Chris & Nancy (20 page)

***

On July
17
,
2007
, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation released the toxicology reports on the Benoit family. Before being killed, Daniel had been sedated with Xanax. Nancy's test showed Xanax, painkillers, and a high blood-alcohol level. And Chris had testosterone in his system — enough to give him a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio
(T/E)
of
59
-to-
1
. Normal is
1
-to-
1
. In Olympic drug testing, the cutoff was
4
-to-
1
. In
WWE
drug testing, the cutoff was
10
-to-
1
. According to Dave Meltzer, who also covered mixed martial arts, for which many state athletic commissions conduct drug tests, Benoit's
T/E
reading would have been the third-highest ever recorded in the California commission's thousands of tests of mixed martial artists and boxers.

But Dr. Kris Sperry, the state medical examiner, refused to go there. “We analyzed the urine of Chris Benoit for the presence of steroids, and the only steroid drug that we found was testosterone. This was measured at a level of
207
micrograms per liter,” Sperry said blandly.

WWE
lawyer McDevitt praised Sperry for conducting his press conference “very professionally and surgically.” All the “speculation about the impact of steroids on this case was essentially removed by Dr. Sperry in about as clear a scientific language as one can articulate,” McDevitt asserted. The key finding was that there were “no illegal anabolic steroids” in Chris Benoit's body.

By the same logic, a heroin addict who obtained a hospital's supply of opium likewise would not manifest the presence of “illegal drugs.” The Benoit and Toffoloni families hardly slept better knowing that what the toxicology tests most immediately identified as the cause of Chris's
59
-to-
1
T/E
ratio was just testosterone, and not some common street drug
^[7]
.

David Black,
WWE
's drug-testing administrator, said on
CNN
's
Nancy Grace
that if someone is on testosterone replacement therapy (and Black later confirmed that Benoit was), “the
T/E
ratio in the urine is no longer of interest. The interest and focus now shifts to the blood testing. And the
T/E
ratio, as someone takes testosterone replacement therapy, their body stops producing epitestosterone. . . . Testosterone's in the numerator. Epitestosterone's in the denominator. You can get a
T/E
ratio of infinity, and it does not mean anything.”

In an interview for this book, Dr. Richard Auchus — an endocrinologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who helped develop the therapeutic use exemption standards for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the agency authorized by Congress to support the U.S. Olympic movement — disagreed.

“It is possible to be doping with a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of
4
-to-
1
,” Auchus said. “It is impossible
not
to be doping with a
T/E
of
59
-to-
1
.”

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
1990
s, 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 '
80
s 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.