By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

A new wrestling documentary titled "Stronghold" is critical of WWE CEO Vince McMahon for "killing" the wrestling industry with his form of sports entertainment. The film focuses on pro, amateur, and submission wrestling, but is receiving publicity attacking one of the most visible figures in wrestling.

The filmmakers issued a press release today announcing details of the documentary and Yahoo ran with the story to generate publicity. The hook for the documentary is a scene where a Vince McMahon action figure is "killed off" to symbolize frustrations with McMahon's vision for pro wrestling on TV.

From the press release: "It's no secret that pro wrestling is still popular, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good. In a segment in the STRONGHOLD film, pro wrestling enthusiasts take on Vince McMahon and how the WWE monopoly negatively influenced professional wrestling."

The comments from wrestling enthusiasts in the movie focus on WWE TV programming featuring too much talking and not enough wrestling. The movie broke down an episode of WWE Raw from 2007 where there was one hour of talking, 36 minutes of commercials, and 24 minutes of wrestling with only six minutes of "applied holds" in the wrestling matches.

"It's not about wrestling anymore. It's about everything else that builds up to the match," said one fan. "Whereas, before, the match was the pinnacle; it was the thing you wanted to see."

There is a video trailer for the movie below. The press release can be read on Yahoo here.



Caldwell's Analysis: Some of the wrestlers shown in the video preview come across like bitter wrestlers who never got a shot at the big time. However, based on the video sample, the documentary appears to have strong points on WWE hurting their namesake in favor of trying to catch more viewers. WWE isn't in the business of looking for wrestling fans, but entertainment fans. And this documentary was completed before the guest host concept was instituted on Raw.

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