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Feedback on Bret Hart
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
Interesting column on SLAM! Wrestling about Bret Hart. I disagree, particularly because of the point you make in your final paragraph. I think Bret is generally seen as an industry crackpot, especially when it comes to all things McMahon related. If he were to call for a stronger drug-testing program, it would just be written off as further bitterness resulting from Screwjob ’97. I hate to say it, but he has about as much credibility as Sammartino, another crackpot. That’s not to say the WWE doesn’t need a better program – it definitely does – but Bret is the wrong person to push for it.
MUCHNICK: I don’t know about Hart’s being an industry crackpot, but I do agree that almost anything he says will be seen through the prism of his feud with McMahon. That’s important to wrestling fans, but frankly I don’t have a lot of faith in fans as a force to pressure Congress to pressure the industry to clean up its act – they just want to get on with the show. However, I suspect that many of the tens of thousands, soon to be hundreds of thousands, of readers of Hart’s book who aren’t even wrestling fans might be moved. In any event, I don’t believe that the fight to reverse this off-the-charts culture of drugs and death can afford to write off any potentially effective advocate.
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I am not an apologist or a defender of steroids..as someone who tried them over 20 years ago and used for a few weeks before fear turned me off them, I have seen people use and not abuse. The wrestling industry is a safehaven for steroid use, but there are so many other ingredients in the deaths of the wresters in past few years.