Sex, Lies, and Headlocks: The Real Story of Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment

by Shaun Assael, Mike Mooneyham

“Current fans and recovering Hulkamaniacs alike should find [Sex, Lies, and Headlocks] as gripping as the Camel Clutch.” —MaximSex, Lies, and Headlocks is the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at the backstabbing, scandals, and high-stakes gambles that have made wrestling an enduring television phenomenon. The man behind it all is Vince McMahon, a ruthless and entertaining visionary whose professional antics make some of the flamboyant characters in the ring look tame by comparison. Throughout the book, the authors trace McMahon’s rise to power and examine the appeal of the industry’s biggest stars—including Ed “Strangler” Lewis, Gorgeous George, Bruno Sammartino, Ric Flair, and, most recently, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. In doing so, they show us that while WWE stock is traded to the public on Wall Street, wrestling remains a shadowy world guided by a century-old code that stresses secrecy and loyalty. With a new afterword, this is the definitive book about the history of pro wrestling.“Reading this excellent behind-the-scenes look at wrestling promoter McMahon . . . is almost as entertaining and shocking as watching the most extreme antics of McMahon’s comic-book style creations such as Steve Austin and The Rock.”—Publishers Weekly“A quintessentially American success story of a cocky opportunist defying the odds and hitting it big . . . Sparkling cultural history from an author wise enough to let the facts and personalities speak for themselves.”—Kirkus ReviewsFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports, Biography, History, Tv, Pop Culture

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 16, 2002

Reviews

[Donald Trump (Parody) · Rating 1 out of 5]

hey look this is a TERRIBLE book, and im not just saying that because Vinnie is a real good friend of mine. this is poorly researched and full of LIES. the fake news throughout this is really something. this shaun ASSael needs to leave the country if hes gonna be spreading lies about one of america's greatest sports. really real stuff happens in that ring, i know it because this one time i main evented a wrestlemania and showed everyone who was boss. i threw the most convincing punches youve ever seen in your life. believe you me you dont want to be wasting your time with this. Vinnie is a really swell guy and he loves his wife and has always been faithful to her. Vinnie told me he can deadlift around 600 pounds and i believe him, i mean look at the size of that fucker, i tell ya. all these guys calling Vinnie a drug dealer and a murder dont know him like i do. a real american legend, Vinnie is. what a DISGRACE this trash is!!!

[Jeremiah Graves · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good book, lots of facts and background information, but short of some of the revelations about Vince's personal life prior to the '80s it didn't have anything that was really new or groundbreaking to me. It was a big re-hash of most of the information that is pretty much old hat for wrestling fans; from Vince's expansion of WWF, to the steroid trials, to the Monday Night Wars, it was all just another version of the same story. Entertaining, because the source materials is very entertaining, but just the same old story with a new voice.

The biggest issue for me was that the author got some pretty simple facts wrong throughout the book and I feel like you can't get that stuff wrong, especially when you're trying to write an expose, if you want to keep your credibility. If I remembered the accurate information without having to look it up, it means that it shouldn't have taken a legit fact-checker more than a few seconds to catch the errors. Inexcusable.

