On WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal (2007):
“Irv Muchnick knows wrestling likes Anna Wintour knows fashion.”
Frank Deford
author, Sports Illustrated writer, National Public Radio commentator
“The wrestling version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND: you fall into the hole and you discover a world you never dreamed of. But Muchnick didn’t dream this stuff up, he dug it up.”
Scott Ostler
columnist, San Francisco Chronicle
“In a world of timid, formulaic scrivenings on sports and entertainment and sports entertainment, WRESTLING BABYLON is a sock on the jaw.”
Bert Randolph Sugar
boxing historian and author
***
On CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death (2009):
“Muchnick is still throwing facts into the fire, still connecting the dots between the sacred cows of respectable society and the WrestleWorld they collude with.”
Phil Mushnick
columnist, New York Post
“Should be called ZEN AND THE ART OF SCANDAL MAINTENANCE. An instant cult classic.”
Larry Matysik
wrestling promoter and author
***
On Irv Muchnick’s investigations of sports concussions:
“[You characterize] the Times coverage as ‘carefully adumbrated’ – which, I’m assuming for now that you know, means presented somewhat incompletely in an effort to be vague or misleading. As far as I know your concern with the coverage stems only from your Maroon-connection-to-Riddell-study issue. Even if that were an issue, which I know it is not for reasons of which you are totally unaware, you have some nerve casting the entire work that way.”
Alan Schwarz
reporter, The New York Times, May 27, 2011, email
“the NYT has led that story for three years. what are you talking about?”
George Vecsey
columnist, The New York Times, June 17, 2011, email
***
on IRV MUCHNICK:
“He’s a vicious man.”
WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt, The American Lawyer, February 2011
http://muchnick.net/americanlawyer.pdf
“I was going to tell you to go fuck yourself.”
Stefan Fatsis, author and National Public Radio commentator
Email, September 9, 2011
“Muchnick’s blog is the best place – maybe the only place – for muckraking, truth-to-power journalism on the [concussion] topic. In fact, I expect that all of us will hear a lot more from Muchnick in 2012.”
Patrick Hruby (Washington Times, PostGame, ESPN.com, The Atlantic online)