Kevin Kelly Wants to Punch Drug Abusers in the Face?

In a recent addition of his blog, current ROH announcer and former WWE announcer Kevin Kelly (that’s right, the ugly hermaphrodite himself) had some extremely harsh things to say about drug abusers in the wrestling business, and drug abusers in general. Kevin mentioned that he had been watching an episode of Intervention on A&E (marvelous name dropping by the way Kevin) and said of the subject of the episode, “I didn’t feel sorry for her. I wanted to punch her in the face.” I sincerely hope I’m not the first person to say to Kevin Kelly, what the holy freaking Christ is wrong with you? He went on to say that anyone who abuses drugs “needs a kick in the ass and a push in the right direction.” While it is true that drug abuse is inherently negative and that people who fall into such a cycle do sometimes need a strong push in the right direction, saying that you want to punch them in the mouth is far beyond callous.

Let’s examine the state of the wrestling business and see if we can better understand the drug problem that has made itself evident in the media over the last few years. Maybe we can come up with something a bit more critical as a solution other than punching random people in the face like some sort of self-righteous idiot.

The wrestling business, despite the ignorant assumptions of the uninformed, is real in that these guys do get hurt. They take bumps and they get injured. That part of the business is absolutely not fake. I don’t think Vince McMahon is sitting in his ocfice chair in Stanford and saying, “Let’s put our biggest star on the injured list for nine months with a fake leg injury. Let’s do it for posterity, and maybe to liven things up a bit.” Folks, if you’re dumb enough to think that these guys “know how to fall”, then maybe somebody should drop you on your head a few times on top of a sheet of plywood covered in a scant inch of canvas, and see how you come out. I’ll bet it won’t be too fun.

All digressions aside, the wrestling business has a high incidence of injuries, and severe ones at that. In the wrestling business it is not uncommon to see torn ACLs, torn PCLs, torn tendons, shattered bones, broken backs, broken necks, even ruptured testicles—just ask tommy Dreamer about that one. It’s true that these guys get paid pretty well for their troubles, but money itself does not relieve pain. What does relieve pain you ask. Well according to just about every doctor practicing in our great country, pills relieve pain. What’s the first thing they do when you go to the ER experiencing sever back pain, sever neck pain, severe leg pain, severe abdominal cramps, severe rectal bleeding? They send you home with a bottle full of painkillers. Of course people are going to get hooked on them. Doctors hand the damn things out like they were M&Ms on Halloween for Christ sakes.

With that being said, let’s acknowledge the fact that there is no system set up for wrestlers after they get let go from one of the big companies. If you get fired from WWE or TNA, and you don’t get hired by the other company, what do you do? You take bookings in the indy feds, and the indy feds can’t afford to pay the kind of money that WWE or TNA does. So when you get injured, if you don’t have private insurance, which is expensive even for somebody who’s making a decent salary, you’re screwed. So you go to the ER and instead of getting some good long-term kind of solution to your pain, you get painkillers, because that’s the only kind of treatment you can afford with no pension or retirement benefits.

Now let’s get into this a bit more personally. As far as Kevin Kelly is concerned, I think what he said was incredibly sanctimonious. This is obviously a man who has no sympathy for another human being struggling with addiction. What I have found is that people that say the sort of things that Kevin Kelly said have almost never been in that situation. It’s easy for you to condemn others when you’ve never walked in their shoes. Addiction is not something that is easily combated. The people that kick addiction cold turkey are very rare. Hell, people who kick addiction with councelling are pretty rare as well. Oh yeah, councelling is another thing that the big two don’t offer to their employees.

So since Kevin Kelly can’t constructively express his disgust or disapproval for drug users, and can’t seem to manage to find any sympathy for them either, I won’t bother to express my contempt for his blatant ignorance constructively. I’d like to punch Kevin Kelly in his face and then stick a heroine needle in his arm so he can get a chance to understand just how screwed these people can be. Kevin Kelly, you’re an idiot. You should take some time and put forth some effort to express your feelings in some sort of intelligent manner, and maybe people wouldn’t think that wrestlers, wrestling fans, and anyone associated with the wrestling business are morons like you.