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A most dangerous sport - early-death wrestlers

Chris Benoit is the latest in a long line of pro wrestlers to meet an untimely demise. That he murdered his wife, Nancy Benoit, and their seven year old son (said to suffer from Fragile-X syndrome) only adds to the pro-wrestling premature-death body count.

Wrestlers Who Have Died Before the Age of 60 (Since 1985)

Adrian Adonis - 34 (car accident)
Andre the Giant - 46 (congestive heart failure)
Art Barr - 28 (unknown)
Bam Bam Bigelow - 45 (drug toxicity)
Bertha Faye - 40 (drug overdose)
Big Boss Man - 42 (heart attack)
Big Dick Dudley - 34 (kidney failure)
Big John Studd - 46 (liver cancer)
Billy Joe Travis - 40 (heart attack)
Bobby Duncum Jr. - 34 (drug overdose)
Brady Boone - 40 (car accident)
Brian Pillman - 35 (arteriosclerotic heart disease)
Bruiser Brody - 42 (stabbed to death)
Bulldog Brown - 58 (heart attack)
Buzz Sawyer - 32 (heart attack)
Chris Adams - 46 (shot)
Chris Benoit - 40 (suicide - hanging)
Chris Candido - 33 (blood clot)
Chris Von Erich - 21 (suicide - shooting)
Crash Holly - 32 (overdose)
Curt Hennig - 44 (cocaine intoxication)
D.J. Peterson - 33 (motorcycle crash)
Davey Boy Smith - 39 (heart attack)
Dick Murdoch - 49 (heart attack)
Dino Bravo - 44 (murdered)
Dr. Jerry Graham - 58 (stroke)
Earthquake - 42 (bladder cancer)
Ed Gatner - 31
Eddie Gilbert - 33 (heart attack)
Eddie Graham - 55 (suicide - shooting)
Eddie Guerrero - 38 (acute heart failure)
Gary Albright - 34 (heart failure - in the ring)
Gene Anderson - 58 (heart attack)
Gino Hernandez - 29 (officially, a cocaine overdose although initially thought murdered)
Hawk - 46 (heart attack)
Haystacks Calhoun- 55 (diabetes)
Hercules - 45 (heart disease)
Jay Youngblood - 30 (ruptured spleen)
Jeep Swenson - 40 (heart failure)
Jerry Blackwell - 45 (Pneumonia)
Joey Marella - 30 (car crash)
Johnny Grunge - 39 (sleep apnoea complications)
Jumbo Tsuruta - 49 (kidney transplant surgery complications)
Junkyard Dog - 45 (car accident)
Ken Timbs - 53 (cardiomyopathy / heart failure)
Kerry Von Erich - 33 (suicide)
Larry Cameron - 41 (heart attack)
Leroy Brown - 38 (heart attack)
Louie Spiccoli - 27 (choked on his own vomit)
Marianna Komlos - 35 (breast cancer)
Mark Curtis - 38 (stomach and bowel cancer)
Mike Awesome - 42 (probable suicide - hanging)
Mike Davis - 46 (heart attack)
Mike Von Erich - 23 (suicide - overdose)
Miss Elizabeth - 42 (accidental overdose)
Moondog King - 56
Moondog Spot - 51 (heart attack in the ring)
Nancy Benoit (Woman) - 43 (murdered by her pro-wrestling husband, Chris Benoit)
Owen Hart - 33 (died of blunt chest trauma after WWF stunt went badly wrong)
Pez Whatley - 54 (heart attack)
Pitbull #2 - 36 (drug overdose)
Randy Anderson - 41 (cancer)
Ray Candy - 43 (heart attack)
Rick McGraw - 30 (heart attack)
Rick Rude - 41 (heart failure from ‘mixed medications’)
Rocco Rock - 49 (heart attack)
Sherri Martel - 49 (not natural causes but not murder)
Tarzan Tyler - 55 (car accident)
Terry Gordy - 40 (blood clot induced heart attack)
The Renegade - 33 (suicide - shooting)
The Spoiler - 56 (heart attack / leukaemia)
The Wall / Malice - 36 (heart attack)
Tony Parisi - 58 (heart attack)
Uncle Elmer - 54 (diabetes)
Vivian Vachon - 40 (road accident)
Yokozuna - 34 (heart attack)

Essential in compiling this list:
Wrestling’s Dirty Secret - About.com
Wrestling Information Archive

Add comment June 27th, 2007

Who cares? It was a white couple.

From the US - When a young couple had failed to return by the following morning, their parents notified police. Christopher Newsom’s body was found near some railroad tracks in East Knoxville that afternoon, but Channon Christian remained missing. A trace run on Channon’s cell phone helped authorities locate her abandoned vehicle the next day, and fingerprints raised from an envelope inside the automobile led police to the residence of 25-year-old Lemaricus Devall ‘Slim’ Davidson, where they discovered Channon’s body wrapped in a blanket.

Carjackers had taken Channon’s vehicle at gunpoint, bound and blindfolded the couple, and transported them to Davidson’s residence. At that location, Christopher was raped prison style (in front of Channon) by multiple assailants, his penis was cut off, he was shot multiple times, his body was set on fire, and, finally, his corpse was taken away and dumped alongside railroad tracks.

With Christopher out of the way, the perpetrators next focused their depravity on Channon. Over the ensuing two days, they beat her, gang-raped her, urinated upon her, cut off one of her breasts (while she was still alive), and poured bleach down her throat. As with Christopher, they finished up by shooting her multiple times and setting her body on fire, but instead of dumping her corpse elsewhere, they wrapped it in a blanket and stuffed it into a trash can which was left inside the residence.

According to reports, they were subjected to lengthy torture in each other’s presence, injected with chemical disinfectants to destroy DNA evidence, then strangled and shot.

According to Snopes, the so-called, Urban Legend reference site, this story did not make national media headlines because it didn’t have the correct combination of factors to warrant such media attention.

The reason the story made it onto Snopes is because of an email circulating on the Internet complaining that the reason the story is being ignored is because it was a white couple who were murdered, claiming that if the couple had been black and the perpetrators white, it would be American national frontpage news for weeks.

Mark M. Alexander, who spent six years in law enforcement, has written a brilliant piece entitled, “Murder in black and white” citing the abject inhumanity of the crimes and asking if the reason the crimes received so little attention was because the murdered couple were white and the five defendants black?

He goes on to point out that in the US “Although blacks represent just 12 percent of the U.S. population, black perpetrators are convicted by their peers in more than half of all murder and manslaughter cases. And, per-capita black-on-white crime is far more prevalent than the inverse.” and to deride the “double standards when it comes to the media’s coverage of interracial crime.”

There’s a touching and very moving video that’s been posted on Youtube simply titled, For Channon Christian.

The evil murdering scum who tortured then snuffed out Channon and Christopher’s lives should be burned at the stake, conscious. No mercy should be afforded them.

More and continually updated coverage available on Bonnie’s Blog of Crime.

Add comment May 11th, 2007