Another ex-WWE star found dead; autopsy scheduled

[ccharles000]

Two weeks to the day after an ex-wrestler lost his life at the age of 29, another one of GOP Senate nominee Linda McMahon's former stars, who the company acknowledges it sent to rehab for substance abuse last year, was found dead Friday.

World Wrestling Entertainment on its website confirmed the death of Gertrude "Luna" Vachon, who the Stamford-based conglomerate said was under contract at various times from 1993 to 2000.

Vachon was 48 and lived in Port Richey, Fla., according to vital records. An autopsy is scheduled to be performed Saturday to determine the cause of her death.

Urging people not to rush to judgment, a WWE spokesman confirmed that Vachon was treated from April through June last year for substance abuse under a company program that pays for former wrestlers to get help.

http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Another-ex-WWE-star-found-dead-autopsy-scheduled-635150.php

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Linda "The Bodies" McMahon.

Kinda catchy . . . .

[Uzybone]

6. +1

[MinM]

2. Deadspin: Dead Wrestler Of The Week: Owen Hart

The sports blog Deadspin has a comprehensive list of Linda McMahon's victims:

http://deadspin.com/tag/deadwrestleroftheweek/

http://deadspin.com/5608464/dead-wrestler-of-the-week-owen-hart

Every week or so, the Masked Man, Deadspin's pro wrestling correspondent, honors the sport's fallen and examines their legacies — famous and obscure alike. Today: Owen Hart, who fell to his death in 1999 during a WWE pay-per-view event.

On May 23, 1999, at the WWE's Over the Edge pay-per-view event, Owen Hart died in a wrestling ring. He was playing a character called the Blue Blazer, a farcical masked superhero, though it can be more accurately stated that Owen Hart — who had long exploited wrestling's interplay between reality and unreality — was portraying "Owen Hart" masquerading as the Blue Blazer. On this night, Owen was being lowered to the ring in a harness to approximate flight. The harness malfunctioned; a clasp gave way, and he fell 70 feet onto the ring ropes, severing his aorta and killing him almost instantly. At that moment, the difference between Owen, "Owen," and the Blue Blazer was rendered tragically immaterial. Wrestling had lost one of its greats.

In the modern world of pro wrestling, even when you're ostensibly playing yourself, you're really playing a character. On screen, "Owen" always denied that he and the Blazer were the same person, even though it was comically obvious that they were one and the same. (His buddy Jeff Jarrett wrestled in the Blazer garb while Owen sat by on commentary to "prove" they were separate, and Koko B. Ware even took a turn under the blue mask for a similar gag; the ruse was more than obvious, and the audience was happily in on the joke.) Owen had played the Blue Blazer character earnestly early in his career, mostly in Japan and Mexico, where such masked personas are customary.

Such a character from his past was an ideal vessel for what would be, in its 1999 iteration, an anti-modern crusade. The Blue Blazer was at once a masked alter-ego and a manifestation of Owen's superego — the Blue Blazer stood opposed to the excesses of the WWE's Attitude Era, the crass sex- and violence-obsessed style that took over WWE programming in the late '90s. Owen the person had long been quietly uncomfortable with the direction the company was heading — he notably refused to work a storyline that had him in an affair with Jarret's on-screen companion, Debra McMichael...

[Radical Activist]

3. This Senate race may get WWE more attention that they want.

Interesting.

[Dawson Leery]

4. The McMahon body count is again growing.

[Hawkeye-X]

5. And I certainly hope that WWE gets scrutinized and McMahon's polls drop like a .05 hooker

I apologize to all the hookers who read DU.

Hawkeye-X

[Jennicut]

7. Nothing new for me. I have been following wrestling since 2000,

been to shows at what used to be called the Hartford Civic Center. The McMahons brought some business and money into CT. But there is a looooong history of their shoddy, controversial treatment of wrestlers in the business. It is part of the reason I stopped watching the WWE. It is not a pretty story at all. Most folks (at least under the age of 45) in CT know some of it. I think it will be part of the reason she won't win.
Also, RIP Luna. I remember watching her.

[firedupdem]

8. Tragic story... n/t

[denimgirly]

9. Wrestling seriously needs a Union organization.

Conditions are horrible ... at least from the several documentaries i've seen and now that WWE is a monopoly again (buying out several other groups) they can conitnue their practice of true republican values.