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Posts Tagged ‘insurance quotes’

Mick Foley returned to TNA this past week, but the results were mixed at best. The angle has him positions as a “wrestler’s advocate” of sorts, talking about the concussion issue in pro wrestling. Foley, a hardcore match pioneer, hardly seems a fitting focal point for this debate. As Flair pointed out in the angle, Foley was a main force in pushing wrestling toward the hardcore excesses of the ECW and WWE Attitude era.

Foley made his name by taking falls through tricked-out steel cages, as well as off them; landing on tacks and broken glass; and otherwise redefining pro wrestling as the work of stuntmen rather than the work of athletic-entertainment performers. He’s a nightmare to get decent insurance quotes for as a result. Like all angles in TNA, the roles played in the debate by Foley, Flair and Bischoff are all self-serving and therefore come off feeling disingenuous.

But the main problem with TNA mimicking the WWE format of long, drawn-out sketches to start the show is that TNA uses them to put over retired wrestlers and suits. In recent years, WWE has focused their opening sketches to putting over their in-ring talent… often by focusing on their younger stars rather than established vets like Cena.

If TNA wants to mimic WWE, they should focus on putting over their young, in-ring talent. That’s where the future lies.

The Harris County medical examiner’s office in Houston, TX, has released the official cause of death for Umaga, whose real name was Eddie Fatu. The official COD is listed as “acute toxicity,” which means a toxic mix of over-the-counter drugs in a short amount of time.

Specifically, it was a lethal combination of painkillers (hydrocodone), muscle relaxers (carisoprodol), and anti-anxiety medication (diazepam), according to the coroner’s report.

It should be noted that Umaga had been released by WWE for months prior to his death. Most reports were that WWE released Umaga for violating the company’s wellness policy. Kind of hard to secure insurance quotes under those conditions.

While release is a legitimate punishment for such a violation, it’s a shame that in the end, it makes WWE simply look like they are distancing themselves from a wrestler on a destructive path before it blows up. WWE does offer even released wrestlers access to rehab services, but once a wrestler is out of a company’s employment, follow-up and accountability tend to suffer.

While there are no easy answers in the death of Umaga, it is tragic that his was another in a long list of preventable, premature deaths among professional wrestling performers.