Ringmaster Quotes

“Even if Vince wanted to go home, there would be none left for him to find.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“As he tumbled through adolescence, Vinnie fell in love with his father, his father’s business, his father’s top heel, and his wife-to-be, all in quick succession. Eventually, there would be no boundary between all these elements in Vince’s life. For him, family is business, business is violence, and violence is, in its way, love.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“Perhaps wrestling, however uncivilized it may seem, is inextricable from civilization.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“Indeed, despite his claims to the contrary, it appears Vinnie was more of a lover than a fighter until well after he’d entered the world of professional adults. Whatever trauma he endured, it had not made him cruel. Not yet.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“It’s frustrating for a child to know that you’re different and you don’t fit in. Maybe you’re not quite as bright and you’re made fun of, and kids will do that. I guess, maybe, I always resorted back to the one common denominator when I was terribly frustrated like that. And that, of course, would be physicality.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“The mythological youth of Vince McMahon is that of a rough-and-tumble hoodlum who barely got out alive.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“The interviewer brought up Vince’s childhood family unit. Vince said he lived with his mother “and my real asshole of a stepfather, a man who enjoyed kicking people around.” “Your stepfather beat you?” the interviewer asked. Vince’s reply: “Leo Lupton. It’s unfortunate that he died before I could kill him. I would have enjoyed that.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“There is no art form more intrinsically and blatantly American—in its casual violence, its bombastic braggadocio, its virulent jingoism, its populist defiance of respectability, and its intermittently awe-inspiring beauty—than professional wrestling.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America

“No matter how bad things got, no matter how many people perished, no matter how great the threat to the American experiment, the nation could rest assured of one thing: we would be entertained.”
― Abraham Josephine Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America