Have you ever thought of this?

[Jordan]

I was just watching this interview with X-Pac where there was a question that said "Are there times where you regret getting wasted so much" and X-Pac said "Of course there are, but we were working 300 days a year in a hard ass ring, away from our families, and that's what we did to escape" referring to substance abuse...

Does anybody know the date when WWE switched to the softer ring? I think it was after June 1998 I remember Foley describing the ring in his first book.

Is it possible that the WWF's hard ass ring is largely to blame for the deaths due to issues likely suffered from substance abuse, or even heavy substance abuse in general? It's something that I've never really herd anyone say and X-Pac kinda skimmed over it, but think about it. If the ring was super hard then everything probably hurt a lot more than it does now, thus pain would be an even bigger factor in a wrestlers life, and if you look at the drug abuse in WWF vs NWA/WCW I feel like the WWF guys were heavier users. And a lot of the WWF guys probably brought a good portion of the drug use to WCW.

I'm not saying WCW didn't have steroid and drug users but if you look at it a lot of WCW grown guys are still alive, while there are tons of guys from WWF's hard ring era who abused drugs in one way or another and died of heart attacks.

Just bringin it up.

[CSL]

I'm sure I remember reading in a few places that WCW had a really rough ring also, maybe more so. I think more likely is simply the drug/party culture. WWF guys were on the road 20-30 days at a time back then running multiple towns some nights and with uppers to wake, downers to sleep and whatever else you feel like doing in between being a big part of the 'party culture', the environment would have bred a lot more cases of drug reliance than most groups working else where on lighter schedules. They were like proper old-fashioned rock stars only on tour all year round.

[Nicky Fives]

No one forced them to take anything.....it's 100% on the performers......

[Ruien]

No one forced them to take anything.....it's 100% on the performers......

This.

[Rock Bottom]

Maybe we should look at some of the hardest abusers, see what type of matches they wrestled, who they hung out with, how old they were, etc. Largely to blame, I doubt it, but you never know, people can do shit like that for a number of reasons or rationalize in numerous ways.