May

On July 31 I had an approximately two-hour session with a CNN interview crew. The producer who interviewed me was neither Drew Griffin (the on-camera reporter who narrates Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling and interviews Vince and Linda McMahon) nor the woman seen on the WWE video interviewing John Cena.

The World Wrestling Entertainment website actually has the key element that my post of a few hours ago said would determine the magnitude of CNN’s gaffe in airing an out-of-context version of John Cena’s response to the question of whether he’s ever done steroids. That element is the unedited video of the entire CNN interview — not just the question-and-answer on Cena and steroids. The video is there at http://www.wwe.com/inside/cenaoncnn/, and it establishes that CNN screwed up big-time.

World Wrestling Entertainment and its top star, John Cena, are screaming bloody murder over a clip on CNN’s Special Investigations Unit report, Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling.

On tonight’s Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling, correspondent Drew Griffin asks WWE’s No. 1 star, John Cena, if he’s a steroid user. His arm in a sling as he recovers from surgery for a complete tear of his pectoral muscle (an injury incurred almost exclusively by juicers), Cena bristles at the “crazy question.”

At the end of my largely complimentary review of Bret Hart’s autobiography, Hitman, I made the point that Hart, who advocates a union for pro wrestlers, has not “stepped up to the plate” on the key current issue: outside regulation of the industry to curb the drug abuse that has claimed hundreds of lives.

Author Irvin Muchnick is interviewed in a documentary on CNN about professional wrestling that will air for the first time on Wednesday, November 7, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time.

It’s always amusing to see examples of how the BS of pro wrestling is ingrained into — indeed is interchangeable with — the BS of big business. In response to a local columnist’s published opinion that hosting next spring’s WrestleMania is a blight on the city of Orlando rather than an honor, in light of the recent revelations of the drug-and-death culture enabled by World Wrestling Entertainment, WWE chair Vince McMahon does a q-and-a with a badly overmatched Orlando Sentinel reporter.

Review of Bret Hart’s ‘Hitman’ Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 A web exclusive: http://muchnick.net/hitmanreview.pdf  

Sun-tzu, the great Chinese military theorist, is credited with a piece of advice that remains solid two and a half millennia later: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” As Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment draws heat from two Congressional committees, which are contemplating hearings on the scandal-plagued pro wrestling industry, the principle is well illustrated by the strange relationship between WWE and the moralistic senator from its home state, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.