[posted 1/27/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Osborne was in World Wrestling Entertainment’s minor league, or “developmental,” system from 2006 to 2008. No other details at this time.
Irv Muchnick
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Dr. Joseph Maroon, NFL and WWE Consultant, Does a Cameo in The New Yorker
[posted 1/26/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Football and the Concussion Crisis
Ben McGrath
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/31/110131fa_fact_mcgrath
Football and the Concussion Crisis
Ben McGrath
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/31/110131fa_fact_mcgrath
More on New Connecticut Labor Commissioner Glenn Marshall
[posted 1/26/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The Carpenters Union, of which Marshall has been president, is regarded as “sophisticated in their approach to labor relations, acting as an ally of construction contractors – both union and non-union — who follow labor laws. By pressuring the state to crack down on contractors who misclassify workers as sub-contractors, a way to illegally avoid paying workers’ compensation and other costs, the union has helped legitimate contractors to make competitive bids on projects.”
Mark Pazniokas, CT Mirror, http://www.ctmirror.org/story/11302/malloy-names-balanced-team-labor.
The Carpenters Union, of which Marshall has been president, is regarded as “sophisticated in their approach to labor relations, acting as an ally of construction contractors – both union and non-union — who follow labor laws. By pressuring the state to crack down on contractors who misclassify workers as sub-contractors, a way to illegally avoid paying workers’ compensation and other costs, the union has helped legitimate contractors to make competitive bids on projects.”
Mark Pazniokas, CT Mirror, http://www.ctmirror.org/story/11302/malloy-names-balanced-team-labor.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
WWE Investigation Should Be on Track With New Connecticut Labor Commissioner
[posted 1/25/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Governor Dan Malloy’s selection of Glenn Marshall, president of Carpenters Union Local 210, as Connecticut’s labor commissioner is good news for advocates of reform and regulation of the pro wrestling industry.
World Wrestling Entertainment, based in Stamford, is being audited by the state Labor Department for alleged misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Not very many observers think WWE’s wrestlers – whose schedule, dress code, and almost every other conceivable job condition are managed and controlled by Vince McMahon – are anything other than regular workers entitled to regular workers’ benefits. One of the loudest and longest proponents of this position has been former WWE performer and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura.
Marshall, who awaits confirmation by the Connecticut Senate, was a member of the bipartisan state commission on misclassification that drafted the law, which took effect last year, toughening penalties for independent contractor abuse. He is described in labor circles as passionate and knowledgeable about how the WWE scenario reflects on the over-reliance on temps, casual workers, and contractors throughout the “new economy.” This deprives citizens of access to affordable health care and cheats governments at all levels out of deficit-reducing tax revenues.
Several years ago a federal lawsuit challenging WWE’s talent contract, by ex-WWE guys Scott Levy, Mike Sanders, and the late Chris Klutsarits, was dismissed on technical grounds. But under Commissioner Marshall, the state of Connecticut seems poised to follow through on one key piece of government oversight of wrestling that could address the industry’s unacceptable and depraved rate of young deaths.
Irv Muchnick
Governor Dan Malloy’s selection of Glenn Marshall, president of Carpenters Union Local 210, as Connecticut’s labor commissioner is good news for advocates of reform and regulation of the pro wrestling industry.
World Wrestling Entertainment, based in Stamford, is being audited by the state Labor Department for alleged misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Not very many observers think WWE’s wrestlers – whose schedule, dress code, and almost every other conceivable job condition are managed and controlled by Vince McMahon – are anything other than regular workers entitled to regular workers’ benefits. One of the loudest and longest proponents of this position has been former WWE performer and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura.
Marshall, who awaits confirmation by the Connecticut Senate, was a member of the bipartisan state commission on misclassification that drafted the law, which took effect last year, toughening penalties for independent contractor abuse. He is described in labor circles as passionate and knowledgeable about how the WWE scenario reflects on the over-reliance on temps, casual workers, and contractors throughout the “new economy.” This deprives citizens of access to affordable health care and cheats governments at all levels out of deficit-reducing tax revenues.
