More Concussions, You Say? I Don’t Remember No Concussions

[posted 7/12/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


Q Are you aware of any incident where a wrestler in a match received a concussion?

A No.

Stephanie McMahon Levesque to the staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, December 2007

Last week this blog reviewed the story from a 2000 World Wrestling Entertainment pay-per-view show at which Kurt Angle was knocked unconscious during a match with Stephanie McMahon’s husband, Paul “Triple H” Levesque – in which Stephanie herself played a prominent non-wrestling role.

Angle is the Joni Mitchell of wrestling – he has seen concussions from “both sides now.” In his main event match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania in March 2003, Lesnar botched a “shooting star press” from the top rope and was so out of it that Angle had to improvise the finish. It is one of the famous moments in recent pro wrestling history; the footage is all over YouTube. Angle recalls the circumstances in an interview viewable at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSwNVDmluRk.

As most people know, Lesnar is now the heavyweight champion of the mixed martial arts promotion UFC. His wife, Rena, was “Sable,” the first WWE “diva” to pose for the cover of Playboy. Rena’s ex-husband, wrestler Marc Mero, now owns a gym near Orlando, Florida, and tours schools giving anti-drug lectures and holding up the list of the dozens of his colleagues who died young. Mero also says that on many occasions during his wrestling career he had no memory of where he was at the end of the match.

But no worries – Stephanie McMahon Levesque was not “aware of any incident where a wrestler in a match received a concussion.”

Congressman Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House committee to which Stephanie told this tall tale, never held the public hearings that would have exposed the lie and spurred reforms of wrestling industry occupational health and safety standards.

Three years later, Stephanie is narrating treacly U.S. Senate campaign TV commercials for her mother.

SEE ALSO:

“Now Don’t You Go Accusing Linda McMahon’s Daughter of Lying to Congress,” July 9, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/now-dont-you-go-accusing-linda-mcmahons-daughter-of-lying-to-congress/

“Concussions? I Don’t Remember No Concussions,” July 10, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/concussions-i-dont-remember-no-concussions-2/


Irv Muchnick