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| Plausible Deniability |
James Denton |
Between the Benoit tragedy and all the wrestlers dead by 40, when will Vince and the industry take responsibility?
It’s long overdue. Despite countless deaths, injuries, surgeries, scandals, arrests, documentaries and rehabilitations, professional wrestling has long flown under the radar of responsibility. Decades of debauchery both in front of the camera and behind the scenes have gone completely unnoticed and remained utterly unregulated. While people protested and called and campaigned for the ban of mixed martial arts – apparently the wildest and most dangerous athletic endeavour that exists – the real culprit of sporting suffering cheerfully went about its business.
But last month, when Chris Benoit murdered his wife and child after the wrestling lifestyle shattered his sanity, that all changed. No more could wrestling hide behind the merry masquerade of being colourful, harmless entertainment; the very real truth had emerged that wrestlers are consuming a lethal concoction of steroids, drugs, concussions and injuries, existing a warped reality where fact and fiction are often indivisible and the mind can too easily be lost to a gruelling road schedule and a world of televised fantasy.
Most wrestlers cannot save themselves from wrestling – they do not have the autonomy and their self-preservation instincts are numbed by the immense competition and overridden by the intense pressure to succeed. So ultimately a duty of care must, absolutely must, fall upon the shoulders of wrestling promoters – and above all, Vince McMahon. But exactly what are the issues at play and can they event be resolved at this stage?
HIT THE GAS!
The biggest issue in wrestling is, was and forever will be the use of anabolic steroids. Steroids, in and of themselves, are not deadly; they are used in a variety of medical applications from eardrops and ointments to hormone therapy and bone marrow treatment. However, used in greater dosages and “stacked” with other drugs and hormones, steroids allow for dramatic, unnatural increases in muscle mass. Of course, muscles such as the biceps, pectorals and deltoids grow to gargantuan proportions, but so does another muscle – the heart.
The number of wrestlers who have died of heart complications, often in their thirties and forties, is staggering; names like Eddie Guerrero, Brian Pillman, Davey Boy Smith, Rick Rude, Road Warrior Hawk, Eddie Gilbert and The Big Boss Man. In many cases, wrestlers suffering from “steroid heart” exacerbate their condition by abusing both prescription and recreational drugs. With an ungodly schedule of anywhere from 200 to 220 days a year, constantly working hurt, crossing time zones and never having time to rest or recuperate or recharge, dependencies on painkillers, uppers and downers are almost inevitable. Combined with steroid and hormone use, the effects on the heart can be devastating.
But it’s not just cardiac issues; there are numerous other complaints arising from steroid use including severe, even cancerous, liver damage. This time last year (issue 005) we reported on WWE suspending wrestlers due to “elevated liver enzymes” that were almost certainly steroid related. While these included impossibly large men like Bobby Lashley and The Great Khali, it’s not just the big boys who are juicing. When Sports Illustrated broke its story on professional athletes buying steroids (issues 013, 014), wrestlers of all shapes and sizes were names – from Rey Mysterio to Edge to Randy Orton to Gregory Helms. Steroid use isn’t just limited to the biggest guys on the roster – it is systemic.
Look at some of WWE’s recent headliners: John Cena, Bobby Lashley and Batista – all gigantic men with bodies bloated to capacity. Where are the guys who look like Brian Kendrick and CM Punk? They’re not headlining shows, that’s for sure. The very clear message that’s being sent – and has been sent ever since WWE topped the bill with Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior – is that if you want to get a push, you have to have a big enough body. And if you want to get a big body enough to compete with the names above, you almost certainly have to take steroids. They are, for all intents and purposes, a condition of employment.
There can be no argument that wrestling’s steroid epidemic is a direct result of WWE’s pushing policy. When the company that holds a virtual market monopoly only gives its top spots to the biggest men, it not only tells the wrestlers that they have to be big in order to be successful but it also conditions fans not to accept anyone at the top of the card who doesn’t have a superhuman physique. It is a self-perpetuating cycle of sustained, requisite steroid use that will never, ever stop until Vince McMahon fundamentally changes his promotional model. But then, Vince has already been indicted by the US government for distributing steroids – if that didn’t force him to change, what will?
REAL: REALITY EQUALS ACTUAL LIFE
It’s difficult to understand quite how cold the wrestling business can be when it comes to its performers. To understand its underlying failure to take responsibility for wrestlers’ well being, it’s important to understand the twisted attitude that it takes to their deaths – and this was perfectly demonstrated last month with the death of Sherri Martel at the height of the ‘Vince is dead’ angle.
A conversation took place between the WWE production crew with words to the effect of, “if we acknowledge Sherri’s death it will undermine Vince’s storyline.” Thus, Sherri received no tribute video, no show-opening “In Memory Of” card – instead she received a brief graphic, two-thirds of the way through the show. WWE made a conscious decision that the passing of one of its most beloved alumni (and Hall Of Fame member) could not be mentioned because it might spoil a wrestling angle. That is an incredibly perverted sense of priorities.
But that’s the mentality that exists: if something might impair a storyline, it isn’t confronted. And this is made worse by WWE’s unique position in the entertainment industry. Neither a legitimate sport or completely fictional, wrestling is a complicated haze of indivisible kayfabe and pseudo-truth. After all, when Linda McMahon appeared on television and demanded a divorce from Vince, there were some very worried investors understandably concerned about what impact it would have on their WWE stock. To us, the “smart marks”, it’s ludicrous that anyone could think that what happens on Raw or SmackDown is real. But wrestling is rapidly losing track of what is a work and what is a shoot.