Several years ago a federal lawsuit challenging WWE’s talent contract, by ex-WWE guys Scott Levy, Mike Sanders, and the late Chris Klutsarits, was dismissed on technical grounds. But under Commissioner Marshall, the state of Connecticut seems poised to follow through on one key piece of government oversight of wrestling that could address the industry’s unacceptable and depraved rate of young deaths.
Irv Muchnick
Wrestling Media on WWE Medical Director Joseph Maroon ...
[posted 1/24/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
... Missing In Action.
Corrective links welcomed.
Irv Muchnick
... Missing In Action.
Corrective links welcomed.
Irv Muchnick
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Timeline of Dr. Joseph Maroon’s Work As WWE Medical Director
[posted 1/24/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
(See also yesterday’s post, “Sports Concussion Scandal Ground Zero: NFL and WWE Doc Joseph Maroon’s Hype Article in ‘Neurosurgery’ on Riddell Football Helmets.”)
The Pittsburgh Steelers are back in the Super Bowl. Their team neurosurgeon for more than two decades, Joseph Maroon – also an important member of the National Football League’s concussion policy committee – has been medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment for almost three years. Now Maroon is at the center of a Federal Trade Commission investigation of inflated safety claims by Riddell, official helmet supplier of the NFL.
Here is a chronology of Dr. Maroon’s involvement with WWE.
2007: BACKGROUND
In June 2007, WWE star Chris Benoit, 40, murdered his wife, 43, and their 7-year-old son before killing himself. Chris and Nancy Benoit were approximately the ninth and tenth of approximately 21 wrestlers and on-screen personalities who died before their 50th birthdays that year – the peak year of a generation-long industry pandemic with at least some relation to occupational health and safety standards.
Retired WWE wrestler Chris Nowinski – who had written a book, Head Games, about his own bout with long-term brain trauma – launched the Sports Legacy Institute in Boston, which advocates reforms and facilitates studies of brains of dead athletes. An examination of Chris Benoit’s brain by pioneer researcher Dr. Bennet Omalu revealed evidence of the phenomenon known as Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy.
On November 7, 2007, Linda McMahon, then chief executive of WWE, told CNN, “These studies, you know, have not been — they’ve not been proven, if you will.”
Vince McMahon, WWE’s chairman, added, “Haven’t been even critiqued by the other members of the scientific community.... And the only thing we’ve done really is from a conservative standpoint is just don’t use chairs to the head.”
On December 14, 2007, the McMahons’ daughter, company vice president Stephanie McMahon Levesque, was asked by Congressional investigators, “Are you aware of any incident where a wrestler in a match received a concussion?” She responded, “No.”
SPRING 2008: MAROON AND UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH MEDICAL CENTER TEAM HIRED
Some time around March of 2008, Dr. Maroon was hired by WWE to oversee its “wellness policy.” The appointment did not appear to have been accompanied by a press release or website announcement, and was first reported by Nowinski’s Sports Legacy Institute.
Maroon installed his imPACT concussion-management system, which consists of baseline neurological testing and measured protocols for determining when an injured performer is ready to return to action. The system is patented and marketed by a company formed by Maroon and two other University of Pittsburgh Medical Center doctors.
WWE also hired several other UPMC clinicians, including Dr. Bryan Donohue to supervise talent cardiovascular screening and Dr. Vijay Bahl to assist in determination of claims of wrestlers that high testosterone levels on their drug tests were excused by therapeutic use exemptions. In addition, ringside doctors began accompanying wrestlers on WWE tours.
OCTOBER 1988: LANCE CADE HIT ON HEAD WITH CHAIR, FIRED
On October 6, 2008, wrestler Lance McNaught (“Lance Cade”) was hit squarely on the head, with apparent scripted calculation, on the WWE cable television show Raw.
