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The Condemned

Steve Austin, Vinnie Jones

 

 Vincent K. MacManhon is a third generation wrestling promoter. In many ways this man’s business model should be studied at every business school in America. At the dawn of cable television, he took a regional territory based out of the northwest and took it international. In the process, he destroyed all other competition and became a billionaire, but it is wrestling and Vinnie Mac has never gotten the credit he feels he deserves. He sees himself as a purveyor of entertainment, not just a “wrestling promoter” with all the taint and disrespect that goes along with that title. In turn, he has constantly tried to expand his empire into other fields with comical results. A lifelong workout fiend and a lover of chiseled bodies, in the 1980s, bodybuilding seemed like a natural extension of his operations. Much like wrestling, it was a subculture that he thought could take America by storm with the right promotion. Vince doesn’t just dip his toe in the water. He plunged in with all the gusto he had and swam. Instead of sponsoring a few contests, maybe producing a small line of supplements and magazines, building your business slowly, the wrestling promoter decided to take on Joe Weider, the man who had built a bodybuilding empire. Just like he had done in wrestling, MacManhon went out, snapped up as many of the major bodybuilders as possible, including one Lou Ferigno, by offering them unseemly amounts of money and started The World Bodybuilding Federation in 1990. The business model was simple.  He used his numerous television contacts and massive amount of programming to push his new venture on the millions of wrestling fans who tuned in each week. They loved muscle bound big men like Hulk Hogan, Jesse Ventura, and Superstar Billy Graham. Why wouldn’t they love WBF Bodystars? Hiring a ripped wrestler with the Supermanish name of Lex Luger and a two-time Ms. Fitness Cameo Kuener to host a weekly magazine style show. The program specialized in training vignettes, hawking MacManhon’s line of supplements called ICOPRO, giving the Bodystars wrestler-like personalities, and pushing the upcoming pay-per-view that was to be hosted by McManhon, portly wrestling manager Bobby Hennan, and Regis Phibman. Because if anyone knows the world for bodybuilding, it is Regis. Shortly after he got everything up and running, the feds came knocking.  Seems they were investigating Vince for steroid distribution. The man who gave the world Hogan, Randy Savage, the Ultimate Warrior, and other 300-pound men whose abs could be used as a washboard, steroids, you think? Vince declared his companies steroid-free and announced that he would start drug testing. Strangely, most of the Bodystars disappeared and those that remained looked decidedly what is the word, oh yeah, normal. By the second pay-per-view it was time to fold up the tent.

Cut to a decade later, Vince grew tired of watching that weenie sports league called the NFL with its fair catches and rules that protect the quarterback from injury. Partnering with NBC, he unveiled a new era in football called the XFL. Now a level headed individual would studied the failure of the USFL with its mega-stars like Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Reggie White, and Herschel Walker or even the seemingly over-saturation of the football market with arena football, Canadian football, and the upcoming World Football League, but not Vinnie Mac. McManhon sold his vision like snake oil until every sports fan in America was on the edge of their seats. He even signed up the Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, to do the announcing and highlighting how hot their cheerleaders were. One little flaw in his plan. He waited until the last moment to start fielding players and organizing teams. Americans turned on their television sets to the bad junior college ball known as the XFL and then just as quickly turned them off. In a panic, the ultimate promoter promised television access to the cheerleaders’ locker room. Now there is no more fabled land in the male psyche than the cheerleader’s locker room, a heaven where we picture stretching, tickling, pillow fights, back rubs, and long, hot showers. Now given that Americans would react like Chicken Little to a black singer showing one of her mommy parts for a fraction of a second during family entertainment like the Super Bowl where steroid-ridden monsters violently try to smash each other’s heads in, as beer manufactories push their wares, and drug companies promise to help middle-aged males “get back in the game,” even back then, you knew he could not deliver. By the end of the season, the XFL held the honors of holding the lowest ratings in television history and McManhon was $400 million lighter.

 Never one to give up, over the years, Vince witnessed stars that he created like Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan, and the Rock score huge paydays in Hollywood. While with the Rock he had gotten a little sliver of the cheddar with executive producer credits in order to let the Rock take the time off to make to make the films, he wants a bigger slice. After all, how is what Vince does any different than a movie maker? Another cash cow like the Rock was not going to escape his grasp. WWE films was formed to make movies starring the wrestlers and geared at the audience who already watched the WWE. Now, if you have not noticed the pattern yet, Vince tends to leave out rungs on his ladder to success. With his film division, it was stories. His first effort was the horror film, See No Evil, directed by a man who’s previous success was in the fields of porn and Britney Spears videos, and nothing says class like porn and Britney Spears. Surprisingly, no one went to a movie starring a 6’9” wrestler who is as ugly as a bag of bulldogs. Up next, The Marine, starring John Cena, a wrestler known for his “spinner” belt, sports jerseys, and rap catch phrases. This private school-educated, New England wasp’s street gimmick works like little kids and teenage girls, but the teenage boy’s who would have purchased the tickets to this film hate the pretty boy. Now it is bald, bad-kneed, wife-beating Steve Austin’s turn. Now ask yourself, does this plot sound familiar? A death row inmate in Central America named Jack Conrad (Austin) is purchased by a television producer to be 1 of 10 contestants to battle to the death on a remote island.  Can we say Running Man meets Enter the Dragon?

If truth be told, you should be running away from it also. Awful. It will certainly be on my worst of the year list.  This is probably the death blow of big screen WWE films, but don’t feel too bad for Vince.  Rumor has it he is thinking about getting into mixed marital arts.  How could he fail at something like that?

Verdict: One of the Worst Films of the Year