Why Are Wrestlers Dying?

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I was recently moved by the passing of a ring legend, Randy "Mach Man" Savage, who suffered from a heart attack and joined the long listing of other fallen wrestling super stars. I found a great article by Shawn O'Rourke called When Superheroes Die on Pop Matters. The article does a great job explaining some of the secretive life behind professional wrestling, but what really grabbed my attention was how the article also mentioned wrestlers that have been dying off like Freddy Kreuger victims.

The article mentions another site, Dead Wrestlers, which is one of the most up to date resources for a recently departed wrestling superstar. I utilized this site for the majority of my research, as they have a nice sleek layout and a brief cause of death. I am not too sure where they got their results from; some of it seems to come from another great source that I used, Obsessed with Wrestling. So as I discuss some of my findings, they may be a bit skewed here and there due to some deaths of a heart failure may have also been related to a drug abuse problem.

So I had to question myself, "Do certain wrestling promotions have more dead wrestlers ?" Could there be factors with giant billionaire dollar promotions like WWF or WCW, or is it all because of the hardcore lifestyle as originated by ECW? Are wrestlers self medicating themselves with drugs and pain killers so that they can continue to put their bodies on the line for just one more evening of punishment? What is a common cause of death amongst the wrestlers between promotions? Why is suicide prevalent amongst these deaths along with heart disease and drug abuse?

Introduction

I have been a wrestling fan on again and off again for about twenty years now. I have watched some of these wrestlers do death defying feats and lift giants with super human strength. I believed in them when they preformed the impossible, I was a Hulkamaniac who followed the directions to train, say their prayers and take their vitamins '" oh, and be a real American.

But I can remember soon discovering that wrestling was rigged, hence the politically correct title of "sports entertainment." As a child, you become ridiculed by your peers for still watching that kiddie stuff, oh, and you better put away your action figures too or you'll never get a girlfriend. Sorry, got a bit personal there. But no, seriously, I too gave up on wrestling due to one instance or another, I remember the cheesiness really got to me in the early nineties after Hulk Hogan departed the scene.

Suddenly, wrestling got a rebirth in pop culture towards the late '˜90's when rival promotions competed for Monday night ratings using ridiculous storylines, middle finger flingin' attitude and raunchy sexually devious. Wrestling became cool again and everyone wanted in on the action, even Jay Leno and Dennis Rodman. The allure of Hollywood couldn't have been accomplished by the newly incarnated "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan, who was back with all of his old buddies that I grew up watching.

Having all of the old heroes and villains back together again brought me back to my childhood. I wanted to be just like them, and now I was at the age with that opportunity. Towards my late teens, I was really obsessed about wrestling, my parents and I even tried to hunt down WCW's Power Plant so that I could go off to wrestling school. That dream really started to change when I noticed that a lot of my childhood heroes that had inspired me were dying off left and right.

I found out more about the world behind the curtain which contrived the world of wrestling fantasy. There was a documentary called Beyond the Mat, which showcased the lives of wrestlers that have gone through the grinder of years of wrestling service. I had seen several of them myself at fan conventions and pay per views, many of these wrestlers were older than my father, and still out every night taking bumps, chops and slams.

Even though I never went off to be a wrestler, I still continued to catch it here or there, and I still love to reminiscence about the matches of my youth with the several documentaries released by WWE. And now my fandom has turned into a passion for covering this story and finding out what the big deal is about these wrestlers dying off. I was also hoping to see if I could apply some of my research skills on this project to see what I could find out:

Data / Sample

I began my research by creating a population of wrestlers to choose from. I wanted to focus on the three main wrestling promotions (company) of the time - WWF (later named WWE), WCW and ECW. I couldn't find any clear cut "rosters" of these promotions, so I tried my best to make my own.

By going to Obsessed with Wrestling, I went year by year for select "cards" (major wrestling events) from 1985 to 1995. I thought this would be a could time, as WWF started off in 1985 with the rise of Hulkamania, connections with MTV and cable television and WWF's first pay per view super card, Wrestlemania. I also thought that if I could get at least a ten year sampling of wrestlers across promotions, I should be able to cover a large base of wrestlers.

I got most of the wrestler's names by skimming through the outcomes of matches on the web site. I didn't list every single wrestler, as some of them were just typical jobbers (a wrestler who only loses). But I really focused on the superstars of the time, or the wrestlers who were frequently listed at these events.

I also tried to list the year that the wrestler first started to appear at the promotion. Some of these wrestlers stayed with one promotion for nearly a decade, some of them have mingled with all three promotions at one time or another in their careers. Since this was the case, I decided to just make three separate listings of promotions across a ten year period.

When I chose billionaire Ted Turner's WCW promotion, I knew that I wanted to include the Monday Night Wars era of wrestling. I also thought it was fair to go back a year or two in the promotion's history, back to when it was part of Jim Crockett Promotions' NWA, an era that I didn't get to grow up with due to not having TBS on our cable network in New York. I started to pick wrestlers from the Great American Bash and Starcade back in 1988, and through the years of various other pay per views up until 1998.

Through my research of skimming through the results of various WCW pay per views, I began to notice a lot of wrestlers that I remembered from ECW. ECW was the smallest of the other giant and world-wide wrestling promotions. ECW started off Philadelphia as Eastern Championship Wrestling, and would soon adopt a hardcore style where wrestlers pushed their bodies to the limits of pain and punishment by crashing through burning tables, numerous chair shots to the head and barb wire covered rings. Extreme Championship Wrestling was born and it forever transforms the home entertainment of wrestling. ECW unfortunately only lasted from about 1992-2000 when they were purchased / merged along with WCW into the gigantic wrestling monopoly known as the WWE.

