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Originally Posted by Profits of Doom
The thing that really amazed me about The Wrestler is the accuracy in which they portrayed the industry. My old roommate was a wrestler for the original ECW, and I used to travel with him to shows a lot on weekends when I wasn't working (this was late '90's up to early 2000). ECW used to bring in a lot of the old WWE and WCW names to put over their talent, and it was really sad at times to see guys that I idolized as a kid basically penniless. These were guys that were making millions in the '80's, and they never saved a penny of it.
Pro wrestlers are paid as independent contractors, and more often than not the older names ran afoul of the IRS. That doesn't even take into the account the massive amount of money these guys spend on Vicodin, Soma, and other painkillers and muscle relaxers, on top of living a rockstar lifestyle.
Speaking of my old roommate, Big Vision Entertainment, who produce a lot of pro wrestling DVD's, are shopping around a reality show of his life after pro wrestling in which he goes back to his original profession, bail enforcement/bounty hunting. I really hope some network picks it up...
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I watched a documentary a while back where they followed a guy named Tony Atlas who used to be a huge name in wrestling ( I haven't watched it since the 80s when I was a kid, but he was pretty big back then). In this movie he was broke and living in a tiny little apartment and wrestling at little shows in school gyms or wherever in front of maybe 50 or 100 people. There were a bunch of guys who I recognized from the 80's who were all in the same boat. At one point they were going to do a show at a gym and it got shut down because there was no legal promoter so Atlas spends the day jumping through some hoops to get a special promoters license so the show can go on. Eventually he does, but they have to move the venue and the end up putting on the show for about 30 people.
It was kind of sad. These guys were pretty short sighted when they were making big money and it looks like a lot of them were never able to make the transition into a normal life afterward. You hear a lot of stories of drug overdoses and suicides and stuff like that.