Countdown To Lockdown (33 page)

So the people who are drawn to pro wrestling are likely to ignore the risks not only of being pummeled on a nightly basis, but of just about every other facet of life as well: driving fast, drinking hard, driving fast while drinking hard, and living life itself in that proverbial fast lane. We’ve got some extreme personalities in our world; guys who seem bigger than life in the ring often don’t know how to turn off that persona once they leave the ring. The best wrestling characters are usually just natural extensions of a performer’s real self — with the volume turned up. And throughout the decades, torrid tales of the wrestling lifestyle have filled dressing rooms from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. But those lifestyles — more alcohol, more drugs, more women, more cars, more money — come with a price. And that price quite often includes a shortened life. So many of the lives on that list of sixty-six names were ended by heart attacks — almost half of them, by my count. Some have links to use (and possible abuse) of prescription drugs, some to steroid abuse, some to the cocaine heyday
of the 1980s. In so many cases, wrestlers have just attempted to pack too many excesses into too few years.

I think things are changing for the better, even if some of the changes have been slow in coming and sometimes were forced from the outside world. Guys take better care of their bodies now, and there is not nearly as much pressure to conform to a late-night-party atmosphere in order to gain acceptance among one’s peers. Sure, instances of late-night debauchery still take place, but not on such a regular basis.

Drug testing has certainly helped. For years I wondered how wrestlers could travel from city to city, collecting prescriptions from doctors across the country, treating the world as one giant pharmacy. In
Foley Is Good
I wondered about some type of national database and whether the lack of such a thing was financially motivated — because in the end everything seems to come down to money. I don’t know if such a database currently exists, but I know WWE and TNA are doing their best to ensure that no wrestler has more than one physician. Now that doesn’t mean that guys won’t find ways to cheat the system or won’t find doctors willing to overprescribe legal medications, but I think this step has been a highly effective one in limiting the potential misuse of prescription drugs.

Every wrestler has got to accept that pain is going to be part of the lifestyle, and that the things we do to entertain and to follow our dream are going to lead to a certain amount of discomfort for the rest of our lives. Accept it. Deal with it. Don’t mask it with pills. I’m not saying there is never a need for pain medication. No matter how tough the guy or how strong the will, there will most likely be a time (hopefully a very temporary time) in every wrestler’s life when the pain simply becomes unbearable. And during those certain times, prescribed pain medication certainly can be of great help. For example, while vacationing with my two younger children at Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I was slightly dismayed to find that my kneecap had become dislocated during the course of navigating a children’s
raft ride. Hey, these things occasionally happen when one has taken so many chances with his body for so many years. I managed to get the kneecap back into its groove, but the area swelled almost instantly and made movement painful and difficult. With the entire vacation in jeopardy, I made the call to go to the pill bottle (kind of like a baseball manager going to his closer) and was able to return to the park and get through the day with the help of half a Vicodin (or the generic equivalent). There are certainly times when pain medicine can be of great use in a pro wrestler’s life, but the abuse of such medicine is a good way to ruin a career … and cut short a life.

I have heard it said that the pro-wrestling lifestyle doesn’t necessarily create personal weaknesses, but it will exploit any weaknesses that an individual might bring with him (or her) into the business. Unlike other sports teams, which travel to venues as a group aboard buses and planes, much of the travel in pro wrestling is done in a personal automobile or rental car. Traveling in such a way, the world can kind of seem like one’s own personal playground, beckoning to each individual to follow his or her heart’s desire. If one has a fondness or a weakness for anything, it’s pretty easy to find it while cruising down life’s highway. If one has a fondness/weakness for alcohol, there’s a favorite bar in every city. Likewise, a fondness/weakness for other substances can be easily exploited. For me, the constant calling from late-night restaurants was almost impossible to resist. I’m one of those guys who uses food as both a reward and a consolation, and I did plenty of both at plenty of late-night diners and fast-food haunts over the years.

And if the drug of choice is women? Well, for so many of the guys throughout pro wrestling’s history, that drug is an awfully tough one to resist.

The title character in my novel
Tietam Brown
was an amalgamation of several of the wrestlers I had seen over the years, who had let their insatiable need for women dominate and eventually destroy their lives. It’s like a sickness, as real as any addiction I’ve ever seen and probably
equally damaging both emotionally and financially. It’s not like I’m immune to that sickness, either; being the kid who never could get the girls, transformed into some kind of star with the very real possibility of attracting women, occasionally has me feeling like that proverbial kid in the candy store. It’s like a veritable recipe for disaster — so I just do my very best to stay out of the candy store at all times.

For many years (even decades, from what I’ve heard), the wrestling business seemed to encourage, even nurture, a certain atmosphere of disrespect from its wrestlers toward their female audience. As odd as it sounds now, I think it actually had something to do with perpetuating the legitimacy of good guys and bad guys; a “bad guy” certainly couldn’t have word getting around that he was nice to women … or, even worse, that he’d been a gentle, sensitive lover! So guys were encouraged to be kind of crummy to the girls, even if they weren’t being blatantly mean. I even had my job threatened one night in 1988, by a booker who had seen me talking to a girl in a wheelchair after the matches in Evansville, Indiana. The girl, Terri DePriest, had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and thus a limited time to live, but in the interest of remaining a “bad guy,” I was told not to let anyone see me speaking to her again. I may have really needed that job, but fortunately that was one order I deliberately disobeyed.

For the most part, much of that type of mentality has gone the way of the Burgermeister Meisterburger’s laws concerning Kris Kringle in the Rankin-Bass Claymation classic
Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.
Most of the guys in the business realize that it’s a new day and that most of those old philosophies regarding women no longer pertain to them. Still, there’s this subtle sense of disrespect for women that occasionally rears its ugly head, and it’s almost always the wrestler who pays the ultimate price in the end (whether they realize it or not).