Once I had my raw data of roughly four hundred wrestlers across fifteen years, I then had to hunt down which wrestlers were no longer with us. By using the previously mentioned site of Dead Wrestlers, I listed every wrestler and his various gimmicks (the persona/character that the wrestler portrays) that were on that site and within my time frame or promotion. For example, Louie Mucciolo wrestled in WWF as Rad Radford, then as Louie Spicoli in ECW and WCW, so his name and death are listed for each section in my spread sheet.

Summary of results

During the years of 1985-1995 in WWF, I listed about one hundred and fifty-five wrestlers. Amongst that listing, thirty of those wrestlers are now dead. Other statistics would list that roughly nineteen percent of the wrestlers who appeared in the WWF at this time, are now dead. The average age of a deceased wrestler from the WWF was 43. From this listing of thirty dead wrestlers, half of them died due to a heart related issue, such as heart attack, failure or disease, but this is debatable as some of these deaths were related to drug use or were listed as unknown. Finally, it was interesting to see that a majority of these deceased wrestlers appeared or were major superstars in the late 80's.

During the years of 1988-1998 in WCW, I listed about one hundred and seventy-two wrestlers. Amongst that listing, twenty-two of those wrestlers are now dead. Other statistics would list that roughly twelve percent of the wrestlers who appeared in WCW at this time, are now dead. The average age of a deceased wrestler from WCW was 41, and four of them were suicide (more than twice the amount found in the other promotions). From this listing of wrestlers, again, half of them died due to a heart related issue such as heart attack/disease/failure and a majority of them appeared in the mid 90's era of the promotion.

During the years of 1992-2000 in ECW, I listed about ninety-two wrestlers. Amongst that listing, sixteen of those wrestlers are now dead. Other statistics would list that roughly seventeen percent of the ECW alumni are now dead. The average age of a deceased wrestler from ECW was 38, and most of them were rising stars around '94 and '95. As far as cause for death was concerned, the results once again show that roughly half of the deaths were heart related, or drug inspired that caused the heart failure.

Conclusions

After analyzing the results across the three promotions of four hundred wrestlers and fifteen years, I feel it i s it safe to say that if you started in the WWF around the late 80's or in ECW during the mid '90's, you died due to a heart related cause, whether it was heart attack, heart failure or heart disease, but not to mention the several incidents that were brought upon by drug use (cocaine, steroids, pain pills).

After doing a lot of research on this subject and following a lot of these wrestlers, it would seem that a lot of them were superstars in the '˜80's at WWF and would later migrate to WCW during the Nitro era. Nitro also showcased a variety of cruiser weight wrestlers that they imported from ECW, who would eventually become legends like Chris Jericho and Rey Mysterio, but they would also find untimely deaths like Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero.

I think there was a lot of instances with drug abuse, or mixing of drugs that caused a few deaths as well. Miss Elizabeth and Louie Spicoli both combined booze and pills. Cocaine was also a reoccurring drug abuse problem within these results, it would seem that wrestlers would use it to get jacked up prior to a match or get addicted on pain pills to make it through just one more match. I think the fear of getting old and beaten up was a big fear and prevention from making me want to be a professional wrestler. As it doesn't seem that a lot of wrestlers use or have health insurance, as they have to make do with what they got, such as super glue over a barbed wire gash.

Finally, I think the heart related issue must go back to all of the steroids that these guys used to take. I once heard of a perspective on an anti-wrestling documentary. It discussed how big that Hulk Hogan was, and in order to find him marketable opponents, the other wrestlers had to get bigger and bigger too. Before you know it, there was that Roid scam going through the WWF in the '˜90's when Hulk had to testify against WWF owner/President Vince McMahon.

There have been debates back and forth on if there is a connection between anabolic steroids and heart issues. I did recently find an article on Science Daily which states that long-term anabolic steroid use may weaken the heart more so than previously thought. The article states that there has been debate and uncertainty of such of a connection since the practice is illegal and athletes have really only been taking steroids since the 1980's. But now, these same athletes are getting to the age when heart problems are becoming evident, such as the numerous wrestlers who passed away from these heart problems. In fact, I am surprised that late 80's wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, The Barbarian or Rick Martel haven't had heart issues.

I am hoping that these deaths and findings will change the ways that Sports Entertainment is now treated. Wrestlers put their bodies on the line for our entertainment, much like the gladiators of Ancient Rome. Sure the fights are scripted, the acting is poor and they have costumes that Liberace would die for, but accidents do happen, and if a wrestler gets hurt, they sometimes just shrug it off in order to not be out of commission. Or there were times in the old days where they would go three-hundred sixty-four days of the year, no breaks, no time off '" just be on the road and find ways to relieve the pain. I think wrestlers being away from their families, numbing down pain and doing fantastic feats could be any number of reasons that wrestlers would contemplate suicide or drugs for escape. Not to mention while staying in shape and getting as big as possible with steroids, or the next bigger guy will take it from you. Wrestling is a sad profession full of dreams, pain, critical fans and old men that are put out to pasture and wrestle in old high school gyms, that is, if they have escaped the heart failure epidemic.