Rassling Deafs

[cantthinkofanything]

This was on a Cracked slideshow and all the rest of the slides seemed real but is this correct that all of these wrestlers are dead?

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

Saw that today too. I don't recognize the guy in the flannel and backwards hat on the second to last row, but yeah, they've all jobbed their last.

Bossman (heart attack), Macho Man (heart attack), Andre (congestive heart failure, not uncommon for guys that huge), JYD (car crash), Hercules (heart attack), Bam Bam Bigelow (ODed), Hawk (heart attack), non-singing Bryan Adams (ODed), Paul Bearer (cancer), Miss Elizabeth (ODed. There's audio of Lex Luger's 911 call when he found her. Heavy ), Owen Hart (fell to death during a PPV), John Tenta (cancer), Dino Bravo (gunned down in possible mafia hit), Giant Gonzales (diabetes complications), Bad News Brown (heart attack), Dr. Death (cancer), Captain Lou (heart attack), Yokozuna (pulmonary edema), Sherri (ODed), Rick Rude (heart failure), Kerry Von Erich (suicide), Bruiser Brody (stabbed in a locker room), British Bulldog (heart attack), Curt Hennig (OD), Crash Holly (OD), Eddie Guerrero (heart failure), Chris Benoit (suicide), Big John Studd (cancer), Brian Pillman (OD), Umaga (heart attack), Doink (OD), Ludwig Borga (suicide), Luna Vachon (OD), Bastion Booger (heart attack), Andrew Martin (OD).


In the case of most of the those heart attacks drugs or lengthy periods of drug abuse in prior years were contributing factors. They left out the Dynamite Kid. I'm sure there's others that I'm forgetting. (ETA: Mike Awesome, Chris Candido, Johnny Grunge and Rocco Rock of Public Enemy)

[cantthinkofanything]

Saw that today too. I don't recognize the guy in the flannel and backwards hat on the second to last row, but yeah, they've all jobbed their last.

Bossman (heart attack), Macho Man (heart attack), Andre (congestive heart failure, not uncommon for guys that huge), JYD (car crash), Hercules (heart attack), Bam Bam Bigelow (ODed), Hawk (heart attack), non-singing Bryan Adams (ODed), Paul Bearer (cancer), Miss Elizabeth (ODed. There's audio of Lex Luger's 911 call when he found her. Heavy ), Owen Hart (fell to death during a PPV), John Tenta (cancer), Dino Bravo (gunned down in possible mafia hit), Giant Gonzales (diabetes complications), Bad News Brown (heart attack), Dr. Death (cancer), Captain Lou (heart attack), Yokozuna (pulmonary edema), Sherri (ODed), Rick Rude (heart failure), Kerry Von Erich (suicide), Bruiser Brody (stabbed in a locker room), British Bulldog (heart attack), Curt Hennig (OD), Crash Holly (OD), Eddie Guerrero (heart failure), Chris Benoit (suicide), Big John Studd (cancer), Brian Pillman (OD), Umaga (heart attack), Doink (OD), Ludwig Borga (suicide), Luna Vachon (OD), Bastion Booger (heart attack), Andrew Martin (OD).


In the case of most of the those heart attacks drugs or lengthy periods of drug abuse in prior years were contributing factors. They left out the Dynamite Kid. I'm sure there's others that I'm forgetting.

Ah....I didn't look close enough. At first I thought they were all from the newer wrestling organizations. I didn't look hard enough to see Kerry Von Erich, Bruiser Brody, Andre, JYD, etc. You know...the ones that fought before wrestling became fake.

Regardless, it's a shocking amount of deaths but I guess given what they put in their bodies, it shouldn't be surprising...but it is.

[cantthinkofanything]

I do wonder why they didn't put the rest of the Von Erich's on the list...

Although the family patriarch Fritz lived to the age of 68, five of his six sons preceded him in death (three by suicide). The firstborn son, Jack Jr., died at the age of six. In 1984, David Von Erich died in Japan from acute enteritis of the upper intestine. Michael, Chris, and Kerry all committed suicide in 1987, 1991, and 1993 respectively. Mike died after taking an overdose of Placidyl. Chris shot himself in the head with a 9mm handgun at his parents' home in East Texas. Kerry shot himself in the chest behind his father's house on Shady Shores Road. Kevin Von Erich is the sole surviving child of Fritz (Jack Adkisson) and Doris Adkisson

[CavsSuperFan]

Do you have a link to the story...

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

Flannel and hat guy is Louie coli.

