"Taking It Home" asks the question, How Many People Have To Die?

After an overwhelming response to my first two columns, I had spent some extra time on the third one; trying to address the many different topics brought up by the fans.  I was about to send it and then stopped upon hearing of Crash Holly's death.  You see, in a business where so many talented athletes are taken from us so often, I am left with this unanswered question... How many people have to die before the leaders in this industry do something to stop it? I'm sure this is not a question that hasn't been asked before, but I'd like to throw my two cents in and I'd love to hear your feedback.

I shared my experiences with Road Warrior Hawk with you and based on your emails, I let you know him a little better.  With Crash Holly, I didn't just have a few limited experiences... he was my friend.  I met Michael "Crash Holly" Lockwood through a mutual friend about three years ago.  He had worked for me in MCW and the last time I spoke to him was two days before he passed away to confirm his flight information for a show that he was working in Baltimore on November 22.  Talking to him on the phone, I would never have believed that this was a man who wouldn't be around by the end of the week.  He seemed happy, he was excited about moving back to California, and he didn't at all seem like someone battling addiction.  As his friend, I won't sit here and discuss any particular things he did or didn't do - I'll simply say that he wasn't a Saint but very few people are.  I'm not going to discuss anything pertaining to Crash that has not already been confirmed or suggested publicly.

One of the things I have always admired about the wrestling business is that everyone in it is family to a certain degree.  It is a wonderful thing in the sense that you have so many colleagues and in most cases, the only thing that separates you from another wrestler is how much time one of you has on TV each week.  I have found that it is a truly awful thing when it comes to deaths in this business.  I have felt personally affected by each and every death in wrestling, from someone like Stu Hart who lived a long and full life, to Crash Holly and many others who are wrongfully stolen from the world and this business before their time. The sad thing, and the thing that really bothers me, is that so many wrestlers have died from their "personal addictions" and it seems like everyone just shrugs their shoulders and says "oh well, what can you do".  Then you have fans passing judgment on the wrestling world and the higher ups just trying to shuffle them past it.

Everyone knows that addiction is a disease, just like any other disease you have to fight it with everything you've got and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  I'm no stranger to addiction, four years ago a long battle with alcoholism took my father's life, my best friend chose pain killers and cocaine over a promising wrestling career and our friendship, I've seen many of my friends have the best match of their life wrestling addictions, and I've been there too.  Am I saying that everyone in wrestling is a junkie? NO! My point is that people on the outside don't understand how easy it is to escape into addiction.  Just like those really annoying commercials on TV, no one plans to put something in their body and get addicted to it.  The guys (and girls) with problems don't buy drugs and alcohol just because they have the money, there's something you're not seeing.  There's a ladder, and they start at that first rung and that is what I'm trying to help you understand.

In 1997, I was hanging around the ECW locker room with a good friend who was working with them full-time.  My persistence paid off and one night they gave me my first ECW match with Spike Dudley.  ECW was the thing to be a part of, it was quickly becoming one of the hottest things in wrestling, and now they wanted to give me a chance.  We had just been given the finish to our match when sheer terror crept over me, I was excited, nervous, and absolutely terrified.  It didn't help to see Rick Rude, Raven, and Paul Heyman peeking through the curtain watching my match.  Naturally I wanted to bump my ass off for these guys and show them that I wanted to be a part of their product, so we were going to do the Acid Drop (now the Dudley Dog) for the finish and I hadn't taken that move before.  I hesitated for just a second, but it was long enough for me to have to rush and catch up with Spike, in doing so, as I lifted Spike off of the top turnbuckle I over-stretched my back while turning around to take the bump.  I hit the mat and thought "Oh my God, what the hell is that?"  It was like being stabbed in the lower back.  Anyone who has had really bad muscle pull to their lower back knows exactly what I'm talking about.  You can't bend over, you can't lower yourself to sit down, and it hurts to sit or stand straight.  So, I tried to be the tough guy and act like I wasn't in pain but I was doing this uncontrollable limp/hobble back to the locker room.  By the end of the show, it had become a joke for the guys I was driving with, here I was as a rookie asking the veteran guys to carry my bags - not out of disrespect, I couldn't bend over to pick them up.  So, here I am  hardly able to walk, and yet I was about to climb up my first  rung of the ladder and I didn't even know it.  One of the guys in the locker room came up to me, smacked me on the back, and said "here kid, take two of these and call me in the morning".  He told me they were Somas, a muscle relaxer, and it would relax my back - I can't say he was wrong!  About an hour into our four hour trip home, I was in heaven.  I couldn't feel the pain in my back, my fingers were tingling, my face was numb, and I didn't have a care in the world.  (Let me point out here that I wasn't driving)

