Wednesdaymania 3.2 (TW - death, suicide, murder)

This is late, I know.

Also, this isn't going to be a common occurrence here, but I feel the need to place a trigger warning of sorts up here. The world is harsh, and sometimes, it can be a lot to handle. This week, I'm covering death in wrestling. Well... not exactly covering. Just giving a rundown. And it's bleak. If talking about suicide, murder, and other kinds of traumatic deaths will cause you distress, then please, don't force yourself to read this. I'll be back to complaining about my lack of artistic talent later on Thursday.

I just felt the need to get this out.

This is one of the hardest things I’ve written and looked at in a while. As many who watch wrestling are aware, there’s a lot of death we, as fans, have to deal with. It seems like anyone can go at any moment – that’s just the nature of a “sport” where the performers have to meet certain physical, mental, and emotional requirements every day in order to make a living. This week, we lost Leon “Vader” White. I’ll talk more about him specifically on Friday, but for now, I will say only this: he passed early, at 63 years old.

Professional Wrestling has something of a reputation for deaths – the wikipedia article on premature wrestler deaths is 346 entries long. I’ve done the dirty business of digging through it for everyone else, and I’ve compiled the top 10 causes of premature deaths in wrestling. I also looked up the article on premature American football deaths as a point of comparison, since both are very physically demanding activities with a reputation for injury and mayhem.

Professional Wrestling: (out of 346 deaths)

#10 Diabetes (1.16%)

#9 Heart Disease (1.73%) and Pneumonia (1.73%)

#8 Complications (3.18%)

            surgery taking up over 70% of these “complications”

     Murder (3.18%)

#7 Injuries, in-ring (4.05%)

           in-ring heart attacks accounted for over 35% of in-ring fatal injuries

#6 Overdose, non-suicide (4.91%)

             some of these were accidents, bad prescriptions, or partying too hard.

#5 Organ Failure (5.49%)

            heart failure accounting for over 42% of organ failures

#4 Suicide (7.52%)

               while 50% are not specified for method, the method most mentioned in the article was via gunshot at just under 27% of suicides recorded.

#3 Accidents (8.38%)

             Car accidents account for almost 69% of all fatal accidents in wrestling

#2 Cancer (11.56%)

          The most common cancer people in professional wrestling seem to face is leukemia (15% of cancer deaths), followed by liver cancer (12%). The liver cancer can likely be linked to the hard partying that is rumored to go on backstage and on the road. Also, it seems that many professional wrestlers develop alcohol dependencies to deal with the loneliness of life on the road and to dull the pain of accumulated injuries.

The #1 cause of death among professional wrestlers is Heart Attack.

When you have a business full of big men, you’re going to have a lot of heart attacks. It doesn’t matter if it’s muscle or fat, if your neck and biceps are growing wider, your risk of heart attack dramatically increases. Add to the bulk the fact that many wrestlers are stuck in cars or on planes for far longer than most people, and you have a perfect recipe for heart attacks. That’s not even counting how many have been smoking most of their lives.

Here’s what I got from the football pages (472 deaths):

#10 Organ Failure (0.85%)– all heart failure, from what I saw.

#9 A 4-way tie among Cardiac Arrest, Medical Complications (especially surgical), Falls, and non-suicide Overdoses at 1.48% each.

#8 Drowning (2.12%)

#7 Heat Stroke (2.33%)

#6 Cancer (2.97%); more cases of leukemia as than other one form of cancer (21% vs the average of 14% per cancer category).

#5 Heart Attack (3.39%)

#4 Suicide (3.6%); the only specified methods were hanging and gunshot, which were equal at about 17% of the suicides each.

#3 In-Game Injuries (8.05%), especially head or neck injuries.

#2 Murder (9.75%)

#1 Accidents (41.73%). Most football players seem to perish in terrible accidents – car and airplane crashes can take out whole teams at a time.

I don’t think there’s anything to be proven from this, only a realization that all sports, all activities are dangerous.

Are there behaviors that can be corrected in professional wrestling? Yes, absolutely. That’s one of the reasons things like “wellness policies” and team buses and the “Young Boy” system exist – to make life on the road easier for wrestlers so they don’t wreck their cars, get into fights, or overdose alone in a hotel room. There’s still room for work, though.

I just felt the need to understand what’s going on in wrestling.

I was lucky enough to miss the early 2000s, when people’s heroes were dying left and right, it seemed. I haven’t discussed any particular deaths here, since it’s all a bit much for me right now. Hopefully by next week, I’ll be ready to talk about more good things about wrestling. Because there are good things.

So many good things.

There’s the All-In Show, there’s NXT Takeovers to talk about, there’s looking back at great wrestlers who are gone but can never be forgotten (especially when really good new guys in NXT are absolutely basing their current gimmick off of them…), there’s New Japan, Ring of Honor, Kaiju Big Battel!

The world of wrestling is not as bleak as it seems in the sudden absence of Big Van Vader and Bruno Sammartino, two enormous names in the business who made this strange ballet of violence what it is today.

And there will be more who rise to the challenge of changing the business for the better.

There are people like Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, and Aleister Black, after all.

In spite of the world, my friends

Go out and enjoy something.

FC