So sad but yet so true ....

'Beyond the game
Rob Peters


WWF is a laugh. The organisation that brought us such legends as the 'Ultimate Warrior', 'Andre the Giant', 'Hulk Hogan' and more, no longer even pretends to be legit, referring to their shows as 'sports entertainment'. But there is no denying that the wrestlers are real athletes. And there is so much more to these brash, hammy monsters… much more than I knew anyway.


Lounging around on Sunday afternoon I was lucky enough to catch a documentary on the wrestling phenomenon in the States — it was pretty dated, but still as relevant today as when it was made, which I am presuming was the late nineties. The documentary focused more on the wrestlers outside of the ring than in it and it exposed some pretty harsh truths.

And none more so than the story of Jake 'The Snake' Roberts.

Once one of the top performers in the industry, Roberts is now at the bottom of the food-chain, performing in backwater towns and getting by on a lifetime of memories and crack… It is far removed from the glitz and glamour of the finished product we see on TV. Roberts, who was serving time for not paying child support when the documentary was first aired, is not the only wrestler struggling to make ends meet, the documentary opened my eyes to a pretty bleak picture — for every 'Triple-H', 'Batista' and 'Undertaker', there is a hard-luck story. And that is one thing it certainly has in common with the 'real' sports.

The plight of Roberts reminded me of a former West Indies all-rounder, Richard Austin, who suffered a remarkable fall from grace after taking part in the rebel tour of South Africa in the mid-80s. When he returned home from the tour he found himself banned from any form of cricket for life and shunned by his own countrymen. Touring Apartheid South Africa was not taken lightly and Roberts, along with the other squad members, bore the brunt of their actions.

For Austin it has been downhill ever since. Twenty-five years on and he now finds himself living on the streets, begging for money outside of a local Kingston store. Austin has also turned to drugs to numb the pain of his existence – cocaine being his choice to dull an existence he would not have predicted when he was being lauded as the "right-handed Sobers".

If anything stories like these should serve as a warning to current, and future sports stars, that with the plaudits comes a false promise of never-ending wealth and comfort. It can all be yanked away in a heartbeat. History is littered with the names of those who have hit the very top, only to plummet to the bottom and beyond. Mike Tyson, Ben Johnson, Hansie Cronje… the names should serve as a warning for all those who aspire to greatness.'

Aye, Danny Germs... was an article on the plight of those rebels about 12 months ago. Was quite sad overall. They shouldn't have done it however.

Batfink Begins wrote:Aye, Danny Germs... was an article on the plight of those rebels about 12 months ago. Was quite sad overall. They shouldn't have done it however.

Especially the cocaine. Damn expensive if you don't have an income...