Benoit by Steve Johnson

Author:Steve Johnson [Johnson, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-01-25T23:21:08+00:00

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’Roids, RepoRteRs, and Rasslin’:

anatomy of a feeding fRenzy

steven Johnson

n a December day in 2005, Dave Meltzer, editor of the o Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which is to wrestling what Variety is to the entertainment industry, was on the phone with a former wwe world champion when the toxicology report on Eddie Guerrero’s death was released. The conclusion was expected — the Latino star had died a few weeks before at age thirty-eight, his enlarged heart irreparably damaged by years of steroid and substance abuse. This was it, Meltzer and the wrestling star agreed. The press had been harping on steroids in athletics; Congress hauled in the heads of major sports leagues for questioning about the effectiveness of their drug-testing policies. Now the media had its smoking gun.

“He said it first, ‘Oh, my god, this is going to be gigantic!’” Meltzer said. “I go, ‘I know. Every basebal writer in the coun-95

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steven Johnson

try has their steroid victim.’ We expected it to be huge news the next day and it wasn’t news at all. I mean, nobody even picked up on it. And here you had a guy that died. It was steroids and growth hormone right across the board. Eddie was on those Latino tv commercials and was real y at his peak as a personality. It was like a nonstory.” In fact, The New York Times expended 470 words on Guerrero in two short stories.

In the Los Angeles Times, Guerrero merited a forty-one-word obituary. wwe chairman Vince McMahon appeared on the Rita Cosby: Live & Direct show on msnbc to pay quiet tribute to Guerrero. Meltzer, who has chronicled how the premature death rate of wrestlers rivals that of postwar navy test pilots, arrived at a sad conclusion. “My thought was, ‘Okay, now I know. I don’t care if there’s two hundred people that died

— this wil never become a story. You wil never have a bigger star than Eddie Guerrero die with steroids right on his death certificate. It wil never happen again.’”

~

For decades, the press has treated professional wrestling like a crazy uncle, amusing in a quirky sort of way but, for the most part, better off tucked away safely in the attic, brought into plain sight only on special occasions. Dan Parker spent a good part of his thirty-eight years as a columnist for the New York Daily Mirror deriding and ridiculing wrestling to the point of disclosing outcomes days before bouts took place. After the Second World War, The New York Times took a tongue-in-cheek tack of reporting matches in the manner of a Broadway play.

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‘Roids, RepoRteRs, and Rasslin’: anatomy of a feeding fRenzy Gordon S. White Jr., a veteran sportswriter at the paper, recal ed the farcical treatment served up by col eague Joe Nichols. “He pul ed a gag that was accepted and was absolutely perfect.

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