Wrestling\'s Dirty Secret

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Wrestling’s Dirty Secret

While many people think of wrestling as a big joke, there is one thing about wrestling that isn’t funny. The death rate among wrestlers is alarmingly high. The only time this story was covered by the national media was on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumble. That segment featured Vince McMahon mocking the interviewer and slapping the notes from his hands. In addition, the only wrestler to speak up for the wrestlers, Roddy Piper, was fired after the piece aired.

Drug Usage
While the outcomes of the matches are pre-determined, the effort to put on those matches takes a huge toll on their bodies. The wrestlers are on the road over 300 days a year and unlike other athletes, they do not have an off season. In addition, accidents do happen and injuries occur.
Unfortunately, if wrestlers take time off, their wallets will suffer significantly. These factors all lead to the deadly slope that many wrestlers have found themselves facing. They get addicted to pain killers to numb the pain. This medicine keeps them too lethargic to wrestle, so they take drugs to get high. This deadly mixture leads to illegal drug dependency that many wrestlers have to cope with even after they retire.

Large Bodies
In the '90s, the WWE faced a major steroid scandal. While they claim to test for steroids, it is obvious to the casual viewer that many of the wrestlers are taking something to get their physiques to look like they do. In today’s environment, a wrestler must carry either an enormous amount of muscle or a tremendous amount of fat to give him the larger than life size needed to be successful in the business. That extra weight, whether muscle or fat, makes the heart work harder than it must.

Accidents and Old Age
Not all the wrestlers die due to the reasons stated above. Some die due to travel related incidents because of all the time on the road. Some have even died as a result of injuries suffered in the ring. Unfortunately, the least common way that wrestlers seem to be dying is due to old age.

How bad is the problem?
The list below only includes wrestlers that have appeared on national TV and were stars. Imagine if this many baseball players died at such an early age. There would be congressional hearings. Yet because it is wrestlers, no one cares. In an effort to stop this problem, the WWE has recently instituted a wellness program that monitors wrestlers for drug usage and cardiovascular issues.

Famous Wrestlers That Have Died Since 1985 Before the Age of 65
Chris Von Erich - 21
Mike Von Erich - 23
Louie Spiccoli - 27
Art Barr - 28
Gino Hernandez - 29
Jay Youngblood - 30
Rick McGraw - 30
Joey Marella - 30
Ed Gatner - 31
Buzz Sawyer - 32
Crash Holly - 32
Kerry Von Erich - 33
D.J. Peterson - 33
Eddie Gilbert - 33
The Renegade - 33
Owen Hart - 33
Chris Candido - 33
Adrian Adonis - 34
Gary Albright - 34
Bobby Duncum Jr. - 34
Yokozuna - 34
Big Dick Dudley - 34
Brian Pillman - 35
Marianna Komlos - 35
Pitbull #2 - 36
The Wall/Malice - 36
Leroy Brown - 38
Mark Curtis - 38
Eddie Guerrero - 38
Davey Boy Smith - 39
Johnny Grunge - 39
Vivian Vachon - 40
Jeep Swenson - 40
Brady Boone - 40
Terry Gordy - 40
Bertha Faye - 40
Billy Joe Travis - 40
Chris Benoit - 40
Larry Cameron - 41
Rick Rude - 41
Randy Anderson - 41
Bruiser Brody - 42
Miss Elizabeth - 42
Big Boss Man - 42
Earthquake - 42
Mike Awesome - 42
Ray Candy - 43
Nancy Benoit (Woman) - 43
Dino Bravo - 44
Curt Hennig - 44
Bam Bam Bigelow - 45
Jerry Blackwell - 45
Junkyard Dog - 45
Hercules - 45
Andre the Giant - 46
Big John Studd - 46
Chris Adams - 46
Mike Davis - 46
Hawk - 46
Dick Murdoch - 49
Jumbo Tsuruta - 49
Rocco Rock - 49
Sherri Martel - 49
Moondog Spot - 51
Ken Timbs - 53
Uncle Elmer - 54
Pez Whatley - 54
Eddie Graham - 55
Tarzan Tyler - 55
Haystacks Calhoun- 55
Giant Haystacks - 55
The Spoiler - 56
Kurt Von Hess - 56
Moondog King - 56
Gene Anderson - 58
Dr. Jerry Graham - 58
Bulldog Brown - 58
Tony Parisi - 58
Rufus R. Jones - 60
Ray Stevens - 60
Stan Stasiak - 60
Terry Garvin - 60
Boris Malenko - 61
Little Beaver - 61
Sapphire - 61
Shohei Baba - 61
Dick the Bruiser - 62
Wilbur Snyder - 62
George Cannon - 62
Karl Krupp - 62
Dale Lewis - 62
Gorilla Monsoon - 62
Hiro Matsuda - 62
Bad News Brown - 63
Bulldog Brower - 63
Wahoo McDaniel - 63

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That makes for very worrying reading. A good friend of mine is wrestling in Japan at the moment and I’ll be giving him a heads up on this post. His name is Fergal Devitt by the way and some of his fights can be looked at on youtube. I used to think wrsetling was the biggest joke ever but these guys are serious athletes.

