Welcome to another edition of Kay’s Korner.
As I was driving over to my best friend’s house the other night to watch Raw, I couldn’t help but wonder if wrestlers ever really do retire. There have been many that have claimed to. The thing is that they didn’t really retire. It finally hit me when I got to my destination that I don’t think you ever really retire, completely and totally, from wrestling.
Sure, there are wrestlers out there who are retired from the ‘wrestling’ part of the business. A perfect example of this is Mick Foley. While Mick was relatively young (by wrestling standards) when he retired, his body was that of a 50 year-old wrestler. The bumps, wear, and tear of hardcore wrestling had started to affect his personal life. In order to enjoy his children to the fullest, he had to retire.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mick is done with wrestling. I have seen Mick in action recently. He wasn’t on the card as a wrestler but as a guest referee in Tony Hunter’s Carolina Championship Wrestling on March 12, 2005. He looked great; he had lost quite a bit of weight and seemed to be in the best shape of his life. While getting some of my Mick Foley books signed, I couldn’t help but wonder (and hope) if he would be physically involved in the main event, Dusty Rhodes Vs Abdullah the Butcher. (Hey, I had front row seats and a camera, you would have been hoping for it too.)
It didn’t take long to learn the answer to that question (and get some great pictures). Within a few minutes of the match, aggravated at his lack of control, Mick grabbed the microphone and announced that since he was in charge of this particular match, he was turning it into a tag team match, due to outside interference. Before I knew it, he was pounding on Abdullah, who was desperately trying to get away, while Dusty was taking care of Franklin Frye III, the manager of Abdullah the Butcher.
While watching Mick, I noticed the same passion in his eyes that I had seen when he was on WWE television except it was a slightly different look than I had seen before. It was the look of excitement, but a different kind of excitement. It was a look that I haven’t really seen in his eyes before. He was feeding off of the live crowd, like a starving man in the desert that had just wondered upon an all you can eat buffet. When he pulled Mr. Socko out, there was not one fan out in the audience that was sitting down.
I also can’t help but think of Terry Funk. Terry has announced his retirement more times than I can remember. I can remember in the Beyond the Mat movie that Terry’s knees were shot and how hard it was for him to get out of bed each morning. Years later, after he swore it was his last match in the movie, Terry is still out there wrestling. Maybe not as much as he was, say 10 years ago, but he’s still out there doing what he loves.
Abdullah the Butcher is sixty years old and still wrestling. Granted, he doesn’t wrestle as much, but he is still out there on the Indy scene as well. He still takes a beating, gives a beating, and bleeds like a stuck pig. He still has that crazed look in his eyes when he gets in the ring and can still make me shudder in revulsion.
Ric Flair is in his fifties and he is still an active wrestler on Raw. Granted he wrestles more in tag matches now, which is understandable, but he is still out there sweating and putting his body on the line, night after night. He has a professional career in wrestling that speaks for itself but he's still out there. When is enough, enough?
When do wrestlers retire? Do they ever really retire? I honestly don’t think that they do. Even if they do give up the physical part of wrestling, they are still involved in the world of wrestling, one way or another. Look at how many retired wrestlers are currently agents in the WWE; there’s Arn Anderson, Fit Finley, Ricky Steamboat, Dean Malenko, and Michael Hayes, just to name a few.
While watching wrestling, my mind wondered back to that question; when is enough, enough? I think that wrestlers get just as addicted, if not more so, to wrestling than the fans do. I can only imagine the high felt when the crowd is chanting your name or booing you over something that you did. Then it hit me. Wrestlers are addicted to wrestling.
Think about it; wrestlers have to be addicted to it in order to put their bodies and their lives on the line, show after show. The passion of wrestling is not just in the fans, but in the wrestlers as well. Addicts have a hard time kicking their addictions. Wrestlers have a hard time kicking wrestling.
