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Because he has the trust of wrestlers and just lets them talk, Mike Mooneyham of the Charleston Post and Courier can be an indispensable primary source for their apparently straight-faced malarkey. Last week it was Batista, master of the torn triceps, decrying a “witch hunt” and making a comical and garbled defense of the WWE wellness policy. (See the November 25 posts on this blog.) This week it’s Ken Kennedy.

BENOIT: Wrestling with the Horror That Destroyed a Family and Crippled a Sport, by Steven Johnson, Heath McCoy, Irvin Muchnick, and Greg Oliver, is reviewed in the December issue of the Canadian book publishing trade magazine Quill & Quire.

We earlier reported the November death in Texas, from undisclosed causes, of retired wrestler Dave “Angel of Death” Sheldon. Early obituaries listed Sheldon’s age as 43. However, an article about Sheldon’s life on the authoritative site SLAM! Wrestling now says that Sheldon was 54 years old.

The answer to that question appears to be “yes.”

What happened to the Congressional hearings on the pro wrestling industry, which were being explored by two different committees of the House of Representatives in the wake of the June double-murder-suicide of wrestler Chris Benoit? (The Benoit case is No. 8 on Time magazine’s list of the year’s top crime stories.) I explain in “Looks like wrestling will dodge Congress’ steroid bullet,” a column today at SLAM! Wrestling on canoe.ca, “Canada’s home page for sports.”

Greg Gillies, 44, a musclebound journeyman Canadian pro wrestler who was booked “Mr. Gillis,” has died of a heart attack at age 44.

In an Orwellian world where wellness policies are not well, the other shoe of life’s wrestling angle is not quite ready to drop, after all. At 100+ dead and counting, it’s still in the tease stage.

I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that no more pro wrestlers under age 50 will die in the last three days of 2007. If so, the number will hold at 11.

I’m getting immediate feedback with additions to my just-posted list of 11 names. I’ll be following up shortly.