McGuire’s Mondays: Why is it so hard for some people to publicly condemn Vince McMahon?

Last week, I had the lede to a column written. It was about Vince McMahon and the Rolling Stone piece that was published on Oct. 19 regarding the WWE writers room. The article gained little traction over that weekend and it surprised me. Only some – not all – of the typical pro wrestling news sites gave it some attention, and I wondered why. Was it because it shed no new light on Vince or WWE or the toxic workplace the company embodied for so many years? Are we all suffering from Vince fatigue? Can all the revelations about his evil ways just stop? Finally? Maybe? Please?

Something didn’t feel right about what I had written. I walked away. Came back to it. Tried again. I just never felt comfortable with it. It was a little too annoying, a little too flippant. The tone was wrong. It was probably too cute by half, as some might say, and not nearly as insightful as it could have been. So I gave up. Because, really. Who needs another Vince McMahon take these days? Nobody, probably (which, of course, makes me prematurely apologize for inevitably putting together a Vince McMahon take this week, but there’s always the “back” button on your web browser).

And yet, here I am a week later and the thoughts still circulate throughout my head. That’s because one week and some change after the writers room story, Rolling Stone and David Bixenspan came back with the news that a new lawsuit from five former ring boys alleging a sex abuse cover up in the 1980s and 1990s had been filed. According to the claim, WWE allowed Mel Phillips Jr. to conduct “open, rampant abuse” within its company for years and the former ring crew chief would target children from broken homes to groom, abuse and exploit. The scandal had been talked about for years; the lawsuit filed recently takes aim at both the company and the McMahons, who are essentially painted as enablers for Phillips.

It’s the latest in a string of revelations about McMahon that, to some people, are hardly revelations at all. The Ring Boys Scandal is not new. Just like the craziness of the writers room atmosphere is not new. Just like the abhorrent treatment of women is not new. These are all things about which many people who have been interested in the pro wrestling business for a long time have heard. For so long, there’s been a collective turning of the head, a conscious willingness to throw it into another box and stow away in the attic, never to be remembered again whenever the topic of Vince McMahon came up.

It is at that precise spot where my mind has resided recently. Even to this day – watch the Netflix documentary, listen to the old-timers’ podcasts, read some interviews, watch Cody Rhodes try to finesse his way around the one real question anyone has ever asked at a post-PLE press conference – there are too many people who refuse to simply say, “Vince McMahon is a maniac, he should be punished.” And that’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. We don’t need to get into politics, his influence on the pro wrestling business, what he did know, what he did not know, what’s alleged, what’s proven, how he gave Mr. Fuji an envelope of cash to help him out one day. Just that very simple sentence.

“Vince McMahon is a maniac, he should be punished.”

I don’t get it. There’s always a caveat. There’s a, “Well …” In some cases (cough, Jim Ross, cough), there’s a consistent, “Can’t we all just move on,” which I find almost as gross as anyone blatantly supporting McMahon even after all this stuff came to light. It makes me wonder if people are afraid – afraid of McMahon’s influence over the entire pro wrestling business, afraid of potential backlash or blackballing or anything else in between. It’s like the boogeyman has been proven to be nothing more than a few sweatshirts hanging on a coat rack, but some people still can’t sleep at night because they’re certain it’ll come alive and attack them in the wee hours of the morning.

But he’s gone … right? Save for the possibility of him cooking up another business venture in his very last days as a living, breathing person, McMahon can’t possibly ever be accepted back into the pro wrestling space. So, then what’s the issue? Maybe for all bodies that McMahon has buried (figuratively and … well … otherwise), everyone else has bodies of their own, too. McMahon’s secrets are out, but what’s rarely considered is that McMahon most likely knows everyone else’s secrets as well. If an Undertaker or a Bruce Pritchard speaks up, McMahon or someone close to McMahon can make sure someone speaks up on them, too. Remember when John Laurinaitis said he was all in on being a victim of McMahon, too? That was fun … until, of course, he walked that back pretty soon thereafter.

Who knows what it is, but whatever the reasons, watching so many people refuse to unequivocally denounce McMahon has become both troubling and fascinating. It will never be my place to tell people how to feel, what to say or which side to support, but … man, it’s hard to understand, at this point, why 100 percent of anyone who ever has anything to say about the guy doesn’t take that very simple position: “Vince McMahon is a maniac, he should be punished.”

Anyone who hides behind the notion that we need to hear things play out in a court of law before ultimately formulating conclusions is a coward. At this point, it’s not just where there’s smoke, there’s fire; it’s a house is burning down in front of you, flames are shooting everywhere and as such, yes, indeed, there is fire. Maybe there are some inaccuracies in stories and maybe there are people who have bad intentions, vendettas, untoward reasons as to why they are targeting McMahon in the public eye. But to think this guy was purely innocent when it comes to all these allegations, all these stories, all these troubling accusations …

That’s wild.

I mean, really. That’s wild.

It’s also – and I mean this devoid of all political undertones – very Trumpian. McMahon has cultivated a culture around him where loyalty is the only currency and even that can be compromised depending on a whim he might have on any given day. You’re either with him or against him and being with him means you play by his rules, even if he decides to change the rules on an hourly basis. That type of loyalty can be scary, and yet it bleeds through each time anyone past or present refuses to go on the record to condemn McMahon in any way. It’s not unlike the supporters of one of the presidential candidates looking to win an election next week.

It adds up to one big question mark, one big thought bubble looking for answers that will never be found. Unless someone is developing a truth serum that can be injected with the objective of producing pure, unadulterated honesty, most of us will never know why abusive men like this have such a hold on so many people’s minds and hearts – no matter what, no matter the circumstance, no matter the amount of time that passes.

And so, in the meantime, I suppose I’ll reiterate, in the spirit of compensating for all those former and current movers and shakers who just can’t bring themselves to say it out loud:

Vince McMahon is a maniac. And yes. He should be punished.