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. See http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orl-vince0207nov02,0,4767926.story?track=rss.
My favorite line from McMahon: “[Talent Wellness Program] random testing is designed to be at 400 percent, meaning that all performers are to be tested at least four times a year.”
Do the math: A 100 percent effective drug test is administered four times a year. Four times 100 = 400! To anyone who might think it’s impossible to give more than 100 percent effort, WWE proves you wrong again.
The reporter, Lynn Hoppes, fails to follow up by noting that Chris Benoit — who in June would murder his wife and their son, and kill himself — passed an April drug test administered by the 400 percenters. Benoit’s postmortem toxicology report showed that he had ten times the normal level of testosterone in his system. So I suggest some different arithmetic: 10 times 100 = 1,000 percent ineffective. Or at the very least, 3 dead people times 100 = 300 percent ineffective.
Or we could take the average of these three rhetorical renderings of effectiveness: (400% effective + 1,000% ineffective + 300% ineffective) divided by 3 = 300% ineffective.
Irv Muchnick