Vince McMahon Compared To Hannibal Lecter By Old Adversary
Vince McMahon has been compared to Hannibal Lecter by a man who has spoken out against the former WWE boss for decades.
In the Netflix docuseries “Mr. McMahon” which covers the life and times of former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, a NY Post columnist named Phil Mushnick was featured throughout the documentary.
The reason Mushnick was in there is because starting in the 1990s and in the years that followed, he was known for criticizing McMahon’s WWE product for being too raunchy and for crossing the line with some of its content. That led to people like former WWE manager/announcer Jim Cornette going on WWE TV to trash Mushnick for his opinions, which is likely something McMahon allowed because he didn’t want to respond to Mushnick himself.
That same Netflix documentary is something that Vince McMahon wanted to buy to prevent it from airing because he thought it didn’t give a fair depiction of the kind of person he is.
During a recent episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored with a panel of people who worked for WWE, Mushnick was also a guest. While appearing on the show, Mushnick compared McMahon to the Hannibal Lecter character portrayed by Anthony Hopkins from the legendary “Silence of the Lambs” movie. The character did appear in other films as well but is most known from Hopkins’ performance as the maniacal villain.
“My empiral knowledge, my knowledge based on research, based on interviews and interviews with really good people. I’ve met some wonderful people. Bruno Sammartino was one of the most noble people I have met cause he told the truth. But based on what I know of Vince McMahon, he’s the closest thing to the fictional character, Hannibal Lector I’ve ever met.”
“He is that sick. I think he is a sociopath.”
Vince McMahon Criticized By Former Writer For How Women Were Portrayed In WWE
Another guest on the Piers Morgan Uncensored panel was Vince Russo, who was WWE’s head writer from mid-1997 until his departure in October 1999. Russo is criticized by a lot of people for some things he did in pro wrestling in other places, but there’s no denying his success in coming up with content in the beloved WWE Attitude Era as somebody who worked closely with McMahon.
While on the show, Russo said when he left WWE, Vince McMahon was in segments with various women in the company where he was kissing them and groping them. Russo claimed that he could never have written female superstars in roles like that.
“When I was writing, what the Attitude Era was all about, Piers, was blue collar versus white collar. Well, when I left, all of a sudden there was a shift and that shift was all of a sudden Vince is on camera with all these beautiful women, making out with them, kissing them, groping them. They are groping him.
Now, Piers, you gotta understand something, and everybody here will understand this, as a writer I could have never written any of our female characters in that position because they couldn’t have said ‘no’. They would have had to say ‘yes’ because it was with Vince McMahon and they would have thought if they didn’t do this, they were going to be fired. So when I saw this type of behaviour, after I left, it never sat well with me. Now, I don’t know if that came from Vince or the writers.”