For weeks, WWE purported that Vince was dead. The story permeated its website, television and pay-per-views, the company flew its flag at half mast and issued press releases about a federal investigation. So when, on www.WWE.com, it also announced that the Benoit family had been slain, how was anyone to know whether it was truth or fiction? And when Vince McMahon – for weeks having been portrayed as being dead – appeared on Raw and said that Chris Benoit had died, what the hell was anyone supposed to think? A dead man coming back to life to tell us that another man is dead – no wonder some people thought it was an angle.
And that’s the problem. Wrestling has worked us and conned us and blurred the fact/fiction divide for so long neither it nor us can tell what’s what – and we’ve become so accustomed to this that we don’t even question it. It’s one thing not to know whether someone is on a stretcher because he’s legitimately hurt or he’s selling a match, but we can’t tell whether or not a man has actually died? That’s when the line of work/shoot ambiguity has been pushed too far. And for the wrestlers that live in this perpetually warped and distorted reality, it’s no wonder that they can’t identify those real personal issues that require serious attention.
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
Professional wrestling is equally adept at exploiting wrestlers’ personal problems as it is at ignoring them, sweeping tragedies under the carpet to service storylines and incorporating their real-life issues into on-screen angles.
Scott Hall, a man battling life-threatening alcoholism, is booked in vignettes where he’s drunk at a bar. Jim Ross is undergoing surgery for colon cancer, so Vince McMahon (dressed as a surgeon) appears in a skit where he pulls “hilarious objects” out of the rectum of a man in a JR mask. Eddie Guerrero dies and, the very next week, Randy Orton cuts a promo saying that he’s in hell, leading to six months of shameless exploitation. After concussions ended the careers of Bret Hart, Chris Nowinski and numerous NFL players – and may also have contributed to the deaths of Mike Awesome and Chris, Nancy and Daniel Benoit – Randy Orton’s new finisher is kicking people in the head, giving storyline concussions to RVD and Shawn Michaels.
Not only does this trivialise gravely serious issues, it conditions fans and wrestlers alike to think that doing so is somehow acceptable – that potentially fatal problems are nothing more than fodder for a storyline. But can you imagine Stacey Slater undergoing a mastectomy and then an episode of Eastenders where the cast make fun of her having breast cancer? How about Daniel Flynn dying of a heart attack, leaving a wife and two children, before DCI Meadows appears on The Bill and says that Flynn – not even his character, John Heaton – has gone to hell? When you think about it, wrestling is completely f**ked up.
Ironically, WWE so desperately wants to be considered part of that legitimate entertainment industry – and, in doing so, it only further endangers the safety of its performers. In the case of John Cena releasing a rap album or Vince McMahon starting the XFL, the only victims are our ears and good taste. But what happens when the company starts incorporating elaborate stunts that go beyond the realm of professional wrestling? We know exactly what can happen: tragedy.
Did Owen Hart really have to descend 80 feet on a zip line just to have a wrestling match? Did MVP really have to set himself on fire just to have a feud with Kane? Did The Undertaker really have to take a 25-foot high fall just to have a match with Kennedy? These are wrestlers, not stuntmen, yet their lives are being put in danger in an effort to chase Hollywood spectacle for which these men are completely untrained. That is, by our account, unnecessary personal endangerment and woeful disregard for employee safety. Apparently WWE didn’t learn a thing from the Owen tragedy – just as it didn’t learn a thing from Eddie’s.
WELL, WELL WELL
As a direct result of the death of Eddie Guerrero, WWE decided that a legitimate testing programme would be put in place – wrestlers found to be using substances would be fined, suspended and even fired if they did not clean up their act. However, the WWE Talent Wellness Program that ultimately came to be is in no way a sincere attempt to monitor and safeguard employee health.
Instead, it is a piece of carefully implemented and artificially enforced legislation; a paper mechanism whose sole function is to absolve the company of liability by providing a façade of pre-emptive self-regulation in order to convince investors, government bodies and all other concerned parties that WWE is actively trying to eliminate substance abuse among its performers. In actuality, it does not function to prevent steroid or hormone use; in fact, it can actually be said to encourage it.
The most fundamental flaw of the Policy is it that doesn’t matter if wrestlers use steroids, painkillers or hormones as long as they have a valid prescription. That’s a very clever device because one would naturally assume that, if a drug is prescribed by a doctor, its use must be legitimate. But the problem is that, with the punishing schedule and no down time, wrestlers are always carrying injuries that merit these prescriptions. The end result is that instead of curbing the steroid and painkiller abuse that has resulted in so many deaths, the Policy actually legitimises it.
It brings about a situation where Chris Benoit – who murdered his wife and child due to what may ultimately be attributed to acute steroid rage – took a steroid test in April and passed. Yes, a man of completely unnatural physique, with muscle mass completely disproportionate to his size who was found to have steroids in his home, passed a WWE steroid test. The Wellness Policy, clearly, is a joke; what was designed specifically to prevent another tragedy has been a profound failure. Not only did it fail Eddie Guerrero’s memory, not only did it fail Chris Benoit; it failed Nancy and Daniel, too.
What kind of health initiative only considers steroids, prescription medication and recreational drugs to be matters of wellness? Benoit cannot possibly have been a well man, yet the company declared him fit for work. This sham of a Policy is so clearly and transparently self-serving and disingenuous, and WWE needs to take immediate action to redress its so-called testing procedures before more people are dead.
In addition to cardiovascular monitoring, it needs to include complete EKG screening, brain imaging scans (both MRI and CT) and complete psychological and behavioural examination. It needs to mandate that a trained therapist is on staff and on call, both for voluntary counselling and compulsory evaluation. And more than anything else, it needs to incorporate a full, thorough, annual medical assessment just as all other professional athletes are subject to. If these measures are not taken and both physical and mental abnormalities continue to go untreated, wrestlers are condemned to continue living in a culture of early death…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 17 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
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