10 Wrestlers Who Admitted Their Physiques Were Drug Enhanced Bull$hit
7. "Superstar" Billy Graham
How do we know? His book, his DVD, and countless interviews over the course of the last 25 years. In many ways, "Superstar" Billy Graham was something of a pioneer when it came to steroid use in professional wrestling. While there had been other steroid users before him, Graham was the first big star who was defined by them. A bodybuilder turned marginal football player, he was an incredibly green rookie when he went to San Francisco as Pat Patterson's tag team partner and thus an instant main eventer. While he was already a gifted talker, he would not have gotten nearly as far with a more average look. Within three years he was headlining in the AWA, the number two drawing and paying territory in the country. A few years after that, he was the first heel to get an extended run with the biggest money spot in the business, WWWF (now WWE) champion. However, even though he knew the exact end date of his year-long title reign long before he got the belt, he felt he had a ton of steam left and spiraled into a deep depression that led to him largely disappearing from wrestling for years, and while he returned, he was never the same. He eventually became something of an anti-steroid advocate, as the years of abuse left him with a condition called avascular necrosis that caused severe degeneration of his hip and ankle bones. With Graham considered the big steroid pioneer in wrestling, it seemed like an inevitability that others would suffer from the same condition, but if anyone ever did, they never made waves about it.
Formerly the site manager of Cageside Seats and the WWE Team Leader at Bleacher Report, David Bixenspan has been writing professionally about WWE, UFC, and other pop culture since 2009. He's currently WhatCulture's U.S. Editor and also serves as the lead writer of Figure Four Weekly and a monthly contributor to Fighting Spirit Magazine.