Thursday, June 25, 2009

Gina Carano Doesn't Exist in the East Bay Express

Last week the East Bay Express, based in Berkeley, California, ran a cover story on female mixed martial arts in the area. You can read it at http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/tigers__but_ladies_too/Content?oid=1013324.

Focusing on a particular local trainer, it was an OK-enough article, except for this glaring statement:

"But will there be a place for these fighters to compete? Since 2007, two of the leading companies holding women’s MMA fights have folded. Fatal Femmes Fighting has spent the year reorganizing, bowed by the economic realities where there aren’t many people willing to pay $25 to see an all-women’s card. Sherdog’s Hunt thinks that women’s mixed martial arts is at the same point as the men’s sport was seven or eight years ago. 'There’s a handful of really good athletes that know the sport, but there’s not enough opportunities,' Hunt says."

What the Express doesn’t add is that on August 15, at the HP Pavilion in San Jose — 50 miles from Berkeley — Strikeforce is presenting the first-ever televised MMA card (on Showtime) headlined by a women’s match: Gina “Conviction” Carano vs. Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos.

A story on women’s MMA that doesn’t even mention Gina Carano, a crossover glamour girl who also boasts world-class legitimacy in both Muay Thai, a specialized strike sport, and MMA is a little like breaking down women in auto racing without a reference to Danica Patrick.

I sent a nice note to the Express, which apparently has decided not to tap out to the obvious omission.

The Express snidely covered the launch of my first book, Wrestling Babylon. If the paper responds similarly to the publication of my upcoming Chris & Nancy: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, y’all will know why.

Irv Muchnick

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Muchnick / Bret Hart CNN Exchange Popular on YouTube

The clip from the June 29, 2007, edition of CNN’s Nancy Grace, with an exchange between author Irvin Muchnick and retired wrestler Bret Hart about the role of steroids in the Chris Benoit double murder/suicide, is the first clip on the new WrestlingBabylon channel at YouTube to surpass 1,000 views.

The channel is at http://youtube.com/WrestlingBabylon.

“Irvin Muchnick Challenges Wrestling Legend Bret Hart” is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXmw7Fmhwgg.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Historical Footnote on Wrestler Brian Blair

Brian Blair, a retired wrestler who most recently was an elected commissioner of Hillsborough County, Florida, has been arrested and jailed in Tampa on charges that he punched his two sons and put the older son, who is 17, in a chokehold. See http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1012183.ece#.

At the 1991 federal trial of Dr. George Zahorian -- the then World Wrestling Federation ringside physician in Pennsylvania -- Blair testified that he received shipments of steroids from Zahorian.

Irv Muchnick

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Donald Trump, WWE, and the SEC

In a Friday piece headlined “GE and WWE in Violation of Securities Law?”, http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/media/ge-wwe-violation-securities-law, Kathryn Glass of Fox News wondered about the storyline “sale” of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Raw brand to Donald Trump.

Trump’s involvement is a ratings stunt for the USA cable network show Monday Night Raw. (USA is owned by GE. Raw is one of WWE’s three wrestling troupes; the others are Smackdown and ECW.)

The Fox article noted that a USA press release, which did not identify the Trump purchase of Raw as a TV shtick, was distributed via PR Newswire, a business and corporate-relations service. In response, shares of WWE, which is listed at the New York Stock Exchange, fell Tuesday more than seven percent, to $12.18 per share, after opening at $13.13, arguably because some naive investors fell for the ruse.

The Securities and Exchange Commission prohibits the dissemination by publicly traded companies of materially false statements. This subject came up with respect to WWE in another incident two years ago, which is covered in my forthcoming book on the Chris Benoit double murder/suicide. (Tomorrow is the anniversary of the strangulation of Nancy Benoit, the first of the three deaths.) On the day the Benoit family’s bodies were found, WWE was scheduled to air a special edition of Monday Night Raw with a memorial to WWE chairman (and TV bad guy) Vince McMahon, who had been “murdered” by a car bomb. It was one thing for WWE to hype a storyline on its entertainment website, but in this case the corporation also put out a press release through its investors website, a move that Darren Rovell of CNBC questioned.

Yesterday, on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter website, Bryan Alvarez, the publisher of Observer affiliate Figure Four Weekly, wrote of the Fox story about Trump: “Sometimes it’s a bit annoying when wrestling falls under the radar because ‘it’s just wrestling.’ but with something like this, there aren’t more important things to do in the financial world?”

Unfortunately, my friend Bryan gets the tone here precisely wrong. The tipoff is his solipsistic phrase “a bit annoying.”

