Behind the Gimmick: How Wrestling Shaped My View of Death, Meaning, and Identity”

Wrestling was never just entertainment to me. It was everything.

As a lifelong wrestling fan, I saw it as more than a show it was a mirror for real human struggle, identity, and mental health in professional wrestling.

While others wore Batman pyjamas or looked up to Superman, I was more interested in real men who bled, travelled town to town, and broke their backs for a pop from the crowd. I didn’t grow up idolising Marvel heroes. I picked mine from a much rougher ring.

Wrestlers were my superheroes. But unlike superheroes, they could die. And they did.

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From Fan to Tape Trader: A Deeper Love

I wasn’t just a casual fan. I was one of those kids who took it seriously. I traded tapes, classic matches, Japanese deathmatches, ECW before most people knew what it was. I’d order old VHS compilations, tape over PPVs, and build my own archive like it was sacred.

Then came the shoot interviews.

And that changed everything.

Shoot interviews were my first real exposure to the human being behind the character.  These interviews gave me insight into wrestler mental health, long before that phrase was being widely discussed. For the first time, I saw the toll the addictions, the regrets, the backstage politics, the losses. It was like peeling back the canvas of the ring and finding something raw, vulnerable, and unfiltered underneath.

What fascinated me most was the post-wrestling identity crisis many faced when the crowd went quiet

As I grew older, it wasn’t just the matches I was drawn to, it was the men behind the gimmicks.

The father is trying to make ends meet. The performer grieving the loss of a tag partner. The icon who, without the lights, was just trying to survive.

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Death Was Always in the Ring

You see, when you grow up loving wrestling, death becomes very real, very fast.

I watched Brian Pillman deteriorate in front of my eyes. I watched Davey Boy Smith, who once seemed like a tank, pass away far too young. I remember the heartbreak of losing Eddie Guerrero, someone whose pain and redemption was part of his very story arc.

These weren’t just wrestlers to me. They were the men who gave me hope, gave me meaning, helped shape my understanding of resilience and identity.

When they died, I felt it. Not in the way you cry at a film ending, but in the way that shakes something loose inside your chest.

Wrestling made me familiar with grief early on. Not the theoretical kind the real kind. The kind where your childhood heroes vanish and the business moves on like nothing happened. This was death in wrestling not as an angle or storyline, but as personal loss.

These moments taught me more about grief, legacy, and purpose than any classroom ever could.

It was then I began to feel something deeper. I didn’t have the word for it yet, but it was existential.

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The Benoit Tragedy: A Permanent Mark

But nothing shook me like what happened in 2007.

Chris Benoit.

To this day, I struggle to even write that name without a tightening in my throat.

Benoit was different. He was respected by everyone. Quiet. Humble. Technically unmatched. A wrestler's wrestler. If you were deep into the scene, you knew that guys like Eddie, Regal, Jericho, and so many others respected him immensely. And when they talked about him, you listened.

That respect transferred. I admired him deeply. And then… he did something that will haunt wrestling forever.

The events in that house and what happened to Nancy and Daniel are unspeakable. But for me, as a young man, trying to make sense of the world, it became a moment of internal rupture. How could someone who represented everything I thought was noble about wrestling… do that?

It forced a confrontation within me I hadn’t had before.

It wasn’t just about wrestling anymore. It was about human nature. How do you reconcile greatness and monstrosity in the same person? How do you carry respect for the craft, while confronting the horror of what a man has done? How do you grieve someone who destroyed so much?

This wasn’t just a wrestling story it was a wrestler mental health crisis, a trauma story, and a reckoning with how we understand human complexity.

 It was a story of identity, trauma, and the terrifying ambiguity of the self.

The Chris Benoit tragedy left a permanent scar on the wrestling world and on fans like me trying to make sense of the fallout.

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What Wrestling Taught Me About Being Human

Through all of this, wrestling became more than fandom. It became a mirror. Of pain. Of purpose. Of mortality.

Each match became a metaphor. Each promo, a cry for relevance. Each tragic passing, a warning that no spotlight lasts forever.

Wrestling raised questions that traditional psychology couldn't answer. That's when I discovered existential therapy, particularly Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, a form of existential therapy created by Viktor Frankl. Frankl believed that even in suffering, we can find meaning. That purpose is not handed to us it is wrestled into existence.

Today, I’m an existential coach. Not because I planned it. But because wrestling taught me that behind every gimmick is a real person trying to hold it together. And I want to help that person, the one behind the tights, the promos, the broken bone

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If You're a Wrestler Reading This

If you’re a retired wrestler, an independent worker, or someone quietly battling addiction, trauma, or life after wrestling know that you are not alone.

You may not know me. But I’ve known you all my life.

I saw your matches. I watched your documentaries. I heard the slurred words in post-match interviews. I felt the loneliness behind the glory.

And I believe that your story still matters even if the world’s moved on.

If you’ve ever felt the weight of death, of identity, of grief… know this: You’re not alone. And your meaning doesn’t end when the match does.

I’m here to talk, not to fix. But to listen. To walk with you through the silence after the bell.

Because wrestling shaped me.

 And now I help the ones who shaped it.

Wrestling taught you how to take a bump. Now it’s time to learn how to stand without the gimmick.

Qu-rious