10 Wrestling Moments You Didn’t Know Were Totally Ripped Off
3. Mr. McMahon
One could argue that Vince McMahon has plagiarised himself for years, what with his tired recycling of foreign heels, unpopular top babyfaces and the same opening segment of RAW for about two decades, but his alter-ego, Mr. McMahon (himself with the volume turned down) is itself a derivation.
Of multiple acts.
He turned heel in an enforced measure in 1997, after the events of Montreal outed him forevermore as a massive c*nt. He may have drawn encouragement from the success of WCW's Eric Bischoff in his similar role, but certainly not inspiration: in a wild early 1990s development, McMahon turned heel in Memphis in a strange, fascinating, non-canon dispute with Jerry Lawler as part of an experimental association with the USWA. McMahon was more quietly menacing and unbearably smug than deafeningly hammy in the role, which is preserved in its episodic greatness on YouTube.
But McMahon wasn't the first - and certainly, f*ck all of your lives, not the last - wrestling heel authority figure.
Tom Renesto, himself drawing from the worked era of roller derby, played dastardly obstruction to Jerry Lawler's path to gold with a simmering, indignant contempt in the early 1980s. Jerry Lawler is sitting on the tapes, but you can't imagine WWE is in a rush to add this to the Hidden Gems playlist.
It would expose a false narrative.