Why would accusers say such things? McMahon was asked. “Insanity,” he said.
The committee staff tried to engage McMahon on two televised incidents in recent years in which wrestlers were taunted for looking smaller when they returned from drug suspensions. “As I recall,” McMahon said dismissively, “there was one incident in which Triple H [made] an ad lib [to that effect].” There were actually two incidents. In one, Chris Masters was ridiculed by Triple H. In the other, Randy Orton was mocked by Vince McMahon.
Investigator Cohen noted that thirty WWE wrestlers tested positive for steroids or illegal drugs in 2006, and eleven in 2007. Between March 2006 and February 2007, fifteen were suspended, three received “TUE’s,” or therapeutic use exemptions, and twelve got “warnings.” Cohen asked McMahon to “describe the circumstances under which those twelve wrestlers received warnings.”
McDevitt: “You’re basically asking him what he knows about the warning business? . . . Ask him about his conversation with Dr. Black, for Christ’s sake. Come on, quit dancing.”
McMahon added an oily, “I don’t have anything to hide, guys. Just shoot me right between the eyes, okay?”
This led to a discussion of the initial concern of wrestlers over what would happen when they tested positive but had a doctor’s prescription for steroids. McMahon said he eventually resolved the apparent confusion between Black and the wrestlers by hiring Dr. Ray, the medical review officer, to help determine the legitimacy of particular prescriptions and claims of TUE’s.
“The nature of this policy is to do exactly what it was designed to do, the overall wellness of our talent,” McMahon said. “Let’s face it, as a good businessman, I don’t want talent that isn’t well. They can’t perform. They can’t perform at their highest level, and they won’t be with us. So, obviously, I want talent to be healthy. Notwithstanding the fact that I am a human being and want other human beings to be healthy, aside from that, I’m a good businessman. I want my talent healthy, because if they’re healthy, their clear longevity is much greater as intellectual property to the company. So, yeah, you know, I want this policy to be as good as it possibly can be.”
McMahon disputed the idea that the wrestlers on the Signature Pharmacy list were caught by the Albany district attorney rather than by WWE. “My understanding, my recollection, okay, is of these eleven individuals identified by the Albany outfit . . . two of those had some sort of infraction with the testing with Dr. Black” — by which McMahon meant that they testified positive for something, whether or not it was the something they had illegally ordered from the Internet pharmacy.
McMahon said he took “great offense” to Waxman’s statement at the time of the Signature revelations that the WWE policy deserved criticism because law enforcement, rather than the company, caught the miscreants. “It says to me, basically, that this is sort of a witch hunt kind of thing. You guys already have the answers before you even ask me the questions. . . . I think that is stupid, okay? That is out-and-out stupid. And I resent the fact that, you know, someone would fry us in the court of public opinion without having the knowledge you’re now going to give [Waxman] based on my testimony. . . .”
On Chris Benoit specifically, McMahon revealed the misleading nature of company statements suggesting that Benoit’s wellness program tests did not show steroid use. McMahon conceded that he didn’t know when a test detected a banned substance, only when there was “a conclusion positive,” which was the detection of a banned substance combined with Dr. Ray’s conclusion that a TUE claim was invalid.
Some of the most convoluted dialogue involved an amendment to the WWE policy to cover wrestlers whose suspensions threatened to interrupt ongoing TV story lines. In August 2006, McMahon promulgated a policy change stating that the company “may, at its discretion, schedule the Talent to work selected televised events without pay and pay-per-views with pay during the 30 day suspension period.” The theory was that sudden no-shows caused by last-minute suspensions penalized only the fans. By putting the offending wrestlers on TV for the purpose of resolving their story lines, WWE ensured that they were being punished, not rewarded; they were downgraded or forced to “do the honors” by losing out in their pending feuds.
