With just hours to go until Mr. McMahon arrives on Netflix, some new details have emerged about the documentary series Vince McMahon claims misrepresents him and misleads viewers.
According to Puck's Matthew Belloni, director Chris Smith had nearly finished working on the project when the initial hush money scandal broke in the summer of 2022. As a result, that, McMahon's WWE return, and eventual departure were added to the show.
It sounds like Vince got nervous about what he was seeing pretty early on and attempted to buy the documentary back from Netflix so it could be shelved and never see the light of day. TKO CEO Ari Emanuel lobbied on his behalf - no great surprise when it doesn't exactly portray WWE in a positive light - but the streamer wasn't interested.
Complicating matters, of course, is the fact WWE and Netflix entered a big money deal earlier this year that will bring RAW to the platform in the U.S. and every WWE show and PLE there overseas.
That deal was made before the Janel Grant lawsuit (which alleged sexual abuse and trafficking) was made public but, according to Dave Meltzer, there were already those in Netflix who had their doubts about working with WWE.
Here's what he had to say about the way things played out:
"If you remember, the deal with Netflix was signed a couple of days before the Janel Grant lawsuit was filed. It was not like this was behind the scenes, this deal that was everybody was drinking champagne about. I mean, there were people on Netflix that were not high on this deal, but they signed it. You know, they went with it, but there were people who were trepidatious about getting into business with WWE."
"And I think that if this lawsuit had been filed a month earlier…once the deal was signed, and they were all excited and been announced. I mean, didn’t back off because Vince was gone. You know, it’s like, you got to remember that the lawsuits filed, they signed the deal, it’s announced a couple days later. The lawsuits filed a day or two later, Vince is gone. So if Vince had stayed, would they have stayed with the deal? Who the hell knows."
In related news, Grant's attorney has issued a statement responding to McMahon's social media post in which he dismissed what happened with her client as little more than an "affair."