[Artiom Karsiuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had a nickel for every time a person I've met was dismissive of or ridiculed professional wrestling, well... I'd have quite a few nickels.
Silly old rasslin', right? Wrong. When you see Hulk Hogan saying his prayers and eating his vitamins or John Cena preaching "hustle, loyalty, respect" on screen, you only get the tip of the iceberg of what pro-wrestling is. This book gives you a good look at what lies hidden "underwater", behind the fun characters and colorful entertainment facade that you see on your TV sets. The reality of this business is much more complicated than it seems to be, and when you start flipping through the pages, you are taken behind the scenes of this microcosm: its almost like opening up a Pandora's box full of overinflated egos, cut-throat backstage politicking, steroids, drugs, broken lives and premature deaths. There is nothing rosy or pretty about people injecting elephant-dose cocktails of painkillers and steroids to numb their many injuries and grow cartoonish muscles.
The story centers around one Vincent Kennedy McMahon. If you considered WWE to be a religion, then he'd be the equivalent of His Holiness, the Pope. A brilliant, creative, competitive, ruthless, lying, egomaniacal son of a bitch of a pope. *Gotta love Vinnie.* True, like many critics of this book have said, it is not a flattering portrayal of Vince if you worship the ground he walks on [like many do], but I believe that it is a fair portrayal. It tells the story of a man hell-bent on succeeding, at all cost. When he dealt with his competition (like NWA and WCW) he was merciless and conniving. And you know what? He admits it. The important thing that McMahon fans who try to berate this book are missing is that Vince himself brags that he was a bloodthirsty asshole. More so, he is proud of it! As he should be, because all of the raunchy, scandalous television that he produced in the late 90s gave birth to the golden age of professional wrestling known as The WWF Attitude Era. It was glorious and, on a random side note, today Hollywood wouldn't have Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson without it.
As with any genius, McMahon isn't a saint, nor does he claim to be one. He is a perfect mess of both good and bad qualities. This cool little book gives a good summary of both his spectacular achievements and embarrassing blunders (WBF and XFL). I use the word "summary" with a purpose, because the readership that this book was crafted for is the casual reader, not a hardcore wrestling fan (or a smark). So if you are a Wrestling Observer Newsletter subscriber, you'll find nothing new or groundbreaking here, but if you're an average Joe who heard about this "raslin" thing, then I suggest you educate yourself by laying the smackdown on this book.

See what I did there? "Smackdown". SMART.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit, I actually enjoyed a book about the history of professional wrestling. The good news is that you don't have to be a childhood fan of the WWF like me to take something away from this book. The history of wrestling is also the history of vaudeville, boxing, and cable television. Recommended for fans of 20th century American history and pop culture.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fact that, in one throw away sentence, Assael purports the expansion of WWF's pay-per-view roster (1989) to have occurred concurrently with the public implication of the WWF in Zahorian's trial (1991) and Hogan's year long sabbatical (1992) is generally indicative of the indifference to factual accuracy that damns this book as any sort of authoritative document on the history of the company.

However, riddled with factual inaccuracies and ludicrously condensed timelines though it may be, this does feature a wealth of scintillating anecdotes that expand the bizarre mythology of Vince McMahon. See, for instance, Vince snorting piles of coke off his desk at titan towers whilst declaring that he can "never get hooked," Vince ducking into side rooms during TV tapings to bang out a few reps of compulsive dumbbell curls, and Vince hiring a personal assistant whose job it is to keep him so flush in cans of tuna-fish that a pungent odor begins to encircle his corporate office.

I guess, at the end of the day, there's a charm to that.

The truth is: people who'd care that this book constitutes a very sloppily edited timeline of WWF's rise to mainstream popularity already know the actual facts and those who don't probably won't mind or notice in the first place. As someone who's read more about this god forsaken topic than I'd ever admit in polite company, Assael's spirited bolstering of these already bizarre personalities - be it rooted in fact or appropriately indiscernible fiction - is a satisfying alternative to the truth.

[Peter Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent reminder of why I loved professional wrestling so much as a youth. Here we get intimate portraits of not only Vince McMahon, Ted Turner and Eric Bischoff, we also get a refresher course on long forgotten wrestling bosses like the old N.W.A. network of federations. If you grew up watching the World Wrestling Federation on UHF, or World Championship Wrestling on TBS, than this is the book for you!

[Jay Rain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating - 6

Forgettable and not much more than what I already knew; Biography from Mankind was such a better read and is worth reading again - very poor writing style

Wrestler auto-biographers are a far more interesting read; A capitalization on the fad of wrestling books at the time, although my general knowledge probably influences my boredom in the book

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riddled with minor inaccuracies but otherwise a highly readable summary of the "McMahon Era" of wrestling. Far superior to Assael's Steroid Nation in large part because it seems a fair amount of actual investigative work (original interviews, etc.) went into the production of this book.

