[posted 3/14/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Reporter Don Michak of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut, today wrote a story headlined “WWE Critic: Blumenthal should repay supporters with involvement in sports concussion controversy.”
The full text of the article, at http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2011/03/14/politics_and_government/doc4d7e139052d69548402911.txt, is available to subscribers only. I have put in a request for permission to post the full text at this blog. In the meantime, a few highlights:
* “Irvin Muchnick, an author and blogger from California whose sharp criticism of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. figured in the Connecticut Democrat’s successful [Senate] campaign against the WWE’s former chief executive, Republican Linda McMahon, last week urged the former attorney general to use his new job to help resolve ‘the national concussion crisis.’ Muchnick explained that two other Democrats, Reps. Henry Waxman of California and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, had asked a House subcommittee to hold hearings on football helmet safety, but that he wasn’t optimistic about the prospects for such an initiative in the Republican-controlled House.”
* “Muchnick also argued that any hearings should be broad enough to raise questions about the ‘global problem’ of concussions in all contact sports, including the wrestling sponsored by the Stamford-based WWE. ‘Concussions in sports are mixed up in the whole cocktail of steroid and painkiller abuse as well as the whole subject of regulation of the profitable and influential’ professional wrestling business.”
* The article cites the support last year to the Blumenthal Senate campaign provided by Michael Benoit, the father of Chris Benoit, and Don Hooton, head of the Taylor Hooton Foundation, a steroid-awareness group.
Irv Muchnick
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