Countdown To Lockdown (32 page)

I wanted to have my say, but I came to the conclusion that it would be better to do so after the smoke had cleared and the scramble for ratings had dissipated. I felt like this issue would be with us in the
wrestling business for a long time to come, and eventually I would have a chance to make some sort of sense out of it. I even thought about writing a novel,
Letters to Eddie
, attempting to get into Chris Benoit’s head during those last few months of his life and explain the frustration, rage, and fear that he may have expressed through his journals to his deceased best friend, Eddie Guerrero. I had so many ideas running through my head during those first few weeks, and I was looking for some way to get them out. I absolutely knew that it wasn’t as simple as the ’roid rage the press was attempting to pin the blame on, or, later, the head injuries that Chris’s father was placing all of his faith in as an explanation. Of course, Benoit’s history of steroid use may have been one
part
of the problem, as may have been a history of possible concussions. But I believe
each
of these was just a simple ingredient in a complex stew of factors, stirred and seasoned over time and circumstance, eventually bubbling forth at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way.

I think it’s entirely possible (perhaps even probable) that Benoit would have never gotten a series of big career breaks had he not had the impressive physique that anabolic steroids helped make possible. But at a certain point, when he had been a big star for many years, I think the only person who thought Chris Benoit still needed steroids to maintain his career was Chris himself. Apparently Chris was so psychologically dependent on maintaining his look that he didn’t cycle off steroids even when recuperating from neck surgery, when he wouldn’t be in the public eye for several months. So there is a chance that his longtime usage may have played a contributory role, but the idea of the guy just “snapping” due to steroid use struck me as highly unlikely, especially given the drawn-out nature of the murders/suicide.

I completely understand the emphasis that Chris Benoit’s father has placed on his son’s head injuries as an attempt to explain the unexplainable; living with the tragedy and the knowledge that his son was responsible for these deaths is a burden too great for me to even
imagine. I heard Mr. Benoit on a television show, talking about the severity of the blows Chris had taken over the years from chairs, tables, garbage cans — all the stuff that I’m pretty closely associated with. To be sure, Chris had some experience with those types of matches, but I think that it’s more likely that his traumatic brain injuries were a result of a hard-hitting style that really never relented over the course of time. Everything he did was just so intense; every forearm, every suplex, every one of those diving head butts from the top rope. I thought he might come back from his neck surgery with a slightly more relaxed style; certainly I thought he’d take the top-rope head butt out of his repertoire of regular moves.

As a matter of necessity, most guys who wrestle in a physically demanding style will eventually find a way to ease up, to change their style, to incorporate a little levity into their character if they want to continue wrestling past the point where Mother Nature starts suggesting they slow down. Just about everyone who has had a long run in a top spot has found a way. I know I did, practically turning a 180 and becoming a comedic character with a sock puppet after so many years of doing all that hardcore stuff. But Benoit never changed. He was still pretty much full tilt every night, with very little in the way of comedy or even promos to take the pressure off his body, especially when it came to absorbing some type of punishment to the head on an almost nightly basis.

I’m not trying to sell the gravity of the concussion crisis in the wrestling business short, either. Believe me, I think about it every single day, wondering if I took too many head shots for too long, and what type of price I may eventually pay for doing so. I think there was some argument to make years ago that taking unprotected chair shots to the head was the right thing to do for business. I mean it looked so convincing on camera, back in the day when people still could be emotionally swayed by that type of image. Now, it’s a ridiculous argument to even have. Barring some huge angle, where a chair shot absolutely, positively, has to look devastating on camera (and even
then
it’s
questionable), every wrestler needs to get those hands up when a chair is headed their way.

A few months ago, after a couple years of persistence on the part of my friend Chris Nowinski, I agreed to contribute posthumous samples of my brain to the Sports Legacy Institute, the group that Nowinski cofounded after his own pro-wrestling career was cut short due to a history of concussions. It’s not like I find the image of a drill burring its way into my brain after death to be a real comforting one. But after doing some studying on all the problems associated with concussions in football, hockey, wrestling, and just about any contact sport, I do realize the great importance of this type of science, and I hope that my life and career can be of some use to others after I’m gone.

A few months after the Benoit deaths, I asked WWE if I could speak to the wrestlers in their two developmental territories, Ohio Valley Wrestling and Florida Championship Wrestling, and pass on whatever knowledge or advice I could in order to possibly prevent any further tragedy in the future. In truth, the Benoit situation was probably some kind of perfect horrible storm, the likes of which our business will never see again, but one need only look at the ever-expanding list of wrestler deaths to see that certain mistakes keep being made over and over again. It was my intent to arm those young wrestlers with as much information as possible so they could make the best possible decisions for themselves. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but at the very least I hoped that my experiences and advice would add another voice to a much-needed conversation about life and death in the world of professional wrestling. Maybe it could even act as food for thought, which the younger guys could feel free to digest and absorb, or eliminate from their systems as quickly as possible.

I thought the talks were very effective — and who knows, maybe some of it even sank in. I spoke to a total of maybe one hundred men and women, all wrestlers that WWE had thought enough of to have in their developmental program. These men and women were set to become the stars of tomorrow — some of them already have. But there
are thousands of professional wrestlers out there, and no possible way to talk to them all. So I’m going to use this chapter as a means of hopefully reaching a few more. Again, I’m not going to pretend to have all of the answers, or that listening to me is going to have a profound effect on many lives. But I am hoping to get through to a few. And though I usually try my best not to be preachy, in this case, I probably do know more than almost any of you. So I’m going to do my best to share my feelings/knowledge/advice, in what I would like to think of as an open letter to every wrestler: past, present, and future.

