True confession: I am a recovering pro wrestling fan.
My favorite athlete growing up was a faker, but it didn't matter. Jack Brisco was Clark Kent in tights.
That's why my hand shook as I called him the other day. I wanted to get his thoughts on World Wrestling Entertainment.
"I don't like it," he said. "I don't watch it."
My hero.
Now everybody is looking at WWE after the murder-suicide of Chris Benoit and his family. They're discovering Vince McMahon's freak show isn't just harmless schlock. Wrestlers are dying at alarming rates, though nobody cared enough to get alarmed until last week.
When McMahon came to City Hall in March to announce next spring's WrestleMania 24, it was all hoorah and handshakes and jokes about Ashley the Dirty Diva's silicone anatomy. Yes, it's all fun and games until a superstar kills his wife and son and then hangs himself.
Now the Benoit story has become Natalee Holloway on steroids. Just don't say that word around McMahon. He insists steroids aren't to blame, and the media feeding frenzy is totally uncalled for.
Poor Vince. He reportedly lost $21 million as WWE stock plummeted last week. He lost a star performer. At least he hasn't lost his shame.
Of course, how do you lose what you've never had? McMahon long ago turned pro wrestling into a pimped-out joke.
Sure, rasslin' was always a charade. But if you ever saw Championship Wrestling from Florida, you know it was honorable fakery. Wrestlers actually knew how to wrestle. The women didn't all look and act like porn stars.
For a kid in the '70s, there was no better way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Gordon Solie was wrestling's Walter Cronkite.
The WWE is Paris Hilton. Paris gets ratings, of course, and McMahon has turned America's appetite for drivel into a billion-dollar business.
That doesn't mean we have to like it. Would the great Jack Brisco make it in today's rasslin' world?
"I wouldn't be employed," he laughed.
He was at his auto repair shop in Tampa. It's hard to believe the king of the Figure Four Leg Lock is 65. Brisco got into wrestling because he could wrestle, not because he could preen.
"We had a lot more real athletes with amateur backgrounds," he said.
Brisco weighed 200 pounds when he started in 1965. He hit the gym and started a diet heavy on potatoes and beer. All that, and he still never got heavier than 235 pounds.
McMahon would have looked at him and laughed. Though wrestling pre-Vince has one advantage.
"The guys in my era are still alive," Brisco said.
By one account, 55 wrestlers under the age of 45 have died since 1985. Congress would shut down the circus if that many elephants dropped. But Benoit, Rick Rude, Eddie Guerrero and all others were people, not just WWE characters.
Each death had different factors, from drug abuse to mental breakdowns. But if you believe steroids aren't rampant, you probably also believe Paris Hilton is a virgin and pro wrestling isn't fake.
Naturally, McMahon wants to move ahead and begin "the healing process." We'll know he's serious if wrestlers start looking more like Brisco than Bluto.
Don't count on that. I just feel sorry for any kid brought up watching today's wrestling, assuming their parents are irresponsible enough to let them.
I at least got to reminisce with my childhood hero.
If somebody tries to call one of McMahon's stars in 30 years, there won't be anybody around to answer the phone.
We don't know that wrestling led Benoit to the terrible events of last weekend. We will never know what ran through his mind.
Some people dismiss wrestling all too easily because of its carnival roots and ridiculous plots. But really, what's so rational about dressing up in colored armor and beating your fellow man as half-naked women cheer you on at the coliseum? I've just described the nation's most popular sport, professional football.
And we know that football shatters the bodies of its greatest heroes. Johnny Unitas' scarred knees and gnarled hands told us so.
We know that tens of thousands of punches to the head slow the steps and slur the words of courageous boxers. We're reminded every time Muhammad Ali appears in public.
We know that a car traveling 200 mph can spin out of control even when guided by the most skilled hand. Dale Earnhardt's demise at Daytona attested to that.
No, it won't do to dismiss the implications of Benoit's death simply because he was a wrestler.
As a culture, we've decided that consenting adults are allowed to push themselves past safe limits for our entertainment. Drug testing and better medical care and safety precautions can lessen many of these risks but cannot stamp them out.
I don't know about you, but when a boxer loses his life in the ring, or a football player is crippled, or a wrestler turns up dead in his hotel room, I feel complicit.
If I know these acts are so destructive, why do I watch? Do I lack the moral fortitude to look past my desire to be entertained? I fear the answer is yes.
In the past few days, scores of wrestling fans have said on message boards that Benoit's death will kill their love of the spectacle. Many more have said that one man's deranged acts shouldn't end an art loved by so many. I agree with the latter, and yet I wonder.
Make no mistake: If professional wrestler Chris Benoit hadn’t strangled his wife and son and then hanged himself from his weight machine, no one would care whether or not he was on steroids.
