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Scott Hall wheeled into hospital

It must have sounded like the easiest pitch in documentaries. Find a real-life version of Mickey Rourke’s character from The Wrestler. Someone who has ravaged their body through drugs, drink and bad choices and is reduced to doing stumbling, incoherent spots at indy shows after having headlined Wrestlemania.

And step forward Scott Hall. A genuine, real-life fuck up, who hit incredible highs in wrestling with the WWE and WCW, but whose personal demons have left him, in his 50s, likely to die sooner rather than later from a heart attack, having a fractious relationship with his family, and famously showing up at indy dates in ‘no shape to perform’.

So it was with ESPN’s E60 documentary earlier this week. A sad, depressing look at a man who clearly had issues long before he stepped inside a wrestling ring, but whose subsequent career highs and lows – to match his personal ones – make for a heartrending Rise and Fall style piece.

Hall’s problems are, for wrestling fans at any rate, well documented. Despite numerous spells in rehab, and a stomach implant that was supposed to prevent him drinking alcohol, his drinking cost him his chance to make an impact with the WWE on his return there in 2002.

More significantly it cost him his family in the late 90s – and despite the documentary showing him trying to make bridges with his son Cody, subsequent reports suggest that has failed and he’s back in rehab again, having broken off contact with the young man.

Hall’s issues stem from – amateur psychologist hat on – two problems, the documentary purported. A family with a history of addictions, with his parents and grandparents all alcoholics. And an incident when he was a bartender in the early 80s, just prior to joining Jim Crockett Promotions, when he shot a man through the head who had been about to pull a gun on him.

The documentary featured his former NWO stablemates and friends Sean Waltman and Kevin Nash talking about how much they feared for their friend – to the point where Waltman, who has himself overcome addictions and health issues to get his life back – admitting he’s been preparing himself for Hall’s death for a year and a half. To see the bloated, puffy, immobile shell Hall has become – especially compared to the guy who was still able to tear it up in the ring as recently as a couple of years ago – you understand why.

Scott Hall's coffin will come with its own childproof lid

But there was another aspect to the documentary, one which showed either a lack of research or an urge to pursue an agenda regardless or veracity by ESPN. At the start, the filmmakers are seen talking about how the modern crop of pro-wresters aren’t interested in drugs or drinking. It’s an issue reiterated by various figures, including senior WWE figure Stephanie McMahon, later in the documentary.

“These days, the biggest addiction for most wrestlers is Playstation,” claims reporter Shaun Assael.

Bollocks. Indeed Assael, who penned the superlative Sex Lies and Headlocks book a decade or so ago, should know – he’s written numerous articles about the drug testing and drug problems within pro-wrestling, upto and including the WWE.

TNA Wrestling recently had two of its top performers involved in high profile drugs cases. In the case of Jeff Hardy – like Hall, a hugely promising star who has, sadly, become a monumental screw-up – it saw him do jail time for possession with intent to deliver.

His brother Matt, arrested so many times recently he’s practically got a season ticket, was fired from the company for his behaviour, before being arrested for possession after a series of YouTube videos and tweets which suggested he was either on the verge of, or suffering, a nervous breakdown.

Steroids and painkiller abuse are long-standing problems right across the pro-wrestling industry, from the lower leagues to the top companies, which remain a major issue. The number of wrestlers dying before the age of 40 is one of the great dirty secrets of the industry, and despite a high profile ‘Wellness Policy’ instigated at the WWE since Eddie Guerrero’s untimely passing in 2005, the death toll continues to mount. And of that death toll, the most common causes that come up are drug overdose or heart failure.

If football, or rugby, or baseball, or the NBA had a run of deaths of top performers like that, it’d be headline news. Indeed, the sudden passing of Marc-Vivien Foe and Phil O’Donnell within a couple of years of each other woke up football to the need for heart monitoring and cardiology checks on players.

ESPN’s documentary (posted below) was a heartbreaking look at the fall from grace of a man who, at one point, was one of the most famous and successful wrestlers in the world – and fitted the pitch they clearly wanted to make, that Scott Hall was the real life equivalent of Randy the Ram from Darren Aronofsky’s film.  In that respect, it’s worth watching

But by taking that blinkered approach, and allowing nonsense about the current crop of pro-wrestlers being clean-living kids whose only vice is video gaming, ESPN does both Hall and their own film a disservice.