KELLER'S TAKE VIP - KELLER: Latest amendments to WWE Wellness Policy render it potentially pointless (PWTorch Newsletter #1013) Feb 28, 2008 - 5:31:16 AM

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Below the Bottom Line
By Wade Keller, Torch editor
Headline: How big are the loopholes in WWE's policy?
Originally Published: February 28, 2008
PWTorch Newsletter #1013

Partial preview of this week's feature editorial by editor Wade Keller in the latest PWTorch Newsletter...

WWE officials touted the company's Wellness Policy last year. They said it was evolving and being amended to make it stronger and to protect wrestlers. I wanted to see those amendments. I had the original policy, but I didn't know what those changes were. Recently, WWE put a link to the complete policy rather than the abridged "press release" version which contained just highlights that had been available on the main corporate webpage previously.

The policy has been amended four times since it was initially released. The first change, dated June 13, 2006, added a couple pharmaceutical drugs to the banned substance list.

The Second Amendment, dated Aug. 21, 2006, stated that talent that was suspended for either 30 or 60 days could be "required, in WWE's sole discretion, to work televised events and pay-per-views.

The Third Amendment, dated May 16, 2007, just over a month before the Benoit Family Tragedy put WWE's policy back on the media radar, added the following:

"In the event of an initial positive result for drugs prohibited by this Policy, the Talent shall be fined an amount equal to 30 days’ pay deducted from your downside guarantee on a weekly basis. The Company may, at its discretion, schedule the Talent to work selected televised events without pay, pay-per-views with pay, and non-televised live events with a $200 stipend per event during the 30 day suspension period."

In the case of a second offense, the same applied - adding a potential requirement to work house shows with a $200 stipend - plus noted that if an individual needed rehab, " the Talent shall not be assigned to work until the individual has successfully completed the drug rehabilitation program. However, regardless of the length of the program, the Talent’s fine shall be limited to 60 days’ pay."

The Fourth Amendment (the last to date) added marijuana to the list of substances that could be tested for, but excluded it from the standard suspensions, instead noting that talent would be fined $1,000 per failure, deducted from the talent's downside guarantee. There are no suspensions or potential termination tied to repeated failures. Previously marijuana was only tested for on a "reasonable cause" basis. Alcohol remains a "reasonable cause only" test.

Did you catch all of that? Basically, the drug policy boils down to this now: If you get caught taking banned substances three times, your contract will be terminated. Try not to let that happen. The first two times you fail, you may or may not be punished much; it's up to us.

There is almost nothing binding to the first two failures, and even the third failure requiring termination has one big loophole. Let's start with that.

If a talent fails three drug tests, their contract is terminated. Yeah. So? How long is it before that wrestler can be brought back? Two years? Six months? Two months? Two weeks? A day? Two hours? It doesn't say.

Just going by the wording of this policy, if a fictional wrestling organization adopted the same policy, and its owner felt drug testing was silly, steroids and supplements weren't that harmful, and nobody should be telling any adults what to do anyway, this policy would allow the owner - after terminating the contract of his top, massively muscular wrestler who was taking loads of steroids and failed the test three times - to rehire him after a two week vacation in Europe - with a raise!

How would anyone - media, fans, other wrestlers, stock holders, Congress - know whether that was happening? They wouldn't. There's nothing in the amendments to the policy or the policy itself stating that policy failures will be made public 100 percent of the time. WWE said they would do that last fall, but it's not in this policy, and for all we know WWE has or could in the future not reveal all suspensions. Without a public announcement of 100 percent of drug test failures, there's no way to be sure wrestlers aren't failing three times, having their contract terminated, and being rehired days or hours later with no one being the wiser.

Let's go back to the other amendments. WWE does not want drug test failures to get in the way of drawing money. They may argue it's to protect the fans from paying for one thing and receiving less. Either way, after a wrestler gets suspended the first or second time, they aren't really suspended at all. They can continue to work every single event they would have anyway - house shows, TV events, and PPV events. The Third Amendment granted them pay for working house shows. Just $200, which for all I know is to cover themselves legally should the wrestler get hurt while being forced to work for nothing during a suspension.

The Third Amendment also now allows suspended wrestlers to work a pay-per-view event with pay. So the punishment now for being suspended is working a few house shows for $200 instead of the usual range of roughly $500 to $5,000 per event, but otherwise no missed TV time to promote and develop their character, no missed PPVs which accounts in the cases of top acts for huge chunks of their annual aggregate pay, and no public (or even backstage among colleagues) knowledge of the suspension - per the written policy. That's soft. Very soft. Especially when taking into account how WWE pays it wrestlers.

WWE wrestlers aren't paid like NBA players. NBA players, as in other pro team sports, receive a guaranteed salary for the season, with some having incentives built in. When an athlete is suspended, it's for a certain number of games, and their salary is deducted based on 1/82nd of their pay in an 82 game season. There is no way for that athlete to make up that lost income. Because of salary caps, a team can't "overpay" a star athlete next year or with his next contract because that could damage the team's ability to sign players to keep them competitive, and thus hurt their attendance and TV ratings. A suspended player absolutely loses substantial salary, plus potentially endorsement deals and fan adulation.

In WWE's case, it's totally up to WWE management whether that wrestler ends up actually punished by the end of the year. WWE salaries aren't public. So if a wrestler was receiving on average over the course of a typical month $2,000 per house show for six house shows, and is paid instead $200 per house show for six house shows in a "suspension month," the following month - after the suspension - WWE could pay that wrestler $3,800 per house show for six house shows, making up for the lost income the previous month......

The rest of this feature editorial from this week's PWTorch Newsletter is available only to PWTorch VIP members at the VIP website.

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