Part Two: Vince McMahon, History's Greatest Monster

Robert is joined again by Sean and Tom to continue to discuss Vince McMahon.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Robert Evans here and we'll get to the Vince McMahon
episodes in a second. I wanted to let you all
know that for the fourth year in a row, we
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the Bastards supporters have been helping to fund the Portland
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(00:24):
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please go fund me bTB Fundraiser for Portland Diaper Bank.
Help us raise the money that these people need to
get diapers to folks who need them desperately. All right, everybody,

(00:48):
welcome back to Behind the Bastards. We're gearing up for
a really intense match today. In one corner of the
room we have Sean Baby, the famous guy on the Internet,
and on the under court of By God, it's Tom
Rayman with a steel chair O the.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Cream the crop rising a top the cream Crop. I
don't know why I had to pick one of you
to be the Steelers.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Bring this energy, but let me get into it, grabbed
the bolls of your enemies and used him to power
the thrusters that take the Warriors rocket to the top
of the Bastards.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, that was great.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
This is behind the Bastards podcast that is inconsistently opened,
but I appreciate the edge that you both lent to this.
We Are We Are, We Are Coming in Hot and
Part two of the Vince McMahon series, the episode where
we finally talk about Vince McMahon. I hope you're all

(01:54):
now caught up all of our people who were not
coming in as wrestling fans, and I also hope that
our wrestling fans learn a thing or two in our
last episode before we diverted to talk about the von
eric family. I kind of left wrestling in the fifties
and sixties when the NWA and television had started to
turn it into a big business with seriously big money

(02:15):
for the first time. Now, today, pro wrestling salaries are
pretty pitiful. I think the average is like fifty two
thousand per year, which may sound good for you if
you're making like thirty five grand a year, but you
have to remember your job does not entail getting a
head injury every single night. So it's really you have
to cut some dollars off of that salary, which is

(02:38):
not wildly you know, crazy anyway.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, makes you this.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
You live on a bus, you'd pay eight grand a
month for painkillers and steroids. You get hitting out of
the chair seven times a day, and any tiny mistake
will get you fired.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, making making an average American middle class salary for
collecting TBIs like kids in the nineties collected hogs.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
And by the way, you have no retirement and retirement
absolutely whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, your retirement is dying at thirty seven.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, that's your pension. Is you're not gonna make it
to fifty. You're secure in the knowledge.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
That you're not.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I mean, one of the saddest moments in kind of
pro wrestling history is is my hero Rowdy Roddy Piper,
when he was like sixty or sixty one, gave an
interview where he was like, look like, I'm out of cash,
you know, between the medical bills and everything, Like, I
don't have you know, any of the money left that
I made during all of those years that I was

(03:38):
one of the biggest stars in wrestling. You know, I'm Canadian,
I have a pension, but it doesn't kick in until
I'm sixty five, and I'm not going to make it
to sixty five. Like it's a bleak, bleak interview to watch. Yeah, Anyway,
that's the way things are now. Back in the day,
in this kind of period where we're having the first
real big height of wrestling and alevision kind of coming together,

(04:02):
wrestlers were paid reasonably well. Now they're destroying their bodies
probably at a faster rate. Right, we know less for
one thing, Like we didn't know what we know now
about steroids, so it was kind of impossible to do
them without destroying your heart very rapidly. Nowadays you can't, like,
you know, all these like celebrities who are on steroids
for movies and stuff aren't doing the same thing to

(04:23):
their bodies that like the Vaughan Erik kids work, Which
is not to say you should do steroids listeners, it's
just it's it's less toxic.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Now are going to steroids do them today? Not in
nineteen fifty eight.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yes, don't do steroids and yeah, yeah, and also you.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Know, but Jose Canseco's book juice. He's got some tips
travel to the future. Think his book Travel to the
Future Your Steroids.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
When you do enough steroids, you visit the future. But
in those days and kind of this first big wave
in the sixties, most pros were compensated pretty well. That
is to say that we're making what people at the
time would have considered pretty good money. This is one
of the reasons why wrestling never unionized. We'll talk a
little bit later about another reason why it didn't unionize,

(05:14):
but kind of at the beginning of its rise to prominence,
a lot of guys would be like, well, we're making
great money, why do we need to unionize. The answer
to that is because Vince McMahon will inevitably come along
in your industry.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
When you said the other reason they didn't unionize him
like he's talking about Ncentman.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, absolutely, but that comes later, so he's on his way,
like fanos So.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Television caused wrestling to go mainstream, and TV execs during
the Golden Age of TV loved it because wrestling not
only did it get a lot of eyeballs, people are
always wanting to rotch wrestling. It's incredibly cheap to produce,
right you don't need a ton of blocking, you don't
need you know, special effects people. You don't need the
same kind of you know stars that you have to

(05:59):
have for a drama or something. You need a ring
in huge men who are willing to hurt themselves for money, right.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Its own like source of profit, like the ticket sales,
and yeah, yeah, and yeah sorry, I'm just saying you
can theoretically make money on a wrestling broadcast before even
gets on TV.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, and we're getting to that. That is what people
eventually figure it out. And one of the first people
to realize kind of how profitable television could be for
wrestling was Vincent James McMahon, the father of our Vince.
He was born on July sixth, nineteen fourteen, to a
sports promoter named Jess McMahon in West Harlem. Now, over time,

(06:36):
Vince we'll call him Vince Senior for the purpose of
these episodes, and we'll call r Vince Vince Junior otherwise
it's going to get way too complicated. Over time, Vince
Senior's father and older brother got really into boxing promotion,
and you know, Vince Senior eventually follows his dad as
a promoter in nineteen thirty one, his dad noticed that

(06:56):
pro wrestling seemed to be a growing concern. People are
really getting into the kind of thing a lot more.
So he decided to promote a match, and he wound
up thinking it might be a good business. For the
next fifteen years, Vince McMahon Senior's father worked in both
boxing and wrestling, booking matches all throughout the Greater New
York area. He expanded his business to DC and sent

(07:16):
his son to run his office there. Vincent Senior was
on a swell path until you know, World War Two happened,
that whole shebang, and he had to go overseas for
a couple of years in the military. It was during
this period that he met up with a young woman
named Vicky Hanner. By nineteen forty three, Vicky was pregnant
with his child. This is going to be our Vince McMahon.

(07:38):
Vicky was married to another guy at the time, and
while they did file for divorce before she got pregnant,
or while he filed a divorce petition against her before
she got pregnant, she didn't like do anything with it,
and so the divorce didn't go through until nineteen forty seven,
she and Vincent Senior, while kind of in a big
amous relationship, moved to New York, where they had their

(08:00):
first son, Roderick James McMahon, who is Vince McMahon's older brother,
out of wedlock on October twelfth. The couple were married
in nineteen forty four, while Vicki is again still legally
married to her first husband, which means that Vincent might
technically qualify as a literal bastard, although the timing here
is a little fuzzy. In August of night. Huh, how

(08:23):
often does that happen? Very rarely, most of our bastards.
They're born within the bounds of holy matrimony.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Really, okay? Nice born into ethics is well? Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
So, in August of nineteen forty five, Vincent Senior was
honorably discharged and a few days later their second son,
Vincent Kennedy McMahon. That's our Vince McMahon, was born in
North Carolina. I'm sorry the Vince McMahon's here, It is
a little complex at this point.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
I don't buy it.

