The Dead Wrestlers Society
Part III: Look For the Union Label
By Michael Frissore
Sixty-three-year-old wrestler Terry Funk wrote in his recent book More Than Just Hardcore that whereas it would have been impossible to unionize in the '80s and '90s because there were so many organizations, now would be the right time. "People have to get over that idea that a union is the enemy. It's not to put Vince [McMahon], or anyone else, out of business. It's just something to make sure something is set aside for guys who need medical care for their ring injuries."
Lenn Oddity likes the idea of a union, but questions whether it's possible. "I think many of the indie workers would benefit from a union," he told me. "But it would be very hard to have such a thing; though it would help to regulate pay and travel and not get fucked over."
One former wrestler who is against regulation in Lanny Poffo, who wrestled for Vince McMahon from 1985-1992. "Live fast. Die young. Leave a good-looking corpse," Poffo told me via e-mail. "No regulations can stop wrestlers and/or non-wrestlers from choosing to abuse their bodies. It's a matter of choice."
I read Poffo's quote to Mero. "I disagree," he said. "We've seen football and baseball cleaned up, and baseball players are just hitting a few extra home runs. They're not dying."
There are no player associations in pro wrestling as there are in football, basketball and baseball. But a union would protect wrestlers from the drugs and insane schedules. If they need time off, they could go to the union and not the promoter, and they wouldn't have to pay for their own hotel rooms, car rentals and gas. Maybe there would be fewer deaths in hotel rooms and on the road.
Ultimate Fighting, now one of the biggest sports in the country, was once banned thanks to an investigation pushed for by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the '90s. In response, the UFC increased its cooperation with state athletic commissions and changed its rules, taking out the more unsettling elements of fights and gradually re-branding itself. Pro wrestling needs a John McCain. While boxers and mixed martial arts fighters fight two or three times a year, and athletes in football, baseball, basketball and hockey have an off-season, wrestlers have to work anywhere from once or twice a week for some independents to well over 300 nights a year for the top guys if they want to get paid. There are very few guaranteed contracts in wrestling.
"When I was in the WWE," Mero said, "we were in 250 cities a year. And the problem is there's no off-season. Our Super Bowl is Wrestlemania. The next night we're wrestling again. Football players don't play again the next day."
Without a union, wrestlers shouldn't expect any kind of pension when they retire like athletes in other sports get. This is why you can go to a high school gymnasium on a Friday or Saturday night and see a wrestler whose heyday was in the '80s.
The irony is that between the schedule and the lack of regulation, pro wrestling would probably be safer if it were "real," when you look at boxing and ultimate fighting. "They have an entrance plan for wrestlers and no exit plan," Piper told Freezerbox Magazine in 2003. "Except for death. They don't give you anything, they don't set anything up for you, they just take you behind the barn and shoot you in the back. Either that or you end up setting up the ring and dying in a bottle of whiskey."
In Bloodstained Memoirs, Piper discusses his friend, wrestler Bruiser Brody. In 1988 Brody was wrestling in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and was murdered in the locker room by a fellow wrestler for refusing to job (wrestling speak for taking a dive). "What part of it is fake?" Piper asks.
In his book, Piper says Brody's murderer was another victim of The Sickness.
The term, "The Sickness," I think, is the right one. As Piper said, fans and wrestlers both get it. I've had The Sickness myself, whether it was wrestling with friends growing up or attending matches. I was in Revere, Massachusetts for what became known as The Mass Transit Incident on November 23, 1996, when Jerome Young, who wrestles as New Jack, cut 350-pound Eric Kulas, wrestling as Mass Transit, so badly on the forehead that EMTs had to assist as fans chanted, "Rest in peace!" Young was subsequently charged with assault and battery, and he and ECW were sued by the Kulas family. He was also banned from wrestling in Massachusetts for two or three years afterward. He later escaped both conviction and civil liability when it was revealed that Kulas lied about his age, telling ECW he was 19 instead of 17, and that he lied about having been trained by retired wrestler Killer Kowalski. Kulas, New Jack and every fan in attendance had The Sickness that night.
Kulas died in 2002 at the age of 22 due to complications from gastric bypass surgery.
