05.07.2007, 19:58
Zitat:Slamming 'roids - Ex-star out to break drugs' hold on WWE
BY CHRISTIAN RED and T.J. QUINN
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Three days after professional wrestler Eddie Guerrero was found in his Minneapolis hotel room, dead at 38 from heart failure, Carlos (Konnan) Ashenoff stood at his friend's funeral and had an epiphany.
"For me, that was it," Ashenoff says, remembering the November 2005 funeral in Arizona. "All these guys are dying and nobody gives a ----."
Ashenoff says he swore off a culture of steroids, painkillers and drugs that was so over-the-top that he and his pals used to keep a "dead pool" with their rowdier friends' names on it, knowing it wouldn't be long before someone collected.
Ashenoff, a legend from his days in the Mexican circuits and a one-time World Championship Wrestling champion, is 43 and semi-retired now, with an artificial hip in his side and a kidney transplant in his near future. The hip degenerated after years of steroid abuse and the physical toll of his sport, and he thinks painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs ruined the kidney.
In the wake of Chris Benoit's murder-suicide rampage, Ashenoff says he is tired of waiting for wrestling to fix itself. Ashenoff wants Congress, state legislatures, anyone with some authority, to step in and force professional wrestling to deal with the drugs that are killing performers at an astonishing rate.
"Everybody - I can guarantee you, 100% from top to bottom - everybody's either on steroids, painkillers, they drink or they take recreational drugs, and in the case of half the guys, all four," he says from his home in Chula Vista, Calif. "Nobody gives a ----. When that baseball player (Orioles pitcher Steve) Bechler died from ephedra, everybody got all upset and reacted and they banned ephedra. (In wrestling), it's all these guys - big names - and, nothing."
Since Benoit's death, the Internet has been awash in lists of wrestlers who have died prematurely. One blogger compiled a list of 98 men and women under the age of 65 who have died since 1985, and he limited the list to names that wrestling fans would recognize. There were accidents, such as Owen Hart's fatal fall from a harness in 1999, but steroid and drug use seemingly have played a part in the overwhelming majority.
Ashenoff is angry about how professional wrestling treats the living, too. His friends and fans helped find a donor and raised money for a transplant operation through the Web site "MySpace." He's meeting with a potential donor within the next week, and plans to have the operation in Mexico to save money.
(See Ashenoff's MySpace page )
Ashenoff recently was interviewed about wrestling's problems on cable television, and several friends in the business called him to complain. He estimates that "80 to 90%" of active wrestlers agree with him, but they know only the biggest, most freakish wrestlers are "pushed" into the limelight, and they don't want to risk alienating themselves from the WWE and its owner, Vince McMahon, by speaking out against the drug culture.
"In our business it was almost like 'omerta,' like in the Mafia. You don't snitch," Ashenoff says. "They say 'you're burying the industry.' I'm like, '---- you guys. Guys are dying, they're leaving families. If anything, I'm trying to make changes to our ---- sport so that Vince won't force you to take steroids."
McMahon and WWE officials have long maintained that they don't force anyone to take steroids, and McMahon was acquitted of charges in 1994 that he provided steroids to his wrestlers. The WWE instituted a steroid testing program after Guerrero's death, but doping experts have ridiculed it as all but toothless. Ashenoff says a close friend of his echoed the company line the other day. "He said what they always say: it's a personal choice. Nobody put a gun to our head. I said, 'Bro, it's impossible for a human being to do what we do without taking what we take. Our brothers are dying.' I said, 'Name one guy who isn't on something.' He couldn't think of anybody."
Ashenoff was friends with Benoit, and says he saw nothing to indicate that Benoit was capable of killing his wife and his son. "That isn't roid rage," he says. "It could be GHB (or its brutal withdrawal process), it could be undiagnosed concussions — all those chair shots to the head. It could be anything."
A veteran congressional staffer says no one is planning hearings on professional wrestling — whether as a workplace safety, public health or interstate commerce issue — but Ashenoff knows what he would say if called to testify.
"No. 1, make sure steroids are out of the equation: you aren't rewarded for using, you're punished for using," he says. "No. 2, with painkillers it's a little harder, but you rotate guys, let them rest, so they're not constantly on the road. Then say, 'You can only have this amount of painkiller in your body. That would cut back on the painkiller use. Right now nothing's being done."
Gary Davis, a spokesman for WWE, says Ashenoff is wrong, that wrestlers are not encouraged or forced to use steroids.
"Not in the WWE," he says.
Davis indicates that the WWE is preparing a wide-ranging statement to deal with the Benoit fallout and the sudden, overwhelmingly negative mainstream attention wrestling has received, but when asked about potential congressional intervention he says, "I really don't want to talk about that at this point."
Ashenoff says he knows by speaking out he has eliminated the possibility of lucrative work with the WWE in his future. But he'll continue to encourage other wrestlers to do the same, although he knows what he's up against.
"The money's too good," he says of WWE life. "And they're the big show in town. Someone's going to have to do something."
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