- 02/29/2008 (8:56:14 pm)
- Media
…….
Nothing fake about wrestling's juicing problem
By McMahon's standards, the hearing qualified as a great success: rife with conflict and stage-managed buffoonery. By the end of the day, a great and prosecutable lie had been told without shame. Most important, though, ratings were great. It got people talking.
It's a wonder, then, that McMahon declined his own chance to testify. He had been called to appear on Wednesday by the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. This wasn't an inquisition directed at the wresting industry. Rather, the WWE impresario had been called along with the commissioners of the four major sports and their corresponding union bosses. Nobodies such as Bud Selig, Roger Goodell, David Stern, Gary Bettman, Donald Fehr and Gene Upshaw saw fit to attend and be sworn in. But, alas, McMahon — who, unlike the commissioners, runs a publicly traded company — had a scheduling conflict. His lawyer had a prior commitment (a federal criminal trial in Pennsylvania), and so the subcommittee seeking more vigorous and uniform drug testing had to do without him.
Recall that the Clemens Committee — otherwise known as Oversight and Government Reform — subpoenaed former Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch as a witness. In fact, the subpoena itself produced national headlines. No such subpoena was issued for McMahon. But maybe there should have been.
No one likes the idea of baseball players injecting steroids and human growth hormone. There is, however, a difference between the baseball players and the wrestlers.
The baseball players may be cheating. But the wrestlers are dying.
In June it will be a year since Chris Benoit, a WWE wrestler of some renown, murdered his wife and his son before taking his own life. Benoit, who hung himself, was receiving a 10-month supply of injectable steroids every three to four weeks, according to a DEA agent's affidavit. The case brought some mainstream media scrutiny, albeit briefly, on the wrestling business.
Among these pieces was a column I wrote citing the work of Irvin Muchnick, author of Wrestling Babylon. Muchnick had compiled a roster — "staggeringly incomplete," by his own admission — of wrestlers who died before the age of 50. Between 1985 and 2006, there were at least 89 such deaths. A Florida congressman seized on these figures (unattributed, of course) to call for an investigation of steroids in wrestling.
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| The Chris Benoit murder-suicide tragedy sparked a brief look into wrestling's problems with performance-enhancing drugs. (Peter Kramer / Getty Images) |
But now Muchnick's 2007 tally is in. He stopped counting dead wrestlers when the number hit 21.
Causes of death are typically suicide, overdose of prescription medication, ruined organs (livers and kidneys), heart attack or heart failure, a possible sign of steroid abuse.
"Steroid abuse in pro wrestling is probably worse than in any professional sport or amateur sport," said the subcommittee chairman, Bobby Rush (D-Il).
It's worth noting that not all the dead wrestlers worked for the WWE. Two years ago, McMahon's company embarked on a new "Wellness Program," mandating testing and treatment guidelines for performers. Later, after the Benoit case, the WWE offered to pick up the tab for wrestlers (all independent contractors) in need of drug rehab. Still, it's difficult to argue that professional wrestling is anything but a perilous vocation.
To argue that wrestling is fake isn't much of an argument. Worse, it misses the point. Yes, wrestling is fake. Bookies don't take action on scripted matches. And for all its production values, the WWE lacks the quantifiable beauties of Major League Baseball, all those numbers and records to be endlessly debated. All wrestling has is a body count. That much, however, is real.
Finally, consider the prevalence of the muscle aesthetic in American culture. It's everywhere: video games, comic books, movies. As many kids looked to Chris Benoit as a role model as they did Roger Clemens.
The distinction between real and fake, between the virtuous and the virtual has become almost meaningless. Vince McMahon, a visionary if ever there was one, understood that much years ago. There is nothing in the real world he can't exploit in a WWE storyline. A subpoena would've only found its way into the Wrestlemania script.