I was at the same venue just a month or so before for a match between Tommy Dreamer and "Primetime" Brian Lee, cheering along with everyone as they threw each other through empty seats because every fan was standing and following them around. Suddenly my eyes met with Lee's, and I said, "Oh, shit," and got out of the way as he dragged Dreamer in my direction.
My ECW experiences were The Sickness, as were the deaths of some of the men I saw wrestle in those years: Bigelow, Spicolli, Kronus, Durante, Gordy, Awesome, Candido, Dudley. All ECW guys I saw from 1996 to 2000. All are now dead. "A lot of times," Funk wrote, "I just feel numb to the news, when someone calls to tell me about another young guy in the business dying."
"Lee," Oddity said. "Other workers killing themselves... attempting to kill themselves...a lot my friends. We all need to be there in this business for each other; if not, things won't get better.
Mero started a Web site, Championofchoices.com, and goes to schools, raising awareness and education to drug abuse. And he believes regulation is possible in wrestling and that there will be hearings on Capitol Hill, during he hopes to speak.
"Imagine a bigger name dies," he said. "And we say, 'Why didn't we do something in 2007?'"
I've started getting sick feelings in my stomach whenever I hear about another death. There's a website updated regularly that lists wrestler deaths. I used to check it every couple of months. Now I check it almost daily. I'll see a new, unrecognizable name and hope the guy was in his 70s.
"Regulations?" Poffo wrote to me. "That's always corruption. We need less government, not more." But something needs to be done. Former Illinois Department of Professional Regulation Director Leonard Sherman once said, "It's not a legitimately contested sporting event. If we regulate wrestling, we might as well be regulating plays and the circus."
This is the kind of thinking that men like Mero and Piper have been up against. But look up CZW, Combat Zone Wrestling, on YouTube and watch one of the video montages. It's a wonder that, thus far, the only wrestler from this promotion to die has been Chris Cash, of a motorcycle accident, in 2005.
Or watch a backyard wrestling DVD. The Sickness is all too clear — and it's anything but a joke. And regulation is long overdue.
The Dead Wrestlers Society has many faces to it, from teenagers to ring veterans. There are many Eddie Guerreros and Chris Benoits with tribute pages and videos dedicated to them. But there are also kids who didn't have thousands of fans. Kids who wrestled in Elks halls, high school gymnasiums, Moose Lodges, armories and Veterans Clubs. Kids who dreamed of wrestling stardom. You won't find tributes to most of them, or even their matches, on YouTube. A lot of these men and women are just names on a list. Kids who wrestled regularly or semi-regularly in front of less than 50 people. Take a look at the number of memorial shows throughout any given year. It's getting to where you could attend a couple per week. Then think of Dave Finlay on Nancy Grace defending Vince McMahon and saying, "It's only wrestlers that die?" instead of saying someone should do something to help the younger wrestlers. Or think of Finlay telling Marc Mero that wrestlers make enough money to buy health insurance and retirement funds, forgetting about guys like Lenn Oddity, who have to pay for things out of their own pocket, like Finlay once had to do.
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These kids, the ones who passed on without the fans or the tribute pages and videos, they're just names on a list. You can go through The Sun's list or any of the countless dead wrestler lists on the Internet and see nothing but a wrestler's real name, wrestling name, date of death, age at time of death and maybe how they died, which is often listed as "Heart attack" or "Unknown," with many discrepancies from site to site.
Below are ten such individuals, ranging in age from 19 to 34, a few of the less famous members of the Dead Wrestlers Society.
10. Dr. Destruction
Real name: John L. Coggeshall
Died: April 4, 2004
Cause: In-ring heart attack
Age: 34
John Coggeshall was a computer programmer and part-time
wrestler who co-founded Main
Event Wrestling, an organization that began as a backyard
wrestling league and rose to the point of running charity
shows in the Rhode Island area.
Coggeshall was wrestling a match at an Elks Club with
two young men, 18 and 19 years old. One of the youngsters
jumped from the ropes and landed on Coggeshall. Both then
fell onto the mat and landed on the other wrestler. When
the other two men got up to continue the match, Coggeshall
didn't move. He was taken to Rhode Island Hospital and died
of cardiac arrest.
Other heart attack deaths listed by The Sun: Biff
Wellington, Billy Joe Travis, Emory Hale, Jeep Swenson,
"Lethal" Larry Cameron, "Delicious" Dave Vicious, Jimmy
Hustler, Alex Lovett, Tiger Khan.