Yes, the Madoff scandal is more important than a goofball press release. But Alvarez doesn’t cover the financial world. He covers pro wrestling. How wrestling gets regulated, or not, affects a lot of things for wrestling fans and for talent. For example, in recent years the latter have experienced an avoidable and obscenely high volume of early deaths.

I’m not sure exactly what wrestling journalists who want to be taken seriously accomplish when they treat real-world stories so flippantly. For this reader, the only thing they accomplish is a careless signal that they — like wrestling promoters — enjoy having it both ways.

Irv Muchnick

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

'No WWE in Benoit Wrongful-Death Suit' (full text from SLAM! Wrestling)

[originally published on June 12 at SLAM! Wrestling under the headline "No WWE in Benoit wrongful-death suit -- only Dr. Astin and "Distributors X, Y, Z," http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/Benoit/2009/06/12/9772341.html


By Irvin Muchnick

On Wednesday the family of Chris Benoit's wife Nancy brought down the civil litigation hammer, filing a wrongful-death lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Newnan, Georgia, over the June 2007 murders by Chris of Nancy and their son Daniel (which were followed by Chris's suicide).

But as was speculated in this space on Tuesday [Second anniversary of Benoit tragedy slams shut another door on reform], the target of the suit by Nancy’s parents, Maureen and Paul Toffoloni, is not World Wrestling Entertainment. Rather, it is Dr. Phil Astin, Chris’s personal physician, who already has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after the Drug Enforcement Administration busted him for wildly overprescribing drugs to his patients.

(Prosecutors told the sentencing judge that two Astin patients other than the Benoits had died as a result of the doctor’s prescription abuses. One of these patients was Mike “Johnny Grunge” Dunham. The other was believed to be Sherry “Sensational Sherri” Russell.)

The Toffolonis’ complaint introduces a new element to the Benoit mystery in its inclusion of three co-defendants, who are referred to as “Distributor X,” “Distributor Y,” and “Distributor Z.” According to the complainants, the identities of these defendants are currently unknown to them, except to the extent that they are “for profit entities doing business in the State of Georgia” and are “manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and/or retail sellers of certain anabolic androgenic steroids, narcotic drugs, and/or controlled substances.”

Dr. Astin himself is accused of being a proximate cause of the Benoits’ deaths because of his negligent medical care and treatment of Chris, which began in June 2000. During that period, the complaint says, Astin’s actions put Chris “under the influence of CNS [central nervous system] depressants, opioids and anabolic androgenic steroids,” which impaired him mentally and triggered his homicidal-suicidal rampage across a weekend at the family’s home outside Fayetteville.

Both individually and on behalf of Nancy and Daniel’s estates, Maureen and Paul Toffoloni seek a jury trial and recovery of damages for “the full value of the lives of each decedent”; “final expenses, including funeral expenses”; and “compensatory damages for the fear, shock, mental and emotional trauma, and extreme pain and suffering endured by Nancy E. Benoit and Daniel Benoit prior to their deaths.” The plaintiffs also ask for punitive damages flowing from the defendants’ “willful misconduct, malice, fraud, wantonness, oppression, [with an assumption of] conscious indifference to consequences.”

At least three motivations could underly the decision by the family and their attorney, Richard P. Decker, to structure a three-fourths-unnamed defense group. One may be the struggle to locate a culpable party with deep pockets. The only hope of recovering monetary damages from the broken and imprisoned Astin himself would almost certainly be through his malpractice insurer. The Toffolonis may be betting on discovery and new evidence generated by a trial to identify the Atlanta area non-licensed pharmaceutical sources of what we already know, through the Fayette County sheriff’s criminal investigation and through the DEA’s case against Astin, was Chris Benoit’s astounding personal inventory of drugs.

The second motivation may be the need, for civil wrongful-death purposes, to establish something that was missing from the Astin prosecution: counts involving steroids and human growth hormone (not just painkillers and antidepressants). The network for those substances reaches beyond the doctor himself to the netherworld of online and other black-market dealers, and might involve recreational drugs as well.

A third motivation may well be grounded in pure principle — in a simple determination by the Toffolonis to use the civil legal system to expose as much as they possibly can about the circumstances that led to the horrific loss of their loved ones.

“We are not money-hungry people and that is not what this is about for us,” Nancy’s sister, Sandra Toffoloni, told me last year. “We have lost everything. Everything. I firmly believe there is responsibility to be taken, not just by Christopher.”

A facsimile of Wednesday’s 15-page complaint can be viewed through my website at muchnick.net/toffolonicomplaint.pdf.


Irvin Muchnick’s Chris & Nancy: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death will be published this fall by ECW Press. Pre-order and other info is at benoitbook.com.

WrestlingBabylon / Chris & Nancy YouTube Channel Launched

A channel collecting the media appearances of Irvin Muchnick, author of WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal (2007) and the forthcoming CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, is now live at YouTube.

