TDK
Main Eventer
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<table><tr><td>Rick Santorum's Role In Changing WWE From Sport To Entertainment
The Daily Beast has an article detailing Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's ties to WWE in the late 1980s. Santorum was part of a team that lobbied the Pennsylvania government to get wrestling to be categorized as "entertainment" instead of "sport," saving the company any government oversight as well as allowing them to avoid paying local taxes and fees to the state athletic commission.
"I was at the center of that," Santorum recently told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Pennsylvania was the most pernicious of states when it came to regulation. They made you pay all this money to the boxing [athletic] commission. They used to just rape these guys. You'd have to pay a certain percentage of the gate receipts to have these officials just stand around and watch the match. It was ridiculous."</td><td>
</td></tr></table><table><tr><td>The implications were far reaching for the mini-empire now known as WWE, run by the family of the current Republican Senate candidate from Connecticut, Linda McMahon. By officially dispensing with the illusion that professional wrestling was a sport, rather than entertainment, they were able to pump up profits by avoiding local taxes and fees paid to the state athletic commission. But in addition, the elimination of government oversight helped enable the proliferation of steroid abuse among performers.
'Deregulation is a huge story,' says Irvin Muchnick, the author of Wrestling Babylon who blogs at Concussion Inc... "It leads to the whole 'cocktail of death' problem that they have, the occupational health and safety area of sports and entertainment right now... Wrestling did not become safer for the performer. It became more dangerous."
"The use of weapons and chair shots and dangerous 'can you top this' stunts became greater and greater," explains Muchnick. "What we have today is a situation where wrestlers are just killing each other for uninterrupted junk entertainment. And there's no regulation, there's no brake on it at all."
In just one snapshot of the human costs, an investigation by USA Today found that 65 professional wrestlers under the age of 45 died between 1997 and 2004 - many dying of drug overdoses, suicide, or coronary disease, with prematurely enlarged hearts.
To be clear, deregulation did not directly cause these deaths, but it contributed to an environment where abuses can increasingly occur.
TDK's Take:
It's obviously a politically charged topic and while certain aspects may be true, I think the article goes too far and becomes blatantly partisan. The one thing I do hold to be accurate is that guys like Santorum undoubtedly helped create an environment where Vince's empire could flower and bloom.
Was there a negative ripple effect? No doubt, but there's always unforeseen consequences in life and whether that makes him a white hat or a black hat I'll leave to you. Fact is for every negative a corresponding positive also developed.
I guess what I'm trying to say is we should use the lessons from the past, (whether they be good or bad), to improve the future rather than as political ammunition to try and ruin someone we're opposed to.</td></tr></table>
The Daily Beast has an article detailing Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's ties to WWE in the late 1980s. Santorum was part of a team that lobbied the Pennsylvania government to get wrestling to be categorized as "entertainment" instead of "sport," saving the company any government oversight as well as allowing them to avoid paying local taxes and fees to the state athletic commission.
"I was at the center of that," Santorum recently told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Pennsylvania was the most pernicious of states when it came to regulation. They made you pay all this money to the boxing [athletic] commission. They used to just rape these guys. You'd have to pay a certain percentage of the gate receipts to have these officials just stand around and watch the match. It was ridiculous."</td><td>
'Deregulation is a huge story,' says Irvin Muchnick, the author of Wrestling Babylon who blogs at Concussion Inc... "It leads to the whole 'cocktail of death' problem that they have, the occupational health and safety area of sports and entertainment right now... Wrestling did not become safer for the performer. It became more dangerous."
"The use of weapons and chair shots and dangerous 'can you top this' stunts became greater and greater," explains Muchnick. "What we have today is a situation where wrestlers are just killing each other for uninterrupted junk entertainment. And there's no regulation, there's no brake on it at all."
In just one snapshot of the human costs, an investigation by USA Today found that 65 professional wrestlers under the age of 45 died between 1997 and 2004 - many dying of drug overdoses, suicide, or coronary disease, with prematurely enlarged hearts.
To be clear, deregulation did not directly cause these deaths, but it contributed to an environment where abuses can increasingly occur.
TDK's Take:
It's obviously a politically charged topic and while certain aspects may be true, I think the article goes too far and becomes blatantly partisan. The one thing I do hold to be accurate is that guys like Santorum undoubtedly helped create an environment where Vince's empire could flower and bloom.
Was there a negative ripple effect? No doubt, but there's always unforeseen consequences in life and whether that makes him a white hat or a black hat I'll leave to you. Fact is for every negative a corresponding positive also developed.
I guess what I'm trying to say is we should use the lessons from the past, (whether they be good or bad), to improve the future rather than as political ammunition to try and ruin someone we're opposed to.</td></tr></table>