Nothing makes one look like a horse's ass quite like getting caught in the middle of a lie. Doing the media rounds in 2007 -- following the Chris Benoit murder-suicide -- Ken Kennedy claimed that, although he had previously taken steroids for cosmetic purposes, it had been years since he had done so. The reason he gave them up, he stated, was because of WWE's Wellness Policy. Kennedy claimed it wasn't worth the 10 pounds of muscle to lose his job with WWE. In an interview with Fox News, he went so far as to state that he was part of a new generation of wrestlers who don't use steroids. Weeks later, Kennedy was one of nearly a dozen superstars implicated by Sports Illustrated as having had received shipments of steroids from online distributor Signature Pharmacy. According to documentation, Kennedy received packages of drugs as late as February of 2007. Kennedy immediately backtracked, claiming that he did, indeed, take the steroids, but they were for medical purposes -- in late 2005, he suffered a torn latissimus dorsi muscle followed by a staph infection, and he lost 45 pounds in three days. The steroids were then prescribed, constituting a legitimate medical purpose. More confusing, though, are the facts that Kennedy denied ever ordering drugs online (a no-no according to the Wellness Policy, but also how Signature Pharmacy operated) and that he was given anastrozole, a drug typically given to combat growth of potentially dangerous breast tissue -- a side effect associated with taking steroids in bodybuilder-level doses.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
