The name of this article is incredibly presumptious in claiming that the deaths are premature. No death is premature. Yes everyone expects a standard life expectancy, and yes life factors greatly affect it, however calling it premature is total nonsense. Indeed the title seems to explicitly imply that professional wrestling was the cause of death, which is also not true for many on the list.
Examples of non-wrestling causes of death in the article include Jeff Peterson (Leukemia), Mass Transit (gastric surgery complications), Edouard Beaupre (Tuberculosis), Art Barr (unknown), Bobby Shane (plane crash). And that is just from numbers 20 to 30 alone! If this is truly premature then we must state in every article on everybody who has died as "premature".
A more suitable title would be "List of dead professional wrestlers" considering all you need to qualify for this list is to be a professional wrestler who has died. If the article wants to focus on wrestlers who died because of issues relating to their profession then reduce the list to those that are proved or start a new one.
Mabuska (talk) 21:54, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
- This article was started, by me, because the wrestling industry has a higher death rate per capita at younger ages. The mortality rates are discussed in the article lede. There are a lot of different causes of death, on the list and in the general population. There is no way to correlate any one death to the industry a person worked in, the only correlation is based on statistics. One thing left out of that lede is a lot of these people are big, fat, overweight, even obese. Weight problems contribute negatively towards one's longevity. The majority of the participants in this entertainment industry are famous; notable. This list identifies those, by name, whose death by any cause contributed to the statistics. What alternative do you suggest? Trackinfo (talk) 22:41, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
- It's not every pro wrestler that has dies. It just lists ones who died before widely accepted retirement age. oknazevad (talk) 23:06, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
- Similar lists have been shared by the media for years without omitting certain kinds of death. Nancy Grace was criticized for sharing a such a list when she tried to tie The Ultimate Warrior's death to drugs and implied that everyone else on the list had a death that was drug related. There's a section about that at Nancy Grace#The Ultimate Warrior if you're interested.
- I wouldn't be opposed to changing "premature" to something else if a better alternative is proposed but List of dead professional wrestlers would be title for an indiscriminate article. We need the pre-retirement age involved in the title somehow.LM2000 (talk) 23:41, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
The article already is indiscriminate.
I already suggested two ideas both far better than what we have at the moment. The definition of what premature means is open for various meanings and how are any of these academic or reliably sourced for Wikipedia? Simply making one up is not good enough for Wikipedia.
Like what is the defined average retirement age for a pro wrestler? Can evidence be provided of one? Does it take into account different eras retirement ages? If you are using the national retirement age, what about wrestlers who are from or died in places with a different retirement age?
It is possible to qualify to a degree wrestlers that died due to their career in wrestling. From steroid and pain killer abuse, to head trauma etc. etc. The article as is is hugely problemtic. Mabuska (talk) 16:34, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
- @Mabuska: To me this entire article is one gigantic WP:SYNTH violation. There was a study done to say something, and everything else in this article is tied to it, without a source tying them. - Galatz גאליץשיחה Talk 16:43, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
- It has been discussed previously. We have a simple to define criteria: notable; worked in professional wrestling; died before age 65. We do not get into potentially controversial decisions about what caused the death specifically to avoid arguments like this one. Did the 400 Lb wrestler have a heart attack because they were a wrestler, or because they were 400 Lbs.? Were they 400 Lbs because they were a wrestler? Or were they prequalified to be a wrestler because they were 400 Lbs.? Its unnecessary. This is just a list stating the facts. Trackinfo (talk) 04:32, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
- And again, this is how reliable sources tend to cover the issue. Here's an article from The Post Game which simply states that 1/3 of the performers at WrestleMania VI had died by 2014 and that "grueling travel schedules, painkiller abuse, steroid use" contribute to the high death rate. A Washington Post article examined those deaths and made the same observations that I did; John Tenta had died of cancer and Dino Bravo was murdered, so they were anomalies, but the rest died of either overdoses or heart attacks. That doesn't necessarily mean that every heart attack was directly linked to the sins of the wrestling business (that's usually very hard to prove) but researchers do look at the whole list of dead wrestlers to find these trends. That means we should present the entire list as well.LM2000 (talk) 20:53, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
- So no proper answer to my question? And no academic reliable sources? Simply that we use a Wikipedia user agreed cut-off point and newspaper articles that are claimed to be reliable? Also
made the same observations that I did
- so basically you performed WP:OR and WP:SYN and found a source to back up your view? I don't disagree with the correlation and the effects of the industry on its performers, especially in years gone by and it is tragic however this article is hugely problematic the way it is presented and it is obvious others feel so too.
- If you have a source stating that "grueling travel schedules, painkiller abuse, steroid use" is a contributor to the problem then why not focus the article on wrestlers who have died from such? Surely if such a statement with such definiteness can be made by what you say are reliable sources then there must be specific wrestlers confirmed as having died from those reasons? Yes? No?
- This article especially with its lead seems to be an attempt to smear every "premature" wrestlers death because of the pro-wrestling industry.
- Providing a link to a short story from an alleged reliable source about the Ultimate Warrior passing "early" at the age of 54 provides no evidence for its claims, which would make more sense if he had have been an active wrestler when he died in 2014, but wait he retired in 1998 and wrestled only once after that. Indeed he died from atherosclerosis cardiovascular disease, which can happen anybody in any profession at any age. If we take one of the more famous examples in this article, Andre the Giant, it is most likely the natural effects of his gigantism was the blame for his heart problems. Did wrestling exasperate it? Who knows.
- Simple solutions for this article include:
- Renaming to from a presumptious title that feels like it's an attempt to lay blame on the industry
- Ditching the lede that implies all deaths were caused or influenced by the pro-wrestling industry
- Remove the self-imposed age limit and restrict article to notable wrestlers. (Seems to be the case anyways as it is indiscriminate at the moment)
- Alter the lede to state that it is about notable wrestlers who have died, however that there are studies showing a higher correlation of wrestler deaths than in other sports due to certain factors
- Focus on wrestlers who's deaths can be attributed to the effects of the industry
- Really. Anything is better than the current article to be honest. It feels and reads like someone with a grudge or agenda. Mabuska (talk) 13:03, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
- The first source and only external link is a scholarly study of 557 wrestlers which was covered by the BBC and other high quality sources. Its conclusions are what you find in the lede here and in basically every reliable source, or short story, that writes about the topic. It also uses the word "prematurely" repeatedly. I believe my last response explained why we must give the entire list, but basically your proposals would push us further from where the WP:RS go.LM2000 (talk) 20:27, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
I would have to agree completely with @Mabuska:. No evidence has ever been provided that Dennis Coralluzzo's death is anything to do with professional wrestling, where are the sources citing his death as a premature wrestling death? Moab12 (talk) 10:12, 24 April 2019 (UTC)