Irvin Muchnick’s interview Tuesday with Sean Patrick of WOC Radio, 1420 AM in Davenport, Iowa, can be downloaded at http://muchnick.net/WOC_040808.mp3.
A blog reader speculates that WWE honchos might be punishing Guerrero for suspected leaks to this blog. If so, Vince, let me take this opportunity to assure you that Guerrero has not been a source.
In the last post I had some fun at the expense of Chavo Guerrero, the ECW champion who got “jobbed out” at WrestleMania ten days ago.
But, of course, the information that he and Scott James, and probably a small circle of others, are closely holding about Chris Benoit’s last contacts with the outside world is no joke.
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.
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.
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.
Chris Nowinski has heard from anonymous professional wrestlers in World Wrestling Entertainment that WWE management has instituted a concussion management program.
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.
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.