That Was Then 11.11.07: Thoughts On Vince & Linda McMahon On CNN

I read Vince and Linda McMahon’s comments when they appeared on CNN recently to discuss the Chris Benoit situation, and I had a lot of thoughts on the things they had to say. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are going to tear down what he has to say just because he’s Vince McMahon, but I thought a lot of the things he said make sense, so I thought I’d chime in, hopefully before the floodgates open. First Vince and Linda’s comments, then my reaction. By the way, full credit for this transcript goes to PWInsider.com:

Vince McMahon on whether WWE is in”Crisis Mode” following the Benoit Tragedy: “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’. 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 recovery from the emotionality of this.

I do think that Benoit’s situation is given a little too much credit for the recent decline of ratings, and it’s not even that WWE is blaming it on that, but a lot of people in the IWC. I don’t know that there’s enough people who got that emotionally attached to Benoit that this would cause such a drastic drop in ratings, and would say it’s probably more due to the fact that the product generally isn’t that great and has been steadily declining for years now. Besides, it’s not like anyone was blaming Eddy Guerrero’s death for the ratings declining after his death, and he was a lot more popular with the general public than Benoit ever was.

Vince on Whether WWE Was Unfairly Blamed for the Benoit Tragedy: “Well, 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.”

I absolutely agree with this, because in the wake of Benoit’s death, the story was “Wrestler kills wife, son, then kills himself”, but literally within hours had turned into yet another steroid witch hunt. Of course we all know that steroids is the only issue for which the mainstream media will give wrestling any substantial coverage, and indeed the coverage dropped off almost completely once the autopsy revealed that there wasn’t enough of anything in Benoit’s body to have caused him to do what he did.

Vince on The Early Deaths of Professional Wrestlers: “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.”

In fact this is nothing new, and Vince has helped out a lot of people who used to work for him, and was doing it long before Wellness came around, we just never heard about it because he didn’t feel it was something he needed to trumpet to show how awesome he is. Jake Roberts and Marty Jannetty are just two names you might know who Vince has helped out, and done so out of his own pocket. And Vince is right, there should be more accountability for one’s own actions, and not everything can be blamed on who they work for.

Vince on Whether WWE Should Be Held Responsible for Early Deaths in the Industry: “Well, again, 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.”

All one needs to do is watch any shoot interview with anyone who was around in World Class or Florida or any other territory back in the day, or even in ECW to hear what the party scene was like in those days, and most of what I hear paints a picture far worse than anything I’ve ever heard going on in WWE. A lot of the ECW and World Class vets who have passed over the years never worked for Vince at all, or were like Terry Gordy and did so for a cup of coffee. Eddy Guerrero’s well-publicized substance abuse problems started way before he ever set foot in a WWE ring. The problem is that, regardless of what you think about how WWE earned their pseudo-monopoly, the fact is that they are the last man standing and are synonymous with wrestling to the general public, so they’re going to catch all the heat for anything that happens in the business, whether or not it happened partially or at all within their jurisdiction.

Vince on his relationship personally with Benoit and whether they were close: “I was, because I dealt with Chris. I wasn’t as close as many of his friends, you know. Eddie Guerrero was a very close friend of Chris Benoit. Many others were very close. But he was my friend, and there was no way that you could ever, ever see anything like this ever coming. It would be the most unlikely individual, I would think, to commit this atrocity you would ever see.”

Linda on Benoit: “I had had interaction with Chris. I wouldn’t call myself his friend. We were an acquaintance; we certainly dealt professionally together, but there were times that I would see Chris with his sons — two boys, Daniel and, and [one from] his first marriage. And I would see the boys backstage, both of whom looked like Chris, and they were so excited to be there. Chris was just the the ultimate father. He was often requested by our Make-a-Wish charity to be the superstar that interacted with the Make-a-Wish children. So there was just nothing to indicate what went on in that house, what the actions, what the motivation was behind what went on in that house, that tragedy.”

