Slam! Wrestling has an excellent interview with Bill "Trevor Murdoch" Mueller about his relationship with his recently deceased best friend and tag team partner Lance "Cade" McNaught. It's a must-read and there's a lot of interesting stuff about their relationship, but the most newsworthy portion is probably where Murdoch discusses Chris Nowinski:
With former WWE CEO Linda McMahon running in the race to be a U.S. Senator from Connecticut this fall, Cade's death at such a young age has been used as fuel by her opponents, including an old colleague of Cade's -- Chris Nowinski.
"Oh, please, let me make a comment -- and you can quote me on this. Okay, I understand that there's people in this business that want to protect or defend this business. He is one of those individuals that really only knows about a tenth of what he's talking about," Murdoch began.
"To be personally honest with you, Lance thought Chris Nowinski -- I'm trying to be respectful, I don't want to sound like a backwards redneck -- but he didn't have the highest opinion of Chris Nowinski. We're talking about a guy who milked a concussion for three or four years, and was getting a paycheck. It's really hard for guys who are going out there, busting their hind ends every single night to have great matches and to have that guy talk to you like he's on the same level as you.
"Yes, Chris, congratulations, you did do something that I will never do, and that's go to Harvard and graduate. But that does not make you a wrestler and that certainly doesn't make you a fan of pro wrestling. Lance didn't talk to him about his demons with addictions. And the times that he did spend with him, it was in developmental and they weren't tagged up very often."
Murdoch does his best to pull in his venom. "I don't want to sound like an idiot on this, and I don't want to bury Chris Nowinski. But the thing is, he needs to be more honest in trying, in my opinion, he's speaking up to try to get his name out there because of Linda McMahon."
Well, that's an interesting comment. I see it working out one of two ways:
- Murdoch is putting his ducks in a row so he can get rehired by WWE or
- He legitimately has a primitive view of head injuries and believes that Nowinski was milking his concussion so he could sit on the sidelines and get paid.
Either way, this situation calls for a look at the the facts:
- Nowinski had suffered multiple concussions playing football in high school and college.
- He suffered several more concussions in WWE.
- His doctor told him that he wouldn't clear him to wrestle again unless he went a month without headaches. That was 2003. He didn't stop having headaches until recently.
- While he wasn't on the road as talent, he was still working in a public relations role as part of the "Smackdown Your Vote" campaign. He wasn't sitting at home doing nothing.
- He became an expert on concussions in sports by being motivated to figure out exactly what was wrong with him.
- His contract wasn't renewed only because he pushed to have Chris Benoit's brain looked at.
- He has no problem getting publicity without waging a media war against Linda McMahon. Just look at how much coverage there was about the research into how repeated head injuries can cause symptoms that mirror that of ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease).
Sorry Trevor, but you do "sound like an idiot on this."