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Its really worring to hear about so many deaths i was on a different website yeasterday and over a 100 wrestler died under the age of 50! The problem is growing and something has to be done quick before it gets worse!

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Grim reality hits unreal showbiz world of wrestling

Professional wrestling is at risk of decline in America after the appalling deaths of two of its stars.
Kevin Mitchell
July 7, 2007 12:00 AM

The appeal of wrestling has never been immediately obvious to those of us brought up on the more conventional, if not always wholesome, attractions of boxing. Lately, however, the rivalry has seemed less relevant. Events of the past couple weeks have pushed both disciplines back into prominence, but with significantly different results.

Ricky Hatton did what he had to do in Las Vegas, ripping the commitment out of a brave Mexican with a liver punch from hell and winning over the parochial American fight crowd. He has become the most respected British boxer in the United States since Ken Buchanan was fouled to defeat by Roberto Duran at Madison Square Garden 35 years ago. The word here is that Hatton’s next opponent could be Oscar De La Hoya and then the man who retired after recently beating De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather. Life could hardly be better for the Mancunian with no side to him.

Wrestling, meanwhile, has spiralled into an awful descent. Chris Benoit, one of the performers of the World Wrestling Entertainment circus, has brought his sport from nowhere to the front pages in the most shocking circumstances.

First, some background. Professional wrestling has long been considered a harmless diversion in a sporting universe that is more serious and absurd than it ought to be. In a way, the parody of violence that is TV wrestling was its antithesis. It was fun. It didn’t matter. Nobody got hurt.

The charade of the guys in tights always undermined the moral and spiritual integrity of participants and consumers; you had to be seriously disengaged from reality to do it or watch it. But, so what? Certainly you would not see the results in the papers the next morning; it never has been a water-cooler sport, and never will be. It was for laughs.

Yet there was always a sadder underbelly to the performance. Wrestling, historically, was the last stopping off point for legitimate fighting men as separated in stature as Primo Carnera and Joe Louis. Carnera, a prisoner of the Mob, had, at least, pretended to be a boxer for a while and, whatever his bad press since, he could fight a bit. He was, briefly, and with the aid of the Mafia, the world heavyweight champion. Louis was the real thing. But both, drained of dignity by the shakedown merchants, the revenue saints, ended up wrestling.

There was a certain innocence about their activities back then, bordering on pity. Thereafter, in America there was Gorgeous George, the salesman who inspired Muhammad Ali to go so over the top in boxing. In Britain, we had Jackie Pallo, Kendo Nagasaki, Mick McManus and Giant Haystacks, characters it was impossible not to love. Or hate, according to taste.

That was then. Latterly, the antics in the burlesque universe of World Wrestling Entertainment have done more than simply fall between the faked and the surreal. The principals were asked to stretch their thespian horizons to ridiculous lengths, as well as their bodies. They jumped on each other from ladders, used tables and chairs as alleged weapons and, most importantly for the script, bloated their greased physiques into cartoon proportions for a salivating audience of brain-dead yahoos. They played out racial and cultural roles. They incited anger and base prejudices. They had lost their innocence.

The excess became part of the performance. The bigger, the louder, the more outrageous and stereotyped, the better. It was a travelling freak show, but, said its fans, one that moved on without hurting anything more substantial than the pockets of willing dupes.

Now the sniggering has stopped. Benoit, flying on drugs that helped him look like the overblown, musclebound ring actor he actually was, last month killed his wife, Nancy, their son, Daniel, then committed suicide. Last week, the wrestler’s doctor, Phil Astin, was charged with prescribing 10 months’ worth of anabolic steroids to Benoit every three to four weeks between May 2006 and May 2007.

Whatever your view on the legitimacy of banned substances in sport, this was a grotesque expression of the greed that drives modern sport. Benoit didn’t need the steroids to compete, because there was no competition. It was about image, attitude, showbiz.

The story has been running at the top of bulletins here all week. And nobody knows how to deal with it: sport, entertainment, tragedy, farce. There didn’t seem to be a section of the newspapers that allowed for its coverage.

As the story unfolded, it grew more bizarre. Hulk Hogan, who knows a thing or two about these muscle-building, brain-killing drugs, reckoned Mrs Benoit, who once wrestled as Fallen Angel, ‘was into devil-worship stuff’. It was, he said, ‘part of her wrestling character’. She ‘gets into their character too much’, he said. ‘Sometimes,’ said the Hulk, ‘these people believe their own publicity.’ What more needed saying?

Yet the people who run WWE, who regularly tour the UK to packed audiences and who feature on satellite TV, at the peak of their popularity, on pay-per-view, have eliminated all references to Benoit, his wife and their son in their otherwise smooth publicity machine. Perhaps the lawyers stepped in. Maybe they had a blinding headache of conscience.

After pretending for so long to be real, they find reality too hard to handle.

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Great Larry King show on recently with John Cena(steroid freak), Chris Jericho, Bret Hart amongst others. I’m half way through watching it on youtube and I’m quite disappointed that Larry doesn’t ask the tough questions e.g On the issue of steroids in wrestling he doesnt ask anyone present if they ever used them. Cenas presence on the show is a bit of a mystery.