Random As Rhyme

Growing up my dad had one of those nifty boxes that got pay per view for free. This lead to the two of us watching a lot of wrestling in the late 80s and early 90s. Back then the story lines were a lot easier to follow and it was good fun. I have no idea what’s going on in wrestling now but I woke up this morning with a slight interest in tracking down some of the more popular ones from the golden years. I left out some obvious one just because most people know what happened to them.

Jake the Snake

Apparently Jake the Snake wrestled for a long time, about three decades, at various levels of profession wrestling.
However after lots of injuries (neck and back) most notably after the Honkey Tonk man smashed him with a real guitar he became addicted to pain killers, and alcohol. At one point he got so bad that he would take off his pants to show fans why he was really called the snake. It sounds like he has bouts with sobriety and relapse to this day but is trying to work out his issues.

Jake.. not at his best.

The Macho Man Randy Savage

The Macho Man, who’s real name is Randall, actually has had a pretty decent run after wrestling. He appeared in Spiderman, Slim Jim commercials, and Bolt’s growl in the new Disney movie. He has also been seen around 50 cent and had a rap album based around his fued with Hulk Hogan. Unfortunately his then wife Samantha didn’t fair so well as she died of an overdose.

Be a Man Hulk!

Mr. Perfect

I always kind of hated Mr Perfect. I thought he was a pretentious, pompus, ass. Really that’s exactly what his character was and he did a great job of portraying that. He continued wrestling after the WWF WWE and then suddenly died of an overdose in 2006.

Summerslam entrance in 1991 before fighting Bret Hart.

Bret The Hitman Hart

After the Montreal screw job, WCW, and appearing at local Pizza Pizza’s here in Ontario, Brett suffered a minor stroke in 2002 and was paralyzed for awhile. He has now fully recovered and wrote a book called “Hitman: My Real Life In The Cartoon World of Wrestling” he is not addicted to anything and seems to be living happily. He really really hates Shawn Michales. ” Asked if he had seen or spoken to Michaels since 1997, Hart said, “No. And I hope I never do…for his sake.”

Montreal Screw Job and the aftermath.

Hacksaw Jim Duggan

Hacksaw surprisingly still wrestles. Even after getting kidney cancer, but apparently if you beat cancer hard enough with a 2×4 it goes away. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The British Bulldog

Davey Boy Smith, aka The British Bulldog had the coolest beaded braids in professional wrestling. Wiki tells me he started competitive wrestling at 15, and continued doing so until the year 2000. Like many other wrestlers he developed an addiction to pain killers and eventually died of a heart attack which may have been caused by the use or steroids throughout his career.

The Ultimate Warrior

Out of all the wrestlers I have talked about today the Warrior was definaltey my favoirte. His entrances were always amazing, he would run out full speed slide into the ring and shake the living hell out of the ropes all to hard 80s guitars.Who would have though that this energetic bag of muscle would one day settle down to be a republican and motivational speaker? Well that’s exactly what happened, after getting fired from the WWE three times he decided to quit wrestling and be a talking head. Bummer.

Warrior vs Rick Rude cage match intro

This list could go on forever, but while researching for this post I learned that a staggering amount of wrestlers die before 65. It’s all documented here and actually quite a shock. No matter what anyone says wrestlers are real athletes and face real injuries. Next time you think about talking down on wrestlers remember that there is a real person behind the persona and more often than not they are suffering for your entertainment.