Dead Wrestlers: Leaving it all in the ring

Courtesy of WWE.com

THE GRIND

Imagine if you were forced to go to work every day with a herniated disk in your back (I know, many fight through this pain). Now imagine your job entails falling on your back over and over again. Now, this isn’t the 1960’s, when wrestlers were on the road performing 300 or more times per year and the travel is certainly a little better, but what do you do when you’re afraid to take time off?

You’ve worked the better part of the last decade just to get to the big organization and you realize that your shelf life as a wrestler is extremely small. You can’t sleep because your joints feel like hot pokers are embedded in them — and you’ve only got a five-hour window to sleep anyways. You can get away with that life for a short period of time, but it does a horrible number on your body. You’ve got to sleep so that you can squeeze in your workout (remember the body) before the next show. Sleep deprivation leads to depression, which pairs up with drug abuse or even suicide far too often.

How do you do it? How does the rest of the world do it? Drugs are the answer. Prescription drug abuse is running rampant in the United States and wrestlers are certainly part of the problem. We can’t speak for the current crop of wrestlers, but it’s a well-known fact that wrestlers of the previous era would pop pills to sleep, to get up and just for the fun of it. It was the way of the road. Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, man.

Combine those drugs with the effects of the steroids you’ve taken to get your body to a certain point and what do you get? Early death.