Dave Meltzer Still Ain’t Ready for Reform

World Wrestling Entertainment’s Linda McMahon is losing her race for a U.S. Senate seat – in no small measure because of her association with the industry’s pandemic of young deaths, which has been publicized at new levels during the McMahon/Richard Blumenthal campaign.

That might embolden a journalist to renew calls to investigate and clean up wrestling. But not if you’re Dave Meltzer, publisher of the biggest fan publication, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Meltzer, like the bulk of his readers, wants other people to take wrestling more seriously … until they actually do.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Meltzer writes in the November 3 issue of the Observer, referring to attempts to refocus Congress on occupational health and safety issues at WWE and other promotions, “because Congress was heavily criticized for wasting its time when it looked at steroids in baseball, and if baseball is considered a waste of time, imagine the criticism Congress would get for looking at pro wrestling. When they did have the hearings a few years ago, they were in private, a year after they were done a report came out that was quite negative. But then nothing was followed up on.”

Meltzer is mostly accurate (though there were no public hearings in 2007, only private interviews of the McMahon family and others by staff investigators for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform). But most of all, he is incomplete – guarded. Real analysis would at least tip its hat to the possibility that, as a consequence of the 2010 election season, there is much greater reason than ever to expect Congress to follow up on the report that Congressman Henry Waxman punted to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in January 2009.

C’mon, Dave, you can jump into the pool. The water is fine.

Irv Muchnick

Blumenthal Has Solid Lead: CT Capitol Report

http://ctcapitolreport.com

“While individual polls have varied on the size of Blumenthal’s lead, it has remained constant and comfortable in our survey since the beginning of October,” says the poll’s Executive Director Matthew Fitch. “It appears that McMahon has reached her maximum level of support, and her only chance of winning would seem to be a total collapse in Democratic turnout, particularly among women where she fares the worst.

“One of McMahon’s worst demographic areas is the 25-point deficit among respondents who have a post-graduate degree, which constitutes a sizable percentage of the population in Connecticut. Further, while we usually think of Evangelical Christian voters as one of the strongest segments of the Republican base, McMahon is only winning 51-43 among them. Her message may be appealing to unaffiliated and non-traditional voters, but it does not appear to be reaching the more religion-oriented voters.”

Politico Story on Harry Reid’s Supporters at UFC

I’m quoted in a new piece at Politico by Molly Ball, “Ultimate Fighting Championship stars rumble for Harry Reid,” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44315.html:

Reid’s partnership with the UFC comes at a time when Democrats are delivering harsh criticisms of World Wrestling Entertainment under former CEO Linda McMahon, now the Republican Senate nominee in Connecticut.

Irv Muchnick, a vocal critic of the WWE’s employment and safety record under McMahon, said he saw a crucial difference with Reid’s involvement with the UFC.

“One, neither Dana White nor his wife is running for the Senate,” he wrote on his blog. Second, he said, UFC doesn’t have the same troubling record of fighter deaths as pro wrestling.

While the McMahons sought to deregulate professional wrestling starting in the 1980s, he said, White and the UFC have gone in the opposite direction, seeking legitimacy by embracing regulation from state athletic commissions.