9. "Bad Boy" Basil Bozinis
Died: February 18, 2002
Cause: Drug overdose
Age: 26
As a teenager, California wrestler Basil Bozinis finished
third in the 1994 Team National Bodybuilding and Fitness
Championship. He wrestled for Ultimate Pro Wrestling and
was once part of a UPW vs. NFL tough man special on FX. He was under a developmental contract with
the WWE at the time of his death, which he signed around
the same time as fellow UPW wrestler John Cena. Medical
examiners found heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and the
painkiller Nubain in his system after his death. He was
also a heavy steroid user.
Like many of the independent grapplers in the Dead Wresters Society, it's
difficult to find a lot of information about Bozinis. In
fact, The Sun listed him as "Bad Boy Brazil" in their "104
wrestlers" list.
Other drug overdoses listed: Art Barr, Buzz Sawyer,
Dave Casanova, The Stud.
8. Yukon Braxton
Real name: Jeffrey O. Dingess
Died: December 30, 2002
Cause: Brian aneurysm during sleep
Age: 24
At nearly seven feet tall, Michigan wrestler Jeffrey Dingess
impressed many with his skills in the ring. In fact, the
champion of promotions such as Xtreme Intense Championship
Wrestling, Great Lakes Wrestling and Independent Wrestling
Revolution, he once defeated Jerry "the King" Lawler. After
the match the two became friends and Lawler pulled some
strings to get Dingess a WWE tryout. The tryout was scheduled
for January 2003. Dingess died on December 30, 2002. He
had a wife, Dawn, and a young son.
The cause of Dingess's death is listed as "Unknown" in
The Sun; one wrestler who is listed as having died from
a brain aneurysm is Russ Hardman.
7. Axis
Real name: Steven Ranton
Died: March 27, 2007
Cause: Suicide
Age: 22
Steven Ranton wrestled for the Independent Wrestling Federation
and other independent promotions. He had wrestled in a few
dozen matches, but his true love was the theater. He was
a theater student a the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania,
having acted in the Players' productions of Dead Man
Walking, The Crucible, Urinetown and others.
He was also a director and writer, who, upon graduating,
planned on trying to become a working actor in New York.
Ranton was due to graduate in May 2007. In March, he committed
suicide by setting himself on fire.
6. Devil Bhudakhan
Real name: James Fawcett
Died: July 12, 2007
Cause: Suicide
Age: 31
Pittsburgh grappler James Fawcett wrestled in a mask as
"Devil Bhudakhan." He was a huge Chris Benoit fan. So much
so that he patterned his own wrestling style after that
of the "The Canadian Crippler." Just five weeks after Benoit
killed his wife and son, and then hung himself, Fawcett
was found dead in his home. He had also hung himself. Whether
this was a coincidence no one can say. Fawcett was also
despondent over his wife leaving him just weeks earlier.
Other suicides listed: Ed Gantner, Kerry Von Erich,
Chris Von Erich, Mike Awesome, Mitch Snow, Lee Estabrook,
Big E. Sleaze.
Not listed: Tojo Yamamoto, Eddie Graham.
5. Brian Ong
Died: May 28, 2001
Cause: Injury while training
Age: 27
Brian Ong began training at All Pro Wrestling's school
in Hayward, Calif. in March 2001. Two months later he
was asked to volunteer to take a move called a "flapjack"
from a seven foot, 400-pound wrestler named Dalip Singh,
who now wrestles for WWE as The Great Khali. After the move,
Ong, a 175-pound man, was disoriented and suffered a head
injury. It was the second slam that killed him.
In 2005, Ong's family won a $1.34 million lawsuit against
APW and its owner. The jury unanimously found the promotion
liable for recklessness. A Great Khali fan site says that
Ong was the third volunteer and that, while the first two
were unharmed, Ong took the move incorrectly both times.
Ong was not on The Sun list, probably because it was a
training accident and he wasn't a pro yet.
4. Branden Starr
Died: June 6, 2004
Cause: Injury while training
Age: 19
Branden Starr started training with his friend BJ Walker
at the School of Hard Knocks in San Bernardino, Calif.,
a school associated with the Empire Wrestling Federation.
