Chris & Nancy (21 page)

“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 '
90
s?

“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.)