Photo courtesy of  WWE

Professional wrestling is currently the most popular form of sports entertainment worldwide. With long-running narratives, bulky men and extremely talented athletes, professional wrestling has embedded itself into the cultural zeitgeist over the last 70 years. 

Most people find the worlds of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), All Elite Wrestling and New Japan to be idealistic escapes where their favorite stars can take on hated heels in stories that mirror Western tales of good and evil. And besides, wrestling is fake, so these people can’t be getting hurt – right? That thought is far from true, as these athletes put their bodies through the worst pain imaginable nightly.

When talking about professional wrestling, it’s important to note that it’s not actually “fake” – it’s more choreographed. This means that the matches and outcomes are predetermined, but the bumps and bruises these people take are mostly all real. 

Obviously, there are things that they can do to soften the blow, such as having springs in the ring or pulling punches, but the matches hurt almost as much as they look. This is the reason why injuries are so common in the ring. 

There are countless examples of wrestlers who sustained real-life injuries during a match. When a wrestler gets badly injured, you’d expect the match to end, but most of the time, management forces the match to continue – like when the Undertaker had to wrestle for 25 more minutes with a concussion so bad he couldn’t remember his last name. This priority for a match over the safety of their performers is one of the reasons why professional wrestling is so unsafe.

The ring isn’t the only place where people suffer from injuries, as the long-term effects of the squared circle have become apparent. The best example of this is the tragic story of Chris Benoit. 

Benoit was a main event level star who was loved by fans and his peers, but over time people noticed erratic and paranoid behavior from him. Eventually, after a long period of absence, he, his wife and their child were discovered dead in their home in what was later found to be a murder-suicide. 

This obviously was a tragedy and an unforgivable action, but not many people talk about why he did it. 

After a forensic scan of Benoit’s brain, he was discovered to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy akin to an 80-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, according to ABC News. Medical experts have claimed that the reason his brain was in this state was years of repeated brain trauma from wrestling, particularly because of his finishing move of a diving headbutt. This shows how years of abuse on the body can take its toll, and going out almost every night to do it can be disastrous. 

With pain and injury being an inevitability, it’s no wonder that so many wrestlers have looked towards opioids to numb the pain. 

It’s well known that some athletes combat addiction, and wrestlers are no different. The most famous case is of Eddie Guerrero, a professional wrestler who, after a long battle with drug addiction, suffered acute heart failure and died at age 38. 

Professional wrestling now, while successful, is in a state where the talents’ needs are secondary as the industry consistently treats them like products. The wrestlers are their entire brand, after all, but if they’re not given fair treatment, it can lead to further injury, addiction and death.