Fair warning, this isn't going to be an easy read. It's no secret that depression and mental illness can take people to some terrible places and now wrestling legend Tommy Dreamer has revealed that he very nearly ended up committing a very real murder-suicide at
WrestleMania X-7.
Apparently, a number of issues included scrapped plans for his WWE debut, the fact he had to move back in with his parents, and Paul Heyman telling him to turn down offers from WWE despite the fact he was collecting cheques from them as ECW collapsed all culminated with him being pushed to a shockingly dark place.
"I’ll tell you what I wanted to do. It’s sick that I think this. At Wrestlemania, I was gonna hop the rail and I was gonna whack Paul E. in the back of the head right at the announce table, then I was gonna whack myself. The ultimate martyr, I was gonna hit my pose crack, boom, pull the trigger. Because I was that insane. Don’t know if I would have went through with it, but that’s what I was thinking about everyday. I was like, ‘I will go down in history.’ Pop, boom. First they’d think it as an angle until I shot him. I was so severely depressed and so mental with rage, I needed help."
That help came in the form of a phone call from Jim Ross who made it clear that everyone was thinking about him because they were aware he was going through a tough time and promised to make his deal with WWE a reality (and it panned out because he was ultimately signed to the company).
"Think of how stupid I would have been, how dumb and how messed up my thoughts would have been if they would have come to fruition," he continued. "I am so happy I didn’t do it, I am so happy that I did get that phone call, from someone who was a stranger, I barely knew the guy. There was another day, there has been a lot of other days."
It's shocking to hear all of this and a dark reminder of what depression can do to people.
The fact Dreamer felt like this was the only option is terrifying and it's a relief to think that things changed for him and he's now in a much better place. Needless to say, remember that even the most simple of conversations can make a difference to someone going through a hard time.