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Eric E. Jenkins |
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| Introduction |
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The sport of professional wrestling has been around for many years. Some say that it dates back to George Hackenschmidt, who is said to have won the first professional wrestling world title in 1905. Others have said that it dates back even further, to the days of former President Abraham Lincoln. Whatever, the true lineage is, professional wrestling has become one of the most profitable ventures in professional sports, primarily because there is no off-season. Professional wrestling functions year round. Because professional wrestlers perform year round, the rigors on the bodies of the performers become so great that the need for pain relief medicine becomes so overwhelming that some wrestlers have difficulty leading regular lives without it. The competition within the business is so great that the inability to perform creates situations where either the wrestler performs in whatever state he or she is currently in or there are 5-10 other people waiting in line to assume that wrestler’s spot. Professional wrestlers, at least in Vince McMahon’s view, should be bigger-than-life characters who burst off the television screen and into the viewer’s living rooms each week. Many wrestlers just do not have the genetic makeup to be extra large men, so they turn to steroids and growth hormones to make up the difference. Until recently, there was never any serious drug testing policy in place in professional wrestling. It always seemed as if it were more important to look good on screen and in the ring than to be healthy. Many wrestlers, even if they have not been competing for an extended period, have endured a lifetime’s worth of injuries and pain because of the maneuvers that they execute each night in an effort to stand out from the rest of the wrestlers. Though professional wrestling usually consists of scripted matches with predetermined outcomes, some of the more “extreme” moves and spots have been known to cause more injury at a quicker rate than 20 years of body slams and elbow drops. Pain medicines, usually mixed with alcohol and illegal drugs like cocaine are usually called upon to get some wrestlers “back into the game”. I am not saying that every wrestler who dies young is as the result of drug use. Brady Boone and the legendary Junkyard Dog died in car crashes. Dino Bravo was executed by organized crime figures in Montreal. Even wrestling pioneer Frank Gotch died four months shy of his 40th birthday from kidney failure that was brought on by food poisoning. Many great wrestlers have died young from things other than drug overdoses or a heart attack stemming from steroid and painkiller abuse, but the numbers of young men dying from drug use in professional wrestling is growing each year. I have been a fan of professional wrestling for over 30 years and I enjoy watching people do things that I am not humanly able to do myself. The bigger than life characters and events have always been appealing to me, to my son, and many of my friends. However, when men my age and younger, that appear to be at their peak physically, just drop dead without explanation, I am saddened by this. This book is not an attempt to destroy the professional wrestling industry in any way. It is simply a celebration of some of the men (and one woman) who, as the title suggests, died too soon. The men and woman in this book are some of the greatest wrestlers in the modern history of the sport. More importantly, they have some of the greatest stories in the sport and their deaths were felt in America, in Japan, in Canada, in Mexico, in Puerto Rico and all over the world. Wherever fans tune in to see professional wrestling, wherever fans line up to buy tickets to attend live shows, and wherever fans buy DVD’s and videotapes of their favorite wrestlers or pay-per-view shows, the people in this book, and the many others who have died in the prime of their careers, will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.
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