The Fall Of The McMahon Family In WWE

WWE, PWI

For the first time in WWE’s history, not a single member of the immediate McMahon family holds an official position in the company.

A statement that not many of us would have ever foresaw just a few short years ago, yet here we are – on the Road to WrestleMania 40 – the first of its kind not to have any McMahon presence.

The circumstances that led to this point have been widely reported, and are still developing in the wake of the lawsuit filed by former WWE employee Janel Grant towards Vince McMahon – which directly led to his resignation from the company.

The contents of this article were first published on February 17 – to keep up with the latest news on Vince McMahon and the mentioned lawsuit follow this link here.

With that said, join us in our deep dive into the history of the McMahon family and the WWE. The rise and emphatic fall…

CHAPTER ONE: MARKING THE TERRITORY

The story of the McMahon family doesn’t begin with Vincent Kennedy McMahon putting on WrestleMania I. It doesn’t even start with his father Vincent James McMahon.

Instead, it starts with Vincent’s grandad, Vinny K’s grandad that is – or Vinny J’s dad – Roderick James ‘Jess’ McMahon. 

Jess McMahon was born in 1882 in Queens, New York City as the son of hotel owner Roderick McMahon and his wife Elizabeth, who were a pair of Irish immigrants from County Galway. 

After getting a commercial diploma from Manhattan College aged 17, Jess and his brother Edward took that business knowledge and took it into sports.

In the early 1900s, they became managing partners of the Olympic Athletic Club, a semi-professional football team; founded the New York Lincoln Giants, a black baseball team, who played at Harlem’s Olympic Field; and started a black professional basketball team, the Commonwealth Big 5.

The McMahon brothers had football, baseball and basketball teams to their name… but it was a different sport where Jess would gain notoriety: boxing.

Because of his links with Harlem, Jess was able to book black fighters to cater to the growing black population, with fights between black and white fighters drawing the largest, most racially mixed crowds.

Jess McMahon was seen as a ‘real fighters’ promoter – a promoter who booked boxers based on how skilled they were, not because of the colour of their skin.

He was so successful, Jess became the official matchmaker for Madison Square Garden, starting a McMahon family connection with the famous venue that would last the better part of a century. 

And in 1932, he started another family lineage: professional wrestling.

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