Brian Adams found dead today, of course, because that's what we needed to hear about, another dead wrestler in his 40s who had a history of drug abuse and actually played a character who openly used drugs. At least the corpse will have nice hair. Too soon? Ah, whatever, it's too depressing not to joke these days.
Congress is gonna eat Vince alive at this rate.
Tags: Rants
RIP Brian “Crush” Adams.
I won’t lie, I marked out huge for the Kona Crush gimmick at the time. It might have been the awesome theme music, or the “Cranium Crush” finishing maneuver, but he had the perfect gimmick for a hoss who could decently wrestle. And I still remember during the initial singles debut how HUGE he was over. The crowd’s reaction to Crush getting ambushed by Doink was unbelievable (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFuFdCawFA0&mode=related&search=)I don’t know if Keith was right in his King of the Ring review that they should have given the Jesus Push to Crush and had him slam Yokozuna on the Indianapolis instead of Lex, but I’m surprised the company allowed the push to stall and have him quickly turn heel on Savage just a few month later.
Afterwards, I lost interest in Crush with each passing gimmick (N.O.D. Crush, Biker Crush, Kronik Crush), but it doesn’t make me forget the promise he showed since he debuted as the third member of Demolition. My condolences to Adams’ family, of course.
Eh. Marc Mero is just counting the cash from TV appearances.
Question 1: Can this get blamed on McMahon? I understand that Congress will try. I mean, they got elected on these VERY platforms, ya? But Adams… parted ways with the WWE 6 years ago. WCW had him playing a character that openly used drugs. Turner won’t be questioned, I’m sure, as he’s out of the rasslin’ bidness.
Question 2: OK, there isn’t one.
Come on guys, the drug he was pushed as using was marijuana. We all know that had nothing to do with him dying. (For the record, I don’t smoke.)
Anyway, I liked Kona Crush a lot too and was pretty upset when he beat the tar out of Macho Man (I was 12 at the time, give me a break). The whole Fuji thing didn’t click with me. It’s sad that this keeps happening, again and again and again…….
Plus, he was playing a character. Nobody said he actually habitually smoked weed.
I’m sure of two things though: 1) As a wrestler, he probably did smoke marijuana once in a while and, 2) Said marijuana had nothing to do with his death.
OK, 1. I didn’t say he was smoking it. “He played a character that openly used drugs.” 2. I’m not trying to say marijuana kills, far from it. I don’t smoke, but I’m fairly knowledgeable about MJ’s effects, and I know that didn’t lead to his death. K?
3. While *I* know and *you* know, these are lawmakers. They may know, but they won’t care. His character will be McMahon’s fault, and he played a character that used that evil nasty green stuff openly.
i was a crush mark and thought he was destined for the main event until I saw him fail an attempt to slam Yoko…always looked like a big goof to me after that… ah, well. god speed braddah.
I will definitely admit to being a mark for Crush as a kid. Even when he turned heel on Savage, still dug him.
I will agree too, lets not jump on the bandwagon about the open marijuana useage. Yeah the stuff causes some memory loss and lung cancer and what not but its the type of drug you smoke one night and wake up dead the next day.
And as for a previous post, someone mentioned jake roberts not being long for this world, I have to disagree, when the bomb finally drops, the only thing left will be twinkies, cockroaches, mick jagger, and jake roberts, and jake roberts false teeth.
I have a few theorys here with this one.
1. they just found him hanging upside down backstage at msg decomposed and CSI says hes been there since march of 94.
2. Clarence mason killed him cus he didn’t pay him the money to represent him.
3. He overdosed shootin dope, i guarantee this is true. dope fiends
You should probably stick to posting where genius like yours would really be appreciated.
Like scotsmanality.
do i sense sarcasm ? i hope not
ha
Yeah, congress is going eat Vince alive when a guy who hasn’t worked for the WWE since 99 or 2000 and hasn’t wrestled since 2001, yet once again its big bad evil Vince McMahons fault. I love how this society can’t accept personal responsibility anymore. It’s always someone elses fault.