The URL is http://youtube.com/WrestlingBabylon.

Here is a list of the current content:

* Irv challenges wrestling legend Bret Hart about steroids on CNN’s “Nancy Grace,” June 29, 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXmw7Fmhwgg&feature=channel_page

* Irv dukes it out with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” June 27, 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asTdiVWf4gM&feature=channel_page

* Irv is among those interviewed for a report on the Chris Benoit case and death in pro wrestling on France’s “L’Effet Papillon,” Canal + network, May 25, 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KDqolTYGY8&feature=channel_page

* Irv is among those interviewed for an hour-long documentary on Chris Benoit and death in pro wrestling on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “the fifth estate,” February 6, 2008, in seven parts on YouTube beginning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilMSCWC-Yvs&feature=channel_page

* Irv is the featured guest on “The Josh Kornbluth Show,” KQED-TV, San Francisco, February 26, 2007, in four parts on YouTube beginning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAGq8RCzpPg&feature=channel_page

* Irv is interviewed live by Gary Radnich, KRON4 News, San Francisco, March 22, 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH4Vj6X0Q_s&feature=channel_page

* Irv is interviewed about the Benoit case on WOC AM, Davenport, Iowa, April 8, 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xf-7riLmis&feature=channel_page

* In footage acquired by Irv after a fight before the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, Stamford police interrogate the “Benoit Wikipedia hacker,” June 29, 2007, in three parts on YouTube beginning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bHmsfSDvUc&feature=channel_page

'Steroid Cloud Hovers Over Baseball's Feel-Good Stories' ... full text from Beyond Chron

[originally published at Beyond Chron on June 15, http://quartz.he.net/~beyondch/news/index.php?itemid=7030]


By Irvin Muchnick

Anyone who cares about good government must scour the Washington coverage critically. Similarly, if the public-health implications of sports’ steroid scandals matter, you need to read the sports pages with equal skepticism. The feel-good comeback narratives of two baseball players – Rick Ankiel of the St. Louis Cardinals and Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers – illustrate the latter point.

Both Ankiel and Hamilton were on the list of athletes and entertainers, compiled in 2007 by the Albany, New York, district attorney’s office, who received shipments of steroids or human growth hormone from the gray-market Internet dealer Signature Pharmacy.

I don’t mind Ankiel and Hamilton being forgiven for their mistakes – any more than I begrudge Miguel Tejada, a one-time hero in my household, for his fine current (and, apparently, performance-enhancing-drug-free) season.

The steroid story should not just be about naming names. Still, only an apologist could argue that the game of gotcha has no real-world value. Specific examples reveal the range of subtle motivations and manipulations of drug cheats. Again, the key word is “drug,” not “cheats.” Hundreds of pro wrestlers have died young over the last generation. In the coming decades, dozens of our “legitimate” athletes will follow them in the record book of life.

Rick Ankiel was a phenomenal rookie pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2000, whose career went suddenly south in an incurable bout of wildness. In a makeover unprecedented in modern baseball, Ankiel reinvented himself as a slugging outfielder and returned to the major leagues two years ago. Then came the Signature Pharmacy revelation, but it blew over.

“Crash adds chapter to Ankiel’s amazing story,” read the headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 5 of this year. Ankiel had just injured himself running face-first into the center field wall at Busch Stadium on a great catch. He got hurt “playing the way he always has approached any of his baseball jobs: full speed ahead,” wrote baseball columnist Rick Hummel, who has been inducted into the writers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame and is nicknamed “Commish” (for “commissioner”).

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa called Ankiel “a guy who’s had more than his share of adversity, but he’s shown a lot of courage and strength.” La Russa’s chief lieutenant, Dave Duncan, added, “You have a certain respect for all the things he's gone through and how he's dealt with it.”

Not a word from the Commish about Signature. Though the trauma injury of crashing into a wall didn’t have anything to do with steroids, a full account of Ankiel’s “amazing” biography surely did. But as Mark McGwire said to Congress, who wants to talk about the past?

Josh Hamilton was a seemingly can’t-miss prospect who seemingly missed, due to drug addiction. Eight times he went into rehab to shake a cluster of vices, including crack cocaine. Last year he finally emerged as a star with the Texas Rangers, driving in an otherworldly 95 runs in the first half before tailing off, and putting on a show for the ages at the homer-hitting contest before the All-Star Game.

Like Ankiel, Hamilton has a hard time staying off the disabled list. (Ankiel tore a muscle in his side, hampering his swing, just as he was returning to the lineup following his outfield collision.) Now Hamilton is shelved by a torn abdominal muscle, which is said to be a result of running into a wall. Maybe, though running into walls usually causes bruises, not the torn abs, pectorals, and triceps that are relatively recent line items in the sports medicine literature, and are ascribed by experts to steroid abuse, which causes overdeveloped muscles to overload the tendons holding them together.

