Current Stars Injuries Compared To The 80s and 90s

I like it here as well. It would get hammered by current generation fans as an attack on the present day style.

We did have our share of injuries though. Jesse Ventura's career was ended through injuries. Bret Hart had that nasty injury with Bravo. Shawn messed up his knee again later in his career. Savage had a messed up elbow for mania 5.

I'm sure there are a lot of instances of bad injuries, in the 80s you had to work through them or not get paid.

I remembered when Krusher Kruschev (Barry Darsow) severely injured his leg during a match against Sam Houston. He had to drop the Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight title to Houston & took 6 months off to heal.

In Jim Cornette's book, he said (and showed proof) that JCP took $25 out of every wrestler's paycheck, to give to Kruschev, just so he could have a bit of an income. There wasn't any worker's compensation or disability checks. If you didn't work, you didn't get paid. This was JCP's way of making sure that injured wrestlers had a bit of an income if they needed time off.

Kind of nice for them to do something like that.



(1:36:30-1:49:23)

Wrestling fans of today and especially kids wouldn't have the attention span for slow 80's style matches. Look at Ziggler and Rollin's Iron man match. Now I know it wasn't slow wrestling but it was 1 hour long and the crowd got bored and hijacked it to entertain themselves.

Now as far as injuries go the only guy from the past 20 years who has been really lucky is Kane. I believe he only had 1 injury in 2002. Ambrose had a good run too up until last year because he was wrestling constantly from 2012.

in some ways it has returned. will it come full circle? debatable.

wrestling in the 70s and before had some true athletics. the spots were very safe. superstar billy graham was the template for change and what wrestlers would turn into in the 80s - an increasement in spots, bodybuilding physiques, and less traditional characters. a lot of the athletics were traded in for showmanship.

and what did we get? a lot of those 80s guys are dead now, with wrestlers from previous ages outliving then. Bruno hated how things were in the 80s with the steroids.

then we enter the 90s, where we see an increased level of work rate and athletics due to the likes of Bret Hart, Michaels, etc. Bret Hart attributes this change to the tag team matches in the 80s, which may or may not be true but seems possible.

then we have ECW let the cat outta the bag. as Jim Cornette said, the wrestlers went from not hurting each other and the crowd believing they are to really hurting each other and the crowd believing they’re not. I love ECW but it is an incredibly fair criticism. Heyman exploited the business and therefore changed the work rate to a fast pace, dangerous, reckless one and it really ed a lot of guys up right up to the ruthless aggression age where too many guys were getting worn out and they had to reduce the chaos.

now instead of shots to the head and endless hard suplexes to cement etc, we have extreme athletics from guys not on a quarter of the steroids they were 20 years ago. and no body can take the spots these guys are doing, top athletes or not.

local indies like SMASH already have a reduced work rate where there is more of that 1980s showmanship/play the crowd/stomp around the ring behaviour. they have spots and gimmick matches but they’re more few and far between. house shows for WWE are far less costly in bumps and feature showmanship moreso. so we aren’t too far off a full out return.

i think if they could start telling better stories, the focus on athletic spots to sell the matches would lessen. but that’s me speculating

/ end rant

A lot of guys got hurt in the 80s but continued wrestling that was how it was. No salaries or downside guarantees, the only guarantees were minimum payout for house show + tv. So they had to work to pay the bills and what not. Randy Savage worked with a staph infection at WMV when they almost had to cancel the main event. Basically you could break your thumb and still work, just look at Orndorff the guy was in NO way in any condition to feud with Hulk in late 86 but they were selling out shows regardless and he worked till he couldn't anymore and his neck was out of it before WM3. Today a lot more care from the WWE is also noticed than it was back then.

It was different in the 80s, the story was told in the ring and out, it was pop culture. People would literally pop even if it's a punch that knocks out the guy you hated out of the ring. The performers were trained to make you believe it was legit, today they don't even know how to make themselves believe. Kayfabe is dead, gosh I rather not talk about today's wrestling in this forum.