Shortly thereafter, McNaught suffered a seizure on an airplane flight from a reaction to prescription painkillers.
On or around October 14, 2008, WWE released McNaught.
DECEMBER 2009: UMAGA DEATH; WWE LIE TO ESPN FOR ANDREW MARTIN BRAIN STUDY STORY
On December 4, 2009, wrestler Eddie Fatu (“Umaga”) died of a heart attack, caused by prescription drug toxicity, at 36. In 2007 Fatu had been suspended by WWE for violating a drug provision of the wellness policy. In June 2009 Fatu had been fired by WWE for refusing to go to drug rehabilitation. His autopsy would show that he weighed more than 400 pounds at the time of his death and had an enlarged heart.
Also that month, ESPN reported that Dr. Omalu had found signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy in the brain of former WWE performer Andrew Martin, who had died in March of a prescription drug overdose at age 33. (Martin had been released while rehabbing from fusion surgery on his neck.) WWE told ESPN that it was “unaware of the veracity of any of these tests, be it for Chris Benoit or Andrew Martin.... WWE has been asking to see the research and test results in the case of Mr. Benoit for years and has not been supplied with them.” Omalu told me that WWE medical director Maroon had attended a meeting of doctors at the West Virginia Brain Injury Research Institute on October 1, 2008, at which the Benoit brain study specimens were shown. Later another attendee, Peter Davies, a professor of pathology and neuroscience at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, would tell me, “Maroon ... ‘brokered’ the meeting.”
EARLY 2010: WWE BANS CHAIR SHOTS TO THE HEAD
WWE announced early in 2010 that it was prohibiting wrestlers from hitting each other on the head with chairs.
Jim Ross, a wrestling television announcer and executive, blogged, “Some asked if I thought this mandate was ‘politically motivated’ to which I emphatically say hell, no. It simply makes common sense and the overall health of the competitors has to be any companies [sic] utmost priority.”
JANUARY 2010: CHARLIE HAAS RELEASED WITH NECK INJURY
Around the same time as the chair-shot ban, WWE performer Charlie Haas injured his neck. His account is that an MRI by his own doctor in Texas revealed two herniated disks in his neck and advised him to consider spinal fusion surgery. According to Haas, Dr. Maroon dismissed this concern without personally examining Haas, who was released by the company shortly thereafter.
AUGUST 2010: LANCE CADE DEATH
On August 13, 2010, Lance McNaught died of heart failure at 29. Linda McMahon – by now the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut – said, “Who knows what causes people to have addictions and do what they do?”
OCTOBER 2010: DR. MAROON SAYS “NO TALENT NOW ON STEROIDS”
Wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer labeled “mind-boggling” Dr. Maroon’s statement to the Hartford Courant that WWE had “no talent now on steroids.” In a poll at Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer website, 76 percent of the respondents said Maroon was “dishonest.”
Irv Muchnick
(See also yesterday’s post, “Sports Concussion Scandal Ground Zero: NFL and WWE Doc Joseph Maroon’s Hype Article in ‘Neurosurgery’ on Riddell Football Helmets.”)
The Pittsburgh Steelers are back in the Super Bowl. Their team neurosurgeon for more than two decades, Joseph Maroon – also an important member of the National Football League’s concussion policy committee – has been medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment for almost three years. Now Maroon is at the center of a Federal Trade Commission investigation of inflated safety claims by Riddell, official helmet supplier of the NFL.
Here is a chronology of Dr. Maroon’s involvement with WWE.
2007: BACKGROUND
In June 2007, WWE star Chris Benoit, 40, murdered his wife, 43, and their 7-year-old son before killing himself. Chris and Nancy Benoit were approximately the ninth and tenth of approximately 21 wrestlers and on-screen personalities who died before their 50th birthdays that year – the peak year of a generation-long industry pandemic with at least some relation to occupational health and safety standards.
