The REAL Reason WWE Won’t Pay Wrestlers Healthcare
John Oliver and his team set out to open eyes and ears as much as old wounds. This sort of stuff had been said before (most notably when the disturbing death of the Benoit family shone several scalding spotlights on the ills of the industry) but the Last Week Tonight gang were acutely aware of the reach this particular takedown could have. Cynically, they too could have been just looking to pop a rating, pop the boys or even simply pop up on people's Twitter timelines that day, but it'd be nice to think the motives were of sounder mind - wrestlers sometimes need others to fight for them when they can't fight for themselves.
McMahon has set his organisation up to tiptoe through accusatory paradoxes like a jewel thief avoiding lasers. They are neither employer nor general contractor, but an odd purpose-serving amalgamation of the two. Vince McMahon and Mr McMahon are two separate entities entirely to ask the man himself, but Bruce Prichard's revealing podcast hasn't exactly split them that far apart anecdotally. On the stand in a multi-million dollar lawsuit, Terry Bollea literally testified that his penis wasn't hypothetically as huge as Hulk Hogan's.
Actual men talking actual (and literal, in Hulk's case) b*llocks, but it extends out beyond these two supreme sh*thouses. "Sports Entertainment" was a tax dodge before becoming an artistic ethos - it was entirely fabricated so WWE didn't have to pay as much to run venues as other sporting leagues.
McMahon deals in loopholes as much as he does plotholes - and again, it's here where the welfare of the talent is criminally (though, not legally) underserved.
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