Fan Responds To Phil Mushnick's NY Post Column06/29/2007 by Matthew Boone
Mr. Mushnick, You are one sick, twisted individual. You want to make the Benoit Tragedy into more than what it was. You want to say that steroid abuse became prevalent because of Vince McMahon's reign as wrestling kingpin. I hope you don't step in what you're shoveling. Because it's nothing more than a load of crap.
Drugs have been a part of professional sports and entertainment for a long time. Superstar Billy Graham used steroids. As did Jesse Ventura and Hulk Hogan after him. They did so before the worked for Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Yet you don't seem to try and villify other promoters from the past and the present.
You go after Vince McMahon with ruthless abandon in a crusade to rid the planet of the most public face in professional wrestling. There are reasons that wrestlers are dying young. They are the ones making bad choices.
Eddie Guerrero took steroids before he even came to the WWF. When he died, it had been almost four years since he stopped taking them. It was his abuses before he came to the WWF(E) that killed him, not anything he did after he got there.
Chris Candito didn't die because of his past drug abuses. He died because of a clot that was thrown after surgery. Had the surgery come about because he fell off a curb picking up the morning paper, and not because of an injury he suffered in a wrestling ring owned by Dixie Carter, you would not make mention of it.
Brian Pillman was taking steroids and painkillers before he even decided to become a pro wrestler, when he was trying to make a name for himself as a professional football player in his hometown of Cincinnati.
Michael Hegstrand (aka Hawk) was taking steroids back when he was working for Verne Gagne. Louis Mucciolo (aka Louie Spiccoli) struggled with drugs before and after his WWF tenure. Yet you seem content to place the blame for all of these deaths on Vince McMahon.
Davey Boy Smith, Curt Hennig, Richard Rood, you want to blame them all on Vince McMahon as well. Guess what, you can't. These men all made a choice. They took the drugs. They weren't force fed them.
For every Chris Benoit out there, there is a John Tenta, John Minton, Andre Rousimoff, Rodney Anoa'i, Keith Franke, Joesph Marella, or Larry Latham out there that didn't die because of drugs. You want to blame Vince McMahon for their death's too. How about Randy Anderson, Vivian Vachon, David Adkinsson, Chris Adkinsson, Brian Hildebrand, Jerry Tuite, Gary Albright, Eddie Gilbert, or Jumbo Tsuruta, who's legacies never included employment by Vince McMahon on Raw, Smackdown, Superstars of Wrestling, All American Wrestling or any of the other shows that WWE ran in the past 25 years?
The "steroid problem" in wrestling is only apparent because of journalists like yourself that makes it out to be a problem.
To use the deaths of Daniel and Nancy Benoit as a soapbox to spread your message of hate, it's just wrong. To contact the author of the above column, e-mail http://us.f532.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=jjmademedoit@yahoo.com&Subj=WZ
