Pro Wrestler Shawn Daivari Speaks On Recent Deaths In Wrestling

Former TNA, WWE and ROH star Shawn Daivari shares his views on the recent deaths in Professional Wrestling. This is one of the more heartfelt and honest opinions I've ever seen from a performer in the industry. To read this blog and others from Daivari go to http://shawndaivari.wordpress.com/

I haven’t written a blog in a while and I’m kinda thinking about just doing a fluff piece before this one, because I don’t want my first blog in a while to be a "Debbie Downer." As I’m sure you can tell by the title this is obviously going to be one about wrestlers who died, a few in particular, so it’ll be a sad write up. I was thinking about doing something funny or campy first and post this a just a day or two later, but who knows. At the rate August just went another wrestler might die, possibly tragically, and it really wouldn’t be the right time then either.

I think I have the personality of an addict without the drug addiction. For some reason all my closest friends, outside of the wrestling industry, as well as in it are either drunks or drug addicts. It happens way to often to be a coincidence. I think there’s something about a drug addicts personality that either I posses myself which draws me to them as friends, or on some level for me, an addict is a good friend. I have no idea. But almost all my friends have an addiction problem of some sort.

Because of that reason I also have a friends that are recovered or recovering drug addicts. Since I have a few friends that were able to kick the habit, and I was able to talk to them candidly about it, I have an opinion or a hypothesis. I’m not right, Vince McMahon is not right, Dixie Carter isn’t right, and everyone else isn’t wrong. There’s not enough evidence to prove one way or another about the issue, and human beings are to sporadic and random to apply a general formula to all of them. There is nothing that we can point the finger at with 100% certainty. But my personal belief is pro-wrestling DOES NOT cause the use and abuse of drugs. Pro-Wrestling IS NOT responsible for the death of several wrestlers who unfortunately passed away to soon. I believe addicts are addicts because of their mental and or genetic structure, and that if they worked at McDonalds, or Wal-Mart their story would be the same. Now obviously that’s not 100% true because I don’t know anyone who works at McDonalds that can afford to blow thousands of dollars a week on their drug habit, but that’s not to say if they were a lawyer, a dentist, or a lotto winner the tragic ending of their life would be any different.

I wanna share a game that me and a colleague play. Game is not a good name for it. A game is a competition where you have a winner and a loser. Usually done for fun or sport. This is not fun or sporting for anyone, and there definitely aren’t any winners. I guess this is more of an experiment, or an investigation. Starting with when Trent Acid passed away (June 2010) this colleague of mine got word before I did. And when he received the TXT message on his phone he let out a "HOLY SHIT!" and right away, I knew. My first question to him was "Who died?" followed immediately by "wait…don’t tell me. Let me see if I can guess." And we proceeded to play a game of 20 Questions. By I think question 7 or 8, much to my sadness, I guessed Trent Acid and was correct. We’ve since played this game 4 more times since and we’re only about 60 days from when we started. Even worse is we have a 100% success rate with either or having the news, and either or asking the questions. With the exception of Luna’s passing, all of which we guessed correctly prior to question #10.

The reason I made that private "game" public is because I want to explore another possible entity to maybe point the fingers at. Some say pro-wrestling is killing these people. Some say it’s themselves. I want to open the forum to look at the possibility that we may be some what responsible, maybe not for their deaths, but definitely for not interfering. The reason we’re able to guess who these people are who passed away with a 100% success rate is because we knew, to some degree, that they needed help. And we knew, to some degree, if they didn’t get help they were going to die to soon. Of all the wrestlers that died to soon and to young in 2010 I was told, had seen, or had heard SPECIFICALLY that these people had problems and needed help. When I last saw Trent he looked in rough shape. A few months later I asked a mutual friend how he was doing, and I was told not good. A few months later he passed away. When I last saw Lance Cade he didn’t look well. When I asked some colleagues from All-Japan how Lance was doing on the tours, they said they were concerned. I never had the opportunity of meeting Luna, but on a recent tour some people very close to her told me about her day to day life, and on that same tour I asked a different colleague about how JC Bailey has been and was told by this man he hopes for JC’s well being that he straightens his life out.

All these people are no longer with us. If I directly saw, or heard from someone close to them that they thought something foul was a foot, perhaps if I made the effort to intervene they’d still be with us. Not saying that I would have been successful, as an addict will only recover if they want to for themselves. Not for anyone else or at the mandate of anyone. Court order rehabilitation rarely works unless the defendant wants to clean their life up. But perhaps just the confrontation of a friend, or family member, a loved one, or in my case; a colleague, could be the proverbial "straw that breaks the camels back" to make this person WANT to seek help for him or herself.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is as a friend, as a co-worker, I’ve seen people that need help. I can tell when someone is not in control of their habit. And I’ve said nothing. Maybe my words would have fallen on deaf ears. But it doesn’t hurt to ask. It wouldn’t hinder our working relationship, or our relationship as friends. And best case scenario these words might hit close to home and have this person seek the help they need. I’m a co-worker. If I see these things, perhaps there’s personal friends, or family who see more of it, more directly, and more often. The same thing should apply. You can point fingers all you want as to who caused these problems, or what promoter or line of work did this to your loved one. But if your correct in your accusation, or convince the world to incorrectly agree with your finger-pointing, it still doesn’t help your loved one. Without finger-pointing, your loved one is a victim. With finger-pointing, correct or incorrect, your loved one is still a victim. If we’re not going to make the effort to ask our loved ones, our friends, our co-workers, if they need help, we can point fingers at ourselves just as much as anyone else. And we’d be correct. And our loved one would still be the victim. But if we do make the effort, the best-case scenario is much, much, much better then the worse-case scenario. And the only thing we can with 100% certainty point the finger at is the worse-case scenario will happen again if we DON’T make the effort.

SD