't he?
Two daughters.
No, I'm saying he is.
Why would they?
No, will you tell me why were you asking why wouldn't they bring him back?
He has been abusive toward women.
No, no, Phil, I think you misheard her, Phil.
Done the most.
Why would they bring him back?
Phil, I think you misheard what Charlie said.
She was saying, why would he go back?
It's doing very well without him, is what she said.
Because it's his lifeblood.
It makes his heart pump, if he has a heart.
But it's not up to him anymore.
Right.
So, Charlie, what's your view of where we are in terms of...
How do we know that?
But Charlie, how do we know that?
How do we know it's not up to him anymore?
It wasn't up to him last year.
Just because I think you see the direction.
Well, but I think you see the direction that the company's going in.
They're bringing in people that never before really had any business in their wrestling industry.
I mean, you have Tony Khan, a former entertainment agent who's now running the show over on the WWE side.
You have UFC swooping and buying WWE.
I mean, TKO Group owns both of them.
I mean, they're clearly going in a different direction where they're very much geared towards entertainment.
They're all about bringing in celebrities.
It's so much different than it used to be.
I personally am partial to the WWE.
Why would they choose to do it?
They're adult, educated lives.
That's their business.
Okay, let me bring in.
I don't think that.
Okay, I've got to wrap it up, guys.
I want to just get a quick reaction from the three we've not heard from on this.
Jonathan, is Vince McMahon done now with WWE in a controlling way?
Do you think that's it?
Well, he's done now.
There's no way they're going to bring him back.
There's way too much money involved.
They got the biggest deal in the history of the company, $5 million with Netflix, who's going to be around.
And that's kind of what I wanted this conversation to be: to move it forward, because I think as it's gone in TKO, when they bought it, part of the reason they looked at it said, What do we need to get rid of?
And we're not here to defend Vince.
None of us are here to defend Vince.
What we're here to defend is that there are good parts of the business, there are good people that are in this business.
And when you do a wide swiping as just everything is negative, it's very, very short-sighted, especially when you look at the last 25 years and you see these really good people like Charlie and Vince and Maven sitting on here.
We've had really good lives.
We've all moved on from the WWE.
I've been at ESPN, I've been at PGA Tour, and I'm doing a lot of really good things just like they are.
So when I get called to sell out or there's this blanket thing, Piers, that it's just all negative, that's when I have a problem with it.
Vince is done.
Vince is not coming back, and we're all cool with that.
And he doesn't need to come back because they fixed a lot of the things that were issues during all of our times at the WWE.
Maven, do you agree with that?
100%.
Vince is definitely done.
I think the world's moved on.
It's a different time and it's a different generation than the one that Vince knew.
And I think there's just that we're in a place in society where people just aren't going to stand for even allegations and allegations that are backed with fact.
WWE's moving on.
Like Charlie said, they're setting attendance records, the stocks, the stock is up, and they are creating new stars.
And they're doing it without the man that started at all.
And like Coachman said, we've all moved on.
I don't even watch the product anymore.
I haven't watched wrestling and I don't know how long with no plans to.
Right.
Vince Russo, finally to you.
Do you feel that WWE has moved to a better place?
Is it basically a cleaner, better, less scandalous version of what it was under Vince McMahon?
Well, Ari Emmanuel would have to be the stupidest businessman on the face of the planet to still have any association with Vince McMahon.
And obviously, looking at his success and the success of his company, he's not.
So with Maven and Coach, 1,000%, Vince has nothing to do with the WWE today.
Guys, what a fascinating debate.
I've learned a lot.
It's been a heated, passionate debate on all sides.
I appreciate you juking it out together and true WWE fans.
If I could say something real quick, yes, Charlie, quickly.
I think I said Tony Khan was over at WWE.
Now, I meant Nick Kahn, the former entertainment agent, not Tony Khan, who actually runs the opposing AEW.
Not Tony.
Your clarification is benefited and will be included.
Thank you all very much for your time.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, Pierce.
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