“Hamilton’s past might still haunt him,” read the headline in Yahoo Sports on June 9. This story was written by Gordon Edes, who last year left the sinking ship of The Boston Globe to become Yahoo’s baseball columnist.

Was “Hamilton’s past” a reference to his steroid/HGH use? Naw. It was the cocaine.

Jose Vasquez, the Rangers’ strength and conditioning coach, who called Hamilton’s strength “off the charts,” told Edes, “His challenge is his health. We just don’t know how his body will bounce back from all those years of drug use. It’s a mystery to all of us.”

Edes wrote that the team was worried about Hamilton’s recovery from surgery: “Last season, Hamilton had a stomach ailment that sent him to the hospital; he wound up on the disabled list. ‘The years of drug abuse tore up my immune system pretty good,’ he said at the time.”

Fans who believe depressed immune systems from cocaine abuse are relevant to torn abdominal muscles need a crash course on how to read the sports pages.

Irvin Muchnick’s CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death will be published in the fall. See the book’s website, http://benoitbook.com, and follow Irv at http://twitter.com/irvmuch.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Cruel Irony: Misawa's Real Cause of Death Was 'Better' Storyline

According to Japanese news reports, Mitsuharu Misawa died of a spinal injury in the ring Saturday in Hiroshima, Japan. The initial report was that it was a heart attack.

Observers say that the back suplex that Misawa took before lying motionless was unremarkable, not a "botched spot." It's not known whether he suffered the fatal injury from that particular move or from an accumulation of suplexes for which he "sold" over many years, ranging from textbook-perfect "worked" "bumps," in which his weight was properly distributed over the traumatized body part, to moves that were awkwardly executed or botched. Of the thousands of suplexes Misawa took, no matter how skilled he and his opponents were in the art of pro wrestling, some inevitably were botched.

Now here's the cruelly ironic and painful truth about this industry: The explanation that Misawa died from punishment inside the ring is actually a better one, for business purposes, than the idea that he suffered a coronary. That makes the suplexes "real," not "fake." If Misawa's company, Pro Wrestling NOAH, wished to push the envelope of bad taste, it could hang a "legend killer" tag on the wrestler who delivered his final back suplex. (When Chris Benoit inadvertently broke Sabu's neck in a match, the incident was subtly exploited for Benoit's credibility as a "crippler.")

It makes one wonder why NOAH even helped circulate the incorrect and even less convenient story about Misawa's heart. Perhaps no one actively fomented that rumor, which took on a life of its own. Perhaps people understandably weren't thinking clearly in the ringside chaos of this horrible incident. Or perhaps wrestling people just reflexively tell even inconvenient untruths, because they can't stop themselves.

Irv Muchnick

'Steroid Cloud Hovers Over Baseball's Feel-Good Stories' ... today in Beyond Chron

“Anyone who cares about good government must scour the Washington coverage critically. Similarly, if the public-health implications of sports’ steroid scandals matter, you need to read the sports pages with equal skepticism. The feel-good comeback narratives of two baseball players – Rick Ankiel of the St. Louis Cardinals and Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers – illustrate the latter point.”

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Steroid_Cloud_Hovers_Over_Baseball_s_Feel_Good_Stories_7030.html

Irv Muchnick

Wrestling Observer: Misawa Death WAS An Industrial Accident

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter website has this important new information:

“Although Pro Wrestling NOAH and the family of Mitsuharu Misawa attempted to keep the cause of death quiet, it has been reported in Japan from police reports from talking with hospital workers that the death was caused by a spinal cord injury from the back suplex and not heart problems.”

Irv Muchnick

Sunday, June 14, 2009

'Second Anniversary of Benoit Tragedy' (full text from SLAM! Wrestling)

“Second anniversary of Benoit tragedy slams shut another door on reform,” Tuesday, June 9, has cycled off the list of top stories at SLAM Wrestling. Below is the full text. The link is http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/GuestColumn/2009/06/08/9715336.html.

The second anniversary of the weekend that will live in infamy — June 22-24, 2007, when Chris Benoit strangled his wife Nancy with a cable TV cord, snapped their son Daniel’s neck with a variation of the Crippler Crossface, and hung himself from a basement weight-training machine — approaches.

Under Georgia law, the families must file wrongful-death civil lawsuits within two years of the crime. There is no indication that either the Benoits or the Toffolonis will do so. And if that proves out, the window will slam shut on perhaps the last best chance for information that could drive reforms in the regulation of pro wrestling health and safety standards.