[cantthinkofanything]

Do you have a link to the story...

There wasn't a story. It was just a "where are they now" slideshow. http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_6...lebrities_p18/

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

Ah....I didn't look close enough. At first I thought they were all from the newer wrestling organizations. I didn't look hard enough to see Kerry Von Erich, Bruiser Brody, Andre, JYD, etc. You know...the ones that fought before wrestling became fake.

Regardless, it's a shocking amount of deaths but I guess given what they put in their bodies, it shouldn't be surprising...but it is.

I'm sure there are better books out there for it, but Bret Hart's autobiography is pretty good for some background on just how bad was back then. He's not much of a writer, but is one of the few from that era that saw it all and is still around to tell the tale. By his own admission the fact that cheating on his wife was how he coped with road life rather than drugs probably has everything to do with it. The schedule they kept back in the eighties was ish. The Killer Calendar they called it. Back when they didn't have a national television package, when they couldn't afford to charter planes for much of anything. 300+ days a year on the road was the norm. In any profession with that kind of demanding travel schedule you'd expect to see plenty of things like depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. Factor in what they were putting their bodies through on top of that. In a lot of ways it's even worse than what you would see guys in "real" sports because there's not that natural safeguard of a certain level of athleticism required. If you could still stand and draw a crowd you could still wrestle. So an NFL player could get hurt and find there's just no way to push his body far enough to still compete at the pro level and have to retire before he ended up in a wheelchair. A pro wrestler could spend ten years wrecking his body to get to the top and then spend 5 more totally destroying it because fans still want to see them. "Sports entertainment" is sadly the right word for it in that regard. It combines the tremendous physical punishment of the sports world with the harshest realities of life in the entertainment industry thrown in for good measure.

These days things are a lot better, but it's still not a profession I would ever want to hear my child say they want to go into.

[cantthinkofanything]

I'm sure there are better books out there for it, but Bret Hart's autobiography is pretty good for some background on just how bad was back then. He's not much of a writer, but is one of the few from that era that saw it all and is still around to tell the tale. By his own admission the fact that cheating on his wife was how he coped with road life rather than drugs probably has everything to do with it. The schedule they kept back in the eighties was ish. The Killer Calendar they called it. Back when they didn't have a national television package, when they couldn't afford to charter planes for much of anything. 300+ days a year on the road was the norm. In any profession with that kind of demanding travel schedule you'd expect to see plenty of things like depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. Factor in what they were putting their bodies through on top of that. In a lot of ways it's even worse than what you would see guys in "real" sports because there's not that natural safeguard of a certain level of athleticism required. If you could still stand and draw a crowd you could still wrestle. So an NFL player could get hurt and find there's just no way to push his body far enough to still compete at the pro level and have to retire before he ended up in a wheelchair. A pro wrestler could spend ten years wrecking his body to get to the top and then spend 5 more totally destroying it because fans still want to see them. "Sports entertainment" is sadly the right word for it in that regard. It combines the tremendous physical punishment of the sports world with the harshest realities of life in the entertainment industry thrown in for good measure.

These days things are a lot better, but it's still not a profession I would ever want to hear my child say they want to go into.

You sound like you've spent some time looking into it. Pretty interesting. I remember looking forward to Saturday nights to watch the wrestling show they had in Dallas. Von Erichs, Bruiser Brody, The Spoiler. I remember the uproar when Gary Hart brought over the fearsome Kabuki. Also on Sundays when they'd have Mid South Wrestling. This is where I first saw Junk Yard Dog. I still remember the intro (or maybe outro) to that show. They'd play "We Are The Champions" and show wrestling highlights in slow motion. It was just as good as This Week In Baseball's version.

In any event, the history sounds like a compelling 30 for 30 at the least and probably worth a full length do entary. Maybe it's already been done but I missed it.

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

You sound like you've spent some time looking into it. Pretty interesting. I remember looking forward to Saturday nights to watch the wrestling show they had in Dallas. Von Erichs, Bruiser Brody, The Spoiler. I remember the uproar when Gary Hart brought over the fearsome Kabuki. Also on Sundays when they'd have Mid South Wrestling. This is where I first saw Junk Yard Dog. I still remember the intro (or maybe outro) to that show. They'd play "We Are The Champions" and show wrestling highlights in slow motion. It was just as good as This Week In Baseball's version.

In any event, the history sounds like a compelling 30 for 30 at the least and probably worth a full length do entary. Maybe it's already been done but I missed it.

