The most important man in the history of
professional wrestling. Son of
World (Wide) Wrestling Federation founder Vince McMahon, Sr., Vince took over the company in the late seventies, and through a combination of shrewed buisness sense, cut-throat policies, embracing of the new technology of
VHS recording (so that he could ship his product to multiple markets), and incredible luck he turned what had been a stagnant, bloody sideshow that was on the road to going the way of
roller derby, into the new industry of
sports entertainment. By
the eighties, he had made
Hulk Hogan,
Randy Savage, and
The Ultimate Warrior household names, and was a very, very rich man.
The ninties started out well (with, ironically,
Desert Storm), but a slow decline took over the buisness, and despite the creation of new stars such as
Bret Hart,
Shawn Michaels and
Diesel, he was unable to achieve the kind of success he had during wrestling's highest point of popular culture saturation a decade before. Enter
Eric Bischoff: the former broadcaster takes over the reigns at
WCW and hires away nearly all of the
WWF's talent for it's
NWO angle. Suddenly, after fifteen years of dominance, the
WWF is no longer the biggest wrestling promotion in the land. Although
Bret Hart,
Shawn Michaels and
The Undertaker are still with the
WWF, they are being crushed in ratings, live attendance,
PPV buy rate, and merchandise sales by the competitor. It seems like Vincent K. McMahon, the man with
the Midas touch has finally ran out of luck.
But, in this period of WCW dominance, they make a mistake they will very soon regret. Bischoff fires a worker named
Steve Austin. Austin works in
ECW for a time, before being hired by the WWF. McMahon finally has the talent he needs to rebuild the WWF and wrestling as a whole.
Again, he reinvents the WWF. He borrows heavily from
WCW's
stable war style of
angles, and makes the WWF more adult by updating the themes and wrestling style, making it almost an high budget mimicry of
ECW. Finally, he himself becomes a character, and not the good guy, either, but a super heel; the antithesis of Austin's
working man's hero. Very soon, the WWF again rules as king.
Titles Held:
Former WWF Champion.