Gorilla Monsoon’s Daughter Explains Why A&E Documentary About Her Father Had To Be Scrapped Because Of Vince McMahon

Vince McMahon allegedly did not like how he was portrayed in a doc.

Author Brian Solomon has released his latest book, ‘Irresistible Force: The Life and Times of Gorilla Monsoon.’ To go over Monsoon’s life and his career in pro wrestling, his daughter, Valerie Marella-Jankowski, guest appeared on Solomon’s Shut Up And Wrestle podcast.

One of the stories Marella-Jankowski shared was that there was going to be an A&E documentary about her father, but it was scrapped because former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon did not like his portrayal in a documentary that A&E had done on Bret Hart and the Montreal Screwjob.

Footage was eventually given to A&E when WWE started collaborating with them again, but A&E never reached back out to the Monsoon family.

“We were excited to have somebody finally recognizing him, and you know, my mom was kind of on the fence in the beginning. ‘What do you wanna lose?’ He had this great career, this great life, and somebody needs to tell the world about it,” she said about the new book about her father. “I know back in the day — I don’t know if it was the 80s or when it was, but when A&E was doing all the biographies. We would watch them every Sunday night and they were really good. I mean, they were great, and they approached us and they said, ‘You know, we’d like to do one on your dad,’ and we were like, ‘Oh yeah, great. Okay.’ But it was right after they did the Bret Hart Montreal Screwjob one, and Vince (McMahon), for whatever reason, didn’t like the way he was portrayed, and I mean, it’s a documentary. That’s how you are, you know? ”She laughed. “And he told them that he would never give them another piece of footage, anything, ever again. So they called us back and they said, ‘Listen, we still wanna do it. But here’s the deal, we can’t get any footage, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s gonna suck.’ You’re not going to be able to show him commentating, you’re not going to be able to show him wrestling. You’re not gonna be able to show anything. What’s it gonna be like? A couple pictures?’ So we were kind of like, ‘Eh… put it on the back burner and we’ll think about it,’ and then my mom was like, ‘That’s not gonna honor your father. You know, it’s gonna be crappy,’ and we didn’t want that. Eventually, I guess he changed his mind and he gave ‘em footage because I’ve seen other ones after that. But they never came back to us about it and so, maybe we gave ‘em a bad taste, you know, we didn’t wanna do it — it’s not that we didn’t wanna do it. We just didn’t wanna do it half-assed.”

Monsoon passed away in 1999 at the age of 62.

WWE’s current partnership with A&E features the rollout of multiple documentaries and series, such as the LFG show, which wrapped season two.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit Shut Up And Wrestle with Brian Solomon with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.