Most pointedly, the World Wrestling Entertainment wellness program, complete with “therapeutic use exemptions” (TUE’s) for astronomical testosterone levels — which the company’s own TUE administrator at the time, Dr. Tracy Ray, acknowledged to Congressional investigators had “shadiness in almost every case” — will proceed in a business-as-usual mode.

After an initial flurry of sensationalism, the media have already whiffed on the implications of the Benoit story; the mainstream media didn’t care and the wrestling media cared more about breaking down the next pay-per-view storylines. A couple of committees of the House of Representatives strutted their stuff for a while before deciding that they could get more mileage out of investigating fake records in the legit sport of baseball than out of probing the stunning volume of real deaths in “sports entertainment.”

So, for public education and possible future action, only the potential of new revelations in open court remained. With Benoit’s personal physician, Dr. Phil Astin, recently having been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for overprescribing prescription drugs to his patients (though the access to steroids that he also provided was not among the charges), a private lawsuit might have facilitated, for example, release of the wrestler’s medical records. That, in turn, could have shed additional light on the history of both Benoit’s drug use and his concussions — to cite the two major areas of interest to students of his inexplicable descent into homicidal-suicidal insanity.

If, as I’m guessing, neither Cary Ichter nor Richard Decker (respectively, the Benoits’ and the Toffolonis’ attorneys) pulls the trigger, the core reason will be that there is simply not a compelling civil case to be made. Or, certainly, not one that stacks up as a good business proposition, on a contingency retainer, against the formidable legal firepower of WWE.



In December 2007 a story leaked that WWE had rejected a preemptive $2 million settlement offer from Ichter. Mike Benoit, Chris’s father, denied ever approving such an offer, and told me that he subsequently instructed Ichter to focus on resolving the estate dispute between the two sides of the family. Benoit did continue to have Ichter’s office investigate some of the gaps in the Fayette County sheriff’s report closing its homicide file; many of those discrepancies were first exposed on my blog Wrestling Babylon News.

When I was in Georgia last summer, I met with Ichter over breakfast (and, by the way, we went “Dutch”). Ichter expended most of his energy pitching coverage of his lawsuit against TNA on behalf of Konnan. (I wasn’t interested, and that suit soon settled.)

The Benoit civil lawsuit card was always a long shot. In an email to me a year ago, WWE lawyer Jerry McDevitt wrote, in part, “Chris Benoit, and only Chris Benoit, is factually, legally, and morally responsible for the murders of his wife and child and his decision to commit suicide rather than face the legal consequences for committing two first degree murders.” It’s almost impossible to argue with the first two-thirds of that statement.

McDevitt added a point that could have had a chilling effect on any party tempted to file wrongful-death litigation as a kind of fishing expedition.

Dr. Astin, McDevitt noted, was charged with not only prescribing an illegitimate amount of drugs to both Chris and Nancy Benoit, but also “with conspiracy with some of the recipients of his prescriptions to further distribute the drugs. As Michael Benoit surely knows, since he is the executor of the estate, the house where the murders were committed had no mortgage. Instead, the builder was paid by a series of payments totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, and all payments were consistently made by Nancy Benoit from various accounts.”

The clear message — which should have been obvious anyway — was that if WWE were hauled into court, it would defend itself aggressively, and such a defense inevitably would further drag Chris and Nancy’s names through the mud. The same message, in more subtle form, may have been behind the brief campaign by WWE to promote Chris and Nancy’s concern over little Daniel’s medical condition as Chris’s main stressor before he snapped.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. The deepest mysteries inevitably leave open questions, and the Chris Benoit double murder/suicide is no exception. As a writer, I have pushed, and will continue to push, for as much disclosure as possible. Only the most strident fringe of the deny-all crowd could fail to realize that the drug intake and mental hygiene of pro wrestling talent is a legitimate public health issue. The lives of hundreds of wrestlers and their loved ones hang in the balance.

  • Irvin Muchnick’s Chris & Nancy: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death will be published this fall by ECW Press. Pre-order and other info is at benoitbook.com.
  • Fox 5 Atlanta's 'New' Benoit-Astin Revelations Are Old News

    On the Friday newscast on Atlanta’’s Fox 5, a report touted “bew revelations in the Chris Benoit double murder and suicide.

    The station said the civil wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Benoit’s in-laws against Dr. Phil Astin “contains documents that haven’t been seen before in public. In it is a letter written by Dr. Astin to Fayette County deputies on June 26 – a day after the bodies were found.”

    The report is wrong. Astin’s letter was included in the file released in February 2008 by the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, closing the criminal investigation.

    The full text of Astin’s letter is below. I emailed Fox 5 reporter Doug Evans, but he has not responded.

