The autopsy says Eddie Guerrero died from heart failure. We may never get a definite answer as to what caused it but a 38 year old athlete died so I think we can rule out the normal causes of coronary failure. He’d been alcohol and drug free for four years so it wasn’t an overdose of any kind. One suggestion is steroids caused an enlarged heart. You don’t have to be an expert to see that Eddie carried too much muscle mass on his frame and that those muscles were bigger than they used to be. Whether Eddie was a steroid user (or abuser) is not what I want to talk about. Steroids are a major problem in the wrestling business and people are going to continue to die unless something is done about it. But who can do anything about it?

The wrestlers themselves

The locker room has a lot of power. Thirty guys living, travelling and working together. Every wrestling book talks about the "locker room leaders", "wrestlers court", "locker room etiquette" and other examples of how the "boys" police themselves. If they wanted to those leaders could decide to make the locker rooms steroid free. They could use the very real power they have to make the lives of steroid users hell until they give up the juice. Anyone who has been in the business for ten or twenty years will be able to tell if a colleague is still a user. They have spent years using their high-school bullyboy methods to intimidate and humiliate their co-workers. If they really cared about Eddie as much as they said they did they would use that same power to save lives. But they won’t – if they had any intention of doing any good for each other they would’ve unionised years ago. Besides, at least one "locker room leader" is a major steroid user himself.

Vince McMahon

Vince is WWE. What he says goes. If he cracked down on his staff he could get results. But in order to do it he would have to accept that the testing had to be legit and the suspensions (and firings) for positive tests would have to be applied across the board. It doesn’t matter if the positive test is that of the champion or the jobber – the punishment has to be the same and it has to be immediate. No more ignoring results, no more holding positive results back until a more convenient time. Vince used to say, during his heel time, that you "don’t cross the boss". We need more of that from him to get steroids out of wrestling. You could probably count on one hand the number of people in WWE who aren’t afraid of Vince. If they knew he was serious you would see use of the pills and the needles dwindle rapidly. But he won’t do anything. He has it in his head that big muscles equal ratings and profits. Never mind that Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart and Steve Austin drew huge money without looking like Chris Masters. Or that the endless parade of muscle men means that one – exactly one – has succeeded in the last few years, Batista. You only have to look at a Vince McMahon match to see the body he has at sixty years of age and you’ll realise why he will never tell his wrestlers to lay off the gas.

The State Athletic Commissions

Oregon used to have an Athletic Commission rule about drug testing. It was tough – requiring everyone wrestling in the state to be tested regularly – and was considered the strongest anti-drug policy in the country. So WWE simply didn’t run in Oregon. For years and years they ignored one of their biggest markets so no one had to be tested. With most Athletic Commissions simply interested in their percentage of the gate money they won’t do anything to risk WWE boycotting them. Once upon a time a New York Athletic Commission drug testing policy might have had an impact but with business so soft that WWE no longer runs Madison Square Garden they would probably even consider New York to be expendable. Wrestling isn’t real sport so, unlike UFC, the athletic commissions are not valuable allies but simply leaches who want their cut and will happily leave well alone.

Legislation

Let’s pretend for a moment that America’s legislators actually cared about wrestlers and wanted to introduce mandatory drug testing. Firstly, the problem of defining the business they are discussing. It isn’t a sport, it is an entertainment industry. So how do you draft legislation which covers pro wrestling but which couldn’t equally apply to movies, rock music or other entertainments? Mention WWE by name and they law would never survive. Call it simply "professional wrestling" and WWE would simply claim they are "sports entertainment" and haven’t been "pro wrestling" for years. The government’s other alternative would be to launch an investigation into WWE – steroids are illegal after all – but they tried that once and it didn’t work. Unless the baseball scandal gets bigger and drugs in sports becomes a national issue I don’t think anyone in Washington will care that wrestlers are dying unnecessarily.

Sponsors / Stockholders

If WWE had a major sponsor or a powerful stockholder they could exert influence. But with Vince and his family owning about 75-80% of World Wrestling Entertainment there simply isn’t any voice they are compelled to listen to. They also have no major sponsors – none that would have the ability to make Vince thing, even for a moment, about an issue such as this. A "we’ll pull out if you don’t do something about this" scenario is pretty much impossible to imagine. Even the USA Network – home to WWE Raw – would be impotent. As much as they would like to avoid a situation where they are constantly being written about in connection with WWE fatalities they have no real power. They could threaten not to renew the contract for Raw and leave WWE with no TV outlet but can you see them doing it? WWE is a pain in the ass for any network but they are tolerated because they bring ratings and two hours of Raw ratings in a week can lift a cable network’s overall ranking considerably.

So can anything ever be done? Short of another criminal investigation, no. Eddie Guerrero’s death may have moved people to tears but it won’t move them to act. WWE is owned and run by a muscle-mark and another muscle-mark is going to inherit it when Vince dies (because he’ll never retire). Unless mainstream sports stars start dying in great numbers people will still continue to think of steroids as a performance enhancing drug – something that is technically cheating but basically harmless. Well they aren’t harmless – they make muscles bigger, the heart is a muscle, a big heart is a good euphemism but a bad medical condition. Sooner rather than later they stop beating.