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3 concussions on 1 ROH show, 2 wrestlers back next night


Bix

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But if you're watching wrestling with new eyes now, I kinda have to wonder what you were watching before.

I can't speak for your own experiences, but I became a wrestling fan at age 7. I think most people would tell you that the way they saw the world at 7 and the way they saw the world at 23 were very different.

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But if you're watching wrestling with new eyes now, I kinda have to wonder what you were watching before.

Eghads... people have been saying this stuff for more than a decade. It wasn't just with Foley-Taker and HitC. One can go back more than five years before that and find Meltzer talking about the dangers and issue.

 

Of course he would then turn aroud and give **** to a match where Kikuchi is getting dropped on the back his head a dozen times. And someone like me still finds that Kikuchi match pretty memorable, even knowing what became of Kikichi within a few months of it.

 

But still...

 

Talk of damage has been going on for years. It's not just a current fad indy thing, or a Benoit kills the family thing. People were talking about this in 96 with ECW (and all the ECW Rubes defending their promotion and working style to the death), and people talked about Benoit's working still even before the neck went out. To many of this, the discussions rub up against The Same Old Shit we've been talking about for more than a decade. There simply are a few things better understood such as concussions.

 

 

John

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Not really addressing you, John... from what I've seen, you've always been pretty consistent about acknowledging the darker sides to wrestling. Also not singling out S.L.L., who's made a point of feeling conflicted about this stuff. I'm directing this more towards the former stiffness marks who are acting shocked all of a sudden that this stuff actually hurts people. A lot of the same people who took joy in deriding Lance Storm's weak chairshots now act horrified when somebody throws a stiff one. Come on. Y'all knew better all along, and you know it.

 

The idea that concussions are irreparably damaging to one's health is hardly new; Sports Illustrated covered that in detail in the '90s. Nowitzki's findings were simply that they were *more* damaging than previously thought, which doesn't really change the equation that much. Bret retired due to concussions, concussions that caused him to have a stroke a couple years later... we've all watched a shitload of high-impact wrestling since then. Hell, wrestling killed Eddie more surely than it killed any of the Benoits.

 

I can understand feeling weird about watching wrestling now. What I object to is the "how can these retards do this to themselves in light of the Benoit tragedy" tone. The Benoit tragedy didn't change a goddamn thing about wrestling. Just because some fans are arbitrarily catching feelings because of it doesn't mean all the workers are going to.

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On Loss's point, I grew up a WWF fan in the northeast, where of course they draw frequent criticism from smart fans for their half-speed, watered down product. I watch matches from Madison Square Garden in the 1970s and '80s, and you'd be at a loss to find the unsafe spots they use in a match. Even Slaughter/Sheik, the most brutal match the WWF produced in that era, is just two good bladejobs. You can make an exciting gimmick match without taking a lot of risks. Of course they had other problems in that era, namely recreational drug use stemming from working guys eight times a week for months on end. That's become better.

 

I don't have a hard time watching the current product. Then again I don't watch much outside of WWE, so I don't see Ring of Honor and those type shows. The stuff with McGuinness and Danielson hearkens back to the days of Tommy Dreamer killing himself for ECW. Of course the irony of that is that Dreamer ended up with a cushier job than some of the workers who fled for big money in WCW. That's a side issue. I always felt that Benoit was a domestic issue first and foremost and that wrestling was circumstance. I AM more concerned with workers running a high-risk style that may leave them in constant pain or crippled later in life. (I was going to cite Harley Race, but he had vehicular crashes unrelated to wrestling.)

 

I don't have a problem enjoying wrestling as long as the stupid behavior is cut out. Ladder matches for example, I think a good wrestling company should put them on the shelf for awhile. For a time they've been done every three months or more. That is too much, and workers are hurting themselves trying to top the last one and get over. Fans are not going to react to it anymore. Work looser. Fans know it's fake, you're not going to disappoint them if something doesn't look exactly right.

I'm not even sure that wrestling half-speed is necessary, at least not for everyone. I hate to use him as a standard because he's sort of a freak of nature, but Ric Flair certainly didn't wrestle half-speed, neither in his schedule nor his style. He took the bump from the top rope to the mat at least once probably every night he worked for 15-20 years, if no longer. He also wrestled a pretty athletic style. He's nearly 60 years old, and is in far better shape than guys like Hulk Hogan, who wrestled much safer. I wanted to use Nash as an example, but Nash also entered wrestling with bad knees from basketball, so that doesn't seem fair.

 

Anyway, I think when the WWF switched to the hard mats at NBC's request, the risks associated with pretty standard bumps increased quite a bit. Flair didn't work on that mat for most of his big money, heavy-schedule years, while Hogan did. And the injuries from people who worked in those rings were pretty substantial.

