----In the early 1990s Deford took a brief break from NPR and other professional 
activities to serve as editor-in-chief of The National (newspaper), a short-lived, daily U.S. sports newspaper. It debuted January 31, 1990 and folded after eighteen months. The newspaper was published Sundays through Fridays and had a tabloid format. The National featured a weekly wrestling article by Dave Meltzer, which was done in shoot format similar to this site and many like it today.
----I recently posted an article about steroids for this site. My main point being that steroids did not cause the death of Chris Benoit. I had a long discussion with a local worker that was adamant that steroids were not the cause of Benoit's death and I think he, like many others, believe it is not the cause of any of the deaths. As I said, I don't think it 100% the reason, but "Combine the travel, the steroids, the painkillers and little weed and crack rock ever now and then – there is a problem. No other major organization – not even the movie industry have this kind of death rate." Take a look at this article and if you are a worker that has either done steroids or thinking about it - read the stats!!
activities to serve as editor-in-chief of The National (newspaper), a short-lived, daily U.S. sports newspaper. It debuted January 31, 1990 and folded after eighteen months. The newspaper was published Sundays through Fridays and had a tabloid format. The National featured a weekly wrestling article by Dave Meltzer, which was done in shoot format similar to this site and many like it today.----I recently posted an article about steroids for this site. My main point being that steroids did not cause the death of Chris Benoit. I had a long discussion with a local worker that was adamant that steroids were not the cause of Benoit's death and I think he, like many others, believe it is not the cause of any of the deaths. As I said, I don't think it 100% the reason, but "Combine the travel, the steroids, the painkillers and little weed and crack rock ever now and then – there is a problem. No other major organization – not even the movie industry have this kind of death rate." Take a look at this article and if you are a worker that has either done steroids or thinking about it - read the stats!!
A deadly phenomenon
Pro wrestling's mortality rate holds no peer in sports
Imagine, if you will, that in the last decade 186 men who had played major league baseball died before they were 50. Imagine that in that same time 435 men who had played in the NFL likewise died before they were 50.
If this were so, Congress would probably have dropped discussing everything short of terrorism to investigate. Cable television would talk of nothing else. The sports would be decried from the pulpits.
Of course, nothing like this has happened. However, if you extrapolate the number of deaths of under-50 professional wrestlers to baseball and football, that is the equivalent mortality score: 186 major league baseball players, 435 NFL players. Dave Meltzer, the distinguished journalist who has covered professional wrestling for 30 years, has carefully tabulated the death toll in his sport, and he comes up with a total of 65 wrestlers who have, since 1997, died before their 50th birthday. Sixty-five!
If there is a profession in America with a higher mortality rate, I'd like to know. A professional wrestler probably has a greater chance of dying than a soldier posted to Iraq. But who cares? Who does anything about it?
Oh occasionally, as earlier this summer when the wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and son and then committed suicide, the death is so horrific that there is a momentary flurry of interest. But then it is quickly onto the next week's example of American ghoulishness. Who knows that in the seven weeks since the Benoit family massacre, three more wrestlers have died -- two aged 44, one 38. Drugs seem to have played a part in all three deaths.
The main reason for such indifference is that professional wrestling isn't considered a sport and is barely legislated. But, of course, unlike such other popular cable entertainments as poker and hot-dog eating, wrestling is a sport. No, not legitimate in the competitive sense, but it is certainly legitimate athletic exercise. It's grueling, all the moreso that the wrestlers are subjected to an arduous travel schedule.
Meltzer, the editor of Wrestling Observer Newsletter, says that performance enhancing drugs entered the sport as early as the 1960s. By the 1980s, steroids were a staple -- especially as Vince McMahon, the brilliant promoter who headed up the World Wrestling Federation, realized that blown-up action humanoids sold tickets and drove up ratings. The wrestlers juiced themselves up. Says Meltzer, "Even if there had been no Vince McMahon, there would have been a steroid problem in wrestling." Steroid muscles sell wrestling as silicone breasts sell other popular divertissements.