[Cleveland Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading for book discussion on November 12th at Main Library

[Victor Orozco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this often in the entertainment and sports section alongside the biographies of the great professional wrestling legends. They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but it is clear from the silly parody picture of Vince McMahon that this is an assault on his success as well as the entire business of professional wrestling.

Unlike most pro wrestling books that I have read, which are mainly biographies, a company, or an age, this one attempts to tackle its origins from the time after World War II when the GIs came home, and sports and entertainment came together creating a spectacle that has become ingrained in American culture. Pro wrestling has been around as long as boxing but as athletics began to grant legitimacy as well as a degree of regulation the former was not as legitimate as the latter as well as other sports like baseball, basketball, football, etc. But it is this illegitimacy and lack of regulation that has made its owners and bookers extravagant amounts of money.

From the National Wrestling Alliance, World Wrestling Federation, Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, Georgia Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Productions, American Wrestling Association, World Championship Wrestling, and Extreme Championship Wrestling, the histories as well as behind-the-scenes controversies and rumors that led to their downfalls and successes over the years from the 1940s to the early 2000s are recounted. I must say I enjoyed reading these old “war stories” of professional wrestling and was certainly invested as well as entertained by the knowledge. I have always loved professional wrestling, ever since I was a teenager from the success of WWF and its wrestlers from the 80s and I still buy their products from books, movies, toys, clothing, and other merchandise.

But this book does not provide these facts for amusement but does it for criticism. Particularly the 80s and WWF which the author covers virulently. I only found out much later that the author has a reputation for being extremely against steroid use whether for competitive or in the case of the staged medium of pro-wrestling for definition. The '70s and '80s were prominent times in which athletics tried to enhance the human body to its finest as gymnasiums full of weights, treadmills, and swimming pools, created an age of bodybuilders that made them rich and famous. Anyone who aspired to become like this went to the gyms, read the fitness magazines, and endured the best diets and training to achieve these epic looks. But also helping them were laboratories that provided supplements that assisted their physiques. The supplements were known as steroids and during the times they were used they were legal and accepted but over time the muscled physiques began to appear to the eyes of the novices and drug-free as unnatural and as the 80s War on Drugs began to bust dealers for Cocaine and Heroin, and other illegal drugs many decided that Steroids should be on the list, from the myriad of side-effects including sterility, feminization, cancers, chronic pain, and of course aggressive behavior equivalent to addiction withdrawal known famously as roid-rage. This author villainizes steroids and steroid providers, none more so than the man he believes provided steroids to his athletes Vincent K. McMahon.

Unlike other pro-wrestling books, Vince McMahon’s life is not yet adapted into a biography. The man is still working, still living, and he has yet to let anyone write about him. This author provides what can only come close to a biography of the man and most of it is heartfelt and very revealing from being conceived yet abandoned by his father before he was born yet ending up meeting his father after being raised by a strict stepfather. With forgiveness that I can consider beyond amazing, young Vince McMahon worked in his father’s business wrestling and thrived. His marriage to a loyal spouse and incredibly talented children is recounted fondly but it stops when the McMahon is put in charge and the niceties vanish. The author then attacks McMahon with extreme prejudice citing examples of his competitors' criticisms of nationalizing pro-wrestling at the expense of other wrestling companies and wrestlers, infidelities, an alleged rape charge, drug consumption of steroids, and allegedly cocaine. Still, it is the 1994 trial in which McMahon was brought up on charges of steroid distribution that becomes a major part of this book.

From the Pennsylvania doctor who was busted on tape for selling steroids to a bodybuilder to the various testimonies of several pro-wrestlers who either lied publicly or confessed to their use of steroids, all of it led to the inditement brought on by New York prosecutor Sean O’Shea. O’Shea, an attorney who went after mobsters like John Gotti and corrupt politicians in his state targeted McMahon possibly because he saw him in the same league as the aforementioned criminals. A man who felt that McMahon’s steroid dealing had tainted a product that made hundreds of millions based on a lie.

