Car­la Rauseo

I am not a fan of WWF wrestling by any means. First of all, I do not un­der­stand how one can be en­ter­tained by watch­ing hideous look­ing, an­i­mal-like be­hav­ing hu­mans, pre­tend to fight each oth­er.

While I do not un­der­stand how en­joy­ment can be ob­tained from view­ing such fake bar­bar­ian­ism, I do re­spect the fact that oth­ers may be in­clined to dis­agree. I sup­pose one can ar­gue that just as I en­joy watch­ing fake crime mys­ter­ies, oth­ers en­joy fake fight­ing. How­ev­er, it seems rather stu­pid to me, giv­en the risks of the "sport." The most re­cent events in the world of wrestling sup­port my point.

In brows­ing the news on­line, I came across a head­line that read, "Ul­ti­mate War­rior: One-Third of Wrestle­ma­nia VI Com­peti­tors Now Dead." First of all, I had no clue who or what "Ul­ti­mate War­rior" was, or that there were dif­fer­ent edi­tions of Wrestle­ma­nia. The head­line was in­ter­est­ing, so I read on and was not sur­prised by what the ar­ti­cle re­port­ed.

Wrestle­ma­nia is a pay-per-view pro­fes­sion­al wrestling event (I can't be­lieve peo­ple pay for this) that is pro­duced be­tween March and April every year. It is the most suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tion of the pro­mo­tion­al com­pa­ny, World Wrestling En­ter­tain­ment (WWE). There have been 31 edi­tions of the event since its in­cep­tion. The Ul­ti­mate War­rior was a pro­fes­sion­al wrestler par­tic­i­pat­ing in Wrestle­ma­nia VI in 1990 when he beat the on­ly wrestler I know about, Hulk Hogan, to win the cham­pi­onship.

How­ev­er, at the young age of 54, the Ul­ti­mate War­rior is now dead from a heart at­tack. As the head­line to the ar­ti­cle said, one third of Wrestle­ma­nia VI' s com­peti­tors have died.

Most of these com­peti­tors would be in their fifties to­day. Of the 51 par­tic­i­pants in Wrestle­ma­nia VII, 14 have died pre­ma­ture­ly. A re­view of the his­to­ry of deaths of Wrestle­ma­nia par­tic­i­pants yield­ed a to­tal of 41 deaths be­fore the age of 60.

There are three caus­es of death that stand out: heart con­di­tions, drugs and sui­cide. The ex­cep­tion is An­dre the Gi­ant, who, al­though he died from heart fail­ure in 1993, had acromegaly. This caus­es ab­nor­mal growth and gi­gan­tism, but heart ab­nor­mal­i­ties are al­so part of the con­di­tion.

How­ev­er, oth­er wrestlers like Dav­ey Boy Smith (age 39 at death), Roc­co Rock (49), Road War­rior Hawk (46), Her­cules (48), Big Boss­man (41), Randy Sav­age (58), and Ed­die Guer­rero (38) all died of heart at­tacks. Then there are Rick Rude (40), Mr Per­fect (44), Miss Eliz­a­beth (42), John­ny Grunge (39), Bam Bam Bigelow (45), Sen­sa­tion­al Sher­ri (49), Crush (43), Test (33), Uma­ga (36) and Gar­ri­son Cade (29) who all died of drug re­lat­ed over­dos­es or tox­i­c­i­ty. Texas Tor­na­do (33), and Crash Hol­ly (32) both com­mit­ted sui­cide, as did Chris Benoit (40), who al­so mur­dered his wife and son.

Wrestlers are dy­ing at an alarm­ing rate, but it is not be­cause wrestling is in­her­ent­ly dan­ger­ous where one can die from one's in­juries caused by wrestling it­self, as in the case of Chris Owen who died in front a pay-per-view crowd af­ter falling 50 feet. This is a rar­i­ty. Rather, it is the lifestyle of wrestlers that is of con­cern, and this has been well doc­u­ment­ed.

A wrestler is 12 times more like­ly to die of heart dis­ease than per­sons of sim­i­lar age.Stud­ies have shown that over-the-counter pain med­ica­tions like ibupro­fen, as well as pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tions like oxy­codone, in­crease the risk for car­diac con­di­tions. There was no short­age of painkiller abuse in Wrestle­ma­nia par­tic­i­pants and the death rate high­lights this.

It's not on­ly the abuse of pain killers that in­creas­es the risks of death. The use of ste­ri­ods to "bulk-up" was very com­mon in the eight­ies and nineties, and is pos­si­bly so even to­day. What stands out as well, is the amount of sub­stance abuse that oc­curred. Co­caine and al­co­hol were com­mon caus­es in over­dose deaths.

The sui­cide rate is al­so alarm­ing, and I won­der if the cul­ture of wrestling was re­spon­si­ble for dri­ving some of its prac­ti­tion­ers to put them­selves out of their mis­ery.So think about your de­f­i­n­i­tion of sport be­fore read­ing fur­ther.If sport is sup­posed to pro­mote health, well­ness and per­for­mance of the hu­man body, can wrestling be con­sid­ered a sport?

For me, wrestling is just bad act­ing by very large and mus­cu­lar ac­tors, on a stage that's a ring.

Car­la Rauseo, DPT, CSCS, ATRIC is a Doc­tor of Phys­i­cal Ther­a­py and a Cer­ti­fied Aquat­ic Ther­a­py Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion In­struc­tor at To­tal Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San Juan. http://www.to­tal­re­habtt.com