Vince on Benoit Warning Signs: “No sign at all. And again, you can talk to those who were very close to Chris, and traveled the highways with him, and moments that would be very private, and nothing at all.”

I have to believe that all of this is true, and that if there were signs of a problem, some kind of move would have been made. For example, regardless of how he tells the story, the fact is that WWE released Kurt Angle because he had just become too much of a liability, and he was a hell of a lot more important to WWE than Benoit ever was. While we will never know what his family situation was like, I definitely believe that Vince would have done something if he had any idea that there was a serious problem.

Vince on Running the Benoit Tribute on Raw: ” Right, it was a last-minute split decision, obviously, to do that. We had footage, a lot of it, from Chris Benoit’s performances in the past, and again, everyone was in a state of shock. I don’t think any performers really felt like performing, because as far as we knew, someone had killed Chris and his entire family. There was no thought that Chris could have done this, given, again, the fact that he was a mild-mannered person. So based upon that information we very quickly put together a tribute show.”

Vince on Company Reaction Afterward: “Well, there’s no way to react other than obviously we made a mistake. But you make decisions based upon information that you have at the time. Anyone can do a 20/20 hindsight, but you’re on the air in several hours, what do you do? It just seemed like the logical thing to do based on the information we had was to pay tribute to Chris and his family.”

This was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. If WWE had waited for the facts before running the tribute and then it turned out Benoit was an innocent, then people would have come down on them for not immediately running a tribute. By the time word came down about what had actually happened, Raw had been on the air for about an hour and a half, and WWE wasn’t in a position to just pull it. Now they have people coming down on them for running the tribute in light of what we ended up finding out, when WWE couldn’t have known the facts before they had to make a decision on what to do. WWE really was in a no-win situation under those circumstances.

Vince on WWE Disassociating from Benoit: “Well, again when after something like this is over and you find out, you know, the facts, regardless of whether or not we had been fooled, or whatever it may be, to put on a tribute show, the fact of the matter, that anyone who becomes a murderer, I mean, you want to disassociate yourself with that individual, there’s no question about that, from an emotional standpoint, a business standpoint, everything else. Chris Benoit will not, and has not, defined WWE. You know, our job is to entertain people all over the world, and we do that. To me it’s the, the second greatest job you could possibly have, the first one being curing cancer or whatever it may be as a, as a research scientist or a doctor. The second most important thing you can do is entertain people and put smiles on people’s faces all over the world, and that’s our task, and that’s what we do, and Chris Benoit will not define the WWE.”

I have to believe that the decision to disassociate from Benoit is more a business decision than a personal one, and I think it’s very unfortunate that this one incident has caused Benoit’s accomplishments, which are significant, to be completely erased from wrestling history.

Vince on Analysis of Benoit’s Brain: “Well, let me just say something about this report from a layman’s standpoint, and the report states that Mr. Benoit, Chris Benoit had a mind of an 85-year-old individual suffering from dementia, that was the quote. So I would, as a layman certainly wonder whether or not that report has any credibility because if you’re an 85-year-old and you suffer from dementia, you can’t do what Chris Benoit did for a living. It’s impossible. You can’t function as a normal human being in terms of even getting to the airport to come to work. So, I would question whether or not that information is accurate if they define what his problem was as an 85-year-old with dementia.”

Linda on the Study: “Right, and so we’ve sent a letter — we’ve asked to have the study and their findings released to us so that we can take a look at it, because we would like to investigate these findings further and to see what was there. But these studies are performed on brains of people who have died, and I think it’s a very new science, and there is still a lot of investigation to be done. And we would like to see it. We would like to know what the findings are, but they’ve yet not responded to us to release that information.”

Vince on changes in WWE Stemming from the Brain study: “From a conservative standpoint, as someone who is the head of a public company, the only thing we’ve done really is just don’t use chairs to the head. But other than that, it’s what it is in the ring. Accidents do occur; it’s not ballet, as they say.”