Speaker 4 (08:53):
They found him in the forest.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
They pulled him out of a bush. Yeah, yeah, he
was a He was in a pod. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, he's in a tuber with like, I don't know
the guy who owns the Knicks currently pull them both
up at the same time. So Vince McMahon are Vince McMahon.
Vince Junior was baptized in a local Catholic church, which
Riseman notes would be the only real influence that Vincent
Senior had on his son for more than a decade.
Right because his family's Catholic. He makes sure the kid

(09:25):
gets baptized in a Catholic church. And then he and
Vicky split the fuck up and we don't really know why,
but Vicky has a lot of husbands, so this is
like not a not an uncommon thing for her to
like get married to a guy and then for them
to split up for a while.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
Given given what we know happens in the future, it's
we could blame this on Vince McMahon, Yes, and I.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Think it is generally fair to blame the child and
incidents of divorce. I think we can all usually yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's the official stance of this podcast. So he gets
together after Vincent Senior leaves with a guy named Leo
Lupton Junior. Leo is a high school dropout and an
electrician who had already abandoned one family before he got

(10:12):
married to this family in nineteen Again, these are honestly
these are my people, right, this is this is the American,
the Heartland.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yes, classic American.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
Listen to the Allman Brothers always leaving his family in
the rear view Marriaga.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yes, that's his hobby, is leaving families. It's an rd
form for some abandoning his family. Good stuff.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
So he abandons his first family in nineteen forty, and
it's it's very funny. So before he meets Vicky, he
abandons this first family, a wife and a daughter, and
he gets like charged and convicted for this and his
sentence for abandoning his family, he is sentenced to quote
two years on the roads.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
What does that mean? You're exiled from the cities. I
didn't know.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
My guess is like, realistically, probably some sort of like
hard labor on the highway system. But that that is
a Cormack McCarthy ass sounding just.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Like and his bindle. Two years in the roads. God,
the forties were funny.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
I mean, I guess some unfunny stuff happened, but it
was mostly a laugh.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
So this would be the pillow in the sky, shall
be a blanket sentenced to hobo.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Honestly, we ought to be doing that now, like when
we had the big financial crash in two thousand and eight.
All those bankers. You gotta be a hobo. Now you
gotta go wander with a bendle no more than two
nights in the same city. God, what a cool sounding punishment.
So he finishes his time on the roads and gets

(11:55):
together with Vicki after she breaks up with Vincent Senior.
They get married in nineteen forty seven. This is her
third marriage in six years, which is honestly pretty impressive.
For now, those are some numbers. I'll give it to her.
So Vince McMahon are Vince McMahon. Vince Junior is a
professional liar and a fabulous In another era he would

(12:17):
have been a Carnival barker. And this is a problem
for us because he's been pretty good over the years
at doing his own PR.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
In this era, he's a party. He is a Carnival marker. Yes,
he's the most Carney son of a bis. He does
have strong Carnie energy. He's been doing his own pr
for quite a while and he's given a couple of
remarkable interviews where he goes into honestly startling detail about
his father and his own childhood, although you can't ever

(12:47):
trust anything he says entirely, like, you have to go
over this kind of stuff because number one, even if
he's lying, it's fascinating that he would say some of
these things. But you always take it with a grain
of salt. So one of the two really good, good
interviews we have where he talks about his early life
is a feature with New York Magazine titled Beyond Fake
and written by veteran journalist Nancy Joe Sales. The other

(13:10):
is an interview in Playboy Magazine with an unnamed reporter
who sounds like the kind of dude you'd expect to
find wrestling interviewing wrestling promoters for Playboy magazine, And unfortunately,
the Playboy interview was the one where he gives us
the most detail about his childhood. It is worth noting
that this interview was conducted as part of a promotional
campaign Vince was doing for the XFL, which was supposed

(13:31):
to be an ultra violent football league with no rules
and wound up collapsing inside of a year because all
of the athletes were hoping to get hired by the NFL,
and none of them wanted to suffer life altering energies
injuries in the XFL. So Vince is very much in
macho mode while he's doing this piece. You know, he's
trying to sell himself in order to sell the XFL.

(13:52):
You know, as a result. For example, he starts this
interview by talking about how he doesn't feel pain, which
is why he's so good at taking hits in the ring.
Later in the interview, he calls his stepfather, Leo Lupton,
a real asshole who quote enjoyed kicking people around. Playboy
asks him, your stepfather beat you, and Vince nods yes.
Quote It's unfortunate that he died before I could kill him.

(14:14):
I would have enjoyed that, not that he didn't have
some redeeming qualities. He was an athlete, great at any sport,
which I admired, and I remember watching the Jackie Gleason
Show with him. We used to laugh together at Jackie Gleason.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Jesus.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
I like the idea of going through masturbating to a
magazine and getting to the story and being like, hm,
it only makes it hotter.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
For me, I'm being honest.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
You gradually stop masturbating as you're reading.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
After a solid hour with the restart, after a solid
hour with this ball draining cum mag I was happy
to see Vince McMahon's face.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Let me know I could rehydrate a very alluring story,
mister McMahon, Thank you.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
So this interview, say it's slower.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
Everyone gripping their dick really appreciates it.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
So one of the great things about this, like that's
an objectively insane thing to say, Like it's unfortunate he
died before I could kill him, but at least we
used to listen to laugh at Jackie Gleason together, Like
that's sh right, that's a crazy thing to tell.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Playboy.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot there, and the
interview like, honestly low key. The interviewer here is also
a bastard because after he says we used to laugh
together at Jackie Gleason, the Playboy journalist says Lupton was
an electrician. He hit you with his tools, didn't he
a pipe wrench?

Speaker 2 (15:41):
What jesus what Vince?

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Vince says, sure, sure, and then the Playboy guy says
hit your brother too, and Vince says, God, no, I
was the only one of the kids who would speak up,
and that's what provoked the attacks. You would think that
after being on the receiving end of numerous attacks, I
would wise up, but I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
I refuse to.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
I felt I should say something, even though I knew
what the result would be. And that's like, you know again,
obviously he's he's he's in part doing this to like
mythologize like this, I'm like, this is like in context,
he starts with being like, I'm tough, I don't feel pain.
I learned how to not feel pain because my dad
beat me. He beat me because I wouldn't stop mouthing off, right,

(16:26):
like this is both possibly parts of this are I'm
sure parts of this are true. And also he's telling
you this because he thinks it makes him look cool.
Which is this like just an undeniable aspect of this
Playboy interview And.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Then his story is just getting completely poisoned by this
interviewer who in this interviewer, it's a piece of shit.
You don't want to say no to this, but.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Maybe he hits you with a ridge, right, So Vince
claims the physical abuse started when he was six, and
continued for the next half decade or so at least.
When the playboy guy tells him, that's an awful way
to learn how a man behaves, Vince gives this line,
I learned how not to be. One thing I loathe
is a man who will strike a woman. There's never
an excuse for that. Now hold on to that for