    Irv Muchnick

    ***************

    June 26, 2007

    To Whom It May Concern:

    I have been Chriis and Nancy Benoit’s personal physician and friend for approximately seven (7) years. Chris Benoit was seen in our office on Friday, June 22, 2007. He was here from approximately 12:30 p.m. to about 1:45 p.m. He was seen on a routine check-up whiich hye is seen [sic] in 2-3 month intervals.

    He had no outstanding complaints other than his usual pain and muscular spasms. He did stat3e he wanted to restart an antidepressant, Zoloft, which he had taken in the past. On further history he stated he was mildly depressed mostly secondary to his travel schedule. He was given a prescription for Zoloft 50 mg. One per day, the usual dose and the same dose he had used in the past.

    Chris did not appear outwardly depressed nor anxious. He did state Nancy had been very “moody” lately and he asked about premenopausal and hormonal changes in women her age. I explained about hormal changes, menopause, and mood swings to Chris. He asked me to see her professionally after the upcoming July 4th holiday. I agreed to see her and agreed not to mention our conversation or his conversation to her.

    Chris stayed at our office conversing with my staff as he usually does during his visits. He designed a few autographs for some patients and left approximately 1:45 p.m. He ddid not appear distressed, anxious, nor even depressed at th3e time he was in the office. I told Chris as a friend I would call Nancy if he desired, but he stated I could see her later.

    I hope this helps in the investigation of this tragic incident involving a great athlete and good person.

    Yours truly,

    Phil C. Astin III, M.D.

    Internal Medicine

    Saturday, June 13, 2009

    Japanese Wrestling Great Mitsuharu Misawa Dies in the Ring

    Mitsuharu Misawa, the biggest Japanese pro wrestling star of the 1990s, died Saturday in Hiroshima from an apparent heart attack during a match. Misawa was 46. See http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/9617/ for the first known details.

    Irv Muchnick

    Friday, June 12, 2009

    Chris Benoit's Diva Mistress Was Not Victoria

    On her MySpace blog, TNA wrestler “Tara” (Lisa Marie Varon), formerly WWE diva “Victoria,” vehemently denies a rumor that she had an affair with Chris Benoit.

    My forthcoming book investigates the suspicions of Nancy Benoit, Chris’s wife, that he was carrying on with a diva. That diva was not Victoria.

    Irv Muchnick

    Coverage of Benoit Wrongful-Death Suiit (at SLAM! Wrestling)

    On Wednesday the family of Chris Benoit’s wife Nancy brought down the civil litigation hammer, filing a wrongful-death lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Newnan, Georgia, over the June 2007 murders by Chris of Nancy and their son Daniel (which were followed by Chris’s suicide).

    But as was speculated in this space on Tuesday [Second anniversary of Benoit tragedy slams shut another door on reform], the target of the suit by Nancy’s parents, Maureen and Paul Toffoloni, is not World Wrestling Entertainment. Rather, it is Dr. Phil Astin, Chris’s personal physician, who already has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after the Drug Enforcement Administration busted him for wildly overprescribing drugs to his patients.

    FULL TEXT at SLAM! Wrestling

    http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/Benoit/2009/06/12/9772341.html

    Thursday, June 11, 2009

    Nancy Benoit's Family Sues Dr. Astin

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Nancy Benoit’s parents, Maureen and Paul Toffoloni, have sued Dr. Phil Astin and “three unnamed drug distributors” for wrongful death. See http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/fayette/stories/2009/06/11/benoit_doctor_lawsuit.html.

    According to the newspaper — I haven’t yet seen the court filing myself — the family seeks “financial damages to cover the ‘full value’ of the deceased lives, along with money for pain, suffering and expenses.”

    The unnamed drug distributors would seem to be the key if there are any deep pockets here. I may be wrong, but my impression is that Astin himself, who is serving a ten-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to overprescribing to patients, is broke.

    Irv Muchnick

    'Requiem for Black Oak Books' (full text from Beyond Chron)

    [originally published at Beyond Chron on June 9, http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Requiem_for_Black_Oak_Books_7010.html]

    By Irvin Muchnick

    Yet another venerable independent bookstore, Berkeley’s Black Oak Books, has closed its doors. This one hits home: in 2007 Black Oak kindly hosted the launch reading for my first book, Wrestling Babylon.

    The demise of Black Oak, like that two years ago of another Berkeley institution, Cody’s Books, is sad. Yet I confess that I can’t bring myself to join the chorus of ritual condemnation of the new hegemony of Amazon.com. The reason is that, on balance, I believe online retailing is a very good thing for the vitality of diverse literary voices. My experience with Wrestling Babylon shows why.

