Watching ESPN’s documentary on Vince McMahon’s infamous failed football league, This Was the XFL, struck me in a lot of ways. In part because it’s an excellent and slickly-produced film, but also because it amazed me how much McMahon reminds me of another billionaire who currently resides in the White House. With the unlikely revival of the XFL scheduled for next year it’s interesting to look back to the original project, not just for the crazy story of the league’s founding and crash, but how much McMahon and Trump resemble each other. Particularly, the hostile nature both shared toward the press of their respective fields. While it never mentions the President in any way, it somehow makes an amazing case for how much Donald Trump took from the mogul.
Donald Trump’s association with wrestling is no secret. He is, after all, the only President to be part of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Hall of Fame. Wrestlemania, the top wrestling super show of the year, was once held back-to-back in Trump Plaza (technically not, but WWE recognizes the venues as such and Trump had a hand in financing and marketing both), and he even featured at Wrestlemania 22, where a surrogate of his and Vince McMahon’s battled for the honor to see which billionaire shaved the other’s head. But most people don’t realize just how much wrestling, or sports entertainment as WWE prefers, DNA Trump possesses.
Specifically, how much Donald Trump resembles Vince, or at the very least, the Mr. McMahon character that he portrayed for the better part of three decades on his own WWE programming. A self-made billionaire always in fitted suits doing whatever he wants, including firing people gleefully while wallowing in his wealth and status and crushing those who dare speak against him.
At the original XFL’s announcement conference on February 3rd, 2000 McMahon unveiled the league (the helmet and ball at least) and its kickoff date. He gave an impassioned, if confusing, speech about how the NFL had become too safe and sanitized and weak, calling it the “No Fun League” and decrying, ‘Where’s my smash mouth football?’ Honestly, change the wording around a little, replace football with America and NFL with Obama, and you’ve probably got a fairly typical Trump speech now that I think about it.
But how he reacts to a reporter’s question defines Trumpian.
When a reporter asks if the XFL is McMahon’s attempt to go legit, in reference to professional wrestling’s scripted nature, Vince rolls his eyes and answers by sarcastically saying he hopes he’ll never be seen as “fucking legit.” It’s a subtle thing, but the aggression and dismissiveness so mirrors press conferences Trump holds. Think of all the finger wagging, demands to sit down, eyerolls and scrunchy faces that gets gif’d all over the internet in his nasty spouts with journalists not from Fox News or Breitbart that ask a question he doesn’t like. This Was the XFL has a montage of McMahon making similar gestures in interviews with reporters, hands waving and doing everything he can to diminish any criticism journalists levy towards his creation. One instance he voices hopes critics of the league will die before it does shows the strain between the two. The most amazing instance is an incredible interview with legendary hate-him-or-love-him sportscaster, Bob Costas.
While the XFL started with an explosion of incredible ratings, the league quickly fell off a cliff and never recovered. On top of that the early shows got a critical savaging. NBC and WWE decided to try and rebuild the bridges that McMahon burned with the traditional sports media. This resulted in Vince going on Costas’s SportsCenter on HBO in what was supposed to be a man calmly trying to resell his ailing product. It turned into a raw, emotionally-charged shouting match. McMahon throws out so many familiar Trumpisms in the tidbits the documentary shows, particularly about how Costas represented the ‘elites’ that looked down on the fresh faced ‘average joes’ that were apparently enjoying the XFL. To be fair, Costas himself comes off smug, as he often does, but he’s unfaltering as Vince rants and mocks him. The brief snippets in the documentary are great, but it’s worth finding the whole interview online to see how much ill-will is on display.
Those feelings still remain, too. A modern day Vince is interviewed and sneers recalling the interview. “He’s so diminutive,” he snarled talking about the smaller Costas. McMahon seems to relish in the fantasy of knocking out a Bob Costas that was a foot taller. It’s the same aggression and ill-feelings you feel seethe from Trump in any conversation with or about an interviewer not from one of his chosen news networks.
Diminutive would be a perfect fit for the Trump dictionary, too. Did I mention that Trump also tried to run a rival football league to the NFL that went down in flames? Probably worth mentioning.
The XFL burned out after one season. Despite an explosive start the momentum did not keep and as ratings and attendance plummeted sponsors pulled out and McMahon’s longtime friend and occasional business partner, then NBC President Dick Ebersol, abandoned the project and pulled the network out, effectively killing it.
Bruce Prichard, a longtime WWE producer and host of the popular Something to Wrestle podcast, did a companion episode to This Was the XFL. He fills in some of the behind-the-scenes parts of the story the documentary doesn’t cover, but also adds context to one aspect the film glosses over. McMahon didn’t shrug and quit when Ebersol said he was out like the movie leads you to believe. He defiantly shopped the league out to any other TV networks, willing to pour even more money into the failed venture to keep it going, if only to rub it in the face of those who lost faith in his project. He also recounts a bizarre story where Vince wanted to drive a Honda on the field and blow it up as retaliation for being one of the first sponsors to pull out.
There’s probably a lot of analogy and foreshadowing one can pull about Trump’s presidency from that, but I’ll leave that speculation to you.
I focus on the strained relationship with the press, but there’s so many similarities between the two it can be rather scary. Find any clips of mid-90s or early-00s WWE (then WWF) and watch Mr. McMahon to see eerie echoes of today. The unapologetic brashness, the funny faces and gestures ripe for internet memes, and the pleasure in cruelty against those who cross him. And like WWF at the time, the hatred of Mr. McMahon drove many to tune in week after week, and revel in that cathartic release of seeing him get smacked around. It’s the same kind of cycle we see now, of hating Trump for all he does and says, and then getting that much needed feel good rush when he see political pundits or late night hosts rip into him or those close to him fall from grace.
Of course, Mr. McMahon is just a character. Even if it’s the real life Vince McMahon with the volume turned all the way up that it’s still fictional. The football owner who ranted and raved at the traditional sports press is probably much closer to the real man, but even still it was all in the name of entertainment. All in the name of the show.
To Trump it is all a show, too. He’s so much like a wrestling character, because hell, he’s never lived anything other than his own wrestling styled drama. It speaks to how much we have become addicted to the need for entertainment that we get lost in his show, that somehow our President so closely resembles the biggest wrestling bad guy there’s ever been.
Except, unlike McMahon’s XFL, his show isn’t only on Thursdays and Sundays, it’s on all the time. And while football may be an important part of American culture what happened with the XFL and the repercussions of it stay firmly in the realm of that sport. Trump’s time in office will have a larger impact from trade deals, legislation and judgeships. The way Trump treats the press has more long reaching and lasting consequences than Vince McMahon’s spats with Bob Costas. As much as it feels like fiction, it’s not, and what happens in his show will produce far more than a fun, slickly-produced docudrama twenty years later.
The NFL took a lot from the XFL after it sank. The sky cam that simulates how video games showed the action, more time spent on the sidelines to let player’s personalities shine now. A lot of innovations of the failed league have been infused into the product to enhance it. Maybe there is something there to think about the future in a post-Trump America as well.
Although, who can say. I can’t say if the relaunched XFL will be a success or what other metaphors we can pull from our wrestler wannabe President. But I can say this, one thing I know for sure about all of this. Perhaps it’s the only thing I could possibly say about this McMahon/Trump connection with one hundred percent certainty.
Vince McMahon definitely has the better hair.
This narrative almost works except that one of the people consulted about the league is Jeff Pearlman. XFL CEO Oliver Luck has cited his book on The USFL and the mistakes they made. Specifically how Donald Trump’s influence helped lead to that league’s demise.