(17:10):
a moment, folks, because we'll be talking about this a
little later.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh boy.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah. Leo went on to have a son later in life.
Leo Lupton his stepdad, and this son when interviewered by
I believe it was Josie Riiseman who interviewed his son,
who is like Vincent R. Vincent's half brother, this guy says,
I didn't experience any abuse like our dad, you know,
didn't hit me. Obviously, that doesn't mean Vince isn't telling

(17:36):
the truth. This kind of thing happens all the time.
That said, like, it's also I'm trying both not to
deny because it's entirely possible that Vince and in fact
probably pretty likely that he received something we would consider
physical child abuse, and also every word, nearly every word
out of Vince McMahon's mouth is a lie and has
been for like fifty years. This is a complicated thing

(17:59):
that in your head ethically, but I think both of
those things need to be acknowledged.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
I don't doubt that this was a difficult period in
his childhood. He certainly reports that. And Leo Lupton is
a bit of a dirt bag. So again, you know,
all of this, all of these things can be true.
And while his biological dad was While this was all
going on, his biological dad, Vincent Senior was reaping the
sweet rewards of abandoning both of his children to focus

(18:26):
on his wrestling career. When Jess McMahon R, Vince's grandfather
died in nineteen fifty four, Vincent Senior took over what
had become a sizable family business, one of the larger
wrestling concerns in the United States. Syndicate's probably a better
thing to call it. So Vincent Senior was known to
his wrestlers as a nice guy and a world of

(18:47):
promoters that were mostly unhinged psychopaths. Right, most wrestling promoters,
most syndicate leaders are like you know, von Eric, Right,
they are like just a slight step away from just
being a straight up gang boss and some of them
are literally gang bosses. Yeah, the these people are like

(19:08):
wild men. And by the way, Vincent Senior does work
pretty closely with Toots. Vincent Senior is generally known as
like he's a relatively honest one. He's reasonably good to
work for. Now, this is what a lot of his
wrestlers will say. I'm not sure if that's actually true
or if he was just really good at being likable
while he fucked people over, and he just kind of

(19:29):
was able to differentiate differentiate himself from the other leaders
because he dressed better and he was kind of nicer
to his employees to their faces. There's some interviews that
make me suspect that his reputation for being a decent
guy was largely the result of kind of his marketing.
One of these is a quote from Jesse the Body
Ventura quote. You could be angry at Vince Senior for

(19:51):
a payoff. You'd walk in, you'd voice your complaint, you'd
walk out, and you'd feel great, and yet you got
no more money when he was sticking it to you.
He always made you feel good while he was doing it.
And Jesse the Body Venture is somebody we're going to
be hearing from a little bit later as well. Fascinating man. So,
Vince Senior was a ruthless businessman, but he was also

(20:12):
a team player. When the Justice Department cracked down on
the NWA for being an illegal cartel and threatening independent promoters,
Vincent Senior tampered with a witness, threatening one of his
wrestlers to change their testimony before a deposition. He's not
in the WA, but he's an affiliate. And when they
come to him being like, hey, one of your guys
is gonna, you know, basically testify to the government that

(20:35):
we're operating as an illegal cartel in order to keep
the prices low for you know, paying our wrestlers, Vince
sits down with this guy and he's like, hey, man,
this is the end of your career if you if
you do this shit. You know, he's he's that guy.
He is willing to go to bat for his industry,
for the owners in his industry.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Good for him, Good for him? Yeah, maybe or maybe
I'm confused. This might be terribly ethical.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
So as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem
like little kid Vince was particularly into wrestling during the
years when he didn't know his biological father. In fairness,
he seems to have had a lot on his mind
besides the fact that his stepdad was a violent guy.
In that Playboy interview, he mentions having been the victim
of some kind of sex abuse as a child. The

(21:24):
interviewer asks him for details, and this is this journalist
is the worst person to interview somebody about potentially being
victim of a sex crime. Vince's first response when the
interviewer asked for details is actually pretty reasonable. He says,
that's not anything I would like to embellish just because
it was weird. The interviewer kind of assumes he's talking

(21:46):
about being sexually abused by a male adult, and Vincent
tells him, no, it was not from a man. And
then the Playboy interviewer asks, it's well known that you're
estranged from your mother. Have we found the reason now
why I might rather die than ask that question of
anyone without an extremely good reason?

Speaker 2 (22:07):
But are you fishing for trauma? Dude?

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Like that is part of me, and I maybe I'm
just kind of being hopeful part of me wonders if,
like maybe he and Vince cleared some stuff ahead of
time and planting Vince is again a k fabe guy,
right like he is, he does this so.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Maybe because the it is weird.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
It's wild to ask a guy that question and not
get fucking cold cocked. Yes, like, but maybe they were.
I don't know, I like, I really don't know.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Uh So anyway, Vince answers and says, you know, after
this guy says it's well, you know, you're strange from
your mom, and we found basically insinuating did your mom
sexually like abuse you, Vince asks, answers. I'd say that's
pretty close. So for quite a while everyone took that
as like Vince confirming that his mom sexually abused him.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
So that's what he wants us to believe.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's hard to interpret that any other way.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
Yeah, yeah, every Evince's man, I mean, it's just what
you were saying earlier. Every interview I've ever seen Evince
seems like it's at least partially a work exactly regardless
of what he's talking about, it always seems like he's
performing to an extent. So it's really hard to it's
it is.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
It is extremely hard to tell with Vince McMahon because
he's Vince McMahon.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Now, she did some weird sex stuff with my mom.
Watched thel.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
And it's like, you know, obviously some people will bring up, well,
he took care of his mom. He like gave her
money and stuff for the rest of her life, which
doesn't necessarily mean she didn't sexually abuse him, right, Like family,
this all, this stuff's all complicated. Around the same time
as this playboy interview, I think a little bit afterwards
he winds up, definitely afterwards. He winds up on The
Howard Stern Show to promote a pay per view wrestling

(23:50):
event and also to promote the XFL. Howard Stern is
Howard Stern if you're not aware. So of course he
brings up these allegations of like child molestations, saying he'd
read that Vince had been molested by his mother. Now,
I'm going to read a quote from Jody Risman's book
Ring Master, relating the rest of that conversation. I didn't
say that, Vince countered in a tone that suggested a

(24:12):
rising shield. That was the inference. Stern's co host, Robin
Quivers asked, what did she do? Vince didn't answer. Stern posited,
I don't know, but whatever it was, it was not good.
Vince blurted out and obviously forced laughed. Vince, you get
all choked up when you talk about it, right, Stern asked,
I'd rather not talk about that stuff. Vince replied, Quivers,

(24:32):
your mother is around, and you don't talk to her. Vince,
not a lot. Stern, Boy, did she blow it? Because man,
you're a billionaire. Does she get any money from the WWF,
Quivers asked, referring to WWE by its then current name.
Stern interrupted the question to add, I just realized when
I said did she blow it? That's the question. Everyone
in the studios yelled out a mock disapproving oh at

(24:53):
the host's stick joke. Well, everyone other than Vince. Vince,
I apologize. Stern said, that would be traumatic, that would
be trim ma. Vince said, right now, that is again
fucking insane. What that is like, Howard Stern, you don't
you don't make a blow job joke about somebody's being

(25:14):
sexually abused when they were like six.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
You just you don't do that. That's that's really bad. Howard.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, Like, I don't know what to say about that.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
I mean, I'm in the unusual position of feeling bad
for Vince.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
I do kind of feel bad for Vince there. Yeah,
that's brutal.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
That is that is that's out of its fucking mind.
This is that is that happened?