You know, most people took the findings of the Benoit brain analysis and just accepted it, but Vince is right: nobody stopped to ask how a guy who was functionally a brain damaged 85 year old was able to manage. Looking back, it seems like everyone was just so happy to hear that it wasn’t steroid related that nobody stopped to question the results we got. As far as any changes in WWE, they’d been working to prevent head and neck injuries for quite some time now, especially after the rash of neck fusion surgeries in the late 90s and early 2000s. Piledrivers, shooting star presses, 450 splashes, and chairshots to the head have all been outlawed in order to cut down on the injuries.

Vince on Benoit Passing WWE Wellness during a period he was obviously using testosterone: “You’ve have to ask Dr. [David] Black that. If he were on some prescriptions prescribed by a legitimate physician, then surely, that would be an exception. If he had an infection or whatever it may be, I have no idea.”

Vince on Benoit’s Prescriptions from Dr. Phil Astin: “Well, I can’t speak for the doctor. All I can tell you is from a general standpoint our drug program adviser found or did not find in his last test, and from a standpoint of the criteria established for Chris Benoit and everyone else. Benoit tested negative.”

Vince on Whether there’s a Loophole in WWE Wellness for Prescribed Medications: “Well, let me ask you a question: If you have a prescription, and it’s a legitimate prescription from your personal physician, then why wouldn’t it pass? If you have an infection or you have a sleep problem, you have whatever your problem is, and your physician, a legitimate physician, not one on the Internet, prescribes something for you, then surely that would be accepted in our policy as well as any other policy you can possibly scrutinize.”

This is the part where Vince seems to be sidestepping the issue a little bit. Yes, Benoit had a prescription for whatever he had, but Dr Astin has later been found to have been engaging in some pretty shady dealings, and this just goes to show that the Wellness Policy, as it is currently being implemented, can be circumvented by getting a prescription from a crooked doctor. In Benoit’s case, he did test negative, but that doesn’t mean that nothing was found in his body. What was found was allowed because he had a prescription, and there is an important difference there.

Vince McMahon on the Signature Pharmacy Suspensions: “Well, again, you’re getting back to, yes, so they got things since the [WWE drug-testing] policy was put into effect in February of ’06, and that’s when the barometer was held accountable. Some of those individuals acquired drugs from an online pharmacy, which is clearly written out to be prohibited in the policy, so we took action immediately, the same day.”

Linda on the Signature Pharmacy Suspensions: “Well, that’s exactly true. [The suspended performers] weren’t found positive for testing. The reason we suspended them was because they had obtained their prescriptions through an Internet pharmacy, and that’s, as Vince said, clearly laid out. That is absolutely not allowed in our policy. Our policy is not a ‘gotcha’ policy. We have a wellness program. We’re not looking to just say gotcha. We want to protect the health and well-being of the men and women who are part of World Wrestling Entertainment. That’s why prescriptions from legitimate doctors, from your treating physician, are acceptable if judged to be so by our medical review officer and Dr. David Black who administers the program.”

Linda makes an important point here, as the purpose of the Wellness Program is not to catch people in the act and punish them, but rather to catch them and help them get off of whatever they’re on before they turn into another statistic. It’s a business thing to be sure, because they obviously don’t want to be held accountable for any more people dropping dead on their watch, but there’s also a humanitarian side to what they’re doing, as well. I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe that the McMahons care for the well being of the people working for them, but I can definitely believe that after Chris Benoit died, they sat down and took a look at the situation and asked themselves, “What could we have done to prevent this? More importantly, what can we do to prevent something like this from happening again?” Yes, Vince is the boss and I’m sure there is some professional detachment there, but a lot of these guys have worked for Vince for years, long enough for there to be the possibility of some kind of personal bond, and I do believe that it affects Vince McMahon more than people probably think it does.