And no one would care whether there was a steroid problem in professional wrestling. The track record makes this case.
As media questions took shape this past week around the idea that Benoit murdered his family in a fit of ‘‘roid rage,’’ wrestling fans couldn’t help but wonder where similar scrutiny has been over the past 15 years while wrestler after wrestler died before the age of 50 from the lethal combination of steroids, hard drugs, painkillers and a relentless lifestyle.
World Wrestling Entertainment headliner Eddie Guerrero died at 38 in November 2005 because an enlarged heart, traced to steroid and drug abuse, constricted his arteries and eventually caused a failure.
‘‘It’s just so hard to go through this again,’’ said Chavo Guerrero, Eddie’s nephew and one of Benoit’s few close friends in the WWE, on a Benoit retrospective that aired Monday night on the USA Network.
Media paid a week’s worth of attention to Guerrero’s death, but didn’t seem to catch on to the fact that it clearly illustrated the perils of the wrestling business.
In case they did catch on, WWE was ready. The company implemented a Talent Wellness Program three months after Guerrero’s death. Since then, WWE wrestlers have been subject to random drug testing by an independent agency and penalized if illegal drugs are found in their system. The company meant business: One wrestler got a 30-day suspension for getting caught with pot during a traffic stop.
Fast forward to this past week, as Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly discussed the Benoit situation on his television show.
O’Reilly lamented that wrestling is unregulated (true) and that there’s ‘‘no drug testing of any kind’’ (not true). O’Reilly was corrected on the latter point by a pro wrestling promoter he was interviewing, and had no idea what to say in response.
Here are two pieces of info O’Reilly could have used: Wrestlers are always injured so they can easily be legally prescribed steroids that facilitate healing, and the only reason WWE is testing is that one of its performers, Guerrero, died of an overdose while working for WWE.
The list of WWE alumni who were no longer with the company when they died of drug overdoes is long. To name a few: Scott ‘‘Bam Bam’’ Bigelow, Ray ‘‘The Big Bossman’’ Traylor, Mike Awesome, ‘‘Sensational’’ Sherri Martel, Curt ‘‘Mr. Perfect’’ Hennig, Elizabeth ‘‘Miss Elizabeth’’ Hulette, Mike ‘‘Road Warrior Hawk’’ Hegstrand, Mike ‘‘Crash Holly’’ Lockwood, ‘‘The British Bulldog’’ Davey Boy Smith, Louis ‘‘Spicolli’’ Mucciollo.
If NFL football players died at anywhere near this rate, at anywhere near the ages of these wrestlers, a congressional investigation would have been launched a long time ago.
But apparently a wrestler has to slaughter his family before anyone cares.
The wrestling forums are lighting up with wrestling fans that are outraged at Nancy Grace for her coverage of the Chris Benoit murder/suicide story. Wrestling fans are saying she did not have her facts straight before reporting the story.
Her angle of attack on the story was that anabolic steroids had to have played a part in the actions of Chris Benoit. Nancy Grace quoted the WWE in the statement that anabolic steroids did not play a part in the murders. She attempted to make a statement that the WWE would "of course deny the possibility."
The fans of wrestling became angered because of the fact that the police have announced that they are looking into the possibility that Chris Benoit had been giving the steroids to his child in an attempt to make him grow to average size for his age. Being a former lawyer, the WWE fans would have thought that Nancy Grace would have argued this case after researching it.
The fans were also outraged when she made the statement that Chris Benoit may have become upset when he was demoted from the Four Horsemen to Raw. The Four Horsemen was an organization that was disbanded years ago. Raw has been considered to be the premier brand for years.
In actuality, Chris Benoit had been sent to ECW, which was the training ground for the WWE. He was sent there to help train the new wrestlers to the company, and was reported to be very happy about this change.
Many of the forums are filled with people who stated that they tried to call in to the Nancy Grace show to point out the fact that there are many credible reports that point out that Chris Benoit may have planned this murder for a long time before. This was information that she did not have when her show aired.
The other issue that is lighting up the forums is the fact that anabolic steroids will cause an instant rage. Chris Benoit bound his wife before killing her. For the most part, this would rule out the chance for an instant rage.
Also, Chris Benoit killed his son many hours after killing his wife. This second murder pretty much rules out instant rage.
This is not the first time that Nancy Grace has come under fire for not having the full story. There are many people that will point to the Duke Rape Case as being Nancy Grace's major downfall. She spent many hours trying to accuse the students and prosecute them in the media. They were found not guilty on all of the charges.
This has been a very emotional case for many wrestling fans. They did not think that it was proper for Nancy Grace to make accusations and assumptions without having all of the information that was available.
