Linda McMahon for Senate catch-all thread

[rovert]

Chris Nowinski : "she's kicking dirt on the guy's grave"

Watch this interview:

http://www.necn.com/08/18/10/Former-wrestl...amp;feedID=4212

[kjh]

And speaking of Cade, listening to Meltzer on his radio show, it's hilarious that forgetting to shake Shawn's hand may have been the bigger no no than having a seizure on a plane.

[Dan]

I don't understand how "I only met him once" helps her more than "I knew him well and am deeply saddened by his passing". Though I don't think it is ENTIRELY out of the question that she had little personal interaction with a midcarder. How often is she even at shows?

"I might have met him once" is code for "I couldn't possibly have known he was a pain pill popping junkie". However, I agree with the point that it is actually plausible that she hardly knew him, though emphasising that fact makes her look cold and distant.

 

I think she could have said sometime like "He was a good person. We did everything who could to help him through his substance problems. *sigh* " Then again, Linda's poor acting skills would have probably made this impossible. But "I might of met him once" isn't that far removed from just shouting "WHO??" in the reporters face.

[shawmic]

And speaking of Cade, listening to Meltzer on his radio show, it's hilarious that forgetting to shake Shawn's hand may have been the bigger no no than having a seizure on a plane.

Not defending getting fired for it - but he didn't forget, he got pissed off that he blew a spot and stormed out of the building after the match.

[sek69]

Things I wish someone in the press would ask, part 2: Since 99.9% of her platform is "look at how successful I was as CEO of WWE", it would be fun if someone asked her why was she given the title secretly in the first place.

[Dan]

And speaking of Cade, listening to Meltzer on his radio show, it's hilarious that forgetting to shake Shawn's hand may have been the bigger no no than having a seizure on a plane.

That reminds me a good story Raven tells on one of his shoots. After the WCW buyout, WWF didn't really have anything planned for Mike Sanders due to his perceived bad attitude. But they send him to HWA, and he applies himself well. He impresses management enough to bring him the main roster. On his first day backstage he shakes everyone's hand except for HHH (who's still on crutches from the quad tear). Eventually HHH hobbles up to Sanders.

 

Raven made a farting noise, "Killed his career right there!"

[Bix]

Why didn't he shake HHH's hand? Didn't wanna impose while he was on crutches?

[rovert]

Why didn't he shake HHH's hand? Didn't wanna impose while he was on crutches?

Yeah it was the old percieved catch 20/20 situation of "should I go up to him."

[Dan]

Also, IIRC, Raven said when Sanders finally mustered up the confidence to go up to HHH, it was too late. HHH was standing in front of him with his hand extended (and a dour look on his face, I imagine.)

[sek69]

It must be awkward for WWE newbies, do you go up to the guy who seems to always have a dour look on his face and risk pissing him off or do you decide not to bother him and risk pissing him off for violating locker room etiquette?

[Cox]

Yeah, but the handshake is more than WWE etiquette, that is a pretty standard wrestling thing. While Sanders probably meant absolutely nothing by the snub, it is a pretty accepted part of the overall wrestling culture, not just WWE culture, to shake hands with everybody and introduce yourself. It sucks for Sanders that he lost his WWE gig over it, and he really had no right option there, but the handshake is a big deal in wrestling, however silly it seems to outsiders like us.

[Guest Slickster]

Didn't Palumbo and O'Haire get off on the wrong foot by not shaking Droz's hand? IIRC it was explained that they weren't sure if he had regained use of his hands and were too nervous to ask.

[Dan]

In his shoot, Chris Masters said that while at a dark match he didn’t shake Bob Holly’s hand, because Holly was talking to a couple of guys. Holly yelled at Masters and tried to change the lineup so they would wrestle each other. Presumably so he could beat Masters up.

 

The weird or funny wrestling etiquette stuff should probably have it's own thread.

[Bob Morris]

What's funny about some of these handshake situations is that, with certain wrestlers, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. While I don't think Droz took it personally about Palumbo and O'Haire being uncertain how to approach them, the attitudes HHH and Holly bring to the table make me think they'd just look for any excuse to snub somebody.

