CHAPTER 13
ON JULY 6, 2007, REPRESENTATIVE Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, called for a Congressional investigation of “allegations of rampant steroid use in professional wrestling.” Stearns said in a press release:
Between 1985 and 2006, 89 wrestlers have died before the age of 50. Of course, not all of these deaths can be attributed to steroid use. However, this abnormally high number of deaths of young, fit athletes should raise congressional alarms. Millions of young wrestling fans, for better or for worse, look up to professional wrestlers as role models. The Anabolic Steroid Act of 1990 makes it a felony to use and distribute these drugs. Congress needs to investigate the recent events and find out how big of a problem steroid use is in professional wrestling. Steroid use is a major public health problem that deserves Congress’ full attention.[1]
As chair of the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Stearns in 2005 had conducted hearings for legislation he called the Drug Free Sports Act, which would have established a single testing standard for pro sports and set up a “three strikes” progression of punishments for violators, culminating in a lifetime ban. The bill stalled, and with the takeover by Democrats of majority control of the House of Representatives following the 2006 elections, the chairmanship of the subcommittee passed to Bobby Rush of Illinois.
Now the subcommittee’s ranking minority member, Stearns joined the Benoit cable news yak-a-thon. The same month, former wrestler George Caiazzo (“John Kronus”), a star at Extreme Championship Wrestling in the 1990s, died at age thirty-eight in the usual sudden and mysterious way. Including Chris and Nancy Benoit, Caiazzo was the industry’s seventh death in a thirty-day period[2]. Weeks later, Brian Adams, whose most prominent role had been as “Crush” in the old WWF tag team Demolition, died at forty-four of an overdose of painkillers and antidepressants. Adams also was a heavy steroid user; even in retirement, his name was found by prosecutors on the Signature Pharmacy customer list.
In August, Stearns visited the Funking Conservatory, a wrestling school in his Ocala, Florida, district, which was owned and operated by former pro wrestling star Dory Funk Jr. On the school’s web TV show, the congressman was named a recipient of the Funking Conservatory Fighting Heart Award and presented with a pair of wrestling boots signed by Funk. Perhaps that was what the congressman was after all along. With no leverage to force hearings, anyway, minus the active support of Chairman Rush, Stearns soon relinquished his ranking position on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection for the same spot on the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee.
Inevitably, Congressional investigations of wrestling would take a back seat to the public’s superior fascination with steroid scandals in legitimate sports. The post-Benoit atmosphere on Capitol Hill reflected this push-pull dynamic. Important developments in the baseball steroid story — whether the November 2007 indictment of home-run king Barry Bonds for lying to a federal grand jury or the report to Major League Baseball the next month by former Senator George Mitchell — either could create a rising tide of attention for the wrestling sidebar, or bury it.
The campaign by the executive branch against steroid traffickers was already drawing the connections between real sports, “sports entertainment,” and the unregulated marketing of “wellness” products to amateur jocks, youth chasers, and the otherwise vain and foolish. But the public education process was never about logic so much as it was about the ability of politicians to get a rub from proximity to celebrity hooks and themes. Thus, when baseball’s Roger Clemens challenged the Mitchell Report finding that he had been injected with growth hormone by his personal trainer, Brian McNamee, and demanded a forum for clearing his name, Congressman Henry Waxman’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had the perfect vehicle. In February 2008 Clemens and McNamee testified before the Waxman committee, and a global Internet TV audience, with competing accounts of the former’s familiarity with the needle and the damage done. Clemens wound up suing McNamee for defamation. The Justice Department wound up investigating Clemens for perjury.
Congressman Rush’s subcommittee of Commerce and Energy, which felt the steroid issue was more appropriately under its direct legislative purview, fired back later in the month with an omnibus hearing on steroids and sports at which the heads of the major team sports and their players’ unions said their pieces. Rush had wanted to include WWE, too. In November he emailed a Baltimore Sun reporter, “Given recent developments — the impending Mitchell report and reports of widespread abuse in professional wrestling — I believe it’s time we get a formal update on what progress is being made to eradicate steroids from all sports and sports entertainment.” Vince McMahon, however, declined the invitation to appear at the Rush subcommittee hearing on February 27, 2008. McMahon explained that his lawyer, Jerry McDevitt, was unavailable to accompany him that day.
