• Look Back In History
• Pmessages
• Quiz
• Stump The Staff
• Top Fifty
• Close

The World According To Dutch: Wrestling Addiction??? Do you have it?

Posted: Apr 21st 2010 By: CMBurnham

This week's edition of The World According to Dutch blog is going to be a little different. I'm not going to tell a story so much as to actually find out something for myself. So let's get to it.

A couple of weeks ago, I entered a wrestling dressing room to see an old friend of mine and ended up staying for awhile talking to some guys who were on the show. I didn't know hardly any of them but they all knew me. They were very friendly and were in such good spirits, I kind of felt out of place with them. From the past several years being in dressing rooms of corporate run wrestling companies, I wasn't used to wrestlers being in such high spirits. All of these young kids were in extremely good moods.

Since I've been in the business for a long time and the business has changed so much, it took me by surprise to actually find out that there were guys who really still enjoyed pro wrestling. In the WWE, after a couple of years, guys treat pro wrestling as a job and as a job only. They live in constant fear of being released, of being let go and sent home that they don't have time to really enjoy what they're doing. I've seen it everywhere I've ever been in corporate pro wrestling. And it's a shame but it's the game. So since that was the only thing I had been exposed to for a long time, the sight of guys enjoying pro wrestling was a rarity for me.

After the first two or three matches, I sat in the dressing room and I started asking questions about why all of these guys were in such good moods. Then I realized that I had a theory about pro wrestling that I've never really heard voiced before. I kind of realized that it could be a reason why people are drawn to the business....it also might be a reason why some guys stay in it...and when I thought about it more, it made more sense to me.

As I started talking to these guys, I suddenly brought up the word, ADDICTION. When I said the word, I noticed everybody in the room looked over at me as though I had said the MAGIC WORD. It was almost like they had had the thought before but had never even so much as broached the subject with their contemporaries. When I saw the interest that the subject aroused, I polled the room asking each and every one of them the same question. Were they addicted? And almost to the man, every one of them replied that they had discovered that they had an addiction to the wrestling business.

As we talked more and more about the "addiction", I could see the room light up with interest. I asked each guy how he became addicted and some of the stories were highly entertaining.

I love stories in the dressing rooms and since I didn't know any of these guys, their stories were all new to me. One kid told me that his father had left the family when he was a small kid and his mother was an alcholic so he found solace in watching wrestling on TV with his grandfather and he always had dreamed of becoming a pro wrestler. Another kid told me that he had become addicted to the game at age 9 and watched every show and went to as many matches as he could when he was a kid.

I even asked the question on my FaceBook page and got a resounding response from even fans, who solidly answered my question that yes, they too, were addicted to the thing we call pro wrestling. Pro wrestling is a drug...a self induced one to be sure...but a drug nevertheless. It is a drug that you don't have to go out on the street and purchase. So its a safe drug but one that is so highly addictive that there is no known cure.

For the uninformed, I am writing another book...hopefully to be released this fall and one of my chapters in my new book will deal in depth with the disease called ADDICTED TO WRESTLING. I've seen it hundreds of times in the last 10 years but the funny thing about it is, that I never much saw it when I first started. Most guys when I started did it solely for the money and since independent wrestlers don't make much money, then they do it for the love of the game and the addictive nature of the art.

Some of the guys in the dressing room read this blog and I told them I would be writing about this in my next one. I got an email yesterday from one of the guys in the dressing room explaining why he was 'addicted' to the sport and what it meant to him.
In his email, he explained that he hadn't had a chance to voice his opinion and he shared my view that yes, the sport had addictive qualities and that he was an ADDICT. His name was Barry Wolf. Mr. Wolf eloquently added in his email that it was a LEGAL HIGH and in his opinion, the BEST HIGH he's ever experienced. Barry, for the record, drove 7 hours to the town for his wrestling 'fix' and therefore had 7 more to drive back and he still wrote me that email.

The question is...can the addiction be cured? It probably can be but I've been seeing some extreme cases. One kid told me that he wakes up thinking wrestling and goes to bed at night thinking the same thing. That's a powerful addiction and one that could be considered as addictive as heroin and to my knowledge, there are no known WRESTLING ANONYMOUS meetings or 12 step recovery programs. If anybody is hooked on wrestling, then they're on their own when it comes to coming clean.

So I want to ask a favor of all of you who are reading my blog this week. Can you answer the question below in the comments section or send me your response to my email.

dirtydutchmantell@gmail.com

Are you addicted to the wrestling game?

If so, can you please leave a comment or two below and tell us all why you have the addiction. Please rank your level of addiction on a scale of 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. After we look at the results, I think we will know a little more about the disease.

Thanks for reading...

Dr. Dutch...Director of Dysfunctional Wrestler Syndrome Studies
University of Dutch

Tags: Dutch Mantell, WWE