Retired WWE wrestler Chris Nowinski – who had written a book, Head Games, about his own bout with long-term brain trauma – launched the Sports Legacy Institute in Boston, which advocates reforms and facilitates studies of brains of dead athletes. An examination of Chris Benoit’s brain by pioneer researcher Dr. Bennet Omalu revealed evidence of the phenomenon known as Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy.
On November 7, 2007, Linda McMahon, then chief executive of WWE, told CNN, “These studies, you know, have not been — they’ve not been proven, if you will.”
Vince McMahon, WWE’s chairman, added, “Haven’t been even critiqued by the other members of the scientific community.... And the only thing we’ve done really is from a conservative standpoint is just don’t use chairs to the head.”
On December 14, 2007, the McMahons’ daughter, company vice president Stephanie McMahon Levesque, was asked by Congressional investigators, “Are you aware of any incident where a wrestler in a match received a concussion?” She responded, “No.”
SPRING 2008: MAROON AND UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH MEDICAL CENTER TEAM HIRED
Some time around March of 2008, Dr. Maroon was hired by WWE to oversee its “wellness policy.” The appointment did not appear to have been accompanied by a press release or website announcement, and was first reported by Nowinski’s Sports Legacy Institute.
Maroon installed his imPACT concussion-management system, which consists of baseline neurological testing and measured protocols for determining when an injured performer is ready to return to action. The system is patented and marketed by a company formed by Maroon and two other University of Pittsburgh Medical Center doctors.
WWE also hired several other UPMC clinicians, including Dr. Bryan Donohue to supervise talent cardiovascular screening and Dr. Vijay Bahl to assist in determination of claims of wrestlers that high testosterone levels on their drug tests were excused by therapeutic use exemptions. In addition, ringside doctors began accompanying wrestlers on WWE tours.
OCTOBER 1988: LANCE CADE HIT ON HEAD WITH CHAIR, FIRED
On October 6, 2008, wrestler Lance McNaught (“Lance Cade”) was hit squarely on the head, with apparent scripted calculation, on the WWE cable television show Raw.
Shortly thereafter, McNaught suffered a seizure on an airplane flight from a reaction to prescription painkillers.
On or around October 14, 2008, WWE released McNaught.
DECEMBER 2009: UMAGA DEATH; WWE LIE TO ESPN FOR ANDREW MARTIN BRAIN STUDY STORY
On December 4, 2009, wrestler Eddie Fatu (“Umaga”) died of a heart attack, caused by prescription drug toxicity, at 36. In 2007 Fatu had been suspended by WWE for violating a drug provision of the wellness policy. In June 2009 Fatu had been fired by WWE for refusing to go to drug rehabilitation. His autopsy would show that he weighed more than 400 pounds at the time of his death and had an enlarged heart.
Also that month, ESPN reported that Dr. Omalu had found signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy in the brain of former WWE performer Andrew Martin, who had died in March of a prescription drug overdose at age 33. (Martin had been released while rehabbing from fusion surgery on his neck.) WWE told ESPN that it was “unaware of the veracity of any of these tests, be it for Chris Benoit or Andrew Martin.... WWE has been asking to see the research and test results in the case of Mr. Benoit for years and has not been supplied with them.” Omalu told me that WWE medical director Maroon had attended a meeting of doctors at the West Virginia Brain Injury Research Institute on October 1, 2008, at which the Benoit brain study specimens were shown. Later another attendee, Peter Davies, a professor of pathology and neuroscience at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, would tell me, “Maroon ... ‘brokered’ the meeting.”
EARLY 2010: WWE BANS CHAIR SHOTS TO THE HEAD
WWE announced early in 2010 that it was prohibiting wrestlers from hitting each other on the head with chairs.
Jim Ross, a wrestling television announcer and executive, blogged, “Some asked if I thought this mandate was ‘politically motivated’ to which I emphatically say hell, no. It simply makes common sense and the overall health of the competitors has to be any companies [sic] utmost priority.”