[Bix]

WWE fires back against Chris Nowinski courtesy of "wrestling journalist David Bixenspan" (LOL).

[rovert]

Meltzer weighs in heavy:

 

WWE has a response to Chris Nowinski at http://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/20...nowinski/61851/ Advice to WWE. When trying to make enemies in the media, this isn't going to end up pretty. WWE has to realize for better or worse, its reputation in the media is not good and Linda McMahon running for office has only made it worse. Trying to pick a fight with a guy lauded constantly for his work on concussions, is well spoken and has a Harvard degree is a debate that would be difficult at best. The only hope is that this prods Nowinski and he loses his cool and it becomes a personal issue instead of a debate of issues, and I'd be betting against that strategy. Nowinski stayed out of the political race and concentrated on concussions. Him in the political race discussing WWE is very bad for Linda McMahon. Worse, the WWE's response claimed Lance Cade was "a total stranger" to Nowinski when the two started together in WWE at about the same time, were on the main roster together, and at one point were tag team partners (OVW days), or saying he exaggerated on how many times he went through tables when any look at reports from live matches of his program with the Dudleys would show he went through a table on every house show.

[Bix]

Interesting to see Dave openly hoping that Nowinski slays WWE.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

By "The only hope is that this prods Nowinski and he loses his cool and it becomes a personal issue instead of a debate of issues," he means the only hope for WWE because then they can write off everything he says as the rantings of someone with a personal agenda, they way they do with Phil Mushnick.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

That "total stranger" thing takes a lot of balls, though, or a lack of brains. I mean:

 

WWE (Raw) @ Bossier City, LA - CenturyTel Center - May 23, 2003

Rodney Mack & Christopher Nowinski defeated Lance Cade & John Heidenreich when Cade submitted to Mack's Black Out

 

And they were on the road together for two full months after that.

[Dan]

By the way, is the newest WON the first time that Dave has outright said that the "Terry Garvin school of self defense" jokes were made about wrestlers believed to be...involved with Garvin? I don't think I've ever seen anyone confirm it to that degree before.

I just was listening to a F4D from Feb 2007. Meltzer says about the same thing as in the WON paragraph.

[Bix]

By "The only hope is that this prods Nowinski and he loses his cool and it becomes a personal issue instead of a debate of issues," he means the only hope for WWE because then they can write off everything he says as the rantings of someone with a personal agenda, they way they do with Phil Mushnick.

You're right, I misread it.

[rovert]

That "total stranger" thing takes a lot of balls, though, or a lack of brains. I mean:

 

WWE (Raw) @ Bossier City, LA - CenturyTel Center - May 23, 2003

Rodney Mack & Christopher Nowinski defeated Lance Cade & John Heidenreich when Cade submitted to Mack's Black Out

 

And they were on the road together for two full months after that.

I hope someone pulls up a picture even a OVW roster group photo. Had a look on google images even searching "Harvard Chris" but nothing.

[El-P]

After all these years I'm still amazed by how much a bunch of dirtbags the McMahons are.

[rovert]

Nowinski's reaction via the Hill site:

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate...mcmahon-critic-

 

Nothing of note really as the internet made the case for him already really.

[rovert]

I’ve a certain amount of trepidation in terming him this way as he is his own person but it looks like WWE has another Michael Benoit in Harley McNaught, Lance's father:

 

'Lance Cade' saga underscores issue of wrestling empire

 

Harley McNaught was planning to stay silent and grieve. Then he saw what Linda McMahon said about his dead son.

 

McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, was asked last week about the death of McNaught's son, who wrestled for the WWE as Lance Cade and who had struggled with an addiction to painkillers before being released by the company, then dying earlier this month of heart failure.

 

"I might have met him once," McMahon said as she insisted that the company could not be blamed for deaths of its employees outside the ring.

 

That response has left Harley McNaught and his son's other survivors furious.

 

"I've been with him on two different WWE functions where she came up to him and knew him by name," McNaught said in an interview from his office in San Antonio, where Lance died, aged 29, on Aug. 13.