But I did not believe this at all, and I feel that if O’Shea wanted to make a difference, he would have protected athletes from damaging themselves by setting up anti-drug programs. He could have made attempts to go after the problem at its roots like the labs in Mexico with help from the State Department, go after the other promoters and bookers from other companies like WCW, ECW, or the territories like NWA. But this man did it because he heard the criticisms of McMahon and was prejudiced against him. I also believe O’Shea had that same disgust whenever people hear of pro-wrestling and feel that because it is staged, it does not deserve the same connection that fans have for legitimate sports like football, baseball, basketball, boxing, where the love for the game transcends the sport. Where the expression “It is just a game,” is an insult to the fans who have such feelings.

But despite such a heavy-laden trial with controversies abounding every single day, a jury acquitted Vince McMahon and the WWF as the pro-wrestling world survived. Yet the author does not stop there as he connects other alleged acts such as tax evasion, racism, prostitution, fraud, corruption, and even murder. Not just Vince McMahon but the entire professional wrestling industry going so far as to condemn the fans who he feels enabled these men like the Roman citizens encourage heinous emperors in the Coliseum.

The rest of the book covers controversies from deaths caused by accidents or drug use, story angles from the golden age of professional wrestling in the 1980s, the WWF competition in the 80s, 90s particularly the Monday Night Wars against WCW and Ted Turner to the branching into various cable and syndicated TV into the early 2000s is covered here remarkably well and with an incredibly thorough telling.

However, the author, whether by indifference or overburdened by the nearly fifty years of professional wrestling history makes some mistakes. WWF wrestler Antonino Rocca is referred to as Argentina Rocca, or he mistakes wrestler Terri Runnels for Terri ‘Tori’ Poch. He also attempts to recount the history as chronologically as possible, but it feels that he jumps all over the place. He could have had several chapters of the steroid case better had he not added certain other controversies between the years. As also a strong possibility that he is basing most of his facts on rumor and innuendo and clearly from how he criticizes Vince McMahon, he is outright promoting lies.

I have to admit, his writing is direct to the point and can be entertaining. But I cannot give him any more praise on what is a hatchet job in an industry I have a great love for.

[Paul Banik · Rating 3 out of 5]

As others have mentioned, there are problems with this book. The first one is while the chapters are divided numerically, it doesn't have the equivalent of a description for what each chapter is about. It would be like clicking on a link for an article without a headline. Another is there are some questionable statements like Shawn Michaels is a harder worker than Bret Hart, which is a stretch, considering Michaels' propensity failure to drop titles cleanly, or his willingness to job to wrestlers who weren't in The Kliq. There is hardly any information that wasn't known before, but I would give it three stars, because it isn't terrible, but hardly good or great based on the content, since much of that content was already known or could be found online or elsewhere. The most interesting part of the book is when it focused on his early years, growing up with him mom and stepfather, and meeting his father. That was interesting, and also how he met Linda, and how he managed to basically lock out Jim Crockett Promotions when they tried to make their closed circuit event a PPV in 1987 when he introduced the Survivor Series, and became a cutthroat operator, and Crockett countered with the Clash of Champions to run against Wrestlemania, and also the Bunkhouse Stampede to compete with the Royal Rumble . The steroid trial with him, Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, George Zahorian and others are mentioned. It also discusses his XFL and WBF (World Bodybuilding Federation) ventures, which is interesting because the XFL is going to be back in 2020, and the WBF was supposed to compete against the IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilers), founded by the Weider Brothers, and was more established, but Vince offered a better payday, but could only get a handful of elite bodybuilders. Both ventures eventually flopped. Maybe Vince was a product of his childhood with his somewhat eccentric personality at times, since he seemed to be interested in forging a relationship with his biological father, compared to his abusive stepfather.

