ARCHIVE 11/12/07: Buckle Up for the Post-Cena/CNN (And Oh, by the Way, Post-Benoit) Period

Buckle Up for the Post-Cena/CNN (And Oh, by the Way, Post-Benoit) Period

Monday, November 12th, 2007

As the dust settles on Death Grip, CNN’s investigation of pro wrestling — both on its valuable moments and on its irresponsible quoting out of context of John Cena — I think it’s more important than ever to fight against Gresham’s Law.

Gresham’s Law states that bad money drives out good, and the same is true of commentary. There’s a lot of intellligent opinion out there about the need to clean up wrestling, and the smartest fans and observers know that it doesn’t all come from people who are out to get the poor, defenseless, persecuted WWE. That’s why I want to keep calling attention to it; I don’t want the morons and the deny-all crowd to drown them out or confuse the issue.

I’ve already cited Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter (http://wrestlingobserver.com), Wade Keller’s Pro Wrestling Torch (http://www.pwtorch.com), and Bryan Alvarez’s Figure Four Weekly (http://www.f4wonline.com). Bryan also writes an online column for The Fight Network, and his take on the Cena/CNN controversy (more developed than the one from his own website that I cited over the weekend) is at http://www.thefightnetwork.com/news_detail.php?nid=5354.

Let me add to that list Ryan Byers of 411mania.com. At http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/columns/63117/The-Custom-Made-News-Report-11.11.07.htm, Byers recaps the CNN development. Byers concludes:

“[T] hough this is a situation in which WWE is clearly in the right and a mainstream media outlet is clearly in the wrong, this incident does not vindicate all of WWE’s mainstream media gaffes over the last several months. Vince McMahon still comes off like the most overly-defensive, paranoid man on the planet every time that he does a television interview. Fit Finlay still came off like a bully live on Nancy Grace, without the help of editing. The doctor in charge of WWE’s drug testing program and the company’s attorney still played silly semantic games and tried to claim that testosterone is not a steroid. Ken Kennedy still repeatedly claimed to have never done steroids while in WWE, only to be proven a liar when he was outed as a client of Signature Pharmacy well in to his run with the promotion.”

I understand that CNN did edit the Sunday replays of Death Grip to include Cena’s “Absolutely not” denial before his rambling explanation of how people are going to believe what they’re going to believe no matter how many drug tests he passes.