“I am exceptionally and extremely disappointed,” Rush said. Steroid abuse in pro wrestling “is probably worse than in any professional sport or amateur sport. . . . The number of deaths in the professional wrestling ranks is startling to say the least. The tragedy of Chris Benoit has been well documented. I want to assure Mr. McMahon that this committee fully intends to deal with the illegal steroid abuse in professional wrestling. And we hope he will be part of the solution and not part of the problem.”
While Rush harrumphed, what the public didn’t know was that Congressional scrutiny of WWE had already played itself out behind the scenes. For all practical purposes, the game was over. In the last four months of 2007, McMahon and others from his organization were interviewed privately by counsel and investigators of the Waxman committee. That body would never issue a formal report. Instead, Waxman released his personal findings another full year later.
***
Despite being injected with exhibits totaling nearly a thousand pages, the Waxman report was not a report, but only a letter, dated January 2, 2009, to John Walters, director of the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. The committee did not promulgate legislative recommendations or otherwise act on the basis of the chairman’s letter. Given the constitutionally designed tension between the White House and the legislative branch under the principle of separation of powers, the Waxman letter was most deferential. Noting that he would soon be moving from Oversight and Government Reform to the chairmanship of another committee, Energy and Commerce, Waxman launched a booming punt to Walter: “I want to provide you with information from the Oversight Committee’s investigation into the use of steroids in professional wrestling, which over three million children and teens watch regularly. I also request that your office examine the systematic deficiencies in the testing policies and practices of professional wrestling that the investigation has found.”
The supplements consisted of transcripts of interviews by committee staff with WWE executives Vince and Linda McMahon and their daughter Stephanie McMahon Levesque, and with consultants contracted to support the WWE wellness program[3]. The committee also questioned Dixie Carter, owner of the much smaller Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, and published data on TNA’s drug-testing.
The history of WWE testing fell into three periods. In 1987, two wrestlers, The Iron Sheik and Hacksaw Jim Duggan, were pulled over by New Jersey state troopers and arrested, the former for cocaine possession and the latter for marijuana. The incident, embarrassing on its face for WWF, was made worse by the status of the busted performers as, respectively, a heel and a babyface engaged in a story line feud and therefore, by the code of kayfabe, not supposed to be seen fraternizing. McMahon later explained the origin of company drug testing this way to the House committee staffers: “The first policy was generally put in place because it was perceived, and I believe accurately so, that we had a cocaine problem. And it was the ’80s and a lot of people were engaged in that kind of party atmosphere. That is the reason why. I don’t even know if we tested for steroids in that first policy or not.” McMahon didn’t add the joke among the talent of that period: “You’re suspended if you test positive for cocaine or negative for steroids.”
In 1991, following the prosecution of Dr. Zahorian’s Pennsylvania steroid farm, WWF undertook the second iteration of its drug-testing program, targeting banned anabolics. Zahorian’s trial revealed the shipments of packages by Zahorian to many wrestlers who testified at the trial, as well as to McMahon and Hulk Hogan, who didn’t. McMahon himself admitted to brief “experimentation” with the steroid Deca-Durabolin (nandrolone), after apparently having been turned on to it by Hogan during the filming of his flop No Holds Barred, WWF’s first Hollywood feature.
For four years, WWE consulted on its new protocols with Dr. Mauro DiPasquale, a Canadian doctor who was such an authority on drug-testing technicalities that his 1987 book, Drug Use & Detection in Amateur Sports, was an underground classic used by steroid freaks to figure out ways to beat the system. David Black — a Ph.D. in pharmacological forensics who had spun off his lab on the Vanderbilt University campus into Aegis Analytical Laboratories, Inc., a for-profit contractor for sports leagues and law enforcement agencies — handled the specimen analysis.
A couple of top names from that period, The Ultimate Warrior and the British Bulldog (Davey Boy Smith), were terminated, though the lack of transparency in such cases always raised suspicion that running afoul of drug tests was the pretext rather than the reason for the dismissal.
