WWE being sued Jimmy Snuka and multiple others.

all of those guys

You definitely raise an interesting issue. But how could one know where Snuka suffered the trauma? Meaning....how can you pinpoint it was due to his time in WWE and not the 15 or 20 years he spent wrestling for other promotions? Certainly I would think Snuka would be more susceptible to trauma the older he got.

Post purchase of WCW & ECW's Intellectual Property falls under the WWE banner. That's why guys like Axl Rotten are listed. If there is specific documentation of an inury and closely followed match, it's WWE's fault for allowing someone to go out and perform based on the employee not getting paid.

In a sense, it's crazy. Some guys never worked for WWE or if so, did so very briefly. And of course, you have guys who saw so little action in the ring they would never be under any circumstance to get headshots.
The list almost reads like a "convention" list where a lawyer went to a big autograph signing with all the wrestlers and just took their names down to be part of the lawsuit.
In another sense, I LOVE it! WWE "owns" all of wrestling, they wanted it that way all along. Now they have to deal with the WCW and ECW wrestlers of the past.
Personally, I'd like to see Paul Heyman give some of his money to the ECW guys (maybe he does, though you'd think we'd hear the wrestlers singing his praises). Those guys were really risking life and limb every match for ECW and Heyman. He not only gets off scot free but becomes attached to one of the biggest attractions in WWE and UFC. ECW guys are either hurting bad or deceased.

They'll probably all forget about it...

The Coach had some interesting comments about this:


"This is a very, very close topic for me. 2003 was the first time I got in the ring to train to be an in-ring participant. The very first day I was in there I suffered a concussion. There’s a very good chance, I didn’t get them all evaluated, but probably between 10 and 20 concussions during my time from 2003 – 2008. The one thing I’ve always said about Vince McMahon is this: he is more loyal than any person, boss or human being I’ve met in my life. and it’s not just because he signed my paychecks for nearly a decade. I don’t like it, in fact I hate it, when a certain group of people… and this was always the case when stars would leave to go somewhere else or they’d get fired because of something stupid they did, then they would blame Vince for whatever issues they had.

:"Vince has recognized that, so he has paid all these guys for years and years. And all he asks, all he asks, is once a year at WrestleMania they show up, sign some autographs, shake some hands and then he pays them enough to live. In response to this, what do these 50 guys do? They go out and file a lawsuit that he was not there for them and the company was not there for them when they had all these concussion issues.

"This drives me crazy because for a lot of these people this is a dream, a dream come true. It’s not an easy business, it’s a tough business but to come out and say the company didn’t take care of you because of these concussions is just wrong, it will go away and as a former employee and a person that loves that business, it just drives me crazy and I don’t like it.”

That's precisely why I don't see this suit being successful unless WWE just wants it to go away quietly sooner rather than later. There *might* be a couple of guys on this list who had the forethought to prepare for this type of situation, but all of the specifics about the biz from the 80s and 90s don't suggest that there's much of a paper trail. Wrestlers were often responsible, as independent contractors, for their own medical care. They worked through injuries on a regular basis, often neglecting doctor's appointments for pay days, and the understanding of concussions leading to CTE only began to emerge in the last 10-15 years. I'd be shocked if WWE/F kept specific documentation of their employees medical conditions until after the Guerrero/Benoit deaths. Perhaps the suit can prove negligence in that aspect, but the plaintiffs are likely going to be recounting old stories without much hard evidence. Those claims might well be true, but I doubt that they'll be able to directly tie their WWF/E stints to their problems.

Are there even surviving, verified hard copies of those from 20-30 years ago? Did these guys keep corresponding medical records from the doctors they saw at the time, if they even sought out medical care in instances where they, like this update on the lawsuit words it, "got their bell rung?" I seriously doubt there's much documentation surviving from the pre-digital age of recording keeping, especially when it comes to the misunderstood nature of concussions in that same era.

Here is the update, and I while I'm guessing that many of the plaintiff's assertions are true, the case seems like mostly hearsay littered with ambiguity.

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