For the record, Congress cant eat anything alive, see Bill Clinton, Alberto Gonzalez, Karl Rove, Harriet Myers, G Gordon Liddy, Dick Chaney, Spiro Agnew, MLB. Congressional hearings are a joke, its all about trying to look like they give a shit and distracting from the real issues they should be worried about…
So once again, THIS WAS NOT, repeat WAS NOT the WWEs fault in any way shape or form…
People have won lawsuits against the tobacco industry regarding health problems they suffered decades after smoking. Why shouldn’t WWE be held liable for death and illnesses that resulted from their encouragement of steroid use 15-20 years earlier?
We as fans just have to accept that the wrasslin business just breeds a certain type of irresponsible weirdo that pops way to many pills and chases it with way too much alcohol.I agree that congress will call out Vince for the photo op, but just like with the MLB it will be business as usual afterwards with most voters/observers not giving a shit.
is it that wrasslin breeds a certain type of person or is it that wrestling attracts a certain type of person. i mean if you look at wrestling and it’s personal requirements which in my opinion are: has good physical body (willing to improve it using steroids), willing to take huge risks (including a near suicidal desire to dive from large heights, or the ability to trust someone else to drop you on your head), being in chronic pain (willing to accept chronic drug use to manage said pain), and not having a stable home life (implying the desire to use drugs, alcohol and casual sex). I mean when you look at the people attracted to the Wrestling business, you have to kind of accept a high mortality rate. It’s kind of like looking at prostitutes and being shocked that they frequently die before the age of forty or that rock stars frequently don’t make it to fifty. I mean expectations of an “average” life span for wrestlers is a bit much given the kind of people that wrestlers are… they aren’t accountants, lawyers or teachers. These are people taking huge risks, making huge sacrifices, and as such are put in greater risk of premature death.
You don’t think that it makes the WWE look the least bit bad when Benoit’s actions cause congress to call them on the drug issues, and before they can even finish gathering evidence, TWO more wrestlers drop dead? It doesn’t matter that Kronus never worked for them (although they bankrolled ECW, so in a very real way he did) or that Brian Adams was long gone; Vince spends millions of dollars a year cultivating the notion that “Wrestling = WWE” and if someone is a wrestler, they must be WWE. Well, it cuts both ways.
You have a point there about having the WWE=Wrestling mentality that Vince seems to want does cut both ways, and yes it does make them look bad. However, as stated before, its all about personal choice. As for the person who compared them to the tobacco industry, the bulk of those lawsuits come from people who started smoking in the 50s where there were ads that stated that they were good for you and bullshit like that. No one who picked up smoking after 1977 has been given a dime in money from tobacco companies.
“Why shouldn’t WWE be held liable for death and illnesses that resulted from their encouragement of steroid use 15-20 years earlier?”
Simple, they encouraged it, they didn’t require it. In the end the guys who used steroids simply made a choice, they decided that they wanted to put their heath at a great risk for the chance of some time in the spotlight. Here is the thing though, there are doctors in this world who will state on record (saw a couple of them on real sports a few years back) who will state that steroids are actually good for a person as it helps them recover from injury faster. The problems come from when guys abuse them. Look at Stallone and Schwartzengger, they used them for many years, and they haven’t dropped dead yet, same with Hogan, Hellwig and how many other former wrestlers. For every one guy who has died young from possible steroid and other drug abuse (davey Boy, Adams, Eddie) there are dozens of other guys who used the same drugs for years and they are still walking around fine (Hogan, Hellwig, Stallone, Schwartzenegger, hell even the poster boy Marc Mero used them according to his list, he should be dropping dead any given moment now)
“In the end the guys who used steroids simply made a choice, they decided that they wanted to put their heath at a great risk for the chance of some time in the spotlight.”
I doubt it is this “simple”. Perhaps these guys don’t know how to do anything else, or are good at nothing else. This may be their one and only chance to make big money. Perhaps they didn’t know all of the risks involved? I think its pretty obvious that they knew that there was little chance of them making the big money if they weren’t big though.
Sure they made the decision to take these drugs, and as Lance Storm has shown you CAN be a successful wrestler without them, but you’d have to say he’s the exception to the rule.
Its there one and only chance to make big money? And? I’ve got some news for you. Its not your right to make big money. Millions of people in this country never make ‘big money’. And there is a tiny chance that they can still lead productive and happy lives. ‘I only had one chance to make millions of dollars and that was to take illegal drugs and destroy my body because that’s what Vince likes’ is not an excuse. Maybe you should have learned to be a fucking carpenter then?
