Redmage said:
No, I haven't missed it. I disagree with it. I used to work in a drug testing lab in the Dept of Pharmacology at UCLA. We tested athletes for the Olympics, the NFL, pro soccer,and other sports. We found to the contrary that top-level athletes were so driven that they readily accepted the risks of drug use if it would give them the critical edge to win.
Pro athletes figure they have an extremely limited career lifespan anyway. They punish their bodies so severely that they wear out quickly. This doesn't bother them - it's the price they pay to play. But anything that helps them make the most of that limited time is good by them.
Look at professional sports. Has banning steroids given athletes an excuse not to use them? Not at all. Do they assist enforcement of those rules? Do they report athletes that they know are using? Almost never. Instead they cover for each other and try to find out how to get the same advantage without getting caught. There is no moral outrage or resistance about performance enhancers among professional athletes.
I said “most reasonably minded human athletes”, not most American athletes (not that I’m making an issue of nationality here, I’m making an issue of what sort of people do sport). A reasonably minded person would love his sport and spend the majority of their effort in practicing and competing in it to win whatever their top prize may be, but they would not sacrifice the chance of seeing grandkids, or the turn of the next century, or not going stuffucked and smothering their wife and choking their kid with their signature hold (according to latest reports, the contusions on his kid’s head and neck don’t match strangulation, but are consistent with the Crippler Crossface being applied by a person who was much larger than him – stand by for further announcements I guess).
I maintain, and I don’t imagine a massive amount of people would disagree, that the laws against illegal enhancers should exist for the benefit of those who are conscious of wanting to live long and in as good a state of health as they can, and for the encouragement of those who are dallying with drugs to turn them away. I further maintain that it is unfair on those fair-minded athletes to have to consider taking drugs to keep up with those who are willing to compromise so much of their health. Your argument about them sacrificing physical condition through pushing their bodies so hard (a very true point – every professional athlete suffers from joint degeneration and a whole load of other shite) cuts absolutely no ice , because there is a shit load of difference between bad joint arthritis and heart failure in your mid 40’s. One means painkillers and a lack of mobility, the other means your kid is an orphan. Everyone has the right to be able to compete without shortening their lifespan of sanity, at the highest level. I can’t see any way of enshrining that right without keeping illegal enhancers illegal.
Redmage said:
How is it unfair? Every athlete judges what price he's willing to pay - in blood, sweat, tears, and money - in order to make it to the top. Every athlete's decisions about those risks are perfectly fair.
I refer to my previous answer. Ibid. The risks are not fair on honourable athletes and the law is morally right to make them illegal.
Redmage said:
Let's take drugs out of it for a minute. Consider Mick Foley. Foley climbed to the top of the heap not because he was pretty, or strong, or charismatic. Foley made his name by doing exactly one thing: taking risks that his fellow wrestlers considered insane. And he paid for it in pain, brutal injuries, and early retirement.
The things he was willing to do to his body put him over the top, and those risks will eventually land him in the Hall of Fame. Was he being unfair to other wrestlers by forcing them to take risks to match his? Hardly. How then is the risk of steroid use any more unfair than the risk of being thrown from the top of a steel cage through a wooden table 15 feet below?
Mick Foley is actually one of my greatest heroes. I would dispute the point about him not being charismatic though. He didn’t have the Mohammed Ali-alike mic skills of The Rock, but he could hold his own any day of the week, in his own fashion.
Okay, let’s consider Foley. To quote myself from above…
Originally posted by a pretentious limey wanker, who couldn’t be concise if his life depended on it…(sorry all)
there is a shit load of difference between bad joint arthritis and heart failure in your mid 40’s. One means painkillers and a lack of mobility, the other means your kids are orphans.
To some extent every wrestler competes with their physicality. You get the mega-muscled types like Lex Luger, Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior; Rick Rude; Brock Lesnar and The Rock, but you’ve also got those like Yokozuna and Earthquake, who go for pure bulk. Some are just more or less average sized guys who get as ripped as possible and rely on their other entertaining talents to build up their whole package. Guys like Chris Jericho; Edge; Kurt Angle and Christian. Some guys are just physical enough to be credible and functional, and rely on character, charisma and technical skill, like Shawn Michaels; Bret Hart and Rey Mysterio. Whatever their particular specialties outside of physicality, they all use it to some degree.
With Mick Foley against say, The Rock, Foley’s willingness to take punishment wouldn’t have to be countered by an identical commitment from Rock. Rock’s flamboyant in-ring performance and personal charisma would be his foil to Foley’s multiple chair shots to the head or kamikaze dives from the cell roof. Foley himself said that his biggest physical asset was the world’s widest and flattest arse, Rock’s would be his American footballer’s chiseled physique. That’s the only thing that would have to counter-balance each other. Foley’s willingness to be an impact sponge is irrelevant because Rock has other stuff he beings to the table.
