Thoughts on the Scott Hall story

It seems like the only time wrestling makes mainstream news these days is when you hear about a wrestler from your childhood dying at a relatively young age.  Earlier this week, ESPN did a short documentary on professional wrestler Scott Hall.  Hall was a main event wrestler from the mid-to-late-90s who was most notably known for his WWE (known as WWF at the time) tenure as Razor Ramon and being one of the co-founders of the nWo, the heel faction that Hulk Hogan led in WCW.  The ESPN special was eerily similar to Jake Roberts unflattering feature in Beyond the Mat and focused on Hall's personal demons since he left professional wrestling and in particular his addiction to his drugs as well as his wrestling alter ego.  The sad reality of Hall's story is that this is not an isolated incident as even though his personal demons might be greater than others, there are wrestlers from past and present dealing with (or even dead from) similar issues.

The physical breakdown
Early in the Hall documentary, ESPN repeated current WWE propaganda saying that the business has changed and gone are the drugs and alcohol with Playstation being the biggest addiction today's wrestlers have.  Quite simply that is a bunch of crap.  Even though Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit's deaths scared a few people and the WWE is parading Edge around as its posterboy for wrestlers retiring since he has most of faculties intact, for the most part not much has changed as the industry still manufactures many sad stories like Hall's. Even though wrestling is “fake” the physical contact and injuries that come from it are very real.  Wrestlers are pressured to stay in the ring and to not take time off to heal injuries. There is very good chance if you are not one of the top guys and you take some time off to let your body heal that some other mid-card guy will take your spot on the pay-per-views, get your television time and bump you down the card.  You need to compete in the ring to get paid and you need the fans to not forget about you which means that most wrestlers will do almost anything to stay in the ring including abusing pain killers and other forms of prescription medication.

Wrestling is not a kind profession for the body and there is often talk about how wrestlers should unionize.  Unionizing in wrestling has always been a pipe dream because the main event guys are taken care of so well that they would not partake in any union discussion and any mid-card guy who dares utter those words around McMahon would be blacklisted from the business.  In 1986, Jesse Ventura tried to start a wrestlers' union suggesting that the wrestlers refuse to participate in WrestleMania, the company's biggest event of the year.  Ventura quickly found out that the main event guys like Hulk Hogan would not participate (Hogan who was at one point very close to Ventura was actually the one who tipped McMahon off about Ventura's plans) and most wrestlers were not willing to rock the company boat. Unionizing talks have cooled considerably since the climate is arguably even worse now than the 80s. With all due respect to Ring of Honor and TNA, when the WCW folded about ten years ago, for the longest time it gave the WWE a monopoly on professional wrestling in North America. If you wanted to make big money as a professional wrestler in North America then you needed to stay in the WWE's good books.

Muscles = Money
The WWE pretends that they are just giving their fans what they want to see but that line is as flimsy as their drug policy.  In 2006, WWE implemented a WWE Talent Wellness Program that “prohibits the use of drugs by WWE talent for other than a legitimate medical purpose pursuant to a valid prescription from a licensed and treating physician.” The WWE drug policy has penalized some star talent (for example world champion Rob Van Dam was nailed for smoking weed in 2006) but recently it seems to continually punish lower level talent while main event talent has suspiciously tested clean even though conventional wisdom says that those physiques cannot be natural. This is the same drug policy that allows an absurd testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of 10:1 (after it reaches 3:1 you have to meet with one of the WWE doctors but it is not considered a strike unless it gets to 10:1).  It is the same laughable drug policy that somehow suspends Heath Slater and not Mason Ryan (more on him in a bit).  The question remains why are so many wrestlers willing to try and cheat the system?

The company's obsession with muscle over ability can be seen with its most marketable star ever in Hulk Hogan.  While Hogan could at least hold an audience when given the microphone, his actual in-ring wrestling ability was laughable.  In the late-80s and early-90s, while genetic freaks like Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior were performing in 2-star main events, there were smaller guys like Ted DiBiase and Ricky Steamboat actually entertaining fans with their in-ring storytelling ability who were stuck in the middle of the card unable to break the glass ceiling.  The obsession with bulk continues today with guys like muscle head Mason Ryan getting pushed while more talented smaller wrestlers are being buried.