But by 1996 the Zahorian-fueled scrutiny of wrestling had faded, and so had the WWF drug policy. McMahon was losing millions of dollars and his dominant pro wrestling market share in fierce competition with WCW. Top talent was jumping to WCW for both higher pay and the lure of a drug-testing apparatus even weaker than WWF’s. So in an October 25, 1996, company memorandum, McMahon announced, “WWF, effective immediately, is suspending drug testing and collection on a group basis.” He said the incidence of illegal and performance-enhancing drugs had become “so slight that group testing is no longer cost effective or necessary.” The promotion reserved the right “to test any individual any time for the use of illegal substances”; such testing would proceed in a handful of cases, “for cause.” In his interview with Congressional investigators, McMahon explained “cause” as “if someone were tardy consistently, if they missed dates, if they would fall asleep when they’re not supposed to fall asleep. Any aberrant behavior, I think, would have been, in all likelihood, a reason, a probable reason to test.”
The third and current version of the policy, the wellness program, was formulated after the November 2005 death of Eddie Guerrero. Linda McMahon conceded this obvious link; Vince maintained that he had begun developing the program “prior to Eddie’s untimely demise.” David Black’s lab was brought back with an expanded role, though still only an administrative one, if not a clerical one — certainly one lacking the autonomous authority to interpret positive test results and impose penalties. This became evident when committee staff asked Black about WWE’s failure to suspend Randy Orton after his name showed up in the summer of 2007 on the Signature Pharmacy list. Black said, “Oh, sure, I would agree that that’s not good.”
As the program evolved, Dr. Tracy Ray, a physician with the famous Birmingham, Alabama, sports medicine clinic of Dr. James Andrews, was engaged as the “medical review officer” to help make determinations on therapeutic use exemptions. Like Black’s lab, though, Ray issued recommendations, not binding decisions. Still later, Dr. Frederick Feuerbach, a cardiologist, added heart tests. The Oversight Committee examined all these aspects of the WWE wellness program.
***
The pièce de résistance of the Waxman paper blizzard was the 122-page transcript of the committee staff’s December 14, 2007, interview of Vince McMahon in the Rayburn House Office Building lounge. In that session, the WWE chairman was, by turns, bullying, self-pitying, creatively evasive, and utterly in character.
Earlier in the year, as WWE came under the microscope of the two Congressional committees, McMahon did a TV skit in which he compared these authorities to Barney Fife, the bumbling deputy sheriff portrayed by Don Knotts on the old Andy Griffith sitcom. Though dated, this was a favorite pop-culture image of McMahon’s son-in-law, Triple H, whose wife, Stephanie, came in behind it in a backstage pep talk to the wrestlers. She bucked up the nervous talent by assuring them that Vince was not worried at all. In fact, Stephanie said, he planned to wear a clown wig at the eventual hearing.
McMahon’s brazen December interview was not a formal hearing. His disdain for the investigators there fell just short of the mocking tactic Stephanie had promised, and the act would not have played as well live in public and on C-SPAN. But lawyer McDevitt and WWE lobbyists had worked to ensure favorable ground rules.
“Per our discussion with Jerry beforehand, we’ve not alerted the media,” senior investigator Brian Cohen said near the beginning of the session. “Our intention was that you were able to come in here without having a media circus.”
In lieu of a media circus, McMahon and McDevitt presented a two-person private circus. The latter objected on points large and small. The former was smug and smarmy.
When senior investigative counsel David Leviss recited routine language seeking confirmation that the interviewee was not using a recording device, McDevitt bristled: “Why would you even think we would do that? What good-faith basis would you even have to ask a question like that, whether we’re recording this. We know it’s against the rules. . . . I’m stunned by your question.”
McMahon chimed in, “Are you guys recording any of this, other than the stenographer over here, in terms of television or radio.” No. “Just thought I would ask.”
The stage was set for the most aggressive wise guy act since Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.
“What is your current position with the company?” Leviss asked.
“Do we have to go through this rigmarole? Why don’t you just get to the meat of it? You know who I am,” McMahon replied.
A Republican campaign contributor, McMahon joked, “Why is it Republican [committee members’ staffers] are smiling and the Democrats aren’t?”
He said he didn’t want to be penalized for WWE’s problems: “We have problems sometimes because of the nature of our business, you know, that require things to be fixed. I had a double quad tear on both legs. You’re sympathetic with that. Thank you. If only it were genuine.”