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, it's something else. So in that Playboy article, Vince
went into what I would describe as a baffling degree
of detail about his early life, just outside of the
stuff we've already talked about. At one point, the interviewer
asks him when he lost his virgin which is at
least kind of a normal Playboy question, although it's weird
to ask that after he has talked about being sexually

(26:07):
assaulted as a child. Yeah, and it's I kind of
get the feeling that both men do not consider being
molested to be the same as losing your virginity, which
actually kind of I mean, I think you could argue
makes a degree of sense because they're talking about having
a consensual sexual experience.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, that makes it. That makes sense the spirit of
the question, I would not count it, right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Anyway, his response here is still one of the most
baffling things I have ever seen a man admit to
in a public forum. And this is him again talking
about losing his virginity. That was at a very young age.
I remember, probably in the first grade, being invited to
a matine film with my stepbrother and his girlfriends, and
I remember them playing with me, playing with my penis
and giggling. I thought that was pretty cool. That was

(26:54):
my initiation into sex. At that age. You don't necessarily
achieve an erection, but it was cool. And around the
same there was a girl my age who was in essence,
my cousin. Later in life, she actually wound up marrying
that asshole, Leo Lupton, my stepfather, a boy. This sounds
like tobacco road anyway. I remember the two of us
being so curious about each other's bodies and not knowing
what the hell to do. We would go into the

(27:14):
woods and get naked together. It felt good, and for
some reason I wanted to put crushed leaves into her.
Don't know why, but I remember that. I don't remember
the first time I had intercourse, believe it or not. Now,
what if you're counting leaf stuff. If we're counting leave.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Stuff, then cunning leaves stuff. I guess first grade it's
one of those things.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Look, I actually can definitely say I have had friends stop.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
To me about or stuff like a scarecrow.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
I don't think it's uncommon for little kids to like
play around with other little kids sometimes, and that's sometimes
like that. But sure, talking about it in this way
is nuts. That this I feel confident that's saying.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
If one of them says, I want to stuff leafs
inside you, now you've got a problem. Now this is
outside Yeah, the acceptable level of like discovery and weirdness
that all humans go through.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, yeah, this is and I think again, the weirdest
part is talking about it in the context of losing
your virginity to Playboy, because honestly, both of those stories
one is like you're with your step brother and they
like play with your penis for some reason, and one
is you're playing with another little kid and like stuff
like leaves in their underwear. Neither of those is sex.

(28:31):
I don't think, like neither of those is consensual sex.
Neither of those is even intercourse. Like, I don't know,
I don't know why you bring that up at all
in this context.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
I guess like Vince's weird brain, he was just like,
there's there's okay. It's like in his weird brain he
might have thought like, oh, well, I mean that the
first time that I, you know, went, my penis flicked around.
But they also like there's it reminds me of like
the kind of weird boasting kids do when they're just

(29:01):
hitting puber. It's like, oh, yeah I had like I
had sex in second grade or yeah, it's all bullshit.
So it's like there's a weird component of that to
it as well, like he's trying to seem cool by
saying he had sex as young as possible.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah, these are like, these are both like stories. I
don't know, if you were a major figure and decided
to write your autobiography, you might if it was a
particularly honest autobiography, tell a story like that when talking
about your early childhood, like saying it in like I
don't know, a fucking Playboy interview as sort of this

(29:38):
is how I lost my virginity? Is is bizarre?

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Explain away like a leaf fetish or some like really
strange thing. You got caught doing it? You're like, well.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
You got caught fucking a tree. Yeah, here's why. Yeah,
they caught me naked in a compost bin. But let
me explain why my stepdad he got sentence to two
years on the room. He sucked a lot of trees.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
Oh wait, I didn't mean that paper is basically trees.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, I think it's fair to the other things.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
He's doing this interview to promote his weird arena football.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
To promote the XFL.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
He talks about stuffing leaves and another child's underwear.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
The XFL really was like this violent, insecure, like man's
man version of football. And here he is telling these
these fucking intimate like dark sexual.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Stories, prittly intimate stories, these stories that like, these are
the kinds of experiences that you do your best to
like not I don't know, it seems these are these
are the kind of experiences and like if you have,
I'm gonna guess there's I mean, just statistically some of
the people listening will have similar experiences. Nothing sure wrong

(30:55):
with this, but like, these are the kind of things
you would you know, a close friend when you're know
bearing your soul some night, you know, or somebody that
you're in a romantic relationship with when you've you've built
up a degree of trust, right, Playboy Magazine, like fucking
Gitmo couldn't get me out of this out anything for
a public forum.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
This story is probably on the same page as a
grotesquely sexual cartoon or in ad.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
For camel cigarettes. Right, this is funny.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
It's to a picture of Joe Cammell in a fucking
leather jacket.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, it's it's something the fuck else is for what
it is for? Goddamn sure it is something the fuck else.
And you know what else is something else? Guys, these
product and services, these products and services.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
You beat me to it.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, Yeah, there's nothing adds love more than being featured
right after talking about Vince McMahon's bizarre admissions of sexual
abuse in Playboy magazine. So here buy some shit. Ah,
we're back boy. That's going to make life easier for

(32:07):
the ad sales team. So, as a rule, when Vince
talks about his childhood, his early memori's focus around his stepfather, Leo.
Even his only young memory of his biological father involves
Leo Vincent Senior when Vince was a little kid, only
visited him once, and Vince Junior's memory of the event
was just that he was scared of Leo. Right, He

(32:29):
was scared of how to react in front of his
biological father because he was worried about how Leo would
react again if Leo's an abusive guy makes total sense.
Outside of this moment, Vince was completely separate from his
his biological father and from the McMahon family until the
age of twelve. One of his childhood friends recalls that
he and his brother did not even know how to

(32:50):
pronounce the name McMahon properly. Now, they didn't have a
lot of money when they were, you know.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Living the McMahon.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
I think he did, like I think it was mcm
or something like that is how he said it. Yeah, Now,
they didn't have a lot of money, you know, in
the time when he was living as Vinnie Lupton and
Vince and his family kind of lived in a bad
part of town. There were hints of normalcy in their life, though.
Vicky volunteered with the local boy Scout troupe that Vince

(33:18):
was in and acted in community theater productions. Unfortunately, one
of these was a nineteen fifty three production of On
Stage America, described by the local paper as a minstrel
show with a modern patriotic twist. Vince Junior's mother was
in the Picaninny chorus. Josie Riiseman writes that this was
presumably in blackface, and I suspect she is correct there.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah to the listeners, everyone who knows what that word
means is dead.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
But that's a really racist Yeah, don't use it.

