ARCHIVE 11/10/07: John Cena’s ‘Poison Pill’ CNN Interview

John Cena’s ‘Poison Pill’ CNN Interview

Saturday, November 10th, 2007

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. The piece aired Wednesday night and is scheduled to run again both Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

On the program, in response to the question of whether he’s ever done steroids, Cena is shown first complaining, “It’s a crazy question,” and concluding with the words, “I can’t tell you that I haven’t, but you’ll never be able to prove that I have.”

WWE is one of the savviest media manipulators in history. So viewers trying to sort all this out should take with several quintillion grains of salt the company’s expressions of outrage on its website.

“In a country in which the news media is highly suspect, and the quality of unbiased reporting has been thrown into the trash can, CNN has stooped to new depths,” WWE’s statement reads. “Notwithstanding the fairness, or lack therein, of CNN’s recent piece entitled ‘Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling,’ perhaps the best example of how CNN misrepresents and unfairly presents their biased, if not illegal, point of view is the comparison of WWE’s unedited video above to CNN’s edited version. CNN’s depiction of John Cena as it relates to steroids is not only professionally and morally wrong, but damaging to his character.”

My transcript of WWE’s video is at the bottom of this post. In this version, the quotes pulled for the CNN broadcast do appear to be out of context. The truest and fullest context, however, may be quite a bit more ambiguous than WWE suggests.

For Cena actually gave two different responses to the question. One was “Absolutely not.” The other was “It’s a crazy question…. I can’t tell you that I haven’t [etc.].”

Evasive or dissembling interview subjects often do this: they start out with a flat denial before swerving into a long, rambling philosophical discourse. The first thing we need to know, therefore, is whether there is still more unshown footage. For example, did the CNN interviewer follow up and ask Cena to clarify why the first response of “Absolutely not” was not sufficient? Just what about the question was “crazy”? It wasn’t crazy; it was obvious. And why, if Cena is squeaky-clean, did he feel the need to dare skeptics to prove otherwise?

If there is such additional footage and it shows Cena squirming or switchbacking on his denial, then the CNN producers might have had a basis for concluding that his essential answer to the question was a lot closer to “It’s a crazy question…. I can’t tell you that I haven’t [etc.]” than to “Absolutely not.”

And if there is such a further context – a meta-context, if you will – it also might explain the $64,000 question of why WWE cooperated with CNN in the first place. It’s possible that Vince McMahon knew he would be damned if he did and damned if he didn’t: ducking a CNN interview would look bad, and his inevitably bad answers to CNN’s hard questions on camera would also look bad. But an interview with the more sympathetic Cena, who could cleverly insert a “poison pill” into his remarks – a seemingly unequivocal denial that, only on extremely close examination, looks a lot less unequivocal – now that’s something different. That’s something handing WWE the populist-victim card in a battle with the hated media.

I don’t know that that is what happened. I also don’t absolve CNN of blame for failing to play both “Absolutely not” and “It’s a crazy question…. I can’t tell you that I haven’t [etc.].” Here are the tools that a fair-minded observer needs at this point:

· CNN should make available any Cena footage that follows the “counter-clip” shown by WWE.

· Cena and WWE should publish all of his Talent Wellness Policy drug tests. Has Cena ever received a “warning” and follow-up monitoring for elevated levels of testosterone? Has he been granted a waiver because of a doctor’s prescription for hormone replacement therapy or any other therapeutic rationale?

· Cena should allow Dr. James Andrews, the famed surgeon, to talk publicly and in detail about the diagnosis of Cena’s torn pectoral muscle and the surgery to repair it. And other experts should weigh in on what the medical literature has to say about how many such injuries are known to have been sustained by non-steroid users.

Irv Muchnick

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TRANSCRIPT OF WWE’S CENA-CNN CLIP

Q. You know, WWE is under the microscope right now.

A. Of course, as is all of sport.

Q. A lot of talk about steroid use, drug use. Have you ever used steroids?

A. Absolutely not.

Q. Even back in bodybuilding days, football days …

A. This is a crazy question. And it’s something that, um, it’s tough to answer, just because of the way society is now, the way people conceive things because performance-enhancing drugs have got the spotlight and it’s a hot thing to talk about. Any time you see any athlete in any athletic venture, could be the PGA tour, achieve physical greatness, something that is beyond the norm. Even for a top-tier athlete. If top-tier athletes are rushing for a thousand yards, and somebody comes out and starts running people over, rushing for two thousand. It’s not athletic achievement any more and that’s something that really gets me. It’s “he or she is on performance-enhancing drugs.” And it’s only because certain athletes have gotten themselves into certain situations where automatically the finger is pointed at somebody: “Oh, they’re on performance-enhancing drugs.” My answer to that question, have you ever used steroids, is the only thing I can say: I can’t tell you that I haven’t, but you’ll never be able to prove that I have. Because each one of you, each one of you out there, has an opinion on how I carry myself. And I can take a million tests, I’ve been tested for drugs since I was 17 years old, I can take a million tests, I can pass every one of them, as soon as I pass it, there’s some other guy on the other end going, “There’s masking agents, there’s this, there’s that.” I know the arguments because I’ve been in the situation. This is a subject that’s very very near and dear to me only because since I was a very small child I’ve worked my ass off to get to where I’m at, and it sucks to be able to have to deal with people saying that I have to rely on a crutch. You know, I wake up every day and I work myself to the bone because I love what I do. I’ve got the best gig in the world. I love it. And it kills me to have to sit here and do this with one arm. Like I want to be back out there. You hear stories about guys coming home from the war and they’re in the infirmary and all they want to do is get back in the field. I want to get back in the field. You know, it’s killing me. But to have to deal with the popularity of a substance that enhances performance, it’s tough to take. I take great pride in the fact that I have a God-given gift of above-average natural strength. And I show it off whenever I can, because to me that’s fun, that’s entertaining, that’s what I love to do.