He said he was looking forward to receiving “a gold star” from the committee for being so cooperative. On a follow-up question, he wanted to know if the investigators were “trying to slap my wrists.” Committee counsel said they were just trying to understand a complex subject. “Great,” McMahon said. “Thank you very much. I don’t want you to spank me on the butt either.”
He took umbrage at being asked his opinion of the possible long-term effects of steroids. “I’m not a doctor. I would suggest if I wanted to know long-term effects of any drug, I think the first place I would go is the FDA [Food and Drug Administration]. That would be the first place I would go. And, quite frankly, I don’t think the FDA tells anyone about the long-term effects of steroid usage or abusage. And I would suggest to you that that might be someplace where your committee and Mr. Waxman, since you have oversight over these areas, might want to begin.”
Had McMahon’s company ever sought an expert medical opinion on this question? “No.”
McMahon insisted that the chief target of the wellness policy was not steroids but the abuse of other prescription drugs. “There were a number of incidents in which, in the past, people have fallen asleep when they shouldn’t, which would indicate that they were taking too many painkillers, things of that nature.”
When McMahon was told that unnamed witnesses had expressed to the committee their view that WWE’s business model relied on talent using “steroids or illegal drugs,” McDevitt interjected: “Vince, don’t even take these baits. You don’t have to answer those kind of questions. We’re not here to answer those. And if you think you can ever get a subpoena to ask questions like that, go ahead and try.”
Why would accusers say such things? McMahon was asked. “Insanity,” he said.
The committee staff tried to engage McMahon on two televised incidents in recent years in which wrestlers were taunted for looking smaller when they returned from drug suspensions. “As I recall,” McMahon said dismissively, “there was one incident in which Triple H [made] an ad lib [to that effect].” There were actually two incidents. In one, Chris Masters was ridiculed by Triple H. In the other, Randy Orton was mocked by Vince McMahon.
Investigator Cohen noted that thirty WWE wrestlers tested positive for steroids or illegal drugs in 2006, and eleven in 2007. Between March 2006 and February 2007, fifteen were suspended, three received “TUE’s,” or therapeutic use exemptions, and twelve got “warnings.” Cohen asked McMahon to “describe the circumstances under which those twelve wrestlers received warnings.”
McDevitt: “You’re basically asking him what he knows about the warning business? . . . Ask him about his conversation with Dr. Black, for Christ’s sake. Come on, quit dancing.”
McMahon added an oily, “I don’t have anything to hide, guys. Just shoot me right between the eyes, okay?”
This led to a discussion of the initial concern of wrestlers over what would happen when they tested positive but had a doctor’s prescription for steroids. McMahon said he eventually resolved the apparent confusion between Black and the wrestlers by hiring Dr. Ray, the medical review officer, to help determine the legitimacy of particular prescriptions and claims of TUE’s.
“The nature of this policy is to do exactly what it was designed to do, the overall wellness of our talent,” McMahon said. “Let’s face it, as a good businessman, I don’t want talent that isn’t well. They can’t perform. They can’t perform at their highest level, and they won’t be with us. So, obviously, I want talent to be healthy. Notwithstanding the fact that I am a human being and want other human beings to be healthy, aside from that, I’m a good businessman. I want my talent healthy, because if they’re healthy, their clear longevity is much greater as intellectual property to the company. So, yeah, you know, I want this policy to be as good as it possibly can be.”
McMahon disputed the idea that the wrestlers on the Signature Pharmacy list were caught by the Albany district attorney rather than by WWE. “My understanding, my recollection, okay, is of these eleven individuals identified by the Albany outfit . . . two of those had some sort of infraction with the testing with Dr. Black” — by which McMahon meant that they testified positive for something, whether or not it was the something they had illegally ordered from the Internet pharmacy.
McMahon said he took “great offense” to Waxman’s statement at the time of the Signature revelations that the WWE policy deserved criticism because law enforcement, rather than the company, caught the miscreants. “It says to me, basically, that this is sort of a witch hunt kind of thing. You guys already have the answers before you even ask me the questions. . . . I think that is stupid, okay? That is out-and-out stupid. And I resent the fact that, you know, someone would fry us in the court of public opinion without having the knowledge you’re now going to give [Waxman] based on my testimony. . . .”