Speaker 4 (33:48):
There's no other assumption you can make based on that word.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yes, yeah, if you see that word written somewhere, it's like,
if you see that word written somewhere, whoever wrote it
all most certainly has a Confederate flag in their home.

Speaker 4 (34:03):
It is referencing the most racist thing you've ever seen
if you see it somewhere.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Bad stuff.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
So that said, really common stuff for the day, Right,
this is not like fringe shit in North Carolina in
the period of time in which she's acting in this,
But doesn't make it right. I'm just you know, trying
to add context. He grows up in a pretty racist
place in time. Vincent's elementary school was segregated further back
up that point, and his sixth grade class had just

(34:31):
thirty two students. In an interview with Playboy, he describes
himself and his friends as the roughest kids in town,
constantly getting into fights and scrapes. He claims that he
was totally unruly, that he refused to go to school
and broke the law constantly without ever getting caught.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
That's what they called me.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
He's talking about himself when he's like ten. In one interview,
In one interview, he let out a potentially revealing statement
saying that he felt as a kid that he wasn't
as bright as the other kids, and so he defaulted
to physicality as a result. That sounds like it might

(35:10):
be like an honest admission of insecurity. But there's reason
to doubt all of this, Riiseman notes quote. However, the
picture that emerges from those who knew him is surprisingly
of a kind kid who made friends with ease. He was,
from what I can remember, fairly popular, and he was
liked by the girls as well as the boys. Recalls
classmate Shelle Davis, who became the boy's best friend in town.
Most everyone knew him liked him, that sort of thing.

(35:33):
Vinnie was not a loud or abrasive child. Rod's best
friend from the period, James Fletcher says that despite encountering
Vinnie at some length, the younger kid didn't make a
big impression. That said, as Davis puts at, Vinnie was
more extroverted than introverted, not a show off, but very sociable,
very friendly, very outgoing to his peers. So again, he
kind of as a preteen and as a teen he

(35:53):
kind of portrays himself as this like violent, unhinged badass.
But everyone knew him was like he was really nice. Yeah,
got along with everybody.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah yeah. It's every stage of his life that he's.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Telling a story about to Playboy sounds at least partially
made up.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Uh huh, and it is badass. Maybe he might.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
These people grew up so scared of little Vinnie that
they're like, Dude, if Playboy interviews me, I'm gonna tell
him that he was there.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
A fucking ten year old in town. That'll cut your
goddamn neck. It was like, if.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Thirty years from now someone comes up and starts asking
you questions about my personality at this point in time,
you better tell him I was sweet.

Speaker 4 (36:34):
Little Vinny's out here smashing people's knuckles with a hammer.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
So when he's around twelve, his stepdad moves Vincent Senior,
Vinnie Lupton, and the family to Craven County. Now, by
this point, Vincent Senior's business had expanded to control much
of the wrestling in the Northeastern United States. He was
one of the biggest promoters in the country, regularly booking
sold out events in Madison Square Garden. Vincent Junior had

(36:59):
no idea of any of this until Vincent Senior's new wife, Juanita,
pushed him to reconnect with his first biological children. So
basically his I don't know what technically she would be
to him. I guess technically nothing, but like his biological
dad's wife, it's you know, when his kids are like
twelve and thirteen years his first biological kids are twelve

(37:20):
and thirteen, is like, hey, you should like talk to them,
like you should have some sort of relationship with you,
which is a very nice gesture, to be honest, Like,
that's very sweet of her. So the two finally meet
when Vincent is twelve years old. He later told New
York Magazine, I saw my dad, and I just immediately
fell in love with him. He saw his father as

(37:42):
big and handsome, and while he says they knew that
making up for lost time wasn't possible, both of them
put a lot of effort into developing a belated relationship together,
and the easiest thing for them to bond over was wrestling. Quote,
he would take me to shows that the old U
Line Arena in Washington, and I remember the crowd response
in those larger than life individuals. The passion was just

(38:03):
so strong. I just knew that I wanted to do
that as soon as I saw it.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
This is the.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Stuff that Vincent has been most consistent about over his childhood,
that he just kind of is immediately enthralled by his father,
is kind of obsessed with him. And there's also people
who are not Vince kind of say this, and Vincent
Senior's family, like his kids are like, you know, we
were friendly to him. We thought it was good that
dad was getting a relationship with him. He was a

(38:30):
little odd and kind of everyone says that about Vince
around his bio dad, that he's he's kind of peculiar.
And for the record, Vince Senior is going to find
his son's obsession with him and with wrestling to be
a little strange and not strange and like it's weird
that a kid would want to connect with his bio dad,

(38:51):
but he is super focused on wrestling in particular.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Imagine being Vinnie at this time. Though it is weird,
like that's a lot for a kid to deal with.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Got a history of abandoning your families, and then here
comes your kid's biological dad and he's like a billionaire
with his own wrestling company. You're like, that's that rage
is going to get internalized, that jealousy. That couldn't have
been good first yeah, first, a weird relationship.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
So Vincent immediately wanted to be a wrestler and his
his bio dad, Vincent Senior tries to put to quash
this right like, he's very from the beginning, like, no, man,
you do not want to be a wrestler. He initially tried.
He warns him that like wrestling has wild ups and downs,
the market's not reliable. You know, sometimes I'm doing well,

(39:39):
but sometimes I'm barely floating by. You would do a
lot better. You'll be a lot happier if you just
find a safe government job that gives you a pension.
But Vince listened to that about as well as you
would expect a child being told that delivering male is
a better future than wearing spandex and punching dudes dressed
as shakes would listen. Right, He's he's like, having a

(40:01):
pensions the smart thing, and he's like, but I want
to fight people for a living.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
You make that choice ten out of ten times.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Absolutely, absolutely not surprising as a kid that he is
so focused on paper, I want to drop kick someone.
So in the summer of nineteen fifty nine, when Vince
was fourteen, he met the man who would become his
childhood hero, a wrestler named doctor Jerry Graham. Vince recalled

(40:27):
he had peroxided hair and wore her red riverboat gambler
type shirt. He had a nineteen fifty nine blood red
Cadillac convertible Washington, DC. That summer of fifty nine, I'd
sneak out of my dad's office and go riding around
town with a good doctor and oh my god, he
would light cigars with one hundred dollars bills, run red lights,
curse anybody he wanted to curse. And I just thought
he was the coolest guy. He was a wild man.