He missed a few workouts and even brought his girlfriend
to classes, a mistake according to the EWF owner as it put
Starr "in a situation of wanting to show off."
After being slammed to the mat by an experienced wrestler
named Ragin' Dawg, the young man who loved science fiction
and computers lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital.
He was taken into surgery and went into a coma. It was discovered
he had suffered a stroke. His last words were, "That was
a good one."
Reasons for Starr's death were later discussed on message
boards. Some said he had a mild heart condition and had
been abusing ephedra. Some say he suffered from a brain
aneurysm. Walker said that, "He wouldn't listen all the
time and wasn't always tucking his chin."
Starr's mother filed a lawsuit against the EWF, believing
her son's death was not an accident.
3. The Diva
Real name: Kelly S. Tabor
Died: December 22, 2002
Cause: Unknown/Died at home
Age: 28
By her own words, GLORY wrestler Kelly Tabor had "absolutely
no delusions of making it to WWE." She was on the Dean's
List in college and working full time at a bank, in addition
to going through wrestling training three nights a week.
She planned to get her degree at Purdue University and teach
high school chemistry.
Tabor loved to do charity work and loved being a "heel"
(a "bad guy" in wrestling). She wrote in her GLORY profile,
"Right now I wrestle for fun, if you can call busted lips,
cuts and bruises fun!"
The cause of Tabor's death is listed on many Web sites
as "Unknown." Other "unknowns" in The Sun and other sites
include Joey Maggs, J Prodigy, Jerry Oski, Randy Mansfield,
Jimmy Beal (whose age is also listed with a "?"), Trae Kellar,
Xtreme and Adam Marks.
2. Tony Nash
Died: August 5, 2000
Cause: In ring injury
Age: 30
At 6'3" and 300 pounds, Tony Nash got his first chance
to wrestle a match after four months of training when one
wrestler with Wisconsin All-Star Wrestling couldn't make
it to the sports bar at which the matches were being held
that night. His opponent, who was 23, 6'5" and 240 pounds,
executed a flip that sent Nash crashing neck-first into
the mat.
Nash, a parking checker for the Milwaukee Police Department,
was engaged and had a two-year-old son, Tony Jr. According
to his aunt, Nash kept his wrestling secret from his mother,
who did not approve.
Carmine DeSpirito, owner of Mid American Wrestling in
Milwaukee, commented on the increasing number of backyard
wrestlers and semiprofessional groups in the Milwaukee area
after Nash's death. "There's so many of these little groups,"
he said. "They're not professionals; they don't have professionals
training them. [They] are just mimicking what they see on
TV, and all of a sudden they are going to get hurt."
1. The Spider
Real name: Daniel M. Quirk
Died: May 28, 2005
Cause: In ring injury
Age: 22
There's a four-minute tribute
video to Dan Quirk on YouTube. This kid could wrestle.
He held multiple junior heavyweight titles and attended
clinics held by Christopher Daniels and Tom Prichard.
Quirk died after missing a move called a moonsault at
a UCW event at an American Legion in Taunton, Massachusetts.
The maneuver was performed outside the ring and Quirk smacked
his head on the floor. He was knocked unconscious immediately
and the match was stopped when blood became visible on the
floor.
After hearing of Quirk's death, Dan Mirade of the Millennium
Wrestling Federation and danmirade.com
wrote, "What most fans of mainstream wrestling don't
realize is what a corrupt business it is that they're fans
of... Back in the 'good ole days' not EVERYONE that wanted
to be a professional wrestler could be one... There are
dozens if not hundreds of 'schools' in operations in this
country. How many of them are operated by a mark [a fan who believes that some or all of professional wrestling is real] that belongs
sitting at home watching it on TV, someone that was never
trained properly themselves?
"These schools," Mirage went on, "will continue to mis-train and horrible shows will continue to ruin what the pros used
to do... What's even sadder... is that there are many Dan
Quirk situations waiting to happen. For his sake and his
family's sake, I hope that wrestling can police itself and
weed out those that don't belong."
Others listed who have died in the ring include Mark Mendian,
masked Mexican wrestler Oro and Japanese wrestlers Emiko
Kado, Masakazu Fukuda and Plum Mariko.
Email Michael Frissore at mfrissore at hotmail dot com
— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)