Vince responding to criticism of WWE’s Wellness Policy made by Travis Targart of the Anti-Doping Organization: ” Let me ask you a question .It seems as though this lady [sprinter Marion Jones] who was recently found that she was lying and had to return her gold medals. Jeez, I wonder how she passed those tests in the Olympics. Hmm, let me see. So whoever this is, Tygart, whatever his name is, from the Olympics, better look into his own policy before he starts criticizing ours, because there’s obviously a loophole somewhere in the Olympic policy. So I can throw it right back at this guy Tygart, whatever his name is, just like he can throw it here. Our policy stacks up just as well as anyone else’s in sport, although again emphasizing we are entertainment, and no one in entertainment, no one has this kind of wellness policy.”

Vince on why the company drug tests: “Well, I think it’s important for us to make certain that our athletes, for their well-being, take care of themselves. We first established one of our drug programs in 1987 because we perceived from an entertainment standpoint we had a problem. It was called cocaine. And we did. We cleaned that up, then we had another policy put into effect, and our latest, as I said, was in February of ’06, which is by far the most comprehensive. So, if you do care about your athletes, and we do, you want them to be as healthy as they possibly can be, then why not do this? Why not be a leader in the entertainment business? Why not have other forms of entertainment follow you?”

Vince brings up a very important difference between steroids in wrestling and steroids in “real” sports like the Olympics, baseball, and wherever else they’re used. Professional wrestling is not a sport in the true sense that it is a contest, so while it makes sense for performance enhancing substances to be outlawed in those other sports on the grounds that they give the user an unfair competitive edge, the same does not hold true in wrestling. In wrestling, people use steroids for purely aesthetic purposes because it’s entertainment, and why should there be a crackdown on illegal substance abuse in wrestling if there isn’t something similar in, say, acting or the music industry?

Vince on why WWE discontinued drug testing during the Monday Night Wars era: “Well, again, what happened is that we were, along those same length of time by the way, we were testing, and we were getting very good results, and taking action. We suspended that. The reason we suspended it was because we were competing for our lives, our corporate life that is, in terms of Ted Turner coming after us. So, as a matter of fact, a letter that I wrote to Ted said, why don’t you emulate our drug program? Let’s be fair about all of this. And the cost of that at that time — we were not a public company — was extraordinary. We suspended that. We had to compete, we lost money, it was a private company, we lost millions of dollars for more than one year and quite frankly did not have the funds to continue this program, and especially when our competition would not.”

Well, I don’t think pointing at the competition and saying “Well, they’re not doing it so we won’t either” is a really passable explanation. It really sounds more like a cop out to me, though I don’t deny that the costs of a drug testing program on the scale of what WWE does is not cheap.

Vince McMahon responding to Chris Kanyon claiming WWE’s testing will go away shortly after public scrutiny of the company does: “Not true. This was instituted in February of ’06. The federal government didn’t suggest that we start a program of this nature. The media didn’t suggest that we start a program of this nature. It started because it was the right time to do it; we had the funds to do it. It was the right thing to do. Who could have ever predicted that the media would bring up this firestorm as it relates to Benoit and bring up all these thing?. The media didn’t tell us to go do this, the government didn’t tell us, we told us. So, someone can, is certainly entitled to their opinion, and they’re stuck with it.”

Though the timing of when the Wellness Program was instituted is somewhat suspect, it is true that nobody made them do it.

Vince on whether he likes big bodies: “I take exception to the fact that — our locker room now in terms of weight, as far as big guys are concerned, is lighter than it’s ever been in history. There’s an expression in our business that here is where you make your money: It’s your face. It’s what you do with it. It’s your personality; it’s what you do with it. It’s your delivery, your elocution, it’s storyline. It’s all those things that are theatrical as well as athletic in the ring. And again, in terms our weights of average are way below anything we’ve ever had before. We have performers anywhere from 5-feet-5, Rey Mysterio, you know, to someone like the giant Kali, who’s over 7 feet and over 300 pounds.”

Vince on whether he told talent to ever get bigger: “No, that was obvious. It was brought out in the trial; please go back and look at the transcript. OK? No, I never told anyone to get bigger. Never. Why would I do that?”

Vince on whether larger than life bodies mean more money for the company: “No, it doesn’t. Again, I’ve just finished telling you why people are attracted to our product. It’s personality. It’s what you do with that personality. And again, in ring performance, you don’t have to be large to be a great performer.”

