-Phil Mushnick, longtime newspaper critic of the WWF/WWE for the New York Post, took another huge swipe at the WWE. This time, it was on the basis of steroids. Here is what he said:
"Are the lives of pro football and baseball players more important than those of, say, pro wrestlers? After all, while football and baseball players don't commonly drop dead before they're 40 - at least not yet - pro wrestlers do. Dozens of them - dozens - have died, sudden, job-related deaths over the last 25 years. "
"Yet, while Congress has shown a very active and adamant interest in what baseball and football players ingest or inject on behalf of moneyed performance enhancement, pro wrestlers continue to die as if they don't count, as if, because they are pro wrestlers, they're not real people. "
"While Bud Selig and Paul Tagliabue are pressed to explain to Congress what's going on - why their players, whom American kids admire and emulate, keep getting more muscular - Congress has never asked the heads of pro wrestling why their performers, also admired and emulated by kids, a) long ago got huge and b) continue to drop dead. "
Mushnick made mention of the recently deceased Chris Candido, mentioning his young death age of 33 and how his cause of death has yet to be disclosed.
Phil Mushnick has been a long time critic of the WWF/WWE, namely for its content, suggesting that it's a part of the "downfall of civilization and good manners" and crudely ripping any fan that follows a sport as "living in a trailer park" or a "juvenile delinquent". Mushnick was also quite critical of the WWE for handling Owen Hart's death at the "Over the Edge" show and he ripped Jesse Ventura for refereeing the 1999 Summerslam main event. Click Here:
http://www.quorumart.com/sitd/phil_mushnick.htm for more on Phil Mushnick's criticisms of the WWE.
This could be trouble for the WWE. All it takes is for a news article or book to create a firestorm within the United States congress over investigating professional athletes lately. Both the National Football League and especially Major League Baseball have been grilled for their handling of illegal performance enhancing substances. MLB and the NFL, however, haven't experienced repeated deaths within their sports due to
performance enhancers/drugs like the WWE has, especially under the age of 40.
To read Mushnick's latest article on the WWE, among other topics, Click Here:
http://www.nypost.com/sports/23641.htm
[ Credit: Dave Meltzer @ WrestlingObserver.com ]
