Dave Meltzer Obsesses Over Timeline ... of When Umaga Was Pronounced Dead

One of the major findings of my book on the Chris Benoit murder-suicide is that no one at the time called out World Wrestling Entertainment for the company’s publication of two different timelines accounting for what it knew and when it knew it.

According to Dave Meltzer, publisher of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter – who fact-checked CHRIS & NANCY but now refuses to review it, falsely claiming that I am falsely claiming a falling out with him – this was reduced to a piece of red meat for the toadies on his website discussion board. Meltzer told them that I was bound and determined to assert that “the wrestling media covered up for Vince McMahon,” even though this thesis didn’t “jive [sic] with the truth.”

Today, tragically, came the death of yet another young wrestler, 36-year-old Eddie “Umaga” Fatu, from one of those “heart attacks.” He had just returned from Hulk Hogan’s flop Australian tour. Fatu was fired by WWE in June after refusing to go to drug rehab.

The Pro Wrestling Torch website reported Fatu’s death much earlier today. So did the Twitter feeds of several fellow wrestlers.

Late this afternoon on the West Coast, the Wrestling Observer/Figure 4 Weekly website posted this update: “Just to clear things up that have been reported, Eddie Fatu at this point is still alive and in a hospital in Houston. The family is being gathered and without a miraculous recovery, it is just a matter of time. But he has not passed away.”

Very shortly thereafter the website, co-operated by Meltzer and Figure 4’s Bryan Alvarez, reported that Fatu “passed away around 6 p.m. Eastern time after suffering a second heart attack while in the hospital.”

Many other insiders question the report of a second heart attack. They also say that if Fatu was on life support all day, it was basically a bureaucratic ritual while family members were rushing to his bedside. Perhaps the time of death on Fatu’s death certificate will shed light on this decidedly picayune controversy.

In the meantime, we can all sleep soundly knowing that Dave Meltzer doesn’t have time to bother examining the spin of the Benoit timeline by a billion-dollar corporation as it played out in the international news. For Meltzer is right there, like white on rice, when it comes to determining precisely when the doctors pulled the plug on Eddie Fatu.


Irv Muchnick