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BBL editorial
Headline: McMahon's on the Defensive
By Wade Keller, Torch editor
Originally Published: November 14, 2007
PWTorch Newsletter #997/998

CNN published what they called "an edited transcript" of the lengthy interview investigative reporter Drew Griffin conducted with Vince & Linda McMahon. The interview transcript reveals a well-researched set of questions and a defensive Vince and Linda McMahon responding combatively and with barely any sense of humanity or compassion. There are definitely examples during the Q&A of the McMahons having made good points, but they are easily lost in the jaw-droppingly cold, crass, and calculating counter-punches they throw at critics throughout. The following are key chronological quotes or exchanges with my added commentary:

-Vince on being the so-called last pro wrestling promotion: From a competition standpoint, that was never given any thought. From a growing standpoint and a vision standpoint, there's no reason why the WWE would not be one of the greatest forms of entertainment in the world, and it has become that. In terms of competition, at one time, I guess, maybe our chief competition was [former CNN boss] Ted Turner, and Ted and Time Warner [parent company of CNN.com] elected not to continue that enterprise. So, it wound up, by default quite frankly, that we're it.

Vince McMahon [artist Grant Gould (c) PWTorch]

With all due respect to the discrepancy WWE has maintained between itself and TNA, TNA is watched by 1.3 million people, give or take, every week on a major national cable network which once was suitable to be the home of Raw,. TNA draws a rating each week which blows away the vast majority of CNN programming. It generates tens of millions of dollars in PPV revenue per year. It pays the full-time salary of a roster that is similar in size to each of WWE's two main brands, with a payroll level that has drawn some full-time workers from WWE to TNA. So for CNN to ignore TNA was either the result of poor research or selective reduction for the sake of telling the story they wanted to tell without regard to reality. Either way, thumbs down.

-Vince on whether he considers himself in a "hot seat" right now: To a certain extent, but in no way is this a crisis mode. With Chris Benoit's death, and the fact that no one in our organization or anyone who ever met Chris thought he was capable of murdering his family, from an emotional standpoint you can say that's a crisis because it has affected everyone in the WWE including our fans, as well as obviously those in the organization and those who were friends of Chris's. There's an emotional scar that will always be there. But from the standpoint of a crisis, this is not a crisis in terms of business as such. Our business has not fallen off in any conceivable way from a financial standpoint. Again, notwithstanding we all are trying to recover from the emotionality of this.

That's certainly ignoring the dip they took in the ratings after Benoit's death, the most concrete initial example of a drop in interest in the product. It's true, though, that "crisis mode" sounds more dramatic than what life in WWE is like. As Shawn Daivari described in his "Torch Talk," there's knowledge of what Benoit did, but it didn't change week-to-week life in WWE after the first few weeks played out.

-Vince on whether he feels he's being treated more harshly by the media or government than, say, baseball if it had a similar murder-murder-suicide occur: Well, let me just say to think that the WWE owes any responsibility for someone who was a mild-mannered man, and someone who had complete control of his faculties as far as we knew, to put the WWE on the hot seat for someone who is a murderer is unfair. Nothing from the WWE under any set of circumstances had anything to do with Chris Benoit murdering his family. How did we know that Chris Benoit would turn into a monster? ... I think it's unfair to assume that there was any responsibility from our organization as to what happened to Mr. Benoit. I certainly think that's unfair. But at the same time our organization and our product draws great television ratings. We sell a lot of newspapers as well, therefore the media, obviously, would be very interested not only in the subject matter, but also from a selfish standpoint they know we get television ratings.

When Vince says WWE bares no responsibility for what Benoit did, I believe he thinks that. It's too bad, whether it's a form of denial or protection, that he won't volunteer to talk about how even though what Benoit did was a freak occurrence unlikely to ever be repeated no matter what prompted it to happen, it has encouraged WWE to step up and try to make sure brain damage, family strife, and dysfunction isn't being fostered through the lifestyle demanded of successful, long-term WWE wrestlers. He can defend their long-running policy while also acknowledging that this prompted them to reevaluate everything about their approach to find ways to improve it.

-Griffin Asked: We have compiled our own statistics; there's been a lot of statistics about wrestlers who have died under age 50. We, in the last five years we count 18, 14 of them have passed through this organization. From a humane standpoint, I mean, is that hard to swallow, that so many of these wrestlers are dying so young?

-Vince responded: Well again, I think that from a responsibility standpoint that we all as individuals are responsible for our own actions. If someone passes through our organization, certainly our organization is not responsible for someone's own personal activities. So, from a humanitarian standpoint, however, as of late, we've instituted a policy in which those who have even just passed through our organization can, in fact, receive attention from us in terms of, if necessary, drug treatment facilities and things of that nature. We'll provide that to them at no cost. So, from a humanitarian standpoint, we've reached out to those individuals who have previously been associated with us.

When I first heard McMahon use the term "passed through our organization," I was appalled, because that's downplaying the role WWE has in the lives of many long-time workers. However, this shows how an edited documentary can mess with perception. McMahon used the term "passed through" because Griffin used it in his question. McMahon, though, still doesn't seem willing or able to face the reality that people happen to take steroids and then pass through his organization; many wrestlers take steroids because they believe it's a necessary component to stand out or at least fit in with the money-players on the roster. To say WWE isn't responsible for an individuals personal choices is ignoring that WWE is creating a profit-incentive (and fame-incentive) for wrestlers to engage in dangerous habits to keep up.

-Vince on the dozens of wrestlers who have died prematurely in the last couple decades being pinned on WWE: I think there's a tendency to look at us as the last man standing in terms of the organization we have become, what is known as pro wrestling, WWE. When you look back on it when a lot of these individuals were around and performing, there were a lot of organizations. They worked for a lot of organizations, many of them did not, as a matter of fact, work for our organization, or if they did, they just passed through. So again, I don't know how our organization could be responsible for all of the deaths, you know, no matter who's counting it, and no matter the efficacy of that count, by the way, which is subject to a great deal of scrutiny. So I think that a number of individuals have passed away. Does it speak well for an industry in total in the past? I think that what the barometer now is what are we, as the last man standing in terms of wrestling organizations, what are we doing about the benefit and health of our performers? I think that's the most important part.

Just once I want to hear in Vince's words a sense of shared grief for an industry that he has had great influence over the past 25 years losing so many talents so young; he always seems to move into a cold defensive stance and stay there. If he showed a human side, a sense that as a patriarch of the industry, part of him dies every time a wrestler dies, whether or not he worked for him for an extended stretch, I think then his accompanying explanation for how he can't be to blame for the majority of bad choices many made would be better received......

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