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July 27, 2009Muchnick Book Club: QUEEN OF THE RING by Jeff Leen
July 29, 2009
The Wrestling Babylon channel at YouTube has added two classic clips of national television interviews by author Irvin Muchnick to promote magazine articles that were later collected in his book WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal.
In June 1991, Muchnick was on ESPN’s “Up Close,” where he was interviewed by host Roy Firestone about the just-published Spy magazine cover story “Pimping Iron,” an account of the war between Joe Weider’s established International Federation of Body-Builders and Vince McMahon’s upstart World Bodybuilding Federation. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSi03jGCvDs&feature=channel.
On September 8, 1988, Irvin Muchnick appeared on “Late Show” on the then new Fox television network, where he was interviewed by host Ross Shafer about his Penthouse magazine article on the Von Erich wrestling family of Texas. “Born-Again Bashing” was later selected for the anthology Best Magazine Articles: 1988. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNaq_NBWhsk&feature=channel.
The Wrestling Babylon YouTube channel (http://youtube.com/WrestlingBabylon) also includes the following TV appearances by Muchnick:
* Confronting wrestling legend Bret Hart on CNN’s “Nancy Grace” in the aftermath of the Chris Benoit double-murder suicide
* Debating Bill O’Reilly on the implications of the Benoit tragedy on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor”
* Discussing pro wrestling’s culture of death on the French network Canal + news magazine program “L’Effet Papillon”
* Commenting on Benoit in the documentary “A Fight to the Death,” hosted by Bob McKeown on the CanÂadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “the fifth estate”
Irvin Muchnick’s new book, CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, will be published in October by ECW Press. For pre-order and other information, visit http://benoitbook.com.