Drawing Back the Curtain

The term pro wrestling brings up a myriad of images. To some a pageant of athletic skill and drama. Others view it as the lowest common denominator on television. Some see it as a mild distraction from everyday life. The sport in itself can be a collection of all those things, but the true nature of pro wrestling is not shown in the ring or during backstage interviews and promos. It is in the locker room and behind the scenes. The lives of the men and women who participate in pro wrestling are as varied and complex as the business itself.

In this past week pro wrestling has been in the media spotlight across North America with the death of Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy and son Daniel. The circumstances surrounding the strange and terrifying acts that took place in the Benoit household in suburban Atlanta are not unique to wrestlers but it is perhaps the most extreme example of the damage that pro wrestling can do to a person.

Wrestlers themselves are an incredible contradiction. They are imposing physical specimens, yet are often self-conscious about their looks and body size. They have towering egos, even arrogance but can be so insecure they can become addicted to drugs like steroids for fear of not fitting a specific body mold. Their persona in the ring is often swaggering and boastful while in the locker rooms and in the real world they can be timid, broken and even self destructive. I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to former wrestler Glen Kulka for his candid and often eye opening interview about the show that goes on behind the curtain in a profession that, in Glen words, is like no other.

Being a pro wrestler isn't easy. The life is one of constant travel and work. There is no off season for wrestlers, only the days in between shows, which can be anywhere from two to as many as five per week. Family life is hard to maintain as the job takes you across the country and even over seas. When Glen made his attempt to break into wrestling, he saw first hand how hard it is.

"When I started I had no idea what it was like. There were guys in there with me who had been in the business for years and grown up around people in it who knew what they were in for, but I didn't." Glen told me in a phone interview. Things on the road are not made any easier by what goes on behind the scenes. Despite what some may tell you, life in the locker room is no Fraternity House.

"It's every man for himself. There were more fights in the locker room then there were in the ring on most nights. There were friendships, but it was mostly cliques and a lot of them were about money, the guy's who had it and the guys who wanted it. There is a lot more conflict in the locker room then people realize." Perfectly understandable when you have a room full of Alpha males all looking for their next paycheck, but certainly not a healthy work environment. It is, however, part of a business that breeds heavy competitiveness, which leads to some of wrestlings biggest problems, substance abuse.

The fact is wrestlers simply cannot avoid the travel, work and injuries wrestling brings upon them. It is hard to avoid substance abuse, be it alcohol, steroids or pain killers because of the rigors the in-ring demands put a wrestlers body through. While steroids and other performance enhancing drugs get the headlines, pain killers are perhaps just as widespread.

"It was accepted to a degree." Kulka told me. "More often then not the attitude was 'That's his thing, it's none of my damn business'. It was sort of an understanding that that sort of thing was going to happen." Glens view on the matter is interesting because when he made his attempt to get into wrestling the sport itself was at an interesting crossroads. Back then some getting hit in the head with a chair or smashed through a table was often the high-light of the nights main event. Today, however, those actions take place in almost every match.

"I can't see how the problem couldn't have gotten worse. The risk of injury and the short length of a wrestlers career means you have to work as often as possible, most times through injuries." was Glen response to my query on the state of todays wrestling shows and the more extreme nature of the stunts being performed. This grueling and unrelenting pain that wrestlers put themselves through every night is also the reason why the life expectancy for wrestlers is shockingly low.

Since 1985 ninety-seven former and current wrestlers under the age of sixty have passed away. Many of those deaths have been attributed to the lifestyle wrestling demands of it's performers. While there is no hard evidence or conclusive studies performed to show precisely how much the profession played a role in their deaths, the fact that so many have died(roughly sixty of those who have died in the last twenty years were under the age of fifty) is a disturbing statistic.

There have been stories and rumors about wrestlers even organizing death pools and placing bets over who they think would die in the coming year. "I never saw it in an organized fashion" Glen told me. "But you certainly would see guy's commenting or joking about other wrestlers. You'd see some big name wrestler walk into the bathroom and shoot himself full of steroids ten minutes before a match because he was so insecure about his body image, you couldn't help but make a joke about how much longer you think he has left to live. You'd see guy's talking and joking about who they just saw stick a needle into themselves all the time." That grown men would develop such a casual and morbid sense of humor about the life expectancy of their co-workers tells you a lot about how harsh things are for them.

The WWE has been adamant about it's steroids testing policy. It has an independent company that does blood and urine tests randomly and wrestlers have been suspended over the last few years for failing tests. This came up as a result of the untimely death of Eddie Guerrero and I applaud Vince MacMahon for his efforts to clean up his company. Glen views on the subject offer a different perspective.

"I don't think the public needs to know what kind of test wrestlers fail. They do need to know there is a problem and that the promotions are doing their best to clean it up. The fans need to understand what steroids do and the drugs effect on the future health of those who use it. Wrestling companies need to focus on repeat offenders and give more education on the substances and there effects on the body. The difficulty is competitiveness breeds problems and with the egos and cliques back stage it's hard for guys to stay clean."

All of those issues are further compounded by the internal conflicts wrestlers find in themselves. Many times the man you see on camera is not the man back stage. Wrestlers have a variety of problems, some minor, some deep-rooted and harmful. I asked Glen if he ever thought wrestling promotions would start to employ psychiatrists or have wrestlers see one every now and again, he didn't think it would ever happen.

"It would open up a Pandora's Box. They know they have employees, potentially lots of them, with issues that they'd rather not know about. It would be to risky for the public eye to get a view of just how many f*cked up people are in the business. It would have an effect on profits, and that's what the business boils down to, money."

So does pro wrestling need a union? "Not a union, no." was Glens answer "But they do a Players Association or something to that effect. Someone to represent the wrestlers and bring their need and problems to ownerships attention and get something done about them."

Perhaps if wrestling promotions had taken the initiative and started something like that years ago more men and women involved in the business would be alive today. I'm not saying it would have prevented the horrors that took place at the Benoit home this past weekend, I'm not that naive. What I am saying is that if wrestlers had more protection, both from the business and at times themselves, their post-wrestling lives and sometimes untimely deaths would stop being talk show fodder.