(40:49):
He would do anything he wanted to do. Robert, this
guy is cool. This guy is in fact kind of cool.
This guy's sophie, would you have a a picture of
this guy? But yeah, he is doctor doctor Graham. Pretty
cool guy. Now, the story about him lighting one hundred
dollars bills on fire is one you'll find in every

(41:11):
recollection Vince has of his childhood. You know, as with
everything Vince says, it may or may not be true,
given things that we know for certain about doctor Cram,
though I'm gonna say that's probably true.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
That's kind of a bargain to get like everyone who
meets you to tell that story, like your whole life.
It's so one hundred dollars to get everyone to think, yeah,
that's that's a deal. I think people should start doing it.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
So I think it's worth noting that Jerry Graham was
an incredible dude in his own right.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
During World War Two.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
He light about his age to enlist in the eighty
second Airborne and fight Nazis as a paratrooper when he's
like fifteen years old something like that, maybe sixty.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Like he's he is too young to be doing that,
but he does it.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Blood red catillect. If you know much about the eighty
second airbor looking the eighty second Airborne like a unit
is yeah, he looks.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Cool as hell, just astounding.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
And doctor Jerry Graham exits World War Two basically a
pile of muscles and trauma. So much mass, there's so
much he is a huge dude. He has He has
the body type of like a fucking beach ball made
of steel, don't I don't know how else to describe it.

(42:31):
Very you wouldn't want to get into a fight with
this fella, Like, you're not not going to I don't
even know, yeah exactly, Like he's just stout. Yeah, his
body type is a fucking Hesco barricade. Like. So he
leaves the war traumatized as all hell. And a lot
of the behavior Vins witnessed was not just a result

(42:52):
of him being a cool dude, but a result of
chronic alcoholism, which was itself self medication for lifelong depression. Now,
the highlight, by his own admission, of doctor Graham's career
occurred two years before he met Vince in nineteen fifty seven,
when he was scheduled for a big exhibition match in
Madison Square Garden. And this is maybe the greatest riot

(43:14):
in pro wrestling history. Have you guys heard this story,
the fifty seven riot at Madison Square Garden?

Speaker 2 (43:19):
No big? Oh man, Oh you're gonna love this one. Details.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
So doctor Graham is a heel, right, I mean, look
at that guy. That's a fucking heel. Yeah, he's cool,
because he's fucking cool as hell. Now, actually we are
about to talk about some racism, but you know whatever.
So Graham is paired up in a double match alongside
his fellow heel Dick the Bruiser, and against some Canadian
guy and his partner, who is a Puitter Rican wrestler

(43:47):
named Roca. The garden is packed with almost thirteen thousand fans.
Thousands more are turned away at the door. The crowd
gets amped up, and you have to assume they're also
drunker than any group of people today could possibly get.
In an interview that he gave later in life, doctor
Graham said this about how the night went from a
normal wrestling match to something decidedly less k fabe. He

(44:10):
claimed he could smell the riot coming.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
I knew the timing was right. The Puerto Rican people
had never seen blood on Roca, and I hit him
in the eye, split his eye, and they went insane.
So this was not something that they had planned before him,
like busting that guy's eye open was not planned. And
this makes Roca very angry, understandably, and they start fighting

(44:32):
for real and actually beating the shit out of each
other for real now. The match had been meant to
end in two straight falls, but Graham charged Roca when
he wasn't supposed to because Roka had been hitting him,
and Roka did that because he'd split his eye. Anyway,
the fight between them can keeps going on like it
doesn't end when it's supposed to, and there's a curfew

(44:53):
on wrestling matches in New York at this point at
eleven pm. But eleven PM rolls around and these guys
are still beating the absolute shit out of each other,
So the ref calls the game for the baby faces
for Roca and his partner, but this just makes the
crowd angrier. Graham and the Bruiser continue beating the piss
out of Roka, even though the match is well past
where it was supposed to have ended by this point.

(45:15):
In a write up for Life Magazine by Herbert Bream,
who was there, noted quote as the crowd roared, Roca
seized Graham and began bashing his head against the ring post.
This also produced real blood. Garden police tried to come
to Graham's aid, but they could not cope with the mastodons.
And I'm gonna show you a fucking picture of this
because it's one of the most insane examples of in

(45:37):
ring violence I've ever seen. This is him, This is
doctor Jerry Graham getting his head smashed in against the
steel like pillar of the fucking ring.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Sophie fantasm Man.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
He is bleeding a lot so, but these guys are
clearly in on it, like he's letting him bash his
headed in the ring.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Like I think there's a mix of that. Yeah, yeah,
it's a it's a little hard to tell. There's definitely
points at which like, this is not how they planned
it initially too, so it is like I was saying
the idea that, like, you.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
Know, when he busted his eye open, he lost his temper,
but then you know, they they're still you know, in
a wrestling rose.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
They're Yeah, it's hard to see. Yeah, it's like the
lines here are blurry, right.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
He's got from the inside of the turnbuckle.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
He's got his head against the ring and he's pushing
it and his hands are like not guarding his face
or not trying to get away. It's very much like
you'd expect a wrestling spot to go.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
But but also that next picture is he is bleeding quite.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
A lot leaking out in front of his face. In
the next picture.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
It's worth relating what Graham later said about that moment.
Of course, he retaliated, ran my head into the post,
and blood was flowing like water. An old time jubilee
right there in Madison Square Garden. So after Graham gets
his face bashed in Breams, coverage for Life magazine continues quote.
The crowd had been lively throwing paper cups into the ring,
but not abnormally demonstrative. Now, stimulated by what was probably

(47:03):
the first honest competition they had ever seen, some hundred
surged forth towards the ring. So Roka keeps beating Graham
while fans broke down chairs and gathered bottles, hucking some
at the wrestlers and using others to charge the wrestlers
and attack unfortunately for them. And this is mostly like
Rocca's fans who are like charging into the ring to
attack Graham and his partner Dick the Bruiser. Now unfortunately

(47:27):
for these random wrestling fans who are charging with pieces
of chairs and bottles. Dick the Bruiser, before being a
pro wrestler, had been a ligneman for the Green Bay Packers, Now,
I am sure somewhere there exists a kind of dude
you want to fight less than a linebacker turned pro wrestler,
But I don't know what that kind of dude might be.

(47:48):
Doctor Graham describes what came next. My partner, Dick the Bruiser,
was picking up and throwing Puerto Ricans outside the ring
like a farmer picking potatoes. Then New York's finest Antam
Moon events have brought in the cavalry to close the
fans down, And that Dolly was the biggest thing I
ever experienced in my career. I was found three thousand

(48:09):
dollars for inciting a riot, but it was the first
time they ever saw blood on the Latin Roca.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
So I don't remember that thing to say he was
throwing Print Ricans like potatoes. What a wild thing to say.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
I love how credulous he was too, like there when
in the first real brawl, this was no longer a that.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Is such a fifties moment. Ah, we're back.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
So the riot of fifty seven at Madison Square Garden
only ended because Rocca addressed his fans in Spanish and
begged them to stop. At the end of it, two
officers were injured, three hundreds were destroyed, and doctor Jerry
Graham's five hundred dollars sequined purple robe was stolen, which is.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
The real tragedy.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
Yeah, plus all those chairs, Now three hundred people will
go seatless.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Yeah that one.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
All those Puerto Ricans he threw like like a filthy
irishman picking potatoes.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
I want a photoshop of like the crocodile hunter at
the Twin Towers and doctor Jerry Graham's sequined purple robe.
That just says, never forget. That's what we're fighting, that's
what we're fighting for.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
I'm wearing one right now. So the riot caused.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Such shock among the great and good of Manhattan that
there were calls to ban wrestling in the entire state. Instead,
they just decided to ban kids under fourteen from attending
live shows, which held for twenty years. I only kids
under fourteen were particularly a.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Part of this.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
But were they hammered one set in the chairs. I
don't think they were. The hammered people charging that linebacker.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
Throwing them should fucking kids across the room.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
So anyway, Dick Bruiser, the guy who described what Dick
the Bruiser is doing as hucking Puerto Rican's like a
farmer throwing potatoes was the primary childhood role model for
teenage Vince McMahon outside of his biological dad. Now, for
his part, Vince Senior was concerned about this. Right. He