On Chris Benoit specifically, McMahon revealed the misleading nature of company statements suggesting that Benoit’s wellness program tests did not show steroid use. McMahon conceded that he didn’t know when a test detected a banned substance, only when there was “a conclusion positive,” which was the detection of a banned substance combined with Dr. Ray’s conclusion that a TUE claim was invalid.
Some of the most convoluted dialogue involved an amendment to the WWE policy to cover wrestlers whose suspensions threatened to interrupt ongoing TV story lines. In August 2006, McMahon promulgated a policy change stating that the company “may, at its discretion, schedule the Talent to work selected televised events without pay and pay-per-views with pay during the 30 day suspension period.” The theory was that sudden no-shows caused by last-minute suspensions penalized only the fans. By putting the offending wrestlers on TV for the purpose of resolving their story lines, WWE ensured that they were being punished, not rewarded; they were downgraded or forced to “do the honors” by losing out in their pending feuds.
How wrestlers got paid, in this or any circumstance, was almost impossible for an outsider to calculate. WWE pegged compensation to its own accountings of ticket sales and other revenue streams; the only stipulated payment by contract was $200 per television shoot. (The talent above the “jobber” or “enhancement” level had written into their contracts what were known as “downside guarantees” of annual income from these accountings.)
McMahon had this to say about why and how such suspensions were held in abeyance: “I’m resolving an issue on television, and I’m doing it very quickly. I’m doing it as quickly as we possibly can. . . . And, again, we’re different than anybody else. We’re not a sport, emphasize, okay. It’s not like baseball or whatever else it may be and you’re not playing, you’re out for fourteen games or whatever it might be. This is entertainment. We are so different than sport. We are entertainment.”[4]
McMahon was contemptuous of the idea that WWE bore any responsibility for the astounding early mortality rate of wrestlers. Asked about the Meltzer study showing the deaths of sixty-two performers under the age of fifty in WWE and other “major league” organizations (including WCW and the original ECW), McMahon said, “I’m not familiar with anything Dave Meltzer writes. He’s a gossip columnist. I don’t read what he has to write. Like I say, he’s a dirt monger. There are a number of those. We call them dirt sheets and they have very little credibility.”
In August 2007, Frank Deford, the author and Sports Illustrated writer, touted Meltzer’s study in a National Public Radio commentary. Deford (who employed Meltzer as a wrestling columnist at the National in 1990–91 and on at least one occasion fended off pressure from McMahon to fire him) called Meltzer “the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism.” McMahon was unimpressed. He said Deford carried a grudge against him over an incident in which the promoter made off with one of the writer’s shoes after they went bowling at a country club[5].
In the summer of 2007, WWE sent a letter to about 500 former wrestlers offering to underwrite the full costs of substance-abuse treatment because, as the letter put it, “Over the last ten years, an inordinate number of wrestlers have passed away. Some of those deaths may in part have been caused by drugs or alcohol.” McMahon told the Congressional investigators that this was “unfortunately about the only thing that we can do. I don’t like to read about these deaths at all. And some of these people who have overdosed and things of that nature have been friends of mine. It’s upsetting on every conceivable front. So as a not necessarily a responsible, but I think I would like to throw in responsible as well, corporate member of society, notwithstanding again the fact I’m a human being, I don’t know anything else we can do other than to extend that service or whatever to someone who may have a problem.”
McMahon summarized his motivation for the letter to former talent by saying this: “Two words: public relations. That’s it. I do not feel any sense of responsibility for anyone of whatever their age is who has passed along and has bad habits and overdoses for drugs. Sorry, I don’t feel any responsibility for that. Nonetheless, that’s why we’re [reaching out with the letter]. It is a magnanimous gesture.”
The committee staff asked whether McMahon himself, who had a talent contract and still stepped into the ring a couple of times a year, was subject to the wellness policy. The answer was no. “I’m not a regularly scheduled performer. In addition to that I’m sixty-two years old, not twenty-six. And the wellness policy is designed for those young competitors who compete on a regular basis.”