JANUARY 2010: CHARLIE HAAS RELEASED WITH NECK INJURY
Around the same time as the chair-shot ban, WWE performer Charlie Haas injured his neck. His account is that an MRI by his own doctor in Texas revealed two herniated disks in his neck and advised him to consider spinal fusion surgery. According to Haas, Dr. Maroon dismissed this concern without personally examining Haas, who was released by the company shortly thereafter.
AUGUST 2010: LANCE CADE DEATH
On August 13, 2010, Lance McNaught died of heart failure at 29. Linda McMahon – by now the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut – said, “Who knows what causes people to have addictions and do what they do?”
OCTOBER 2010: DR. MAROON SAYS “NO TALENT NOW ON STEROIDS”
Wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer labeled “mind-boggling” Dr. Maroon’s statement to the Hartford Courant that WWE had “no talent now on steroids.” In a poll at Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer website, 76 percent of the respondents said Maroon was “dishonest.”
Irv Muchnick
Sports Concussion Scandal Ground Zero: NFL and WWE Doc Joseph Maroon’s Hype Article in ‘Neurosurgery’ on Riddell Football Helmets
[posted 1/23/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Alan Schwarz of The New York Times, who all but owns the major-media coverage of the concussion story, has another good one today: “Oversight Group Vows to Pursue Updates to Football Helmet Standards,” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/sports/football/23helmet.html?ref=sports.
But oddly, The Times fails to make the important connection to its own recent big story: the Federal Trade Commission investigation of safety claims by Riddell, the official helmet supplier of the National Football League, for its Revolution model. Reporter Schwarz leads today’s account of action by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment by stating that it was spurred by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Yet the piece doesn’t mention at all the FTC probe of Riddell initiated earlier this month by Senator Tom Udall.
The concussion story is more than the sum of the blocking and tackling by dueling experts. It is also the story of a process: the ecosystem of clinical research, an interdependent web of leading doctors, research journals, and commercial interests.
Today ground zero is an article in the February 2006 issue of Neurosurgery, “Examining Concussion Rates and Return to Play in High School Football Players Wearing Newer Helmet Technology: A Three-Year Prospective Cohort Study.” One of the co-authors was Dr. Joseph Maroon, a team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a member of the NFL’s traumatic brain injury policy committee, and the medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment. Two of Maroon’s three co-authors were University of Pittsburgh Medical Center colleagues Micky Collins and Mark Lovell; they are also partners in the concussion-management software company imPACT Applications, Inc. The article’s other co-author, Thad Ide, is chief engineer at Riddell. The Pittsburgh research was underwritten by NFL Charities.
As news of the FTC investigation broke, Maroon threw Riddell under the bus, claiming that the company’s promotion of the Revolution helmet emphasized the blue-sky findings of the Neurosurgery article while ignoring its disclaimers. But is that explanation good enough?
Here is the full text of the abstract of the article:
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare concussion rates and recovery times for athletes wearing newer helmet technology compared to traditional helmet design.
METHODS: This was a three-year, prospective, naturalistic, cohort study. Participants were 2,141 high school athletes from Western Pennsylvania. Approximately half of the sample wore the Revolution helmet manufactured by Riddell, Inc. (n = 1,173) and the remainder of the sample used standard helmets (n = 968). Athletes underwent computerized neurocognitive testing through the use of ImPACT at the beginning of the study. Following a concussion, players were reevaluated at various time intervals until recovery was complete.
RESULTS: In the total sample, the concussion rate in athletes wearing the Revolution was 5.3% and in athletes wearing standard helmets was 7.6% [[chi]2 (1, 2, 141) = 4.96, P < 0.027]. The relative risk estimate was 0.69 (95% confidence interval = 0.499- 0.958). Wearing the Revolution helmet was associated with approximately a 31% decreased relative risk and 2.3% decreased absolute risk for sustaining a concussion in this cohort study. The athletes wearing the Revolution did not differ from athletes wearing standard helmets on the mechanism of injury (e.g., head-to-head strike), on-field concussion markers (e.g., amnesia or loss of consciousness), or on-field presentation of symptoms (e.g., headaches, dizziness, or balance problems).
