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I chatted today with a French reporter, Sabrina Van Tassel, who is working on a pro wrestling documentary for L’Effet Papillon (”The Butterfly Effect”), the leading investigative news program on the CANAL + channel.

Chris Jericho in Britain’s Daily Mail: “[Steroids are] not part of the business any more. They can’t be — we’ve been strictly tested over the past couple of years, but they’re not really necessary to wrestling.”

The April issue of Autograph magazine, a publication aimed at memorabilia collectors, has an article by Jake Butikas about deaths in pro wrestling in 2007.

Author Irvin Muchnick was interviewed Monday by Chris Schneider, sports director of KRLD-AM 1080, for a segment that will be broadcast later this week on “KRLD Sports Central,” which airs nightly from 7 to 9 p.m.

The Center for Responsive Politics’ lobbying database now has complete information based on required filings for 2007. It shows that World Wrestling Entertainment spent at least $260,000 on lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill last year via its outside law firm, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis.

Chris Nowinski has heard from anonymous professional wrestlers in World Wrestling Entertainment that WWE management has instituted a concussion management program.

As a journalist examining the who-what-where-when-how-why of the Chris Benoit case, I understand the human factor. I also understand the value of discretion. There are witnesses I’ve backed off from when they made it clear they didn’t want to talk further about that horrible weekend in Georgia, and when I knew that persistence could pay off only in compounded grief.

Not since the Midnight Rider was unmasked, during a ringside brawl in Florida in the early eighties, as Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream — but nobody told! — have fans circled the wagons as assiduously as they are doing right now around Chavo Guerrero and Scott James.

I’ve applied to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office for additional records in the Chris Benoit case that the authorities now acknowledge should have been included in the original release of materials to the media and the public.