Had McMahon used steroids since his admitted use in the ’90s?
“I’m not going to allow you to harass this man,” McDevitt exploded. “How is that pertinent to anything about whether this wellness program works? And you came in here today professing you have an open mind and you’re telling me that you didn’t have this in mind when you [earlier shared a list of anticipated questions]? Bullshit.”
“I’m refusing to answer the question,” McMahon confirmed.
***
Congressman Waxman summarized his views in the letter to John Walters, the White House drug policy director. Waxman reported that “baseline testing,” at the beginning of the program in March 2006, found forty percent of WWE’s 186 wrestlers testing positive despite advance warning.
Then there were the TV and pay-per-view non-suspension suspensions.
There was the evidence that WWE, in 2007–08, went on to hire four out of the five wrestlers who tested positive for steroids in pre-contract testing. The only one not hired was the one who tested positive for both steroids and cocaine.
There were the TUE’s, tied to a circular “testosterone replacement acceptance program” for wrestlers who had damaged their endocrinological systems with past steroid abuse. Dr. Ray, who had made the recommendations affirming seven TUE’s, conceded in his interview that “there was shadiness in almost every case that I’ve reviewed.”
In the summer of 2007, WWE had contacted Dr. Richard Auchus, the Southwestern Medical Center and anti-doping agency endocrinologist (who is quoted at the end of the preceding chapter), about working with WWE on TUE standards. In the December interview on Capitol Hill, McMahon said he was “considering” and “contemplating” such a move. Ultimately, Auchus’s two-page proposal for getting past steroid abusers off androgens — a plan he compared to using methadone to wean heroin addicts — was dropped. (In October 2008 WWE would hire a different endocrinologist, Dr. Vijay Bahl of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, but the announcement said nothing specific about TUE’s.)
Finally, Chris Benoit. “According to WWE officials, Mr. Benoit was tested four times for steroids prior to his death. He tested positive three times, but each time he received only a warning or no penalty at all. The Committee obtained no evidence that efforts were made to discourage his steroid abuse,” the Waxman letter noted.
Waxman’s documentation seemed to be an attempt, in the absence of public hearings, to close the loop on an unresolved topic. The chance that anything substantive would come out of it, in terms of regulation or serious pressure on WWE to make its drug-testing apparatus truly independent, was low. Eighteen months after the Benoit murders, Congress had made a little bit of noise about the problem but left almost no imprint on a possible solution.
***
On Election Eve, November 3, 2008, the two major presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, were interviewed at halftime of ESPN’s Monday Night Football. Each was asked to name the reform in sports that would be his priority if the voters chose him the next day.
Living up to his image as an old-fashioned moralist, McCain said he would work to eliminate steroids in sports.
Obama vowed to advocate to replace the current Bowl Championship Series with a credible playoff system, which every year would guarantee the nation an undisputed national college football champion.
[1]. FoxSports.com columnist Mark Kriegel noted at the time that Stearns’ statistics were lifted from the appendix of my book Wrestling Babylon.
[2]. Maybe the strangest was the self-hanging in Pittsburgh — an apparent copycat suicide — of independent wrestler James Fawcett (“Devil Bhukakan”), thirty-one, who idolized Benoit.
[3]. In this book, the terms “wellness policy” and “wellness program” are used interchangeably. I intend “policy” in reference to the company’s formulation and publication of a plan, and “program” in reference to how it operates, but the distinctions are trivial.
[4]. Wrestling Observer’s Meltzer pointed out the hypocrisy of WWE’s professed concern for customers when the company adjusts wrestlers’ suspensions in order to preserve story lines. The company often pulled star wrestlers from events in order to support story line injuries that didn’t really happen — but not until fans had already purchased tickets thinking those wrestlers would be there.
[5]. Deford confirmed this bizarre story, which took place at a birthday party for John Filippelli, a TV sports producer who at the time was coordinating TV operations for WWE. Pat Patterson, a retired wrestler who was then McMahon’s right-hand man, stole one of Deford’s shoes and one of his wife’s. Patterson and McMahon found this hilarious. “I’m rather amazed McMahon brought this up, but it’s a pretty accurate account of him acting like a horse’s ass,” Deford said in an email to me.