CONCLUSION: Recent sophisticated laboratory research has better elucidated injury biomechanics associated with concussion in professional football players. This data has led to changes in helmet design and new helmet technology, which appears to have beneficial effects in reducing the incidence of cerebral concussion in high school football players.
(Next on this blog: Timeline of Dr. Joseph Maroon’s work as medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment.)
Irv Muchnick
Alan Schwarz of The New York Times, who all but owns the major-media coverage of the concussion story, has another good one today: “Oversight Group Vows to Pursue Updates to Football Helmet Standards,” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/sports/football/23helmet.html?ref=sports.
But oddly, The Times fails to make the important connection to its own recent big story: the Federal Trade Commission investigation of safety claims by Riddell, the official helmet supplier of the National Football League, for its Revolution model. Reporter Schwarz leads today’s account of action by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment by stating that it was spurred by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Yet the piece doesn’t mention at all the FTC probe of Riddell initiated earlier this month by Senator Tom Udall.
The concussion story is more than the sum of the blocking and tackling by dueling experts. It is also the story of a process: the ecosystem of clinical research, an interdependent web of leading doctors, research journals, and commercial interests.
Today ground zero is an article in the February 2006 issue of Neurosurgery, “Examining Concussion Rates and Return to Play in High School Football Players Wearing Newer Helmet Technology: A Three-Year Prospective Cohort Study.” One of the co-authors was Dr. Joseph Maroon, a team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a member of the NFL’s traumatic brain injury policy committee, and the medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment. Two of Maroon’s three co-authors were University of Pittsburgh Medical Center colleagues Micky Collins and Mark Lovell; they are also partners in the concussion-management software company imPACT Applications, Inc. The article’s other co-author, Thad Ide, is chief engineer at Riddell. The Pittsburgh research was underwritten by NFL Charities.
As news of the FTC investigation broke, Maroon threw Riddell under the bus, claiming that the company’s promotion of the Revolution helmet emphasized the blue-sky findings of the Neurosurgery article while ignoring its disclaimers. But is that explanation good enough?
Here is the full text of the abstract of the article:
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare concussion rates and recovery times for athletes wearing newer helmet technology compared to traditional helmet design.
METHODS: This was a three-year, prospective, naturalistic, cohort study. Participants were 2,141 high school athletes from Western Pennsylvania. Approximately half of the sample wore the Revolution helmet manufactured by Riddell, Inc. (n = 1,173) and the remainder of the sample used standard helmets (n = 968). Athletes underwent computerized neurocognitive testing through the use of ImPACT at the beginning of the study. Following a concussion, players were reevaluated at various time intervals until recovery was complete.
RESULTS: In the total sample, the concussion rate in athletes wearing the Revolution was 5.3% and in athletes wearing standard helmets was 7.6% [[chi]2 (1, 2, 141) = 4.96, P < 0.027]. The relative risk estimate was 0.69 (95% confidence interval = 0.499- 0.958). Wearing the Revolution helmet was associated with approximately a 31% decreased relative risk and 2.3% decreased absolute risk for sustaining a concussion in this cohort study. The athletes wearing the Revolution did not differ from athletes wearing standard helmets on the mechanism of injury (e.g., head-to-head strike), on-field concussion markers (e.g., amnesia or loss of consciousness), or on-field presentation of symptoms (e.g., headaches, dizziness, or balance problems).
CONCLUSION: Recent sophisticated laboratory research has better elucidated injury biomechanics associated with concussion in professional football players. This data has led to changes in helmet design and new helmet technology, which appears to have beneficial effects in reducing the incidence of cerebral concussion in high school football players.
(Next on this blog: Timeline of Dr. Joseph Maroon’s work as medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment.)
Irv Muchnick
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