Here’s your answer. Continued use of steroids brings on heart attacks which is what is killing all these wrestlers.
Kinda had this conversation with Ms. Cups when we found out about Piper.
We’re in the midst of an exponential rise in wrestler deaths as more of the old-school hard partying, horrible lifestyle, drinking/drugs/steroids wrestlers begin to die. But there’ll be a cutoff point when the older ones are all dead, and the newer ones who live a much more clean lifestyle will get older and have longer lifespans.
The amount of modern wrestlers who, on non kayfabe interviews, say they don’t drink/smoke/do drugs always surprises me.
For that matter, the wrestlers who came before that generation didn’t tend to die young either - guys like Bruno Sammartino and Lou Thesz were wrestling well into their sixties.
I’d wager that the increasingly fast-paced style that came into vogue in the '80s (no more 60-minute matches which were 2/3rds rest holds and ended in a time limit draw), coupled with the increased pressure for the stars to look like muscular supermen were a contributing factor as well.
Are we? Or was it simply that no one covered it in great detail before? Lots of news stories make things seem like they are happening more/rising/etc today, but that’s simply because they now have to fill a 24 hour national news cycle. Before the 80s, wrestling was local, and it was the rare grappler who might get a nationwide obituary. Most would be lucky to get a line or 3 on a local newscast. Certainly steroid use and abuse has taken its toll, and that seems to be the era when it became popular (though steroids date back to the 1930s). I don’t doubt that the numbers are higher for the wrestlers from that era, but is it truly “exponentially”?
Touche. “Exponentially” was probably a poor word choice on my part.
I guess what I meant was that we have wrestlers dying from these causes that relate to their hard-partying ways of the recent past, and that it’s my opinion that they will reach a cutoff point when the more clean-cut wrestlers of todays day and age retire
There’s a degree of bias, but both Steve Austin and Leon White (Vader) have said the same thing. Steve played college football and Leon was in the NFL for a little while (as part of a Super Bowl team, but he didn’t take the field–he was a pretty good center out of college but was behind a much better one.) White’s leg was blown out a few seasons into the NFL, in an injury in which he says he was knocked down and looked at his leg and saw that it was “gone” below the knee. He was confused as to what happened, when he realized his leg was bent over on itself and that’s why he couldn’t see his lower leg anymore, he was on top of it.
Anyway, he said in an interview that in his experience there is no comparison between football and wrestling–wrestling is far harder on the body; and Leon suffered a very serious NFL injury and still said that.
I think the big reason wrestlers have such diminished life expectancy is the road lifestyle. Young men with money in their pocket, forced to live on the road for 300+ days a year. This removes them from any support system likely to keep them in check, and what happens? I know what I would do with a nice bit of cash and a life on the road c. 25 years old, and it wouldn’t be pretty. I nearly drank myself out of a career in the Army at that age, with all the structure that provides. I can’t even imagine if I was in the WWE instead.
Their physical work obviously causes lots of injuries but I think it’s more the “lifestyle of the road”, which leads to rampant drug and alcohol abuse. Steroids are a factor as well, of course.
Your answer sounds like it comes from personal experience.
I have a friend who trained with Danny Davis, and wrestled under the OVW (Ohio Valley Wrestling) when it served as a training league for WWE. Nick Dinsmore, Shelton Quarrels, and others went through there. My friend and I have discussed what they put their bodies (Jason was forced to retire due to injuries to his back and knee.
But I showed this thread to him, and he didn’t refute any of it.
Not me. This is one of many war stories from an old-time wrestler. Theres even worse stories from Mid-South Wrestling which spread from Oklahoma down to Mississippi then to Houston, Texas. IIRC the old Stu Hart Stampede territory was a driving nightmare, as well.
Pretty much every guy who worked the NWA circuit in the 70s and 80s will tell you the same story. Mick Foley barely drank and never did drugs, but watched everyone else doing them (and had a brush with prescription opiate addiction.)
I’ve hung out with Scott Hall a time or two - and let the record show it’s a miracle he’s still alive - and the stories he tells about his alcoholism would kill your liver. Picture a frat party every night of your life for thirty-plus years, with serious physical injuries mixed in between.
I do think things are better now; WWE’s “two brand” system means only the top guys are working TV more than twice a week, so while they may still be on the road a lot they’re not getting tossed around a ring so much.
The BBC just tackled this very question - Why do wrestlers so often die young? - BBC News
Yeah, Mick was one of the few guys that never got crazy into the drug/alcohol culture, although he did engage in more “normal human being” levels of that in his earlier career. I think he said with pain pills he always tried to use them sparingly, and that late in his career when he found he was “enjoying” using them, he stopped them entirely because he realized he was getting addicted.
One of the only other “name” (i.e. had major pushes and belts in a major territory) wrestlers I can remember who also was like this was Owen Hart. Everything I’ve read about him indicates he never got into that stuff, either. Although the rest of the Hart wrestlers (including Bret) were major recreational drug users. While I always like Bret’s in ring work as the ultimate “mat technician” who knew how to convincingly work a body part better than anyone, I find it interesting in the late 90s/early 2000s he was bashing WWE/F for its “adult” product and its wrestlers who were “personal disgraces” instead of “superheroes” for kids. Yet in Hart’s own tell-all book he details how during the height of his face run in WWE he was a major recreational drug user (mostly cocaine), in addition to the steroids he had done in his earlier career, and unashamedly talks about how he pretty much cheated on his wife every time he left home for the road.
Its a pity Owen’s influence did not rub off on the British Bulldog. Davey Boy was so obviously juiced up, it was scary.
Some members of the Hart family blame Davey’s cousin Tom Billington aka The Dynamite for starting the drug use in the family. Dynamite was known to be taking every drug he could find, and got Davey started on steroids to build up his body. By the time he died Davey looked more like a prize Hereford than a human being.