    That I landed a reading at Black Oak in the first place was a fluke. I happen to live two blocks away, and the manager of the reading series was a good friend of Josh Kornbluth, the comedic monologuist and local icon, who had just booked me for his interview show then running on KQED-TV.

    That said, and with all due modesty, I also delivered big time on my end of the bargain. A crowd of around 100 people filled Black Oak the night of the reading (all right, I’m blessed with an extremely large extended family), and the 30 copies of Wrestling Babylon on hand there sold out. Not wanting to wait for resupply by the distributor, the store purchased another 30-copy batch directly from my author’s-discount inventory.

    Here’s where we get to the moral of the story. The Black Oak shelvers proceeded to stack a quirky little book that had just generated a lot of on-site buzz on a table in the rear corner. One of the charms of Black Oak was always its haphazard organization – you might find Frank Kermode’s 1965 Bryn Mawr lecture series, The Sense of an Ending, on the “New Literature” table – but this was not charming. Only two or three more copies of Wrestling Babylon sold. The rest were returned.

    Meanwhile, Amazon and other “virtual” retailers, for all their arrogance and impersonality, at least offer a universe of infinite space. As a result, Wrestling Babylon two years later still enjoys a nice backlist trickle, supported by mainstream coverage in such places as Forbes.com, the New York Post, the Jerusalem Post, and Scripps Newspapers, along with rave reviews by such major literary gatekeepers as the Sacramento News & Review, the Penn State Daily Collegian, and WorldWrestlingInsanity.com.

    We average writers, or at least the few of us who aren’t delusional, don’t really expect our product to be pushed as hard as blockbuster bestsellers. But who among us shouldn’t cheer a new paradigm that at least gives everyone a fighting chance to get discovered?

    The Black Oak folks had benign instincts and remained true to their atavistic roots. Don’t even get me started on Cody’s. As a parent and community member, I’d put a ton of volunteer energy into marketing an annual Cody’s benefit to raise money for local schools (while also driving traffic to the store and burnishing its brand). Yet when I published my own book, the people there wouldn’t give me the time of day. They were too busy booking name authors for their disastrously expanded upscale affiliates in locations like Berkeley’s Fourth Street and San Francisco’s Union Square (the latter was only a block or so from an existing Borders). Sorry, but I have no sympathy whatsoever for the argument that we must shed crocodile tears for independent booksellers who are so inept that they think the recipe for survival is to ape the same chains they decry.

    To return to my basic theme, this is a time of transition and dislocation in belles lettres. Bookstores aren’t the only things changing. So are books. You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone.

    Irvin Muchnick’s CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death will be published in the fall. And, yes, pre-order info at http://benoitbook.com includes international Amazon links.

    Batista, Master of the Torn Triceps ... And Bicep

    WWE star Batista is out of action, yet again. This time it’s a torn bicep requiring surgery, with a recovery estimate of at least four months.

    In November 2007 I cheekily headlined a blog item “Batista, Master of the Torn Triceps.” I noted that Batista on at least two occasions was stricken with that injury, which once upon a time didn’t occur but now is common among steroid users whose disproportionate muscle mass overloads tendons. (Pectoral, abdominal, and “lat” tears are three other such injuries.) In 2003 Batista was said to have torn a tricep during a match, then during rehab re-tore it “in a freak accident while jogging with his wife,” according to the WWE website. He explained to journalist Mike Mooneyham why his WWE-branded autobiography failed to broach the subject: “We were afraid of what people would read into it. I thought it would be a better discussion for people to have with myself rather than reading it [in a book].”

    Oh.

    In the current Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer comments:

    “Batista’s frequent injuries are hardly just bad luck. It’s a combination of age, physique, and likely a lot of muscle/tendon imbalances because he’s so big and muscular at his age. Torn biceps are not like torn triceps, torn lats and torn abs, which are usually the signs of steroid-related muscle injuries. The biceps, being a small muscle that bodybuilders train heavy, will tear more frequently on steroids, but non-steroid using lifters often have problems with biceps tears. He looked to be high risk when he returned carrying noticeably more muscle mass than when he left, even though he’s now 40. His new look raised a lot of eyebrows and questions including rumors that this injury was a cover reason for a suspension. However, we were able to confirm the injury was real and you don’t have surgery to cover a drug suspension.”

    I told Meltzer that this comment could have been more clear. First, just because they announced the injury as a bicep doesn’t mean that it wasn’t actually triceps. (And, by the way, I’m not singling out wrestling here: Barry Bonds’ 1999 triceps injury was covered up as a bad elbow.) As for bicep injuries (unlike the ones cited above) afflicting non-steroid users as well as steroid users … well, OK, but in the context of Batista that’s a distinction without a difference, and enables the deniers and apologists.

