Konnan Rips Into WWE, Vince McMahon

Three days after professional wrestler Eddie Guerrero was found in his Minneapolis hotel room, dead at 38 from heart failure, Carlos (Konnan) Ashenoff stood at his friend's funeral and had an epiphany.

"For me, that was it," Ashenoff says, remembering the November 2005 funeral in Arizona. "All these guys are dying and nobody gives a ----."

Ashenoff says he swore off a culture of steroids, painkillers and drugs that was so over-the-top that he and his pals used to keep a "dead pool" with their rowdier friends' names on it, knowing it wouldn't be long before someone collected.

Ashenoff, a legend from his days in the Mexican circuits and a one-time World Championship Wrestling champion, is 43 and semi-retired now, with an artificial hip in his side and a kidney transplant in his near future. The hip degenerated after years of steroid abuse and the physical toll of his sport, and he thinks painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs ruined the kidney.

In the wake of Chris Benoit's murder-suicide rampage, Ashenoff says he is tired of waiting for wrestling to fix itself. Ashenoff wants Congress, state legislatures, anyone with some authority, to step in and force professional wrestling to deal with the drugs that are killing performers at an astonishing rate.

"Everybody - I can guarantee you, 100% from top to bottom - everybody's either on steroids, painkillers, they drink or they take recreational drugs, and in the case of half the guys, all four," he says from his home in Chula Vista, Calif. "Nobody gives a ----. When that baseball player (Orioles pitcher Steve) Bechler died from ephedra, everybody got all upset and reacted and they banned ephedra. (In wrestling), it's all these guys - big names - and, nothing."

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