(50:29):
knows wrestlers, he knows doctor Graham, and he's like, boy,
my son probably shouldn't be hanging out with this guy.
So he attempted to restrict Vince Junior from hanging out
with doctor Graham. So Vince Junior developed a habit of
sneaking out whenever he was in town. You're sill to
do it, don't do this. So whenever Vince Junior's like

(50:51):
in DC to hang with his bio dad, he would
sneak out at night so he could party with a drunk,
traumatized racist giant, which probably he explains a lot. Vince
told New York Magazine that same summer, at a place
outside of Atlantic City, while my dad was away, I
talked my steps mom into peroxiding my hair, and of
course when my dad got back, he blew a stack.

(51:14):
That same summer, doctor Jerry Graham gave me my first
set of weights called HealthWays. I had the red shirt,
red pants, I also bought the red shoes. I think
my dad was probably a little afraid. Now, among other things,
Vince Defrey is my rib be dristed in red Now?
Among other things, Vince idolized Jerry's toughness and his willingness

(51:35):
to get into fistfights at literally no provocation. His own
father is not like Vince McMahon. And this we'll talk
about this later, because he does stuff in the ring
quite a bit. He's a legitimately jacked dude. Like he's
very muscular, and this is the ca I mean now
he's like ninety, but for most of his career he's
like a pretty shredded fellow. His dad, Vince Senior, is

(51:57):
not a particularly muscular guy. He's not an athlete. He
doesn't look like an athlete, which is nothing to get.
He's just like, he's very different from how Vince is
going to wind up looking. He's a hard nosed businessman,
but no one's going to particularly fear Vince Senior for
his ability to like beat people up. Vince Junior seems
to have desired to set himself apart from his biological

(52:18):
dad by developing the physical trappings.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Of being a badass.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
That is, big muscles, but since doing that is hard,
he also just opted to lie about having been a
badass as a kid to interviewers. Years later, when talking
about his teenaged years, he told Playboy quote Havelock, where
he lived, is right outside the Marine base at Cherry Point.
There was a place called the jet Drive in real
creative of the jet. Because of all the military jets

(52:42):
at the base on Friday and Saturday nights, it was
time to get it on with the Marines. It was
a challenge. Most of them were in great condition, but
they didn't know how to fight. I'm not saying there
were easy pickings. They got their testosterone going and they
were all liquored up. Some of them are real tough,
but me and my guys were street fighters.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Oh my god, the I liked.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
I like that he took the time to pause this
story that absolutely totally happened.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Yeah, to like dunk on the tribe in.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Theaters name, I used to go to a marine funded
kumite every weekend, but like I have some notes on
the name.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah, it's also funny that he's like, yeah, you know,
you know what everyone knows about marines that they don't
know how to fight.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Right, that's what they're famous for. The Marines. Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
When my brother came back from basic training, he spent
probably the better part of a year just pointing at
objects near people and being like I could kill you
with that ding. Yeah, it's just think they put it
in their head like fighting is the only thing in
your entire world and you need to kill everybody. And
I might say he's a great fighter, like you can
only teach someone so much in basic training, but I guarantee.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
He's a better Vince mcmixt Yeah, then, sixteen year old
Vince McMahon. Vince continues his absolutely not true claims. I mean,
maybe you've been through I'm sorry, I'm I mean maybe
you've been through basic training and you know how to
operate a bayonet. That's different from sticky in somebody's eye
or sitting a guy in the throat, which comes naturally

(54:09):
to a street fighter.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
And they can't both.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
They do not teach soldiers to be ruthless fighters. They
teach him to follow the Queensbury rules when they're out
there fighting hits.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Vince McMahon has never stuck his finger in somebody's eye, Like,
I just don't believe it, and they can't believe you're
not fighting fair. Sometimes suddenly they can't breathe in or
see and they realize, oh my god, am I in
for an ass kicking playboys?

Speaker 2 (54:34):
He's such a liar.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Playboy asks ever come close to killing one of them? McMahon,
I would like to think, not very close. That's not
what I wanted to do. You want to incapacitate the guy.
Once you get someone down, you don't want him getting
back up. You don't want him moving, so you make
sure he doesn't. It's not pretty, but it was challenging
and fun.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Can we corroborate this? Can we google?

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Hi?

Speaker 2 (54:55):
I was a marine and I got my ass kicked.

Speaker 4 (54:57):
By Vince mc when I was If a towny beat
the shit out of a bunch of Air Force Marine
dudes a drive in movie theater, that'll be in the newspaper.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
I will believe.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
And again, it's so easy to make a believable version
of the sly say they were air force guys. Nobody's
in a question that you were able to beat up
air Force dudes.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
I could take yeah, easy.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
So look, uh, Thankfully we do have a good journalist
who like looked into his life Josie Riseman, author of
the again excellent book Ring Master, and her research pretty comprehensive. Here.
It is true that locals of Half a Lock often
taunted and sometimes fought marines, which is a time honored
tradition of people who are drunk in towns near military bases,

(55:44):
right soldiers get into all sorts of fights. But Josie's
investigation turned churned up numerous claims by locals that Vince
McMahon was never a part of any of this.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
This is yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Doug Franks, who went to High School of Events, admitted
to getting into fights with marines on a k but
said Vince was simply too young to participate. From Ringmaster,
Vince was not a part of it. But he grouped
up with a bunch of wannabes and we just considered
him a little punk at the time. That's the best
way I know to describe him. I asked if Vince
in his wannabe's ever gotten any fight or if they
just hung around. They were hanging around in their own group,

(56:16):
trying to be tough guys. Frank's recalls, the only time
I knew we ever got into anything was when he
broke his hand or his wrist in a fight with
a boy named Harvey Elms. Neither Frank's nor mcles recalls
what the fight was over, just that it was a
very isolated incident. Vinny walked around with a cast on
his hand and his wrist for three or four months.
Frank said it was his claim to fame.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
Yeah, yeah, he knew he was going to get his
ass kicked when he couldn't breathe, Like, I broke.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
My wrist on his neck, his throat, This is it
for me?

