SEX, LIES, AND HEADLOCKS: THE REAL STORY OF VINCE McMAHON AND THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION by Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham (Crown/ Random House), 263 pages, $36 cloth. Rating: NNN
Rating: NNN
Depending on who you talk to, World Wrestling Entertainment poobah Vince McMahon is a prophet or a two-bit huckster for the uglier side of showbiz. In their unauthorized biography, Sex, Lies, And Headlocks, authors Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham take a different road by casting McMahon as a businessman driven to make his company succeed at any cost. The book traces McMahon’s past from his roots in a tiny North Carolina town to his rise to the top of the wrestling heap as the founder of the World Wrestling Federation (since renamed World Wrestling Entertainment).
Employing his father, Vince Sr.’s, ability to promote and market, coupled with his own chutzpah, McMahon made the WWF a household name and performers like Hulk Hogan and The Rock cultural icons. Along the way, he’s been accused of tax evasion, steroid trafficking and, in the case of late wrestler Owen Hart, criminal negligence.
Yet despite the best attempts of rival promoters, indignant pressure groups and the long arm of the law to put him