Meltzer, I believe, is the most accomplished reporter in sport journalism. It's incidental that his sport is not a fashionable one. It's Meltzer's comprehensive knowledge that makes his death tally so accurate and so awful -- especially as it shows that the vast preponderance of wrestlers who have died either lost their lives outright to drug overdose or died of heart attack, liver or kidney failure clearly brought on by drug abuse. Most, if not all of the half-dozen wrestlers who committed suicide, were probably also influenced to take their lives because of drug involvement.
There are, I believe, two things we must take away here. First, attention must be paid to the horrors of professional wrestling by somebody other than Dave Meltzer. And second, those who tend to think performance-enhancing drugs in sports like baseball and football really aren't a big deal ought to be forewarned. It can happen here.
Credit http://www.si.com/ and http://www.wikipedia.org/
Pro wrestling's mortality rate holds no peer in sports
Imagine, if you will, that in the last decade 186 men who had played major league baseball died before they were 50. Imagine that in that same time 435 men who had played in the NFL likewise died before they were 50.
If this were so, Congress would probably have dropped discussing everything short of terrorism to investigate. Cable television would talk of nothing else. The sports would be decried from the pulpits.
Of course, nothing like this has happened. However, if you extrapolate the number of deaths of under-50 professional wrestlers to baseball and football, that is the equivalent mortality score: 186 major league baseball players, 435 NFL players. Dave Meltzer, the distinguished journalist who has covered professional wrestling for 30 years, has carefully tabulated the death toll in his sport, and he comes up with a total of 65 wrestlers who have, since 1997, died before their 50th birthday. Sixty-five!
If there is a profession in America with a higher mortality rate, I'd like to know. A professional wrestler probably has a greater chance of dying than a soldier posted to Iraq. But who cares? Who does anything about it?
Oh occasionally, as earlier this summer when the wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and son and then committed suicide, the death is so horrific that there is a momentary flurry of interest. But then it is quickly onto the next week's example of American ghoulishness. Who knows that in the seven weeks since the Benoit family massacre, three more wrestlers have died -- two aged 44, one 38. Drugs seem to have played a part in all three deaths.
The main reason for such indifference is that professional wrestling isn't considered a sport and is barely legislated. But, of course, unlike such other popular cable entertainments as poker and hot-dog eating, wrestling is a sport. No, not legitimate in the competitive sense, but it is certainly legitimate athletic exercise. It's grueling, all the moreso that the wrestlers are subjected to an arduous travel schedule.
Meltzer, the editor of Wrestling Observer Newsletter, says that performance enhancing drugs entered the sport as early as the 1960s. By the 1980s, steroids were a staple -- especially as Vince McMahon, the brilliant promoter who headed up the World Wrestling Federation, realized that blown-up action humanoids sold tickets and drove up ratings. The wrestlers juiced themselves up. Says Meltzer, "Even if there had been no Vince McMahon, there would have been a steroid problem in wrestling." Steroid muscles sell wrestling as silicone breasts sell other popular divertissements.
Meltzer, I believe, is the most accomplished reporter in sport journalism. It's incidental that his sport is not a fashionable one. It's Meltzer's comprehensive knowledge that makes his death tally so accurate and so awful -- especially as it shows that the vast preponderance of wrestlers who have died either lost their lives outright to drug overdose or died of heart attack, liver or kidney failure clearly brought on by drug abuse. Most, if not all of the half-dozen wrestlers who committed suicide, were probably also influenced to take their lives because of drug involvement.
There are, I believe, two things we must take away here. First, attention must be paid to the horrors of professional wrestling by somebody other than Dave Meltzer. And second, those who tend to think performance-enhancing drugs in sports like baseball and football really aren't a big deal ought to be forewarned. It can happen here.
Credit http://www.si.com/ and http://www.wikipedia.org/
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