I don’t claim to know everything about successful relationships (even though, at twenty years, my relationship has to be some sort of pro-wrestling record), but I can advise any prospective wrestler not to
fall into the trap of disrespecting women that has led to so many failed relationships with dire financial and emotional consequences.

It bothers me to hear any wrestler still talking about female fans in a derogatory fashion (the common names are
ring rat
,
arena rat
, or just plain
rat
) just because someone had the poor judgment to physically associate with them. Guys should be flattered that women would want to watch them, let alone sleep with them. In so many cases, wrestlers who break into the business without learning to respect women end up lonely, miserable, and destitute, and I’m pretty sure there is a correlation. And, if I hear of any wrestler messing around with Rohypnol (roofies — the date rape drug), I will do whatever is in my power to make sure they never get booked again.

Look, I know that wrestlers are targets: for women, for fights, for lawsuits. Just try to remember that as a wrestler you are a public personality with a bull’s-eye on your back. Check IDs, never assume that no means yes, and try to stay out of places where drunk people hang out. I know that seems difficult, and kind of uncool, but unless you have this real need to spend time in court, watching your hard-earned money go to some drunk in a bar who probably deserved the beating he got, find a new hobby. There’s nothing wrong with being a nerd these days. Hey, half the TNA crew stays in their hotel rooms with their video games, or tweeting, or texting, or possibly even reading. If I could recommend one specific talent to a wrestler who wants to hold on to some of the money he (or she) has made, it would be “enjoy the act of doing nothing.” Enjoy being by yourself in a hotel room, or on a beach, or in front of a computer screen watching, um, movies … in moderation, of course. You know, if I was sure I could do it without getting busted by my children, I just might do it, too.

No matter what we get paid, wrestlers work hard for their money. There is a physical and emotional toll for everything we do in the ring. No one gets out of the business without paying some kind of price. So do yourselves a favor and save as much money as you can. As much as you can, whenever you can, for as long as you can. No
matter how good you might think you are, or how much you might think you’ll make, everyone is just one wrong move, one bad bump, one missed step, from being out of a job. No one should think of the wrestling business as a lifetime job or a right to make a good living. With TNA in the picture more wrestlers of different looks can get a fair shot. But there are still only fifty or so really good jobs for the thousands that want them, and most of those thousands are going to be putting an awful lot of faith in one man’s whim. I used to sit in on production meetings when I did some announcing for that man’s company. And that man I’m making reference to, Vince McMahon, well, he kind of changes his mind for any reason he wants, or for no reason at all. So a wrestler, no matter how good, or how popular, or how filled with potential, should probably not rest all his financial dreams, professional hopes, and sense of personal self on the whims of a somewhat impulsive billionaire.

The wrestling business is filled with lists of guys who
made
a fortune, and guys who are
worth
a fortune … and it’s
not
the same list. Believe me, there are some big spenders in the business, guys who believe that the good times are never going to end, who have very little, if anything, to show for a lifetime of hard work. On the other hand, there are wrestlers who made steady but never really big money, who nonetheless get to call their own shots in life because they were smart enough to save and invest the money they made, and realized that the business might not always be there to take care of them.

Speaking of being smart — the real world can be a tough place, and you may eventually need every brain cell you can spare. Get as much of an education as you can, so that you’ll have something to fall back on in the event that your life doesn’t work out exactly as you would have booked it.

On one of the last days of my WWE stay, when few outside of the front office staff knew of my imminent departure, I asked if I could address the wrestlers in one of the regular talent meetings, held every few weeks. I’m sure there were a couple of anxious moments
for the front office staff on hand as I made my way to the front of the room.

“Look, I don’t know how many of you follow the stock market, but it’s down right now, and it might be a good time to start thinking about funding your own retirement.”

I had asked the developmental wrestlers in Ohio Valley and Florida a year earlier if any of them had heard of a Simplified Employee Pension plan. Two or three wrestlers in each place had heard of such a thing. A total of one replied that he had started funding his own retirement through an SEP. I explained that it might seem like it was way too soon to start thinking about retirement, but that no one gets out of the business without paying a price, and the very least they owed themselves was the hope of a dignified retirement and the chance of passing some money down to their heirs.

WWE Hall of Famer Gerald Brisco later remarked that it had been the most important thing said all day. I laughed and said, “Do you think anyone listened?”

“Well, Mick, if just one person listened, it would be worth it.”

Something tells me he was giving our wrestlers way too much credit. Something tells me that very few of them have — but that somewhere down the line, most of them will complain that there is no retirement or pension plan for wrestlers. Look, it would be really nice if a retirement fairy or an insurance fairy floated down and started bestowing nice things like that on us. But it’s not likely to happen. And until it does, it’s really up to you to take the initiative and do the right thing when you’re young enough for it to matter.

I think that wrestlers in general have trouble believing in their own mortality, or in the eventuality of their own decline. Wrestling is objective, and rare is the worker I have met who isn’t convinced they’ve still got it. In baseball, it’s so much easier; if you can’t get around on a fastball, you and everyone else is going to know. Wrestling is full of dreamers and the easily confused; guys who perform in front of a symphony of silence and then come back to the dressing
room, claiming to have had that “silent heat.” We don’t tend to draw those guys who look to get health insurance when they are young and healthy, and insurance is relatively cheap. Although even “relatively cheap” is all relative these days. We don’t draw too many guys who get into the business thinking about compounding interest on their SEP plans when they’re twenty years old. Because if we all thought logically about the future, we’d never get involved in a business like wrestling.