 

"She disrespected him," McNaught said. "She disrespected my family."

 

The father also said he thinks McMahon and her husband, who remains at the helm of their $1.02 billion corporation, know exactly what a toll the driving pace of wrestling competition can take on individual wrestlers struggling, as his son did, to work through injuries and not be passed over for a chance to be in the spotlight.

 

Lance McNaught "would have cut his arm off for Vince McMahon, but it wasn't there in return," his father said. "He don't care any more than the man in the moon for them, other than as dollar signs."

 

McNaught's death has revived the primary question that has nagged McMahon as the Republican's campaign for the U.S. Senate roars ever closer to Democrat Richard Blumenthal in opinion polls: Has the rags-to-riches saga of Stamford-based WWE come at the expense of the health and well-being of the wrestlers? Or are the company and the candidate being unfairly asked to answer for the private behavior of other adults?

 

Wrestler became critic

 

McNaught's death also turns the light on a wrestler who had become a vigorous critic of the McMahons and the WWE, alleging in interviews in the months before he died that he had been dismissed after taking the company up on its offer to go to rehab and saying that WWE's vaunted "Wellness Policy" was a sham engineered for public relations, not the health of its employees.

 

The company dropped him after he went through rehab and remained clean, Lance McNaught and his father both said, treating him as expendable and an embarrassment to a company that is trying to shed a reputation for steroid and prescription abuse that it gained after a scandal and trial in the 1990s and a more recent congressional investigation.

 

"Vince's stance (is) they do all this because they care about the talent," the younger McNaught said in April during an interview with Kenny Bolin, a manager who also produces a wrestling podcast. "Bull----. They care about the image of the WWE and you care about the fact that Congress was having ... hearings about this. That's what this comes down to."

 

In a written statement, WWE vigorously defended its "Talent Wellness Program," which includes drug testing, cardiovascular testing, screening for possible head injuries, annual physicals and referrals to outside consultants as needed.

 

"The well being of our performers is our number one concern, without whom, WWE would not exist," the statement read. "Specifically, our current Talent Wellness Policy is at least as good or commensurate with any others of its kind. As for the assertion that the company was embarrassed because Lance went to rehab (which WWE encouraged and paid for), that is ridiculous. Other WWE performers have successfully completed rehab and are currently on the roster. We are proud that we can offer this assistance, and of our performers who have completed these programs."

 

The company continually checked on McNaught's health, spokesman Robert Zimmerman said, including after his release from WWE. McNaught was released from his first WWE contract in 2008, then brought back in September 2009. He asked to be admitted in January 2010 and successfully completed rehab, the company contends, but was released from his contract in April after a planned story line in which he would have appeared was scrapped.

 

Zimmerman said the company continued to reach out to McNaught after his release.

 

'Change in my body'

 

In his interview with Bolin, the younger McNaught, who as Lance Cade was a WWE star, also alleged that high-profile company officials, including Jim Ross, the WWE ring announcer, and John Laurinaitis, the head of the company's talent relations division, were aware that he had used steroids to bulk himself up from January through March 2003, when McNaught was trying to break through as a performer with Ohio Valley Wrestling, which at the time was part of WWE's developmental program.

 

"It was right in front of the (announcer's) desk at the (Louisville, Ky.) Davis Arena," he said, referring to a conversation with unnamed other wrestlers that year. "And our little talk was, 'Lance, you're going to have to make the decision if you want to change your body, if you know what I mean, or keep going through this.' And that's when I made the decision, and in six weeks - go look at the ... tapes. ... From January of '03, fast forward to March of '03 and look at the change in my body."

 

McNaught went on to say he had later encountered Ross and Laurinaitis, the latter of whom had previously questioned his performances, but now complimented him. Ross, he said, told him: "As you're getting older, your body is starting to come around."

 

"I understood what that comment meant," McNaught said. He added: "So, two months later, all of sudden, 'Lance knows how to work,' and now I'm ready for the big time. Let's cut the bull----."

