Jimmy Ivey

Fans of professional wrestling have been continually horrified all week as more details surface about the double-murder, suicide apparently committed by WWE superstar Chris Benoit last weekend.

While professional wrestling is now under extreme public scrutiny for the deaths of Chris, Nancy and Daniel Benoit, not all the blame, if any, needs go to Chris Benoit’s employer, the WWE — yet.

Speculation of steroid use and abuse has been rampant in professional wrestling for years. In recent years, speculation has become more pronounced, as more wrestlers have been found dead.

Granted, once the toxicology reports come back, we will know if Benoit was on steroids, legal or not, when he died.

Early indications are he was. The visit to his doctor that fateful Friday. The bottles of prescription drugs and anabolic steroids found at the scene. The fact Benoit has been linked to the Florida pharmaceutical company, which has already been shut down and is under investigation by the Albany, N.Y. district attorney’s office for the selling of performance-enhancing drugs.

WWE chairman and owner Vince McMahon is famous for saying he is in the sports entertainment business. He has been king of the entertainment part of that saying. The fact the two biggest rivals to WWE’s rule of professional wrestling, WCW and ECW, have been owned by WWE several years now, is proof enough.

But it is time the sports part of the equation is seriously evaluated and I am not talking about the “wellness” program implanted by the WWE in February.

Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NFL have all had their brushes with Congress over steroid abuse. For that matter, so has McMahon. But the company he controls now, needs to be brought under the same type of scrutiny.

I remember while taking a public speaking course at Texas Tech University, I gave a speech on why professional wrestling is a real sport. One point I made was the stars are athletes and they deal with the same demons as any athlete in any of the big professional sports.

Don’t think so?

Some may remember “Flyin’” Brian Pillman, a small professional wrestler who played on the Cincinnati Bengals in the late 1980s. He died the night before a September WWE pay-per-view in 1997. The official cause of death was heart attack at the age of 35. In Pillman’s case, he had a history of prior drug abuse, particularly painkillers for a foot injury, which caused him to walk with a limp.

Do we, in the sports world, look down on professional wrestling because it is staged and the outcome is known, even though the fate of Pillman could possibly have been the one of a true NFL legend, Brett Favre, if he had not gone to rehab? Should we?

“Ravishing” Rick Rude, “The British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith and Eddie Guererro all died before any of them were 41. In all three cases, heart attacks or heart failure were the official causes of death, but in all three cases, past period of long-term steroid use were given as contributing factors.

The biggest affect from the Benoit case could be it marks the end of a delusion.

Let’s speculate for a minute.

A big sticking point in the steroid debate has been if it is harmful, it is only the people who are taking it who get hurt. Many have argued that is a bunch of junk because of those athletes on “the juice” can do two things: keep borderline players who are not “juicing” off a team because they are not cheating; or giving those superstars an additional edge in performing those superhero-like feats we all flock to stadiums and TVs to see.

Let’s say Benoit had been steroids, which his doctor suggested in a recent AP interview was possible, since he was on a prescription for testosterone due to low levels of the hormone, which could have been contributed to past steroid use.

The Benoit case could be the first case; if it is proven he had steroids in the system at the time of the deaths, that steroid use hurt others, directly.

The WWE has made several statements that these actions suggest deliberation, which is contrary to what some experts say about steroid use, that it can cause depression, paranoia and “roid rage,” a case of violent outbursts.

What if this were a case where all three of those things happened and drove Benoit to doing the unthinkable.

If this were the case, no one could say steroid use hurts only the one who takes it. It is just like any other illegal drug. In light of these tragic events, professional wrestling is a real sport. It is time we start treating it more like one.