I’m going to start out by acknowledging this incredibly sobering list of young wrestlers’ deaths. In 2001, when
Foley Is Good
was published, I had a list of only four wrestlers whose deaths may have been attributed in part to problems with prescription drugs, which was then, and still is, the biggest problem concerning these deaths in the wrestling business. Maybe I didn’t have all the facts, or maybe I just had my head in the sand, because the problem was surely bigger than I described it then, and has gotten far worse since that time. I know there are all kinds of different lists concerning wrestlers’ deaths out there, with all different types of criteria, but for the sake of this book I looked at wrestlers who died at fifty or younger in the last twenty years and whose deaths might possibly be seen as unnatural. So I didn’t include people like Brian Hildebrand, one of my very best friends, who died of stomach cancer, or others whose deaths, however tragic, could not be linked to wrestling in any realistic way.

There are sixty-six names on my list; it’s far from complete, as I have chosen only the names of wrestlers who had some type of regional or national success. If I were to include all the deaths involving young, independent wrestlers, I know the list would be far more extensive. Still, sixty-six wrestlers is an incredible number. Out of those sixty-six, I knew forty-nine. Out of those forty-nine, I considered myself friendly with thirty of them.
Thirty
human beings I knew well and liked — gone before age fifty.

These losses used to devastate me. But in the last several years,
there have just been so many, so often, that I’ve almost built up an immunity to it; it’s like I can no longer mourn deaths that I almost expect to occur. And that is a pretty sad statement. It makes me feel somehow less human, and in truth it probably offers some explanation as to why I am no longer close with many guys in the business. I think it’s almost a defense mechanism to protect myself from the inevitable sadness of losing even more friends in the future. I would most likely be deceiving myself to think that the news of my own death would be much news at all … and that’s a sad statement, too.

Okay, enough of the sad statements. Let’s see what we can do about it.

When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine, I read a statistic claiming that NFL football players had a life expectancy of forty-two. For the life of me, I can’t find that statistic now — at least not with my limited web-surfing skills, but I can almost swear to its existence; most likely in
Sports Illustrated
,
Sport
, or
Sporting News
, as those were my three go-to magazines when I was that age. So, even though I can’t find that statistic or prove it, I’d like all of you to accept it, at least long enough for me to explain it as it pertains to pro wrestling. Now, when I was a kid, that statistic baffled me — a forty-two-year life expectancy. How could that possibly be? But my mother explained it in a way that made a little more sense of it. “Mickey, people who are drawn to pro football are going to be more likely to be drawn to other things in life that are going to be dangerous. They will be more likely to drive fast, live fast, and die fast.”

Like the statistic itself, my mother’s explanation can’t be proven, but it made perfect sense to me then. As I became involved with pro wrestling, I saw my mother’s explanation in action. The guys I met lived lives filled with risks both inside and outside the ring. Wrestling is really not a profession likely to draw from those who have done a careful analysis of risk and reward, because anyone who weighs such things carefully would stay far away from a business like ours. The chances of making a decent living are small, the chances of ending up
broke are good, and the chances of living the rest of your life in some degree of pain because of the foolishness of pursuing this dream are almost guaranteed.

NBC did an intriguing story during its 2010 Winter Olympics coverage, asking whether some of the Olympians drawn to the more potentially dangerous events might actually have a different genetic makeup than those who avoid such things as half-pipes, ski jumps, moguls, and the adrenaline rush of world-class downhill speed.

From what I could tell (including a couple of hours of follow-up research), the answers were inconclusive, but I think it’s a question worthy of asking and scientifically researching. I know during the course of my career I may have struck many as something of a thrill seeker; a guy who needed a fix of danger every now and then. I guess that’s the way I struck the producers of the
Dr. Phil
show, as I was recently asked (and declined) to be on an episode about “adrenaline junkies,” or something of that nature. In truth, I just didn’t think I accurately fit the bill. I just can’t envision myself on a motorcycle, a snowboard, skis (water or snow), or any number of commonly accepted adventurer apparatuses without wiping out and getting badly injured. So common sense tells me to stay far away from those types of things. I weigh the risk/reward ratio for such activities and overwhelmingly err on the side of caution. I don’t even drive particularly fast.

But for some reason, pro wrestling has historically been the one area of my life where caution has repeatedly been thrown to the wind, and where that risk/reward ratio has sometimes been thrown away completely. I vividly recall being told how dangerous the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, was before flying there twice in 1987. For many years, I remember seeing signs at
every
international airport I flew out of, stating that the Lagos airport did not meet international safety standards. The Federal Aviation Administration even suspended service between Lagos and the United States in 1993. Yet such knowledge wasn’t even a
consideration
when I was given the chance to wrestle in Nigeria. Even when I was given a one-way
ticket to Lagos. Even when I handed my passport to a man who bypassed customs and immigration — and kept the passport with him for the duration of the trip.

It wasn’t as if I was stupid. I was a recent college graduate and had even received an award for being an outstanding student in my major. But in 1987 (and for many years after), I just didn’t consider the possible risks when it came to the decision-making process in so many aspects of professional wrestling. I made it to shows no matter what. If a flight was canceled because of weather, I got in my car and drove. On occasions when my car broke down, I left it on the side of the road and hitchhiked. That’s just the way it was when I broke in and, in many ways, the way it still is for people who choose to pursue dreams that often don’t coincide with logical thought processes.

Obviously, there is an upside to the realization of those illogical dream pursuits. But there is a heck of a price to pay for those who willingly go through life with blinders on — even when those dreams come true.