[Luke Koran · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the widely-covered history of the era in professional wrestling popularly known as the “Monday Night Wars”, the 2002 book “Sex, Lies and Headlocks: The Real Story of Vince McMahon and the WWF” somehow manages to provide a fresh look on the events of the decade through interviews with key players and diligent research (especially via the dirt sheets). I am also convinced that this work received my approval as it was not published under the WWE name; thus, this work has the advantage of being an outsider’s perspective with free reign to proclaim the whole truth and to express their informed opinions without fear of editing reprisals by Mr. Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

This book does an excellent job providing relevant background information on the rise of WWF and WCW, beginning with the territory system and followed by some forgotten events that helped transform Vince McMahon and Ted Turner into wrestling tycoons and the business into sports entertainment. Though the title insinuates that Vince McMahon would be the main topic, Vinnie Mac is only one of several featured stories. As much as I feel pressured to only give this book 2 or 3 stars and to jump on the reviewer bandwagon in diminishing it because of a supposed too many “inaccuracies", I have to stick with my gut on this one on the basis of the small but significant details that even the most ardent wrestling fans have yet to hear of (especially since this would have been among the first books to document the era, as it was published in 2002).

[Rama · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to watch wrestling frequently till the 1994 Summerslam event where Taker vs. Taker was the headlining match. And I followed it intermittently until Owen Hart's death in 1999.

So this 2002 book provided a good context to my previous viewings -- it starts out with Owen Hart's fatal accident and goes on to trace Vince McMahon's history. The "innocent" past is not something that this book longs for. Most of it dates from the early Hogan era to 2002: Vince's network battles and politics, the steroid trials, the sexualization of content, the states of mind and body of the pro-rasslers, the rise of the WCW and its fall, the Montreal Screwjob, the WBF and the XFL debacles and so on are covered reasonably well. WCW's fall coincided too much with the end of the book that there is hardly any denouement.

I think that I read an edition with an afterword that discusses 2003 events and expresses views for 2004. I remember it being a bit moralizing too, which was somewhat jarring considering that the rest of the book was like "telling it as it is." I wasn't a fan mad enough to try to get hold of copies of the Wrestling Observer newsletter during younger days in vain, so this small piece of the action was good enough for a one-time enjoyable read.

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fairly superficial treatment of "Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation" that takes major detours into other subjects, the latter half of the book reading more like the history of WCW at times. There's also the question of how much is actually accurate, as some very simple and easy to look up (even in 2002) details are wrong. Such easily-debunked information includes "Macho Man" Randy Savage and Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat wrestling for almost an hour at Wrestlemania III (it was less than fifteen minutes), Andre the Giant retiring upon losing at Wrestlemania III in 1987 (eleven months before he won the WWF Championship in 1988, the WWF Tag Team Championships in 1989, and five years before his final match in 1992), Doink the Clown debuting as a happy-go-lucky character before turning evil (literally the opposite happened, as Matt Borne's IT-inspired gimmick started out by making kids cry (brah) and then turned into a generic silly clown), etcetera. Those probably sound trivial, but if you can't get the little, easily-researchable things correct, are you likely to be getting the big stuff right?

[Adam Whiteley · Rating 2 out of 5]

For 2002 this was probably a decently valuable asset, but from a modern perspective it's quite a weak retelling of a story that has already been told in so many formats. I was disappointed to see simple things being gotten wrong, such as Savage vs. Steamboat at WrestleMania III being described as nearly an hour long (it wasn't even 15 minutes) or Lex Luger slamming Yokozuna on the USS Intrepid being listed as happening in 1995 when it was actually two years earlier. There is a lot of artistic license and facts that are deliberately misrepresented or outright changed to fit a better story, which while entertaining mean this book is pretty useless for anyone looking to get an accurate history of the WWF or Vince.

Not recommended for most wrestling fans, slightly recommended for non-wrestling fans looking for an introduction to the WWE.

[Joseph Gamgee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rated 4 stars as, and I think a lot of people reviewing miss this, this book was written in 2002 as a lot of the things discussed had *recently* happened, and should be judged by that. We all know everything now, but did we 24 years ago? Books like this must have been groundbreaking back then, letting you know things first that are common knowledge now.