 

I also want to point out that one very simple thing I think wrestling could do that would change things that most fans wouldn't even notice would be to stop training wrestlers to take flat back bumps. Ric Flair didn't take flat back bumps, and isn't crippled. DDP didn't take flat back bumps, and was able to wrestle a pretty physical style in his 40s and keep up for a while. When the WWF made him start doing them, his career ended within a year. Lucha stars aren't trained to bump flat on their backs, and tend to have much longer, more productive careers as a rule. I think there's something to that.

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I think you might have something there, Loss. Of all the local guys I knew, the one who had to retire youngest because he racked up the most injuries in the least time didn't do any particularly dangerous stuff, aside from the rare headdrop or floor bump. He just took really snappy back bumps, fast and hard.

 

Well, that's not counting the deathmatch psychos who liked to fall on sharp stuff. And one of my best friends who had one of those Shit Happens eye injuries from just standard work. And the one guy who shot himself and my one close friend who OD'd, but technically those aren't quite the same thing.

 

...geez, I only worked on relatively small shows for five years, and even I've personally known enough dead guys that I'd need both hands to count them, and enough early retirees to measure it in dozens.

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Someone at the F4W boards dug this up from a McGuinness interview last year.

 

Barbie asked, who has the hardest head, you’ve ever head butted? Nigel says he doesn’t know and that they all feel the same, but the ring post in Liverpool was quite an experience. OIB asks how he kept standing after that? Nigel just said the adrenaline and the crowd kept him going. He said after that he had to take a lot of time off, due to post concussion syndrome.

Yet this week, in the letter to WO.com, he said:

 

I did not willingly concuss myself last year in a match with Bryan Danielson. The headshots to which you are referring, while gruesome indeed, caused no concussion.

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Didn't DDP's injury come from that superplex spot where he pretty much had to land wrong to avoid killing Bob Holly? I remember watching that match and they landed so awkwardly Page ended up kicking Holly in the nuts on the rebound.

 

 

Also, what I fear is the "nothing will change so we shouldn't even bother trying" mindset you see in politics taking hold in regards to wrestling.

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I always felt that Benoit was a domestic issue first and foremost and that wrestling was circumstance. I AM more concerned with workers running a high-risk style that may leave them in constant pain or crippled later in life.

Posted Image

 

That's great Bix. Can you quote any studies on the matter? Is there any research considering other people with similar brain damage, and their actions? All that shows is that Benoit had unhealthy brain tissue, and he was involved in a murder/suicide. Correlation is not causation.
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I was referring more to the 2nd sentence of your post. Forgetting the murder/suicide, Benoit's Brain was still profoundly damaged.

That I certainly agree with. I think it is obvious that certain workers, such as Benoit, Dynamite Kid, etc., worked far longer than they should've been allowed given their physical states.

 

It might well be a good idea for an athletic commission to require physicals for wrestlers like they do boxers before certifying them for the ring. Of course that would eliminate the possibility of doing 30 second "angle" matches, so it's tough to say.

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According to the latest WON, Nigel just had a mild concussion and Danielson just was woozy from losing blood. NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT GUYZ!

 

 

(So the answer to the question in Bix's topic description is "yes, Dave will keep believing everything Gabe tells him")

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"Few hundred"? I once saw him, Madman Pondo, and Corporal Robinson literally rip the canvas and padding off the ring, proceed to break a few light bulbs over each other, and then bump on the glass-covered bare wooden boards. This was in front of seventy paid fans, max, on a show which didn't videotape the matches.

 

EDIT: and oh yeah, another wrestling trainee died about a week ago near Mepmhis, TN. The exact cause of death is unknown, during training he complained of being "tired"; he sat down, and apparently passed out. He was taken to the hospital, remained comatose for a few days, and then died. Details are kinda sketchy, and it seems like the bigger wrestling media hasn't noticed the story yet. Some details are here and here.

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The spot I'm referring to was against Super Dragon. It was at a PWG show, which routinely draws over a hundred folks.

 

I'm sure you're talking about IWA-MS. I used to be a fan, but they're heavily hyped matches aren't really that great. I haven't seen a show of theirs since '04, so things may have changed for the better. It's doubtful though, Ian Rotten is the boss down there.

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I'm sure you're talking about IWA-MS. I used to be a fan, but they're heavily hyped matches aren't really that great. I haven't seen a show of theirs since '04, so things may have changed for the better. It's doubtful though, Ian Rotten is the boss down there.

No, it was an indy show called CCW that ran weekly in the old Evansville Coliseum, this would've been four or five years ago. They did use a lot of IWA-MS guys, Chris Hero was there a lot. The promoter died in a motorcycle wreck a couple years back, I heard the shows kept going, but don't know if they're still around.
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