How wrestlers got paid, in this or any circumstance, was almost impossible for an outsider to calculate. WWE pegged compensation to its own accountings of ticket sales and other revenue streams; the only stipulated payment by contract was $200 per television shoot. (The talent above the “jobber” or “enhancement” level had written into their contracts what were known as “downside guarantees” of annual income from these accountings.)
McMahon had this to say about why and how such suspensions were held in abeyance: “I’m resolving an issue on television, and I’m doing it very quickly. I’m doing it as quickly as we possibly can. . . . And, again, we’re different than anybody else. We’re not a sport, emphasize, okay. It’s not like baseball or whatever else it may be and you’re not playing, you’re out for fourteen games or whatever it might be. This is entertainment. We are so different than sport. We are entertainment.”[4]
McMahon was contemptuous of the idea that WWE bore any responsibility for the astounding early mortality rate of wrestlers. Asked about the Meltzer study showing the deaths of sixty-two performers under the age of fifty in WWE and other “major league” organizations (including WCW and the original ECW), McMahon said, “I’m not familiar with anything Dave Meltzer writes. He’s a gossip columnist. I don’t read what he has to write. Like I say, he’s a dirt monger. There are a number of those. We call them dirt sheets and they have very little credibility.”
In August 2007, Frank Deford, the author and Sports Illustrated writer, touted Meltzer’s study in a National Public Radio commentary. Deford (who employed Meltzer as a wrestling columnist at the National in 1990–91 and on at least one occasion fended off pressure from McMahon to fire him) called Meltzer “the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism.” McMahon was unimpressed. He said Deford carried a grudge against him over an incident in which the promoter made off with one of the writer’s shoes after they went bowling at a country club[5].
In the summer of 2007, WWE sent a letter to about 500 former wrestlers offering to underwrite the full costs of substance-abuse treatment because, as the letter put it, “Over the last ten years, an inordinate number of wrestlers have passed away. Some of those deaths may in part have been caused by drugs or alcohol.” McMahon told the Congressional investigators that this was “unfortunately about the only thing that we can do. I don’t like to read about these deaths at all. And some of these people who have overdosed and things of that nature have been friends of mine. It’s upsetting on every conceivable front. So as a not necessarily a responsible, but I think I would like to throw in responsible as well, corporate member of society, notwithstanding again the fact I’m a human being, I don’t know anything else we can do other than to extend that service or whatever to someone who may have a problem.”
McMahon summarized his motivation for the letter to former talent by saying this: “Two words: public relations. That’s it. I do not feel any sense of responsibility for anyone of whatever their age is who has passed along and has bad habits and overdoses for drugs. Sorry, I don’t feel any responsibility for that. Nonetheless, that’s why we’re [reaching out with the letter]. It is a magnanimous gesture.”
The committee staff asked whether McMahon himself, who had a talent contract and still stepped into the ring a couple of times a year, was subject to the wellness policy. The answer was no. “I’m not a regularly scheduled performer. In addition to that I’m sixty-two years old, not twenty-six. And the wellness policy is designed for those young competitors who compete on a regular basis.”
Had McMahon used steroids since his admitted use in the ’90s?
“I’m not going to allow you to harass this man,” McDevitt exploded. “How is that pertinent to a
nything about whether this wellness program works? And you came in here today professing you have an open mind and you’re telling me that you didn’t have this in mind when you [earlier shared a list of anticipated questions]? Bullshit.”
“I’m refusing to answer the question,” McMahon confirmed.
***
Congressman Waxman summarized his views in the letter to John Walters, the White House drug policy director. Waxman reported that “baseline testing,” at the beginning of the program in March 2006, found forty percent of WWE’s 186 wrestlers testing positive despite advance warning.
Then there were the TV and pay-per-view non-suspension suspensions.
There was the evidence that WWE, in 2007–08, went on to hire four out of the five wrestlers who tested positive for steroids in pre-contract testing. The only one not hired was the one who tested positive for both steroids and cocaine.
