Newly released bodycam footage shows a reckless driving crash in Westport, Connecticut. The driver was Vince McMahon —the wrestling guy—clocked at approximately 115 MPH in his Bentley before rear-ending another vehicle on a public highway. In many ways, this incident perfectly encapsulates his entire life. Because if there's one thing Vince McMahon has never understood, it's the concept of appropriate speed.
The man is 80. Most people that age are arguing with their pharmacist about co-pays and falling asleep during Jeopardy! Vince was bombing down a Connecticut interstate like he had somewhere important to be and absolutely nobody in the world could stop him. Which has always been his operating philosophy. You might not like the man—and in many ways, you shouldn't. But take a moment to appreciate the spectacular density of his biography.
Here’s a person who spent decades chemically constructing a physique that looked like someone inflated a anatomy diagram, who ran a company where injectable ambition reportedly flowed like a corporate wellness benefit, who stood trial in 1994 on federal steroid trafficking charges and walked free—and then went back to work Monday morning. The audacity commands a reluctant respect. The steroids alone would be a full career for most scandals. For McMahon, they were Chapter Two.
Then came the women. Decades of settlements, signed agreements, strategic silences, and hush money flowing. The WWE board launched an investigation in 2022 and discovered approximately $19 million in undisclosed payments —which is a remarkable sentence to type.
He resigned. He returned. He resigned again. He bounced in and out of power like a man who believed consequences were a storyline he could book himself out of. Then, in January 2024, former WWE employee Janel Grant filed a lawsuit alleging McMahon had sexually trafficked and assaulted her, sharing her with other men, controlling her employment, her finances, her silence. The details were sickening and specific. McMahon denied everything. Federal investigators came calling. His second resignation became permanent, or at least permanent-adjacent—which, with McMahon, you never know.
And through all of it— the federal courtrooms, board investigations, depositions, devastating civil complaints—the man remained unbothered. He didn't shrink or shuffle quietly into irrelevance. He got in his Bentley and floored it.
This is the thing about Vince McMahon that defies easy categorization. He’s monstrous in ways that matter enormously to people who were allegedly hurt by him. But he’s also, undeniably, a maximalist human being. He didn't just build professional wrestling into a global empire, he became the character. The villain promoter, screaming in the ring, humiliating employees on national television, firing people on live broadcasts as entertainment. He didn't play a bad guy. Rather, he mainlined the role until the role became the man. Most men his age have slowed down considerably.
But McMahon isn't like most men. At 80, stepping out of a crumpled Bentley with federal investigators, civil lawsuits, and decades of wreckage trailing behind him—and somehow it all feels right. A perfectly-proportioned pile of ruin for a perfectly—disproportionate life.