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah, so adult Vince would also claim decades later to
have engaged in serious criminal activity as a teenager playboy.
Did you ever steal McMahon automobiles? But I always got
him back? I just borrowed him. Really, there were other
thefts too. I ran a load of moonshine in Harlow,
North Carolina, in in nineteen fifty.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Two Ford V eight. That was a badass car at
the time. Damn, this is all very cool. Yeah, absolutely
definitely true.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Which is over a bridge freezed and then I said
Cole's Vincent man going to get out of this one.
And then after the commercial break, I landed it. The
fucking cops didn't rate in the fucking water. And anyways,
I last sold the two mountains together and that's how
we made the Mississippi River. Yeah, the cops had a
nickname for me, called me Smoky. My partner was the bandit.

(57:37):
That's what that movie is based on, except.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
In real laughter was more karate, more eyeball karate, hell
of a lot more eyeball poking.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
So Vince says that the cops eventually caught up to
him for all his bootlegging, and that's why he was
forced to attend the military school. Now, the bootlegging and
I have a cousin who got in trouble for stealing
cars and was made to attend the military school. Stuff
like this still happens, at least, I mean it happened
twenty years ago. Off it still happens today. But for Vince,
I don't believe this is true. Vince's claim is that

(58:07):
the cops gave him a choice between like military school
in jail, and since his mom was broke, Vincent Senior
paid for him to go to military school. This is
again a lie. In other interviews that he gave earlier,
his story is a lot more realistic. He claims that
his school had to integrate while he was in tenth grade.
This caused tumult and, perhaps due in part to being racist,

(58:28):
Vince no longer liked it at his school once it
was integrated. His grades in behavior were bad enough that
the administration decided to kick him out, so military school
was one of his only options. This wound up being
what ultimately made him. He later recalled, I had no reputation,
so it was a new beginning, a great chance to
start over and create a new reputation. And so when

(58:49):
Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Virginia started its nineteen sixty
two school year, a new student entered its eleventh grade class.
The previous year, Vince had been known as Vinnie looked
at but at fishburn for the very first time, he
started to go by a new name, Vince McMahon.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
So this is a tough guy. Laser duck. Yeah, has
so many better names than Vince McMahon. You could have
been Dick the Bruiser.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Come on.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Now, that is his name is Nate had lots of sex. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
They call me the eye gounger for short. Though Marine
Bain is my other nickname.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
My nickname is doesn't put leaves in his cousin.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
So this would be a good This is a pretty
good breaking point to end on this episode. But I
feel like I'd be doing everyone at disservice if I
did not provide a coda for the epic story of
doctor Jerry Graham. And I'm gonna ask you guys to
strap yourselves in for this one because we're about to
go on quite a So despite being a wild man

(01:00:03):
in public, Jerry Graham was also a mama's boy, and
in nineteen sixty nine, his mother was admitted to a
hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. He called the doctor immediately as
soon as she was admitted and told him he would
hurt or kill the man if his mother died there. Now,
this next book comes from a book by another wrestler, superstar,
Billy Graham, and I'm going to quote from it now.

(01:00:24):
When she died later that day, Graham showed up at
the hospital with his twelve year old son wielding a
hunting knife and a soft off shotgun. A tearful Graham
shoved down a nurse and tossed a security guard across
a hallway, hoisting his dead mother's body off a gurney.
And draping it over his shoulder. Another security guard rushed forward,
and Graham knocked him down and dragged him across the

(01:00:46):
floor while still holding the corpse with his other arm.
My brother, Vance, a police officer in Phoenix at the time,
vividly recalled how squad cars were called to the hospital,
surrounding it and blocking off the streets nearby. Eventually, copstormed
the hospital and arrested Graham, who screamed incoherently and pounded
on the patrol car doors as he was taken into custody.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
So that's a hell of a thing. Christ, that's the
hell of a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
What. Yeah, he stole his mom's body from the hospital
like you're still in a hunting night, f n his
twelve year old son, and again.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Could have just gone her to that discredited veterinarian. They
could have brought her back to life, not the same
as she was, no.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Something different.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
These are these are the kind of stories that make
wrestling amazing because you don't get this from the NFL, Right,
you don't get this for this is a wrestling story.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Oh, you were right about that guy being cool.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
That is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
We can only hope to have someone who will break
into the hospital when we die and just our body
into the jack us.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
Like fucking new Bigfoot trying to reclaim his wife or something.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Growing security guards. Yes, yeah, crashing through this hospital. An
amazing man, pure engine of KOs. I'm taking her hell myself.

Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
The cover.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Now it was teeth it is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
It is worth noting and sad to note that Graham
was broke by this point, possibly as a result of
burning all those hundred dollars bills he had sent the
money some of them.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Well, he had sent his mom money for decades as
a savings account, and when in the.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
That's what he needed the body.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Unfortunately, when when she died, she she had about a
half a million dollars of his money, but unfortunately she
gave all of it to the Baptist Church.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Doctor.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Jerry when he found out, spent the rest of his
life with a vicious hatred of religion and died in
nineteen ninety seven of a stroke at age sixty eight,
which is a lot longer than I expected Jerry Graham
to live.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Yeah, he beat the odds.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
He beat the odds, both for wrestlers and just general
maniacs y, both.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
For wrestlers and people who steal a corpse from a
hospital at shotgun point. Anyway, that's that's part two. I'm
glad on a happy one. Yeah, it is a tail.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
What an amazing guy. Yeah, yeah, you know, some people aren't.
You can't qualify them as good or bad. They're just incredible.
And Jerry Graham is incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:03:40):
They're just they're just awe inspiring positive or negative connotation
of it, just general awe.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Yeah, I'm glad we don't have more of him, but
I'm really glad we have him. Yeah. It's like when
you see t Rex's skeleton, like that was cool. I'm
glad it's not still here.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
But yeah, yeah, you make it through like a really
insane thunderstorm in You're life. Well that was amazing, but
I don't want to go through that again. I yeah, yeah,
I'd like to avoid repeating this experience. Good stuff. This
is the end of part too. You guys want to
plug your pluggables here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Hell yeah, I'm doing the very last comedy website on
the internet with mi Wow. Robert Brockway is sadly close
to true.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Oh yeah. We started as a joke and we're like, no,
this is true, true actually it's like the golden age
of Internet jokes. We got text and pictures.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
Join our patreon at Patreon dot com Slash one nine
hundred hot Dog.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
It's the best. We're very proud of it. You should be.
It's very very fun and cool.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Now, Tom, you also have some fun and cool things
to plug.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
I have a thing to plug it anyway.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
Anyway, my god a podcast network Gameslan employee that I
started with David Bell, our friend and former Crack coworker.
You can check that out at patreon dot com slash
Gamesley Unemployed and I'll so we have free episodes that
you can get for free.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
So check hell yeah, check that out. Yeah yeah, hell yeah,
Well check all that out. I have a novel. It's
called After the Revolution.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
Type it into whatever website you buy books from, or
you know, like doctor Jerry Graham, grab a twelve year
old a shotgun and a hunting knife and find your
way into the nearest Barnes and Noble, and you know,
steal that book like your mom's court.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
I don't know where I'm going with this, Sophie. Do
we have anything else? No, we're done, Okay, the episode's done.
Perfect plugs Rice see behind The Bastards is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

(01:05:48):
your podcasts.