 

The WWE statement did not respond specifically to McNaught's claims about Laurinaitis and Ross, but noted that the wellness policy includes both testing and sanctions for positive drug tests, and that McNaught has said publicly, including in an interview with Bolin, that Ross told wrestlers in the developmental program not to take steroids.

 

Still, the company has been dogged by criticism that it should be doing more to prevent the wrestlers - who are independent contractors, not employees, of the company and do not receive health insurance benefits - from self-medicating, as McNaught's family says he did, to cope with pain.

 

Harley McNaught said his son had been injured on the job, requiring surgery on a shoulder last year and receiving a prescription for a knee injury in 2004. The younger McNaught worked through pain as much as he could, his father said, because he and other wrestlers were wary of taking time off to heal, believing that they would be quickly passed over in favor of other talent, and would have to begin the long, slow climb of their careers all over again.

 

"It hurt me to see him wrestling in pain," the elder McNaught said, "but you talk to any one of them, once you try to climb the ladder and get a spot, you shut it down (due to an injury) and you lose your spot and go right back down to the bottom. So it's, 'Here, take a few painkillers, make the world go away.' "

 

After injuries, use of painkillers "just came too easy to Lance because it took the pain away," the elder McNaught said, adding that the use of the painkillers made his son "like he was in la-la land; he would just kind of pass out."

Released anyway

What rankled more, for both the younger McNaught and his father, was the notion that he had done the right thing in seeking out rehab to overcome his addiction, continued to pass subsequent drug tests - and yet been released by the WWE nevertheless.

 

Since his return from rehab, the father said, "they tested him from the toe to the top of his head." He passed those tests, only to be released anyway, he said.

 

"After he gets out of rehab, what is it now?" McNaught said. "He embarrassed you? Is that what it is? Don't tell me that you care about these people."

 

The younger McNaught, in interviews with Bolin and with the wrestling newsletter PWInsider.com, expressed similar frustration.

 

"Everybody already knows that if you get hurt, you know, work through it because you'll lose your spot," he told PWInsider. " ... You know, guys don't set out to do this, they don't set out to be problem-makers, most of them at least. You know, and I don't want to be a part of a company that says one thing and then does another, especially at that level with, you know, the media attention that this has gotten since Eddie and Chris has passed away. That's garbage to me."

 

"Eddie and Chris" were Eddie Fatu, also known as "Umaga," and Chris Klucsarits, who wrestled as "Chris Kanyon." Both had died of prescription drug overdoses, at ages 35 and 40, respectively, within months of McNaught's interview, conducted on April 5.

 

Months before his death, Fatu had been released from his WWE contract after he violated the company's wellness program for a second time, then refused an order to attend rehab, according to the WWE.

 

"No talent has ever been discouraged to speak up," the statement said.

 

Meanwhile, a McMahon campaign spokesman said it "certainly wasn't Linda's intent to diminish any additional interaction she may have had" with McNaught.

 

"WWE has nearly 600 employees and about 140 performers, and I think it's understandable that Linda may not recollect every interaction she's had, particularly given the fact that she's personally met with thousands of voters since resigning her position at WWE in September," said spokesman Ed Patru. "Linda's a very kind and sympathetic person, but she is human."

 

In his interview with Bolin - which can be heard at www.whosslammingwho.podomatic.com - broken up into multiple segments, McNaught gossips, jokes and reminisces about the struggles of a young would-be wrestler hoping to make the big-time - and learning he'll have to alter his body to do so.

 

McNaught says, as he and Bolin speculate about whether some high-profile wrestlers are using steroids, "We're not dumb. We know who's using and who's not.

 

"It comes down to, 'Well, do you like your income, do you the like the fact' - hey, I have two daughters. Do I want to keep giving them a better life and shut my mouth, or say something? 'Cause if you say something, your --- is gone."

 

Back in Texas, Harley McNaught didn't hesitate when asked if he now regrets his son's decision to go into professional wrestling.

 

"No, I don't," he said, "because that was his dream from childhood. He loved the business."

http://www.theday.com/article/20100826/NWS12/308269378/1017