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Tears of a Clown

Posted: May 17th 2007 By: CMBurnham

As a kid, I considered pro wrestling high comedy, perched loftily alongside Wally George's "Hot Seat" and the time we convinced the substitute art teacher not to agitate me -- as I heaved a trash can across the classroom while doing my strongest Solomon Grundy imitation -- because I really was crazy.


I loved wrestling's absurd, soap operatic storylines -- nobody double-crossed better than these guys -- and the comical characters. But no wrestler was as funny, smart-mouthed or unpredictable as my favorite, Rowdy Roddy Piper. On the faux wrestling talk show he hosted, Piper's Pit, he could make a headstone smile.

He was a kilt-wearing heel who possessed irrepressible charisma and tickled the funny bone with such regularity that he was a fan favorite too.

I knew pro wrestling's outcomes were predetermined. So what? It was fun and games, a theater of the absurd for those who preferred their performers flying from a ring instead of confined to a stage.

I just didn't know so many wrestlers of my youth would die young.

The mortality rate is staggering. A USA Today examination three years ago found that of the 1,000 or so 45-and-younger men who participated in pro wrestling from 1997-2004, at least 65 of them died in that time -- 25 from heart attacks or coronary disease. The paper found pro wrestlers were about 20 times more likely to die by age 45 than pro football players, whose profession also reeks havoc on their bodies and minds.

Owen Hart, 33.

Adrian Adonis, 34.

Brian Pillman, 35.

Eddie Guerrero, 38.

Davey Boy Smith, 39.

Terry Gordy, 40.

Rick Rude, 41.

Big Bossman, 42.

Curt Hennig, 44.

Bam Bam Bigelow, 45.

Junkyard Dog, 45.

Andre the Giant, 46.

Big John Studd, 46.

Chris Adams, 46.

Hawk, 46.

Dick Murdoch, 49.

There's not enough room in this space to list them all.

They die young, many playing wrestling's version of Russian roulette. They may use steroids to bulk up and look their part; painkillers so they can function and wrestle despite their injuries (wrestlers are independent contractors without health insurance or worker's comp, so if they don't wrestle, they don't get paid); uppers for exhaustion, and recreational drugs to anesthetize the loneliness and disharmony from constantly being on the road.

You hope the drug-testing policy WWE instituted last year will help, but it won't change what wrestling demands of its performers.

Piper, whose given name is Roderick George Toombs, stopped attending funerals for colleagues nearly 20 years ago.

"I don't go to no more funerals," said Piper, who will be inducted into the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, in Amsterdam, on Saturday. "Those guys were fine men. Adrian Adonis, Curt Hennig, Hawk, they're all my friends. You the wrestling fan, they loved you so much they gave you everything they could, including their life. That's another way to look at it, because we do love you, we do understand this: Without you we're nothing.

"You don't come, we gotta find a job because we need the money. Vince McMahon, that's why he tries so hard to make you come."

Nobody forces anybody to choose the profession. Piper entered into it because he was a troubled 15-year-old, expelled from junior high school, estranged from his family, living on Canadian streets, and it beat the alternative. It would provide him with fame and roles in more than 30 movies, friendships and a comfortable life with his wife, Kitty, and their four children, on a 12 1/2 -acre Portland, Ore., ranch.
And it would take away much of his hearing in his left ear; break his neck three times; shatter his spleen, and fill his body with titanium and screws. It would knife him in the chest as a North Carolina fan who took 'rasslin over the top rope once did. (Piper said he's been stabbed three times altogether.)

Now cancer takes its turn. Piper, 53, was diagnosed with lymphoma in November; it is in remission.

He doesn't allow his children to watch him wrestle. He is asked what he would tell his son, 17-year-old Colton, if he wanted to become a wrestler like his dad.

" 'No, no Colton.' I'd blackball him," Piper replied. "It's not for him. He'll do something else. It's too hard, too rough. I got in because I was just a kid lost on the street. It was a mistake. It was a fortunate mistake for me. My son won't be a wrestler.

"If you ask somebody, I was king of the frat house. I was the James Dean, the John Wesley Hardin. I was the roughest, stubbornest, go-gettingest guy they ever had. I suffered for that. Colton has such a beautiful heart and is such a beautiful boy. Why not put him in movies where he can make a couple million dollars a year and live in Palm Springs or something?"

He appreciates what he gained from wrestling, but he wants his son to live a long, fulfilling life.