“The Wrestler” Angers Wrestling King Vince McMahon

It seems that after a personal screening of Darren Aronofsky’s fantastically spot-on depiction of the aftermath of a successful professional wrestling career The Wrestler, the head of the WWE, one Vincent Kennedy McMahon, was deeply displeased. This is likely because the film shows Mickey Rourke’s character, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, as a broken down old warhorse with no money and no prospects outside of his fading career, which is a direct result of McMahon’s consistent efforts to prevent pro wrestlers from unionizing and earning themselves some protections and pensions. Aronofsky has stated recently that there’s no reason why pro wrestlers shouldn’t be in the Screen Actors Guild, considering their job consists of on-camera performances and stunt work, and that couldn’t have sat well with McMahon, either. He avoided strict drug testing of his athletes by calling them ’sports entertainers,’ but his show is categorized as ’sports programming’ to avoid things like SAG.

Incidentally, Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s book I Ain’t Got Time To Bleed details one failed unionization effort back in the early 1980s that was ruined by Hulk Hogan, who was then McMahon’s golden boy.

Anyway, McMahon is refusing to allow advertising for The Wrestler on his shows, since dramatizing the human cost of a pro wrestling career - which results in an early death frighteningly frequently - won’t do anything but harm his efforts to keep his employees from costing him the money it will require to provide them with better benefits. After reading the laundry list of McMahon’s failed efforts to diversify his business (the XFL, for example, and so far the WWE Films company), we’re left to wonder if it’s possible that pro wrestling is just that much of a shoestring business, and if McMahon were to add on the costs of union deals, there might not even be a business left to employ these great performers. Or perhaps if pro wrestlers had to go on strike when SAG strikes, McMahon’s entire business would be devastated.

That’s likely McMahon’s take on it. The battered and broken guys still surviving on meager earnings from getting pummeled in gymnasiums in North Platte, Nebraska might see it differently. The truth likely lies somewhere in between.

If you get a chance, check out the wrestling documentary Beyond The Mat for a better sense of how this industry works.

EDIT: There’s no denying, of course, that the performers themselves make the wrong choices on the road to ruin, as the business has the same kind of rock star aura about it that leads to so many of those VH-1 Behind The Music specials. They’re certainly not blameless in their own lives. Don’t take these extrapolations about Aronofsky’s statements and McMahon’s reported reaction to mean that The Wrestler is a diatribe against big-time wrestling promotions. It’s the quiet story of a man past his prime who has made plenty of bad decisions on his own and is living with the results of being addicted to that lifestyle and unable to move beyond it.