No big deal, muscles get tight or pulled, I took a muscle relaxer, everything is fine.  For the next several months I was going up to ECW more and more often and began hanging out with some of the guys after the shows as well.  We'd be hanging out in one of their hotel rooms, I'd be hanging on every word they said- trying to pick their brains, these are guys that for years I had watched break into the business and make something of themselves and now I'm hanging out with them!  It is a roller coaster of emotions, you are worried about saying something stupid, excited to be in the same room with them, and trying to learn anything you can from whatever experience they share and then it happens, one of the guys pulls out the cocaine and everyone takes their bump and then everyone is looking at you.  It's one of those moments when you feel like the whole world is hanging on your decision, someone throws out a line like "one time won't kill you", it makes sense to you because realistically there are so many people that do it daily, how could it hurt you the first time?  Add to that the fact that you are the new kid on the block and these guys don't want you in a position where they feel you are judging them because you don't participate.  It's not that they are saying these things, I don't even know if they would've cared if I had said no thanks, but the pressure I put on myself to not be the odd man out was overwhelming.  I stepped up to the plate (literally) and snorted.

Shortly thereafter, I changed direction in my wrestling career and started my own promotion and school.  I never got addicted to cocaine, but I always kept my Somas and pain pills around.  It was easy to justify taking them, if I had a headache from wrestling around - take a painkiller, pulled a muscle - take a soma, accidentally slam my finger in the desk drawer - pop a pill, the day ends in 'y' - you guessed it, pop another one.  So you see, anyone can go back and tell you when they stepped onto that first rung, but you slowly start crawling towards the top of that ladder and the rungs just kind of blend together.  When you are popping pills daily, you start building a tolerance, now you need twice as many pills to feel what you used to feel from just one or two, and it's not cheap.  So you find a new way to get your comfortably numb feeling, for me it was Nubaine.  I went from swallowing pills to injecting myself with painkillers just so I could feel numb faster. I could hide my problem, because it had become normal for me to be "high" so people just thought I was this completely laid back and mellow person.  I could laugh, yell, cry, get mad, just like anyone else because shooting Nubaine made me feel balanced.  I was pretty far up the ladder, I shot up everyday and I had no shame in carrying needles around in my hip pack.

Deep down, I knew what I was doing, I knew it was wrong, but I did not want to stop.  I couldn't imagine what it would be like to feel pain and if I didn't shoot up or pop pills, EVERYTHING was painful.  I had convinced my girlfriend (now fiancé) that all I was doing was the pills and only when relaxing with the guys or whatever.  I had her thinking that I used a few pills the same way she used alcohol, just socially, every now and again, no big deal.  I remember being at her apartment one day, opening up my bag, and shooting up right in front of her.  The look on her face will stay with me forever, it was this "oh my god what the hell are you doing" face combined with a look of "who the hell are you".  I was very fortunate to have someone that could be supportive and caring and help me realize that this was not a way to live.  That's where I stopped halfway up the ladder and climbed back down.

Let me state that while I am telling you my experiences I don't want you to misunderstand, I am in NO WAY saying that ECW was full of druggies and I am in no way saying that WWE is full of druggies.  I am speaking in general about a problem and it just so happened my experience occurred with some guys from ECW.  There are so many guys in wrestling who never even touch drugs, let alone have a problem with it. I am also in no way bragging or trying to justify anybody starting to do drugs. I am a human being and I make mistakes. I believe that in the end every person is responsible for their own actions but sometimes you start out doing something that you think is innocent and you think you are doing it for the right reason and all of the sudden it is out of hand. I am simply trying to show how in this business with all of the injuries, banging up your body, trying to fit in, trying to advance your career and trying to "get over" with the right people sometimes you end up actually getting swallowed up by this business without even realizing that it has happened.