Weak analogy? I don’t think so. While pondering everything over in my mind, I decided that you never really leave the world of wrestling, completely and totally behind. It’s virtually impossible to. Wrestlers themselves admit to eating, sleeping, and dreaming of wrestling. While they love their families, and miss them terribly while they are out on the road, the passion of the business drives them away to feed the beast, the beast of wrestling.
In today's wrestling world, the beast of wrestling is more dangerous than ever. High spots and high-risk maneuvers get a crowd going quicker than anything else done in the ring. I would be lying if I said that those particular moves don’t invoke a response from me because they do, which is exactly what they are supposed to do. My mouth drops open, my eyes get wide, and my heart races. However, I’m not sure if it’s over the spot or the fact that somebody could really get hurt doing the high-risk maneuvers.
It has come down to the fact that the biggest threat to a wrestler’s health is the wrestling itself. Ironic, isn’t it? The years of taking bumps, along with constant travel, combined with the high-risk maneuvers, eventually takes its toll on the body in ways that we can only imagine. Over the last five years alone, some of the WWE superstars have had to have time outs due to injuries. The most obvious of the injuries are the neck injuries.
Chris Benoit, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Lita, Kurt Angle, and Edge all have had to have their necks repaired, in one form of surgery or another. When I look at that list, it makes me realize just how dangerous this sport is now, as compared to my childhood years. Kurt Angle hasn’t been a professional wrestler as long as Chris Benoit has, but he has already had to have surgery. Same thing with Lita and Edge, they haven’t been wrestling near as long as Stone Cold has but they had to have their necks repaired as well. (Granted Stone Cold’s neck injury was mostly due to a botched spot, there was some normal wear and tear, as well.)
While writing this, I am amazed by the physical brutality that wrestling inflicts on the wrestlers’ bodies. In the world of professional wrestling, the wrestlers, while they don’t want to be hurt, do understand the risks involved every time they enter the ring, and they do get hurt. This has become the nature of the beast.
Retiring from wrestling is a set of words used quite a bit but they are never really spoken truthfully. Now, I’m not saying that if a wrestler retires from wrestling, that he is just out and out lying. I honestly believe that when they say they are retiring, they believe that they are.
However, the beast of wrestling will only lay dormant for a little while. Slowly but surely, sitting at home starts to wear on their nerves. They are used to traveling constantly and all around the world. Suddenly, it all stops and you don’t have schedules to keep. You don’t have to rush out to the airport to make it to the next show on time. At first, it’s great to spend time with their families but the families have lived to learn without them being at home. After a few weeks, the family goes back to its normal routine while the wrestlers sit at home, wondering what they should do next.
Then the beast starts to awaken a bit. The retired wrestlers begin to have a lot of time on their hands to think. Their minds start traveling back in time and before they know it, they are in front of their television sets, watching old matches and feeling the goose bumps go up and down their spines again. Sitting there, reliving the past, brings a smile to their face that even their families can’t understand.
While watching these old tapes and reliving their careers, the beast roars with hunger. Suddenly, as if a light goes off, a thought pops in their heads. “I can always go back.” With steely determination and passion fueling the fire as well, the retirees eventually find their way back into a wrestling ring to start the dance all over again. More often than not, it’s on the Indy scene, which I think is a great place for ‘retired’ wrestlers to be.
Those 'retired' wrestlers can pass on a wealth of advice and knowledge to those who are trying to make it in the wrestling business. Those ‘retired’ wrestlers appreciate the crowds more, no matter how big or small, just because it makes them feel whole again. Those ‘retired’ wrestlers help out the younger ones, in ways that the younger ones really don't comprehend, at the time. It is as time goes on that they understand the advice they have been given; it also gives them time to appreciate the advice more, later on in their wrestling careers.
I don’t look at 'retired' wrestlers the same anymore. I have to say that if I were in their shoes, I probably would be the exact same way. Wrestling is a beast but a beast of a different kind. It can’t be classified as completely evil and it can’t be classified as completely good either. The beast of wrestling is in a category all by itself.
That’s it for this edition of Kay’s Korner. Thanks for reading! Any and all feedback can be sent to lilwrestlegrl@yahoo.com
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