MITCHELL'S TAKE MITCHELL: Back To Business - Georgia Senate Bill 413, where the losers are the pro wrestlers it aimed to protect Mar 4, 2008 - 9:52:04 PM

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By Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist

For anyone who wants to see the pro wrestling industry cleaned up, the revisions to Georgia State Bill 413 are troubling.

It's not surprising. It's hard for legislators, particularly at the state level, to educate themselves about a unique business - even if they paid attention to the murder/suicide that occurred in this state and the attendant side-stories.

It didn't help that these hearings got off on the wrong foot, with a bunch of silly proposals that overshadowed the real issues and real solutions pro wrestling faces today.

Then you have the boxing and mixed martial arts industries, neither of whom want to be associated with an industry that many see as a drug-ridden fake. They are lobbying for provisions to their advantage while knowing that part of the price of promoting yourself as a legitimate sport is that you'll face some sort of legitimate drug-testing.

Add to that a cornucopia of independent pro wrestling promoters with a variety of agendas - all the way from making a regular buck on a tight budget to booking themselves to get attention in front of a bigger audience than they could draw on their own - whoever showed for the Senate hearings.

Then legislators have to figure in World Wrestling Entertainment. Blackmail is an ugly word, they say, but WWE brings real business to the state and its big coliseums, many of which are starved, in an economic down-turn, for regular scheduled events it can count on year-in and year-out. A threat, implied or overt, by WWE to leave the state if the bill doesn't meet their approval gets the attention of politicians who know voters may not care about the real lives and deaths of cartoon pro wrestlers, but power brokers and lobbyists want more business. What are some forgotten dead pro wrestlers next to the chance to get another WrestleMania in Atlanta, with all the millions of dollars that can bring to the city and the state?

Georgia politicians figured out a way to make everyone involved, from the MMA and boxing promoters, to the indy 'rassling kings, to the publicly-traded WWE happy. They separated pro wrestling from the MMA and boxing, based on the irrelevant-to-the death -rate fact that pro wrestling competition is pre-determined. That meant that the issue indy promoters were most worried about - an onerous 5 percent tax on their shows - isn't amont the revisions.

Exactly why is a 5 percent tax onerous? You got me, but it means there probably won't be any money generated by the pro wrestling industry itself to pay for independent drug testing in the state.

That's just as well because there's no independent drug testing provisions for pro wrestling in this proposed bill, the single thing elected officials can institute to change the health prospects for athletes in the industry for the better. WWE has won that fight here, without politicos crafting the bill publicly asking anyone at WWE why they would want to avoid independent drug testing if their company has no problems in this area.   

The provisions that address drugs in pro wrestling that are in the bill right now are so vague as to be unenforceable. What about concerns about concussions? Nothing - pro wrestlers from the sorriest out of shape untrained indy wannabe to the biggest Superstar is free to pick up that chair and swing away without interference from Big Brother.   

Georgia Senate Bill 413 is democracy in action. Everyone - billionaire, boxer, and broke-ass con man - got what they needed. Everyone, that is, but the pro wrestlers and their families whose plight led to the bill being proposed in the first place.

Bruce Mitchell writes monthly feature-length columns on current events and pro wrestling history in the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter. He has been pro wrestling's most respected, historically relevant columnist since 1990, taking on wrestling's most contorversial issues and confronting power with truth. He also participates in a 90-120 minute discussion of pro wrestling with PWTorch editor Wade Keller every weekend exclusively in the PWTorch VIP section. He also writes shorter newsletter-exclusive "Mitchell's Memos" and "Mojo Raw Commentaries" most weeks. He also interacts with PWTorch VIP members in the "Bruce Mitchell Zone" of the VIP Forum. He has covered some of the biggest wrestling events of the past 30 years in person from New Jersey to North Carolina to Los Angeles to Tijuana and has appeared on dozens of radio shows as a guest analyst and hosted his own radio show over the years. Email him at bmitchell51@triad.rr.com.

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