I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that the roster is lighter than ever, because there have been times where there weren’t many giants running around, but Vince is correct in saying that there’s a lot more to drawing money and headlining than just having muscles. You can say that Shawn Michaels only got his shot at the top because the WWF was in a position where they had to get rid of the big bodies and push smaller guys to avoid scrutiny, but the fact of the matter is that he was getting a push well before that and continues to be one of the most heavily pushed guys today, well into his forties and well past the point where WWE would have pushed him if they “had to”. There’s a lot of guys out there who are both very talented and a lot younger than Michaels, but the fact is that Shawn is such a supremely talented guy that it would be stupid not to use him to his full potential. I see a lot of the younger Shawn Michaels today in CM Punk, who I fully expect will one day be one of the guys carrying the company. John Cena’s got some guns for sure, but he’s far from the biggest guy in the promotion, but he can cut a great promo and he’s a well-spoken and intelligent enough guy that he makes a great public face for the company. As big and muscular as Snitsky is, there’s a reason he’s not main eventing and never will.

Vince on the Wellness Policy not catching everyone (such as the performers suspended when WWE was informed they were receiving prescriptions from Signature): “Well, the vaunted Olympics didn’t catch this lady either, so I don’t think there’s any policy that’s foolproof. All you can do is do the very best you can, and after you’ve done the best you can, and adapt with the changes such as we are. We’ve had a number of changes in our wellness policy since we instituted in February of ’06. You have to maintain that. You have to upgrade it all the time. That’s what we do. So sure, this gal in the Olympics wasn’t caught. They’re supposed to have the greatest testing in the world. Who else is not caught? I don’t know. But these people were caught. They were caught by an agency of the government because they bought things from an Internet pharmacy, which is strictly prohibited. Would they have been caught in the policy as far as testing, concern and time? I think there’s no doubt they would have.”

Vince on the Frustration Level of trying to maintain the WWE Wellness Policy: “Again, I think whether you’re running the Olympics or whether you’re running the WWE, you try to put in a wellness policy that’s absolutely as comprehensive as it possibly can be. And you administer it as such. There are going to be people who cheat, by the way, all the time. There are people in sports that cheat. People in entertainment that are cheating themselves, I suppose, by trying to get around some of our policies. But we’re going to catch them. It’s a matter of time. And one other thing along those lines is that we test, on average, as far as our roster is concerned, a minimum of four times a year, which is, if you’ve done your homework you will know, much greater than most everybody else.”

Whenever you have a system in which the purpose is to catch people doing something they’re not supposed to do, the people that are doing the things they’re not supposed to do are going to break their ass coming up with ways to circumvent or fool the test so that they can continue doing what they’re not supposed to be doing without it popping up on the radar. When you’ve got people that are working that hard to not get caught, things are going to slip by and no matter how hard they try, they’re not going to catch everybody 100% of the time.

Vince on Performers Under Contract who have passed: “But you have, obviously, one by accident, in terms of Owen Hart, another by suicide in terms of Benoit, and the other three had heart problems. And by the way, as a result of that, and our wellness policy, we’ve also instituted a cardiovascular aspect of our wellness policy that we never had before. You had to assume that since these guys were great performers, and they do it day in and day out without any complaints, they had great hearts. Some of them don’t. Those three obviously didn’t, and recently we found one who was a top performer and caught it early, and he went through a process that now does allow him to compete continually in the ring. But that was before we had [the] cardiovascular aspect to the wellness policy as well. You can’t fry us, OK, for what we’re doing now, for what people did and their lifestyle and their habits that never changed from 20 years ago. Unfair.”

Though he doesn’t mention him by name, Vince is referring to the Wellness Policy catching MVP’s heart condition and doing something about it before it became a problem for him. If there was no Wellness and they hadn’t caught the problem, there’s a chance we’d be sitting here ten years from now talking about how MVP was found dead in his hotel room of some form of heart disease.

