Daniel Bryan, headbutts and concussions in the WWE

In terms of toll taken on the body, professional wrestling is essentially the equivalent of experiencing a low-grade car crash multiple times a week. Despite this, wrestlers are going all-out to entertain audiences.

When Bryan Danielson —  one of the most influential and popular grapplers of the last decade —  revealed last month that his retirement was due to a combination of concussions and head and neck injuries that gave him no choice but to quit the sport, it gutted fans and wrestlers alike. Earlier this month, veteran William Regal (a man whose technical ability inspired Danielson to wear his trademark burgundy in tribute) took to Twitter to share a photo of his own severely damaged neck, held in place with metal screws, to illustrate the dangers of a career in the squared circle, and to warn younger wrestlers to stay away from high impact moves that target the head and neck. While a lot of moves are relatively safe, some of the most dangerous ones elicit such big reactions from fans that wrestlers use them anyway.

It’s unrealistic to consider “banning” a move, but given the information we have at our disposal with regards to concussions, CTE and the like in the wake of Danielson’s retirement, it’s about time to ask the question: Is it time to do away with the headbutt?

Tracking the origin of the headbutt in wrestling is basically impossible. As far as offensive weapons, the skull is pretty dense. It makes sense that a wrestler would employ a dome shot as often as a punch. The move shouldn’t be that dangerous —  when safely executed, the person doing the dive essentially just performs a front bump onto the stomach —  but any move where the goal is to drive your head into something can end up causing harm. Harley Race, the multiple-time world champion who is widely credited with inventing the diving headbutt (some say accidentally), has been quoted several times as saying that he regrets making the move popular, due to its direct effect on the head and neck (Ric Flair made note of it in his autobiography, saying “the human body is not supposed to land that way.”)

Regardless of Race’s intent, the move spread like wildfire, roaring into popularity as a favorite move of British wrestling legend Tom “Dynamite Kid” Billington, who performed the move, hundreds, if not thousands of times throughout his career. Billington’s British technical style melded with aerial maneuvers that he honed while in Japan, inspiring a generation of technically sound wrestlers like Chris Benoit, Regal and Danielson. Headbutts are also affiliated with what has become an unwritten rule in the business: wrestlers of Samoan descent can take a headbutt and feel virtually nothing, while an opponent on the receiving end of one can find themselves in for a dose of extra-strength pain. (Seriously, never headbutt a Samoan.)  In Japanese wrestling, the headbutt has been brought back into popularity via association with a string of high-profile, hard-hitting matches in New Japan Pro Wrestling, mostly being used by Tomohiro Ishii, Katsuyori Shibata and Tomoaki Honma —  who uses a variation of the diving headbutt called the Kokeshi as his finisher — who weave open headbutts into the crux of their matches, including extended exchanges where the thud of impact can be heard in the cheap seats. This hard-hitting strong style has received adoration from wrestling fans and journalists, with these matches receiving praise and 5-star ratings. Not everyone is on board with the trend, though. Chris Charlton, a writer and puroresu (catch-all term for Japanese pro wrestling) historian weighed in via e-mail.

“I think the idea that the clunk of skulls brings an air of legitimacy is incredibly anachronistic,” he said. “In some ways it’s even a worse mentality than the chairshot machismo of the late 90s, because through that period and for decades, people were delivering perfectly safe worked headbutts. On the other hand, Japan doesn’t have a great history of being proactive on safety. It tends to be a ‘do as thou wilt’ situation, and chair shots to the head only really were eliminated here when their widespread banning drew attention in the west.”

This is admittedly an awkward point to consider. Like most people, it takes a concerted effort from this writer to watch matches with brutal moves like headbutts and to fully understand the dangers of what’s happening in the ring.

After Danielson’s retirement, the overall vibe in the wrestling industry is business-as-usual. Just like the NFL, however, it’s time to have an ethical conversation about what it means to enjoy a form of entertainment that puts people’s health in danger on repeated occasions.

Rich Kraetsch, owner of wrestling review and commentary site, Voices of Wrestling, paints a picture that is equal parts understanding and unsettling: Maybe the issue isn’t with specific moves, but wrestling itself? “Since the serious discussion of head trauma in football began a few years, I started wondering about similar issues with pro wrestling. We focus on these high impact moves that work the head and neck but what about back bumps? Is it possible that repeated back bumps onto a hard mat is just as bad as a stiff chair shot to the head? As we know from football, the major concussions aren’t the big issue, it’s the repeated sub-concussive hits that slowly but surely destroy the brain. Could a similar effect be happening in wrestling?”

Thing is, it’s not up to the fans, or even the promoters themselves. What is all this research and hubbub about safety worth if the folks who are doing the moves don’t seem to have an issue performing them? Kraetsch agrees: “I think the more likely case is that less people get into wrestling in general knowing the dangers and only the true passionate ones that desire it more than anything else still pursue it. Do those guys care about the danger? Do they care about head and neck trauma? Likely no because they are aware of the dangers and still chose to wrestle. Those ones likely won’t move away from moves like DDTs, brainbusters or any thousand of other variations on moves that are meant to target the head/neck.”

No one, including this writer, believes that we’ll see any sort of wide-sweeping regulation throughout the business that will do away with head/neck-based bumps anytime soon (unlike what we saw when the wrestling community essentially moved away from unprotected chair shots after the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide), but if the response to these recent revelations is simply, “wrestling is always going to have significant chance of injury” then the best case scenario should be to focus on education and proper training, as well as promotions stepping up to mitigate unnecessary risks (akin to WWE banning blading in matches). There’s still a lot to learn, but if the discussion leads to the next Bryan Danielson getting to perform at a high caliber safely for longer, then it’s a necessary one.