From an outsider looking in, it certainly appears that in the USA wealth is a major determinant in one’s social standing, power etc etc.
My argument would be that the overriding desire for wealth many people seem to have would be a strong enough motivating factor for many of these people to take the risk – a risk which may well have not been particularly apparent to them at the time.
My point is that the thought process would be more like – I can’t make much money the way I am, I can take these steroids which people say aren’t great, but hey, everybody else is using them and they’re fine, so why shouldn’t I?
I just wanted to add that I do think that these guys are dumbasses, but I think it is possible to empathise with them more than you do.
For me, Crush’s best period was the post-Kona Crush, pre-NOD heel period from 1994-5.
Nothing is going to come from this. Nothing. Truth is, even ignoring the ’steroid’ situation, larger humans die earlier and have more health problems than smaller ones. That’s just the way that it is. Why do you think football players die 30 years earlier on average than average people? The problem is that these days its way easier to get hooked on prescription pain meds than it was in the old days because they’re much more powerful and still quasi-legal. Its a medical industry problem not a wrestling problem.
“Why do you think football players die 30 years earlier on average than average people?”
What you probably ought to ask is whether football players have always died 30 years younger than everyone else, or whether this is a trend that has started occuring recently, or the age difference has increased recently.
I probably oughtn’t ask that because I know they’ve always died younger.
Ok if you want to play this game; why have football players and wrestlers always died 30 years younger than anyone else, when Rugby Union, and Rugby League players life expectancies have been on par with and increasing at the same rate as everybody else?
Im pretty sure I know this just as much as you know your “fact”.
What does rugby have to do with it? We were talking about abnormally large men. Not tiny drunk men.
Oh man, now you’ve offended my entire country.
But having looked through Wikipedia and taken a guess that Offensive Tackle is a comparable position to Blindside Flanker you’ve been proved correct(ish)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sione_Lauaki
Sione is certainly not tiny, but compared to this guy he is heaps smaller:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Ogden
Are these guys fast & athletic, or do they carry lots of weight so they are harder to move around?
I know very little about American Football’s mechanics.
My firt memory of watching wretling was a promo where Crush walked on a beach crushing a pineapple resembling Doink. Now I only have pineapples. So sad. So sad.
Not to change the subject, but did Volkoff sing the Russian national anthem or the Soviet national anthem?
You think that he would bother memorizing he Russian National Anthem just for this show?
He is Russian you know. Its not like they brought in a guy from Toledo to do it.
I thought he was billed as Lithuanian during his face turn?
He’s actually from (the former) Yugoslavia.
You know when things will hopefully change in wrestling? When the Feds are hauling Vince McMahon’s ass out of Titan Towers in cuffs, and then on to a “Federal Pound’em In The Ass Prison” which from the stories I’ve heard he may enjoy. Paint me reactionary but I wonder if Vince would be so cavilier(read: arrogant) about wrestling deaths/steroids/drug use if it had been Triple H/Steph/Aurora found dead instead of the Benoits?
that’s a good point.
HHH may come back about 50 lbs lighter. Scott may just call him “HH” in his reviews.
(cause when he came back in 2002, he called him “HHHH” since he was SO MUCH BIGGER).
You know when things will change in wrestling? When people stop watching it. I love all of you Super-Smarks sitting on your high horses acting like the problem isn’t you. You’re the ones that support this system. If you really found it so sad and offensive, you’d stop paying guys to pump themselves full of juice and take eight billion bumps a year. But you’ll do what you always do. Support it and complain at the same time.
Even if you’re gay it’s no fun being ass-raped.
My brother-in-law brought up a question — does anyone have a comparison of average life expectancies for wrestlers in the NWA/WWWF years, Hulkamania, and beyond? (I know some people span those generations, of course.) Because it seems to us that most of the old timers made at least 50 …
It is so depressing! How will we live without Crush! BTW, Bergman and Antonioni died within a day of each other a couple weeks ago and no mention on the blog, so discuss here if anyone else cares.
Scott. I’ve been a devoted fan for about six years now, but it’s to the point where I’m seriously contemplating not visiting your page anymore. You’ve given me so much bad news over the past few months. Just though I’d mention that. Sorry.