Originally Posted March 1, 2007.
This past week, yet another wrestler has passed away. Mike Awesome (nče Mike Alfonso) died at the age of 42, having been found by friends who had come to pick him up for a night out. It is a sad loss for fans, friends, and most importantly, his family. Mike Awesome joins a large number of stars in the sport who have died at such a relatively young age.
Why is there such an epidemic of death in the sport today? What is it about the wrestling industry that causes so many of its most talented stars to burn out so young?
Nowadays, pop music celebrities, young starlets, and more established actors and actresses seem to find their way in the spotlight primarily as tabloid fodder with talent taking an often-optional second place. Just last week, possibly inspired by the proposed Battle of the Billionaires Hair vs. Hair Match for Wrestlemania 23, Britney Spears had a very public meltdown and decided to Jackass herself in a California hair salon.
On the flipside, in the wrestling world, unlike most spheres of celebrity who degrade themselves in their personal lives and smile for the camera while doing it, often wrestlers will downplay their own athletic talents, emphasizing sometimes unsavory aspects of the character as part of their on-camera persona.
What is considered as "degrading" is relative and depends on how you look at it. A gimmick as goofy as The Gobbledygooker, while nonetheless goofy, is still memorable. But what would possess a wrestler to take up a gimmick like that? Simply, they do it for the reason that they crave the spotlight and enjoy performing, regardless of the opportunity that presents itself to be performed. Dressing in drag or in a giant turkey suit while in-character in front of large-scale wrestling audiences still gets you to the big show and ensures that a slice of immortality has your name engraved upon it.
Beyond the more slapstick aspects of sports entertainment, there is a certain amount of bodily degradation these men and women are willing to endure in order to keep doing what they love. It is almost impossible to fathom how much punishment a wrestler endures on a nightly basis, let alone how much that physical pain is compounded throughout their lifetime. Consider all of that for a moment and you realize that it's not just these men and women inside the ring who make sacrifices, but it's also the families of wrestlers who give up a lot.
More so than most professions, wrestling requires a lot of time spent away from home and loved ones. At the same time, they do what they love. From a certain point of view, it's like any other job. It puts food on the table for themselves and their families. The trade off is that professional wrestlers are fortunate enough to love what they do for a living.
When the day comes when a wrestler has to leave the ring behind, it has to be a bittersweet moment, having to make the decision to trade in the boots for a comfortable pair of Hush Puppies. As with anyone who has ever been fortunate enough to do what they love most for a living, it's hard to completely close the book on a significant chapter of your life. It never leaves you and there's always that urge to go back -- even if you can't.
Some wrestlers never give it up, regardless of the physical agony they are in from night after night of taking bumps. The will to persevere outweighs the need to sit back and rest. It's easy to dismiss this as selfishness. However, how much more "selfish" is it to continue doing what they love while providing for themselves and their families than the person who spends late nights and weekends at a mundane office job, just because The Boss "needs" them? The standard argument your average 9-to-5er would offer is that they might lose their job if they don't put in excessive amounts of overtime. There's your answer. Only in the entertainment profession, if you're out of sight, you're often out of the minds of the fans, unless you've been fortunate enough to have made a significant impact. Then it's on to the next flavor of the month.
In the days of kayfabe, not much was known about the wrestling business unless you were personally involved in it or knew someone who was. The world was a little bit smaller without the internet or huge media conglomerates that telecast worldwide, hence the spread of information wasn't as predominant as it is now. Additionally, the wrestling world was cordoned off to the degree that either the circus or the military still protects itself with to this day. Now, in the age of almost-instant information at your fingertips, very often, we know almost as much about the wrestlers' personal lives as we do their on-screen characters.
From a business standpoint as it pertains to the world of "sports entertainment," it's a huge boon. The marketing potential is seemingly endless. Wrestlers' stories are mined for book deals, magazine articles, and even DVD documentaries. On one hand, it's a great way to fully recognize their accomplishments and make certain that they are not forgotten. On the other, when wrestlers' personal lives are exploited for the purpose of on-screen storylines, sensationalism can often eclipse talent, causing fans to turn on an otherwise talented performer whose personal life choices they might not agree with.
In what seems to be the order of the day, privacy is a thing of the past. We live in a society that wants to know everything. Not so much out of a thirst for knowledge or even concern for our fellow man, but more so out of a slightly sinister love of watching a potential train wreck in the making. It explains how wildly popular reality television has become over the past decade or more. It's sad because that school of thought has desensitized the masses to creativity. People want what they perceive as "real," and usually, "real" means someone has to get hurt -- either physically or emotionally. In recent years, more than ever, it appears that sentiment has creeped into the world of professional wrestling.