I was a pretty big fan from the age about six to 12. They kind of lost me in the years leading up to the At ude Era. My fanhood took a dip when they had Bret Hart (GOAT) drop the belt to Shawn Michaels ( ing hated him) and then things just eroded from there. Got back into it around 2000 or so with the hype around Goldberg in WCW and then the WWF for a few more years after that. Last time I was really making any effort to watch was around the time Benoit lost the world le. Just over the years with the power of the internet every now and then a friend and I might start talking wrestling and then it turns into a (usually depressing) search into where they are now.

Dunno about 30 for 30 but Beyond the Mat is sort of the standard bearer that jumps to mind. In particular as pertains to this list of guys the profile on Jake "The Snake" Roberts is a perfect example of a guy who ended up struggling constantly with all those pitfalls for decades now and is somehow not dead. There was a Deadspin or may Grantland article a friend sent me a few weeks ago. Diamond Dallas Page of all people is running a program built around (I you not) high energy yoga that's helping get Jake and Scott Hall (maybe the most do ented of the living trainwrecks from that 90s era) get clean. He also started a kickstarter (or something like that) campaign that got them hip or back operations that they've badly needed for years, creating chronic pains that were contributing factors in their drug abuse.

(It was Deadspin.)

[cantthinkofanything]

I think maybe I quit on it when it became so big that everyone was watching it. That's when I determined that Hulk Hogan and anything after was fake. The matches that were taped at the Sportatorium and wherever Mid South was taped were so raw looking that it had to be real. It's like the difference between Rocky I and Rocky IV.

In any event, I'll check out Beyond the Mat. I totally missed it. I'm a long way from being a wrestling fan but it's interesting to look back on it.

I do remmeber the John Stossel interview where the guy boxed his ears.

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

Sounds like you were getting out right as I got in. My earliest memories of pro wrestling were late 80s WWF.

[DJR210]

That list is a small sample of the deceased wrestler from the past couple of decades. Those are the more notable though. If your career path is wrestling, it's pretty much a lock that you will die of an overdose, heart failure, or will kill yourself.

I've included some interesting wrestling do entaries:

Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling


Beyond The Mat


Forever Hardcore

[DJR210]

This is also a good one.

The Ultimate Warrior vs Hulk Hogan battle continues to this day, just in a different form. He rips Hogan from top to bottom, including his hair extensions to Hogan offering him and others a chance to Linda.

[Rogue]

Those people looked morbidly swole and I don't think such muscles could've been procured simply through natural training, without the help of drugs. s sold their health and even lives for bucks. They worked their best throughout their lives adding zeros to their names but later realized a row of zeros doesn't have no value, when the first digit also turned zero.

[silverblk mystix]

lol spam

[Avante]

There I sat on the floor next to grannys spit can (snuff) and rocker as she rocked and...."he's pulling his trunks, he's pulling his trunks ref, are you blind?"...she thought it was real, and so did I at around 9. We'd watch...WRESTLING FROM THE OLYMPIC AUDITORIUM...from LA every Friday night, granny would always fix us some popcorn and cokes. We'd root for...

Edouard Carpentier...the Flying Frenchman
Lou Thesz....still to this day....number one!
Cowboy Hutton...ah shucks
Bearcat Wright...first black rassler I saw.
Lord Bliears....cat was cool.
The Scufflin' Hillbillies

While booing.....

Classie Freddie Blassie...meanest man on earth
Mr.Moto...granny hated japs
Baron Leoni...stuck on himself
Dangerous Danny McShane...meanest man alive...also.
The Sensational Intelligent Destroyer....I knew he was Beyers.

We didn't know what to make of Gorgeous George. My dad saw him once.... ...was all he said.

I discovered it was fake at around 13. I'd seen the Wednesday...BIG TIME WRESTLING...(granny was gone by then) from Fresno. There was a match between Sir Alan Garfield and Danny 0' Rourke. A scientific affair, after the match Walt Harris the announcer called both guys over and praises them for the fair play.

Friday the family drove up to Sacramento to visit some relatives. My cousins were also rasslin' fans, so we tuned in BIG TIME WRESTLING from Sacramento, so there's Sir Allan Garfield and Danny O' Rourke having this scien............. yep, Walt Harris calls them over and....

I didn't tell my cousins, didn't want to spoil it for them.

The great Freddie Blassie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzNagM0JN_4

[CavsSuperFan]

Ricki “Twinkle Toes” Star vs Frank Fozo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdpXCGCaa4

[Avante]

Ricki “Twinkle Toes” Star vs Frank Fozo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdpXCGCaa4

He was an original.