I can’t say I recommend it for what’s discussed as it is all fully known now, but it’s an interesting breeze through the decades pre-2003 and worth it for the short look at the beginning of what was to become sports entertainment.

A lot of inaccuracies, times seem right but information incorrect (When did Mr Ass debut?) which is constantly interrupting the flow as you read when you know better, but again, is that just with less information available due to the time of production?

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched look at the underbelly of the WWF and the bizarre, often brilliant vision of the utterly amoral Vince McMahon.
Oft-quoted on The Lapsed Fan podcast and extremely influential on titles like The Titan Trilogy (which, on reflection, seems to take chunks of the text here and reproduce them “faithfully”) it’s a cult gem that reads swiftly and well.
Condensing the labyrinthine history of the territory system and rise of the first national, then international promotion this is an informative, sobering read that presents the human and cultural cost of the industry in a stark, suitable light.

[Rob Rains · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly well written tale full of tawdry anecdotes about one of America’s most successful traveling circuses, World Wrestling Entertainment. Chairman Vince K. McMahon is endlessly fascinating and some of the stories here don’t disappoint. It’s hard not to draw parallels between how McMahon runs his wrestling empire and how the NFL treats its labor. Probably a better read for wrestling fans then just casual sports fans. This book also is more for cynics and steer clear if you want an uplifting story.

[Anthony Brennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars. Really fun, interesting read. Especially in the origins of the business and in the 80s. But the 90s things seem to fall apart from a fact checking perspective. Some stories I know had to be have some creative telling for space purposes, but some were just wrong. Still, a really entertaining read, I lost the book after starting (at WWE Survivor Series), and was determined to finish it after getting hooked by the first chapter.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dave Meltzer should’ve been given a co-author credit as this book cribs heavily (and I mean heavily) from Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer newsletter reports. Very little in this book is fresh knowledge and it needs an update as it ends in 2004 — though to be fair, the author nails the early 00’s as the start of Vince McMahon’s creative decline and we’ve seen no indication to the contrary since then. The best part of this book was about Vince Sr., whose reluctance to hand the business to his son is a fascinating insight into how Vince McMahon has, and continues, to operate. Here we are now, with Vince almost 80, and he’s yet to cede the company to his children yet either.

[KG · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the book was captivating as it was new information I hadn’t already heard. The origins of the business and Mcmahon’s rise to the top of the industry were a good read. The last half was just rehashed stories I had already heard, mostly on the show “Dark side of the ring”, no fault to the author,as this book could have been the source material for a lot of the episodes.

[CJ Harries · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great intro to wrestling history, covering (in brief detail) the WWF/E, WCW, and ECW. It skimmed many details and often played loose with time, which was frustrating. As a history, it's not great. As an intro, it's amazing.

[Chris Meyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Lots of characters brought in without introduction. Not clear who was quoted. Writer took a lot of liberties with what vince or others were thinking without knowing.

Topic was interesting. Didn't know wrestling had so much history and wasn't always so much drama and theatrics.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

A decent enough read, but given its age there's very little in here wrestling fans don't already know.

And at the risk of sounding like the guy from the Simpsons, there are numerous, glaring examples of inaccuracy and things being bundled together for narrative purposes over accuracy

[Colin Wheatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

More about the Monday Night Wars than solely WWF and Vince McMahon as it was advertised. It’s still a good read, though there are better, more detailed accounts of the Monday Night Wars from the WWF and WCW perspectives respectively. I’m hoping Riesman’s RingMaster is more focused on McMahon.

[Ill D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal.

[Optimus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read
This is for anyone who wants an unbiased look on Wrestling and the crazy things in it.

[AnnMarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of good history, but it's not well written and seems clearly biased at times.

[Chris Blanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, well written, but not much in there that anyone familiar with wrestling wouldn't already know

[JoAnn · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I learned a few new things, the title of the book is deceiving and basically there is nothing of excitement that isn’t already known and hasn’t been talked about a million times before.