Okay, okay. So bodyslamming someone to the canvas doesn't exactly qualify as sweet, pure, and innocent. However, there needs to be a certain amount of respect given to these performers. First and foremost, wrestlers are people, too. They put themselves through the ringer for our entertainment pleasure. They are as at the mercy of the sometimes lackluster storylines as much as the fans are. Unfortunately, it's often the wrestler (and his or her career) that is punished for being saddled with a lame gimmick, not the goof in the creative department who came up with it. I'm as guilty as the next spectator on the outside looking in who passes judgment and claims to be an arbiter of taste.
The truth of the matter is that like everyone else on this planet, we all want to be remembered and will go to nearly any length to do so. No matter if you're an entertainer or the guy selling cigarettes behind the counter of a Convenient store, we all want to leave our mark on this world before we leave it.
While we're on the subject of leaving this world, I'd like to take the time to remember one wrestler who, very sadly, has: Mike Awesome. Initially, I wasn't a big fan of Mike Awesome during his ECW years. Maybe it was the mullet that made me wary of him. Maybe it was just my own personal prejudice as a fan that I rarely rooted for the big men of the sport, preferring to watch some of the more average-sized wrestlers on the card. It wasn't until later on in his career that I fully appreciated Mike Awesome.
The man's incredible athletic gifts not withstanding, one of the things that initially came to the average fan's mind was some of the controversy surrounding Mike Awesome. Unfortunately, Awesome's personal/business decisions in the world of wrestling colored the perception of the man and his exceptional talent. He jumped ship from ECW to WCW shortly after winning the ECW Championship belt, although he was never officially contracted to ECW. While it was undoubtedly politics on WCW's part to snatch up a major player at the expense of a smaller company, Mike Awesome unfairly took the brunt of the blame with fans branding him a "sell-out."
Taking a step back and looking at the whole picture objectively, Mike Awesome did what any other person in his boots probably would have done. It's no different than accepting a promotion for more money to a different office. Due to the high-risk landscape of sports entertainment in its current state, wrestlers have a limited shelf life. The nature of the industry combined with its lack of benefits make stashing away for a comfortable retirement fund all the more imperative. Mike Awesome did what he thought was best to guarantee a steady paycheck and more money while still retaining the ability to perform inside the squared circle. You cannot blame or bash the guy for that. It's easy to cry about loyalty, but the harsh reality is that your loyalties have to lie with yourself. That applies to anything in life, not just sports entertainment.
While I speak as an outsider to the business and lifestyle of professional wrestling, from what I can gather, it seems to be a lonely profession. Yes, you're surrounded by other wrestlers and play to packed houses on a daily basis. However, at night, each performer locks the door to their own hotel room before traveling to the next strange city, miles from home and family. At the end of the day, when wrestlers are wrapping injured knees, packing sore elbows in ice, and disinfecting cuts and stitches before retiring to bed, it only underscores just how solitary of a profession it is.
During his stint in WCW as "That '70s Guy," I really started to warm up to the awesomeness of Mike Awesome. It was hard not to like a guy who gave interviews from a couch that looked suspiciously like the one in my own North Philadelphia hovel I was living in at the time. Obviously, the guy had to have had a sense of humor, as evidenced by Awesome's "Fat Chick Thriller" gimmick. While he was quite likeable in WCW, Awesome's amazing abilities were all but overshadowed by his gimmicks.
It wasn't until I watched the "One Night Stand" PPV and his show-stopping, crap-your-pants amazing match with Masato Tanaka that I was bowled over by his wrestling skills and fully appreciated what a tremendous talent he was. That match with Masato Tanaka still sticks out in my mind as one of the best matches I have ever seen.
After witnessing that match, I was really pulling for Mike Awesome to make a huge comeback, as I'm sure a lot of wrestling fans were, too. His style of ring work was something needed to break up the monotony of lumbering big men without finesse that have been corralled en masse>/i>. Awesome was one of the most agile big men to ever grace a professional wrestling ring, standing 6'6" and nearly 300 lbs. of solid muscle, combining powerful impact maneuvers with a high-risk style usually seen among luchadors or cruiserweights. In a word, he was Awesome.
He retired from wrestling last year to sell real estate, insisting he would return if the money was right. Sadly, Mike Awesome will never have the opportunity to come back to the ring again. As is the case with many wrestlers, no one really knows the cause behind his death. There is just speculation. All that's left is the hope that Mike Awesome will be remembered for the remarkable performer and athlete that he was and that he achieves immortality for all of the positive contributions he made to the world of professional wrestling. There were many.
More importantly, from an outside fan's perspective, not only has professional wrestling lost a great performer, his friends and family lost an important person in their lives. No one really knows why. However, let's all keep in mind that wrestlers are people first and performers second. It's easy to lose sight of that with all of the pyrotechnics and bravado, but it's the truth. As a fan, and a fellow human being, I can only hope his family has some comfort in their time of loss.
Without sounding cliché… Rest in Peace, Mike Awesome. And rest in peace Mike Alfonso.
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