Vince McMahon Talks to Hearst

[posted 7/26/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


“InVincible: WWE Boss McMahon sits down for a chat”

by Brian Lockhart

http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/WWE-s-driving-force-591071.php#page-1

While in Connecticut for my March book tour, I heard that Vince (Mr. Linda) McMahon was negotiating to do an exclusive interview with Brian Lockhart of Hearst newspapers. Lockhart had just written about the abortive investigation of World Wrestling Entertainment by Congressman Henry Waxman’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Now the Vince sitdown with Lockhart has happened.

The piece isn’t bad. Neither does it break any new ground. After what seems to be the obligatory lead of any McMahon feature – a throat-clearing description of one of his “soap opera” performances – newspaper readers manage to learn, in somewhat more detail that they probably knew before, that Vince is a colorful and fascinating guy, quite a bit more colorful than his Senate candidate wife.

Unlike The New York Times a couple of weeks ago, Hearst dares to recall Chris Benoit’s double murder/suicide in 2007, which was merely on Time magazine’s list of the most sensational crime stories of that year. Elsewhere deep inside the article, the “mortality rate” of wrestlers, unspecified but said to be “high,” is delicately referenced.

There are certain places the mainstream media still won’t go. Lockhart has yet to delve into how and why Congressman Waxman tanked his post-Benoit investigation of WWE; the Hearst reporter dipped a toe into that water in March but never took the plunge. Similarly, The Day in New London would later break the story of Linda’s 1989 inside tip of a federal investigation of a Pennsylvania ring doctor who was the main steroid connection for WWE talent (including Vince) – but to date hasn’t tackled the still-open questions raised by its own work.

As for the irregular contacts between WWE’s lawyer’s “fixer” husband and one of the star government witnesses in Vince’s own 1994 federal trial ... forget about it. Either read this blog or remain in ignorance. This is worth remarking upon in relation to Lockhart’s new story because he chooses to rehash Vince’s admission, in a 2001 Playboy magazine interview, that he’d hurt Linda by engaging in affairs. One of those affairs was almost certainly with the tampered trial witness, Emily Feinberg, who had been Vince’s secretary.

The same taboo remains for open discussion of Vince and Linda’s odious management of the scandal of a pedophile ring inside WWE.

After Lockhart’s March article, WWE issued a statement saying, in part, “The WWE agrees with [Waxman] that ‘the abuse of steroids presents a pernicious public health threat.’”

In today’s interview, Vince McMahon says, “There’s not much information that you guys know about steroids other than the media is writing hysterically about them, and maybe they should. I don’t know there’s really been any great research you can point to that definitely says this is deleterious to your health or in some cases it helps you or whatever.”


Irv Muchnick