There were the TUE’s, tied to a circular “testosterone replacement acceptance program” for wrestlers who had damaged their endocrinological systems with past steroid abuse. Dr. Ray, who had made the recommendations affirming seven TUE’s, conceded in his interview that “there was shadiness in almost every case that I’ve reviewed.”
In the summer of 2007, WWE had contacted Dr. Richard Auchus, the Southwestern Medical Center and anti-doping agency endocrinologist (who is quoted at the end of the preceding chapter), about working with WWE on TUE standards. In the December interview on Capitol Hill, McMahon said he was “considering” and “contemplating” such a move. Ultimately, Auchus’s two-page proposal for getting past steroid abusers off androgens — a plan he compared to using methadone to wean heroin addicts — was dropped. (In October 2008 WWE would hire a different endocrinologist, Dr. Vijay Bahl of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, but the announcement said nothing specific about TUE’s.)
Finally, Chris Benoit. “According to WWE officials, Mr. Benoit was tested four times for steroids prior to his death. He tested positive three times, but each time he received only a warning or no penalty at all. The Committee obtained no evidence that efforts were made to discourage his steroid abuse,” the Waxman letter noted.
Waxman’s documentation seemed to be an attempt, in the absence of public hearings, to close the loop on an unresolved topic. The chance that anything substantive would come out of it, in terms of regulation or serious pressure on WWE to make its drug-testing apparatus truly independent, was low. Eighteen months after the Benoit murders, Congress had made a little bit of noise about the problem but left almost no imprint on a possible solution.
***
On Election Eve, November 3, 2008, the two major presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, were interviewed at halftime of ESPN’s Monday Night Football. Each was asked to name the reform in sports that would be his priority if the voters chose him the next day.
Living up to his image as an old-fashioned moralist, McCain said he would work to eliminate steroids in sports.
Obama vowed to advocate to replace the current Bowl Championship Series with a credible playoff system, which every year would guarantee the nation an undisputed national college football champion.
[1]. FoxSports.com columnist Mark Kriegel noted at the time that Stearns’ statistics were lifted from the appendix of my book Wrestling Babylon.
[2]. Maybe the strangest was the self-hanging in Pittsburgh — an apparent copycat suicide — of independent wrestler James Fawcett (“Devil Bhukakan”), thirty-one, who idolized Benoit.
[3]. In this book, the terms “wellness policy” and “wellness program” are used interchangeably. I intend “policy” in reference to the company’s formulation and publication of a plan, and “program” in reference to how it operates, but the distinctions are trivial.
[4]. Wrestling Observer’s Meltzer pointed out the hypocrisy of WWE’s professed concern for customers when the company adjusts wrestlers’ suspensions in order to preserve story lines. The company often pulled star wrestlers from events in order to support story line injuries that didn’t really happen — but not until fans had already purchased tickets thinking those wrestlers would be there.
[5]. Deford confirmed this bizarre story, which took place at a birthday party for John Filippelli, a TV sports producer who at the time was coordinating TV operations for WWE. Pat Patterson, a retired wrestler who was then McMahon’s right-hand man, stole one of Deford’s shoes and one of his wife’s. Patterson and McMahon found this hilarious. “I’m rather amazed McMahon brought this up, but it’s a pretty accurate account of him acting like a horse’s ass,” Deford said in an email to me.
CHAPTER 14
All the World’s a Stooge
CERTAIN DROLL APHORISMS about pro wrestling, if delivered by men in tweed rather than spandex, would be recognized staples of academic deconstruction theory. For example, the wrestler-promoter Cowboy Bill Watts once confronted the topic of the sport’s fake nature with this puzzler: “Work or shoot — either way, it’s still a competition.” Watts meant that just because “sports entertainment” is physical theater rather than a legitimate contest doesn’t change the fact that one participant is trying to get the upper hand over the other under some admittedly elusive standard. Or anyway, that’s probably what Watts meant. Michel Foucault took the final three-count in 1984. The absence of a pulse got Roland Barthes disqualified from life in 1980. Neither could be consulted.