    “Obviously, it was steroid related,” Dave responded to me in an email, “but in fairness, guys not on steroids also tear biceps and not triceps.”

    As serious wrestling fans know, WWE right now is scrambling over not just Batista but also a new raft of drug suspensions. One veteran of the 2007 Signature Pharmacy list, Edward Fatu (“Umaga”), was fired a few days ago without explanation. Today comes the explanation that he was fired for refusing to enter drug rehab. After the Signature fiasco, WWE supposedly gave notice to talent that the names of wellness policy violators would, prospectively, be released. But WWE either didn’t adhere to that promise in the case of Umaga, or has some convoluted rationalization of special circumstances that made it permissible not to release Umaga’s name in a timely fashion.

    As soon as I can figure out what’s going on with this latest round of WWE drug PR, I’ll blog further about it.

    Irv Muchnick

    Wednesday, June 10, 2009

    Great Moments in Email

    SHAWN RYU: Hello, I read your article on Slam! website, and to be honest, I find it harder and harder to read your articles each and every time you publish one on the website. Your hate for WWE and McMahons are simply ridiculous. I am not their biggest fan or anything, but the tone of your article suggests that McMahons are to blame for everything wrong with pro-wrestling at the moment. Some blame should go to McMahons yes, but the wrestlers make their own decisions. They choose to use steroids. Until they prove 100% that McMahons forced them to use steroids McMahons should not be completely legally responsible. These wrestlers wanted to work for WWE. They chose to use steroids. Is Vince McMahon partially responsible? I dont know. Nor shall anyone else outside of WWE including yourself.

    YOUR HUMBLE BLOGGER: Thanks for your feedback. May I publish it with attribution on my blog?

    SHAWN RYU: Sure as long as you keep the E-mail address hidden. I dont mean to insult you. I think you are a great writer. Its just a difference of opinion that I thought I had to adress.

    Benoit Anniversary -- Why It's Important (at SLAM! Wrestling)

    The second anniversary of the weekend that will live in infamy -- June 22-24, 2007, when Chris Benoit strangled his wife Nancy with a cable TV cord, snapped their son Daniel's neck with a variation of the Crippler Crossface, and hung himself from a basement weight-training machine -- approaches.

    Under Georgia law, the families must file wrongful-death civil lawsuits within two years of the crime. There is no indication that either the Benoits or the Toffolonis will do so. And if that proves out, the window will slam shut on perhaps the last best chance for information that could drive reforms in the regulation of pro wrestling health and safety standards.


    FULL TEXT at SLAM! Wrestling
    http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/GuestColumn/2009/06/08/9715336.html

    Tuesday, June 9, 2009

    'Requiem for Black Oak Books' ... today at Beyond Chron

    Yet another venerable independent bookstore, Berkeley’s Black Oak Books, has closed its doors. This one hits home: in 2007 Black Oak kindly hosted the launch reading for my first book, Wrestling Babylon.

    The demise of Black Oak, like that two years ago of another Berkeley institution, Cody’s Books, is sad. Yet I confess that I can’t bring myself to join the chorus of ritual condemnation of the new hegemony of Amazon.com. The reason is that, on balance, I believe online retailing is a very good thing for the vitality of diverse literary voices. My experience with Wrestling Babylon shows why.

    Read the full text:

    “Requiem for Black Oak Books,” Beyond Chron, http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Requiem_for_Black_Oak_Books_7010.html

    Saturday, June 6, 2009

    ECW Press Catalogue Page for 'CHRIS & NANCY,' Story of Benoit Murder-Suicide

    The ECW Press catalogue page for Irvin Muchnick’s forthcoming book, CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, can be viewed at:

    http://www.ecwpress.com/books/chris_amp_nancy

    Friday, June 5, 2009

    Obama on the Wrestlingization of America

    “I don’t find most of the cable chatter very persuasive. I’ve used this analogy before, it feels like WWF wrestling. You know, everybody’s got their role to play.”

    – President Obama to Brian Williams, NBC News, on “Inside the Obama White House,” June 2

    [hat tip to Dave Meltzer, Wrestling Observer Newsletter]

    CHRIS & NANCY Now Available at Amazon France

    CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death is now available for pre-order from Amazon France. The link is http://www.amazon.fr/Chris-Nancy-Murder-suicide-Wrestlings-Cocktail/dp/1550229028/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&s=english-books&qid=1244160900&sr=1-26.

    For links to all other pre-order options (autographed copy direct from the author with free shipping, or Amazon U.S., Amazon Canada, Amazon U.K., Amazon Germany, Amazon Japan, Borders, or Books-A-Million), go to http://benoitbook.muchnick.net/preorder.html.