Even though McMahon's disposition has been very volatile of late he has always been enamored with the big muscular guys as even the mid-60-year-old McMahon has a physique that defies his age.  McMahon's wants his wrestlers to be larger than life and that includes their physique.  This is a man who back in the early 1990s heavily invested in the bodybuilding organization known as the World Bodybuilding Federation. His belief is that bigger is better and for every small athletic wrestler like Shawn Michaels that gets a chance to succeed there are ten Dave Bautistas that are given that same chance. Sure there are examples of small wrestler who have succeeded in the WWE such as Michaels and Rey Mysterio Jr but you are afforded many more opportunities if you look like Mason Ryan who basically resembles Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime with 20lbs of extra muscle. If you had to ask me what I thought the main ingredients were to become a superstar in the WWE, I would say that first and foremost you need an unreal cartoon physique with wrestling ability and microphone skills being well down the list.

Wrestling's poisoned culture
The truth is that the WWE's creative direction is primarily driven by whatever mood its owner, McMahon, is in on that particular day and not by the fans actually watching the show. Most wrestling fans will agree that McMahon has recently spent more television time making himself laugh and telling the WWE fans what they should be cheering (remember Bobby Lashley?) than actually giving his audience a product they can get excited about.  Over the last year, the WWE has been championing its new "Be a Star" anti-bullying campaign but any wrestling fan can see through that bullshit.  Watch any WWE television show and you will see examples of bullying from McMahon's Kiss My Ass Club to him making Trish Stratus bark like a dog (do you notice a theme here as McMahon obviously has issues and uses WWE television to articulate his feelings). According to Jackson Katz Ph.D, author of The Macho Paradox and creator of the video Tough Guise, "WWE is one of the most culturally destructive and blatantly misogynistic businesses in the history of popular entertainment."  This poisoned WWE culture is founded by McMahon and is the working environment for all of the wrestlers. How can you not end up fucked up after spending 250-300 days a year for 15-20 years trying to be one of the boys by participating in this mad man's vision of the world?

The mental breakdown
We are only beginning to really understand the problems that can arise from repeated trauma to the head and the link between concussions and brain damage are starting to be made.  Wrestling is dangerous enough but with fans demanding more extreme maneuvers and the business trying to continually shock its audience, there was a trend in the late-90s and early-2000s towards a more hardcore style of wrestling that included weapons such as chair shots to the head.  Remember how sickening it was when a handcuffed Mick Foley (known as Mankind at the time) took eleven unprotected and undeflected chair shots to the head at the Royal Rumble against the Rock? Wrestlers abuse their body to stay on top for as long as they can and then when they cannot generate money for companies like the WWE, they are basically put out to pasture with a drug dependency and a skewed outlook on life.

Mentally the slide from famous professional wrestler to relative nobody must be incredibly challenging.  Wrestlers are used to being cheered as the center of attention with the world revolving around them but that fame for most is fleeting leaving some entertainers who gave up everything to follow their dreams of becoming a professional wrestling as society's outcast with no real discernible skills other being able to perform a bodyslam.  Think about how much of a letdown it must be to go from being cheered by millions to being just a regular Joe.  This disheartening slide back to reality might explain why you often hear about how retired wrestlers have a hard time distancing themselves from their in-ring character.  That depressing adjustment is even more difficult to overcome when you have an alcohol or drug problem which seems to be the cruel parting gift from the wrestling industry. When you are wrestling at least you feel like you are a part of something.  You often hear wrestlers talk about the locker room as being their second family as if you form a brotherhood from being on the road with the boys for most of the year.  Rip that fame and support network away from an aging wrestler and all he has left is his other real family and life that he hardly knew and an alcohol or drug problem that he uses as a crutch.

Conclusion
I have kept my rant exclusively on the WWE as they are the most well known wrestling company in North America.  However, make no mistake about it as back in the late-90s the same shit that went on in the WWE was going on in the WCW so this poisoned work environment that the WWE has created is also prevalent in other wrestling promotions.  We have an industry where the workers have immense pressure to continually show up to work which results in the abuse of prescription and performance enhancing drugs.  This industry also has unrealistic standard of what their workers should look like and is being run by a man whose view of the world is distorted and sickening to most. Furthermore, the transition from famous professional wrestling superstar to relative nobody is hard enough without being hindered by the drug and/or alcohol problems that plague the industry as well as the unknown effects of repeated head trauma.  ESPN's Scott Hall documentary was a very alarming, real and sober account of the life of a professional wrestler.  Although Vince McMahon cannot be entirely blamed for the culture of death that surrounds wrestling, he has had more to do with creating that culture than any other person.  Wrestling is not an easy lifestyle choice and the Hall documentary highlights that fact.  Sadly, Hall's story is not an isolated incident and there have been and will definitely be many more wrestling tragedies as long as everything remains the status quo.