If it was that easy for me to get caught up in the drugs and I was only wrestling a couple weekends a month, imagine how it is for the guy who is on the road 300 days a year, wrestling night after night, suffering through a pulled this and a torn that, never being allowed the chance to heal, being away from your normal comfort zone of family, having to deal with personal issues while miles away from home, and struggling to be on top of your game at all times because there is always that guy waiting to take your place.   Which brings me to my original question, how many people have to die before the leaders in this industry do something about it?  I read that Mick Foley gave a speech a the University of Alabama and one of the students informed him of Crash Holly's death.  Mick confirmed that Crash had an addiction problem and that he had known about it.  If Mick Foley hasn't been an active member of the WWE for a couple of years and he knew about Crash Holly's drug problem, don't you think most of the other people in the company knew about it?  So rather than step in and help the guy out, they release him and turn their back on him.  They haven't even acknowledged his death, much less make one of their little tribute videos.  Why?  The grapevine report (actual sources, just not mentioning names) is that his death was more or less overlooked because he was not an employee at the time of his death and because of the circumstances surrounding his death.  Now here's my OPINION... it's no secret that Miss Elizabeth, Curt Hening, and Rick Rude (to name a few) were not employees of World Wrestling Entertainment/Titan Sports at the time of their passing and they died due to similar circumstances.  I've had a few concussions in my life, but I could swear that I saw tribute videos for them, and even articles in WWE magazines for some.  Well, what happened to poor Crash Holly?  My feeling is that Crash Holly was too recently off of WWE TV and therefore his death would be a black mark on the wrestling world.  Elizabeth, Curt Hening, and Rick Rude had been off of TV for a while and fans were aware that they weren't with the company, Crash had only been off of TV a few months and some fans weren't even aware he had been let go.  If his death is acknowledged, one of two things is going to happen... one, people will say "wow, the WWE let him go because of his drug problems and now look what happened" or two, people will start doing some math and adding up how many wrestlers are losing this drug battle and point the finger at the WWE.

Guess what?  THERE IS A PROBLEM! There is no other sporting/entertainment industry with as many drug induced deaths as ours.  It started being noticed with the untimely death of Brian Pillman and has grown rapidly throughout the years.  The WWE leads the wrestling industry hands down, but why not lead by example and start making some progress on this.  How about meeting the problem head on rather than pissing away money on big shot writers to critique the writing process?  How about taking care of your employees?   Hire a counselor or doctor to help these guys when they need it.  If the whole team is on the road together it seems unbelievable that hiding a drug problem is easy.  These guys are each others families, they know who needs help.  Mick Foley knew and he hadn't been with the company for years!  There are guys in that locker room, as well as every locker room, that are on that ladder and do not even realize it.  Help them so they can help you, or else spend some great money on a team that specializes in tribute video production.  No one deserves to be swept under the rug the way Crash Holly was, especially when he gave five years of his life to your company.  Five years that his family had to deal with him being on the road, the little girl who will never see her dad again, the parents that lost their son.   Maybe you feel that because Crash Holly's gimmick was already dead why honor Michael Lockwood?  At the very least you could use the merchandise money from his figures and using his likeness in the video games to put together a three minute video to say thanks and good-bye. Last I checked, you haven't pulled his figures or taken him out of your video games but then again, why would you - it's not your problem.

As always you can email me with your questions, comments, etc. at dwm1019@hotmail.com.  Please remember that this column is strictly my opinion based on my own experiences, and these thoughts are not necessarily shared by 1Wrestling.com.

Column for: 11/17/2003 5:33:00 PM 11/2/2003 8:36:00 PM 10/27/2003 9:58:00 AM