Former WWE Superstars Big Russ McCullough, Ryan Sakoda and Luther Reigns are suing WWE for suffering serious brain and other damage as a result of “egregious mistreatment” by working for WWE.
TMZ reports that they claim that as a result of working for WWE, they have suffered brutality in the ring has resulted in dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and a lot more.
According to the lawsuit, “under the guise of providing ‘entertainment’ …. has for decades subjected its wrestlers to extreme physical brutality.” The suit acknowledges wrestling is scripted but nonetheless unrelentingly brutal, claiming “WWE is in the business of selling violence.”
The legal docs chronicle various matches in which wrestlers were destroyed. It mentions the 2014 Royal Rumble, in which one wrestler “demolished another with a series of brutal steel chair attacks,” and the docs refer to “the carnage created by the match’s victor.”
The suit claims, “The WWE coerces its wrestlers to work while they are injured by, among other methods, threatening to strip them of their position within the organization if they refuse.” It says they are “universally encouraged to ‘wrestle through the pain.'”
And the lawsuit mentions Chris Benoit, who was “routinely hit in the head with a chair.” Benoit, who killed his wife and son along with himself, was autopsied after his death. A doctor concluded Benoit’s brain was so damaged from CTE, it “resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.”
