Linda McMahon, From Co-Founder Of The WWE To U.S. Senate Candidate

Jason Horowitz

The Washington Post

February 22, 2010

HARWINTON, CONN. -- Melissa Russell, a Republican voter in a silk American-flag scarf, interrupted her chat with U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon at the Fairview Farms Golf Club here earlier this month to bring up an old acquaintance.

"On a side note," said Russell, 41, "when I was in high school, I met Sergeant Slaughter. He came out of a camouflage limo!"

McMahon dipped her head back and laughed. Sgt. Slaughter, the '80s-era professional wrestling character, was known for dressing in fatigues and applying the "cobra clutch" hold on his Iranian archenemy, the Iron Sheik. He also wrestled for McMahon, whose entire business experience -- her sole qualification for public office -- has been built on the broad backs of muscle-men and -women in spandex.

A co-founder with her husband of the wildly successful World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), McMahon is willing to spend up to $50 million to fill the Senate seat opened by Chris Dodd's retirement. First she has to get by former congressman Rob Simmons in the Republican primary, then the heavily favored Democratic state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal. ...

[S]he distances herself from wrestling scenes that are sexually explicit and purposefully inflammatory, moments her opponents hope to highlight. That trick is made even tougher by McMahon's star turns inside the ring. While her appearances were nowhere near as regular as those of Jesse "The Body" Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, her groin-kicking alter-ego nevertheless did combat with her own husband, son and daughter. Watching her recite well-coached corporate talking points to reconcile the two can be a spectacle in its own right.

On the rampant and deadly use of steroids in pro wrestling: "The thing of it is, there is no competitive advantage for using steroids -- it's not going to make you jump higher, run faster, hit the ball farther or anything like that," she said, adding that "drug policies have evolved, health and wellness policies have evolved."

On the sexually explicit content the company broadcast over the past decade, including the time in 2006 that brawny Edge and vampish Lita disrobed one another, hopped into a bed, simulated sex and flashed a bare breast in the center of the ring ("WWE.com's No. 7 Greatest Moment in Raw History," according to the company's Web site): "I'm glad to see that the programming has now evolved from TV-14 to PG," McMahon said. "Because that's where it should be. It's good for our audience. It's good for our sponsors."

And the way WWE wrestlers, including her husband, mercilessly taunted and beat up a mentally challenged character named Eugene in 2007: "He had a childlike quality about him, and he was a fictional character in a fictional world that was showed no special privilege by WWE and actually was part of a full running story line in which he was an underdog and wound up victorious."

And the footage of McMahon herself in the ring, being called a bitch and slapped to the ground by her daughter, kicking one man between the legs and then having her head inserted between the legs of another man as he pile-drove her down to the mat: "My skills as a CEO are absolutely and completely apart from my being a bad actress every now and then, written into a story line for emphasis."

McMahon is also quick to point out that she resigned from the company in September. Since then, the WWE has developed a primer for reporters, which answers commonly asked questions. "How many wrestlers have died while under contract with the WWE?" Only five! The lack of health coverage? "Such as actors and singers, WWE performers are independent contractors." And the risque story lines? "Much like many other shows at the time [e.g., 'NYPD Blue,' 'Jerry Springer,' 'Big Brother'], WWE engaged in what was known as 'sensationalized TV' in a TV-14 environment." ...

She watched stonily as Simmons declared his confidence in the wake of Scott Brown's Massachusetts Senate race upset. A January Quinnipiac University survey showed him 10 points ahead of McMahon, but her campaign says its internal polling consistently shows her up by two points in the Aug. 10 primary. ...

Not all the wrestlers appreciated McMahon's business practices.

Edward Leslie, who wrestled between 1983 and 1993 for the McMahons as Brutus "the Barber" Beefcake, a villain in purple hot pants and black bow tie who sheared the hair of his unconscious opponents, blamed McMahon for withholding the use of his stage name for more than a decade.

"I'm not sure what kind of politician she is going to make," said Leslie, who has had legal and personal troubles outside the ring. "If politicians are cutthroats and backstabbers and are not true to their word, then she'll probably make a great politician."

The McMahon campaign declined to respond to Leslie's accusations, and directed all inquiries to the WWE. ...

"Steroids were muscle-builders and we wanted to look good," said Bret "The Hitman" Hart, who insisted the McMahons never encouraged wrestlers to use steroids. Asked if the couple ever discouraged the use of the performance-enhancing drugs, Hart responded, "I know that the guys who had a lot of muscles made a lot of money."

In 1991, the company started testing for steroids, a policy it dropped in 1996, as the WWE faced a challenge from a rival wrestling company owned by Ted Turner, who offered larger salaries and less stringent screening. In 1997 [sic] congressional testimony, McMahon said her talent had been "stolen," and argued that the company abandoned its steroid testing because it had proved so successful in bringing down abuse and was no longer "cost effective."

In the late 1990s, the company rebuilt with new stars, bought out Turner's wrestling business in 2001 and changed its name to the WWE after a successful suit brought by the World Wildlife Fund. The McMahons had become rich, flirting with a billion-dollar worth and socializing with Connecticut's gentry. To stay on top, their wrestling empire entered the "attitude era."

The McMahons introduced more sexually explicit story lines, many hawking the charms of "the rated-R superstar" Edge. In one episode, Edge demanded that his girlfriend Lita "finish me off" in the ring with "live uninterrupted sex." In another episode, a wrestler simulated necrophilia with a mannequin in a coffin -- a sequence, according to a radio interview with the wrestler, taped in an actual funeral home -- in a room adjacent to an actual funeral, with Vince McMahon urging the actor to "do it harder and make more noise and stuff."

The McMahon family also became characters in the show, sometimes wrestling one another. Vince became a leading villain, whose in-ring exploits -- forcing humiliated enemies to kiss his bare behind and having his own face shoved into hefty wrestlers' buttocks -- make for an opposition researcher's dream cache of YouTube moments. ...

Since June 2008, the WWE has cleaned up its image, and in recent months has scrubbed offending video clips from the Web. Vince McMahon has been kept away from the media, and the WWE declined a request to interview him. ...

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