You can’t talk to a man with a shotgun in his hand. Nor can you argue with anyone who thinks a cluster of avoidable deaths, in a show business in a non-war zone, can be rationalized. Vince McMahon knows this; the rest of us only suspect it. Chris Benoit might have snapped — but the ring ropes guarding his way of life from reality did not. They just got a little more frayed. They will snap next time, or the time after that. Or they won’t. In the Western Canada and American South of Benoit, in the New Jersey of Mickey Rourke’s Randy “The Ram” Robinson in The Wrestler, and at all points in between, young men (and women) are still taking, and will always take, to extremes their ambition to bask in the roar of the crowd. As a society, we have decided that the collective price they pay is OK. Similarly, we have decided not to make that big a deal of the inevitability of a “student-athlete” croaking every now and then at a “voluntary” off-season college football practice.
***
Chris killed Nancy on Friday night, Daniel either very late Friday or some time Saturday, and himself on Sunday morning. What happened?
Most likely, Chris and Nancy had their final fight, spontaneously, and it got out of hand. A false dichotomy of the subsequent debate over steroids was that acts of deliberation across a several-day period could not have been the result of “roid rage.” Such a framing of the events misses two things. One is that the first murder, Nancy’s, could very well have been produced by a quick burst of rage, with the other acts being ones of greater calculation — more like desperation — once Chris realized what he had done.
The other thing missed by harping on the ’roid rage straw man is more fundamental: steroids also can cause depression. Whether or not they were the main cause of the crime, steroids and the steroid culture were an important factor.
WWE counted on the enormous capacity of its fans to deny and the enormous capacity of everyone else to shrug. At strategic points, it rolled out the sound bites it needed, such as when beloved TV announcer and former company executive Jim Ross attended the funeral of Nancy and Daniel at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Daytona Beach, Florida, on July 14, 2007. “This is not a steroid issue,” Ross told the media. “That horse has got to be put in the barn and unsaddled.”
Those who read the Georgia medical examiner’s toxicology report, which was released three days later, might have been tempted to get back in the saddle. But not good old “JR.”
***
The presence of a small amount of Nancy’s
blood indicated that Chris banged her head on the floor in the course of a struggle, which, if he were serious, could not have lasted long. “Some type of violence” was evident, the sheriff’s report said, including “several impact injuries to her head, and possibly to her body, but it is unclear what type of instrument or object caused the injuries.” Why Chris then felt the need to tie up Nancy, either before or after killing her, takes us to the outer reaches of speculation. One theory is that he considered the possibility of fleeing with Daniel, or in any case somehow making the scene look like a third-party home-invasion crime.
During the dispute between the Benoit and Toffoloni families over the disposition of the estate, a question arose about the order of the deaths. Neither Chris nor Nancy left a will, and the answer had implications under a Georgia slayer statute, whereby the estate claims of a murderer are forfeited. The law would have kicked in if the Toffolonis could establish, as they suggested they would, that Chris killed Daniel first, and Nancy’s side could argue for a larger share of the assets.
A handwritten document in the files of the Toffolonis’ lawyer, Richard Decker, headed “Leigh’s theory,” outlined one possible scenario. (I asked Decker who Leigh was. “Don’t know for sure, probably one of our paralegals,” Decker emailed back.) Leigh’s notes:
Friday night — all 3 seen at pool
Nobody seen Saturday
Later Fri. maybe Saturday morning Nancy and Chris fight over drugs or some other issue and Chris, all jacked up on his stuff from Astin, hits Nancy on the head and knocks her out, maybe an accident. She had many central nervous system depressants in her system to enforce the unconsciousness. This would explain why Chris tied her up, to keep her contained while he figures out what to do. Daniel finds out what happens and freaks out. Chris sedates Daniel to calm him down but accidentally gives him too much and he dies.
Chris & Nancy Page 19
