WWE McMahon game of chess in steroid scandal for Benoit

By Stone Martindale Nov 8, 2007, 16:32 GMT

WWE Chairman of the Board Vince McMahon was interviewed about the steroid scandals and Chris Benoit's death by investigative correspondent Drew Griffin.

Linda and Vince McMahon told CNN that World Wrestling Entertainment has a thorough wellness program.

CNN investigative correspondent Drew Griffin examines the early deaths of an alarming number of wrestlers.on Wednesday, 11 p.m.; Sat. & Sun., 8 p.m.

CNN provided a partial excerpt from the interview:

VINCE McMAHON: From a competition standpoint, that was never given any thought. From a growing standpoint and a vision standpoint, there's no reason why the WWE would not be one of the greatest forms of entertainment in the world, and it has become that. In terms of competition, at one time, I guess, maybe our chief competition was [former CNN boss] Ted Turner, and Ted and Time Warner [parent company of CNN.com] elected not to continue that enterprise. So, it wound up, by default quite frankly, that we're it.

CNN's Griffin asked him about his work schedule:

VINCE McMAHON: ...I mean, it is seven days a week, and if you love truly what you do it's certainly not work. It's just a wonderful experience, and a privilege, actually, to be in this business.

CNN asked him about the hot water the WWE is in regarding Benoit's death.

VINCE McMAHON: 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.

VINCE McMAHON: ... to put the WWE on the hot seat for someone who is a murderer is unfair.

Nothing from the WWE under any set of circumstances had anything to do with Chris Benoit murdering his family. How did we know that Chris Benoit would turn into a monster?

CNN compiled statistics; there's been a lot of statistics about wrestlers who have died under age 50. We, in the last five years we count 18, 14 of them have passed through this organization. From a humane standpoint, I mean, is that hard to swallow, that so many of these wrestlers are dying so young?

VINCE McMAHON: Well again, 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.

VINCE McMAHON: Oh sure, you have to adapt to conditions, and if you can't find someone then you have to obviously assume they're not going to be there, so you have to change things.

CNN asked about the day Benoit and his famil were found.

VINCE McMAHON: ...at our behest, our office called the local authorities to go over and, since we had no answers, and none of his friends had any answers, let's go knock on the door and see if he's there..

CNN asked about the decision to air a tribute show to Benoit.

VINCE McMAHON: 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.

GRIFFIN: Then you came on that next night and said, I'm going to be the last one that says Benoit's name in this ring.

VINCE McMAHON: 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.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reviewed the Benoit brain slides, and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He couldn't believe the damage mirrored an 85-year-old man who had either Alzheimer's, or dementia, or something like that.

LINDA McMAHON: These studies have not been proven, if you will.

VINCE McMAHON: Haven't been even critiqued by other members of the scientific community.

LINDA McMAHON: 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.

CNN asked about the amount of prescriptions fund inBenoit;s home for the wrestler.

VINCE McMAHON: Well, I don't know what you're talking about in terms of 'had so many prescriptions.' What are you talking about?

(CNN): Well, he had a bunch of prescriptions for various drugs in which his doctor is now being investigated in federal court for prescribing to Mr. Benoit.

VINCE McMAHON: 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 McMAHON: 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.

VINCE McMAHON: And not withstanding that, I would take exception to the media, or some quack suggesting that our wellness policy doesn't stack up to anyone's including those in sport.

First and foremost, let me emphasize, we are an entertainment company. We're not sport. We don't compete. There's no cheating involved. It's not like the recent Olympic fiasco in which you have to return gold medals.

There's no betting on what we do. We're Hollywood, we're scripted entertainment, our performers happen to be athletes, and some of them great athletes, but we're different than any sport. Nonetheless, I would suggest that our policy would hold up very well compared, compared to anyone's in sport.

CNN asked McMahon about a WWE attorney who was quoted in USA Today as saying only in the WWE only the stupid ones get caught.

VINCE McMAHON: 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.

CNN asked Mcmahon if the WWE was steroid-free, drug free?

VINCE McMAHON: 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.
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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.