Vince McMahon Commenting on Chris Benoit’s Father Michael: ” I don’t know what you say. I mean, really, other than, obviously you have some degree of sympathy for the father, and for the mother, and for those in Chris Benoit’s family, and his friends, and his associates in our organization for what happened. But certainly there’s no shame on the part of Mr. Benoit. He didn’t do this; it was the son who did it. Other than that, what do you say to someone when their son becomes a murderer and murders his family, other than we have sympathy because, obviously, you didn’t do it. But what do you say?”

I can’t think of anything.

Vince on whether he is concerned by the findings of the Benoit brain study: There’s no question we are. We’re concerned about everything. But again, you’re frying me with facts, if they are facts, that are after the fact. How did anyone have any idea that Benoit, that Chris Benoit, had any brain injuries? The only way you would know that is an autopsy. And again, the findings themselves state that Chris Benoit had the brain of an 85-year-old man with dementia. And I would suggest to you, that from a layman’s standpoint, Chris Benoit could not do what he did for a living. He could not function as a normal human being. He couldn’t even go to the airport if in fact that report were accurate. And he was an 85-year-old man with dementia. You tell me, from a common sense standpoint, if you know of an 85-year-old man with dementia, can he function normally? Much less at a high level? Remember verbiage, remember where the cameras are, learn, know how to perform, and things of that nature, in a high level athletic standpoint? Come on, the answer, obviously, is no. So, I think you have to question the validity of this report right from the get-go. Notwithstanding that, if it does have validity, we want to know about it. We’ve asked these people to give us the information. We’ve asked them, let other people in the scientific community critique your information. They haven’t done any of that. If in fact we find that something like this is occurring, then we will take every conceivable measure to do something about it. It’s only good business if you do things like that. It’s good business if you protect your performers, sometimes even from themselves, from doing things that they want to do. That’s very important. It’s good business to do that, and we’re very good business people.”

He kind of sidesteps the question about being concerned about the findings of the brain study by repeating what he said about question their results.

Vince on whether any part of the Benoit tragedy could be connected to his job: “Well, it might be connected to his job from the standpoint that, let’s face it, this job takes you away from home. You are away from home. And if there were problems with that, problems with a marriage, of Chris Benoit leaving his home to have to go to work, on a weekly basis as many salesmen do year in and year out here in this country and other countries, then that could have been one of the marital problems. We’ll never know.”

It’s generally accepted that professional wrestlers have some of the worst family lives of any profession out there, and a big part of it is due to the road schedule they keep. So I guess it is very possible that a lot of the problems came with him being on the road, though there would be something to ask about how he kept himself functioning while on the road.

Vince on whether WWE is 100% steroid free: “I don’t think that there is any organization in the world, be it entertainment or be it sport, that can tell you that they are totally drug free, otherwise we would not see that lady have to turn in [her] gold medals from the Olympics. The Olympics can’t control this. They try. We can’t control this. We try. All you can do is be a responsible businessperson, and a caring human being, to be able to do everything you possibly can for your performers and/or athletes. Above and beyond that, there’s a certain amount of personal responsibility that goes with walking the streets.”

Like I said earlier, Vince won’t be able to catch everyone doing everything, but he can do his best. The important thing that he points out here though, is the concept of the wrestlers taking responsibility for what they do. Vince McMahon isn’t sitting there sticking a needle in their ass for them. He’s not shoving the pills down their throat or cramming the coke up their nose. All that is the wrestlers’ choice, and even if you’re going to dump the bulk of the responsibility for the wrestlers’ personal conduct on Vince McMahon and WWE (which I feel is wrong), the wrestlers have to take some of the responsibility themselves instead of blaming it on the road schedule, their unhappy family lives, pressure to look a certain way, or anything else. At the end of the day, they’re the ones who decide to get the phony baloney prescription, to have one more drink, to put dangerous amounts of chemicals into their body so they can make it to the next city. Can Vince McMahon do whatever he can to help the wrestlers straighten their lives out? Sure. Should he be given full responsibility for their well being? I don’t think so.