10 Wrestling Facts We Didn't Know Last Week (Dec 5)

3. Del Wilkes Once Routinely Took 120 Pills Per Day

Del Wilkes made much more of a splash in Japanese wrestling than he ever did in North America. Even so, the man worked for the AWA, WCW and the WWF during his career. In the WWF, he was best-known as 'The Patriot'. In WCW, he was unhappy with how he was being used, and asked Eric Bischoff for an early release. When the boss said no, Wilkes decided to head to Japan anyway, refusing to stay with the promotion. In the Orient, Wilkes worked a supremely physical style. There were no easy gigs for the man, who went full throttle every night. Making matters worse, long bus trips made it difficult to full recover from the previous evening's match. This took a tremendous toll on the guy's body. Looking to alleviate his problems and make the journeys go quicker, Wilkes turned to prescription medication. Speaking to Steve Austin on an episode of his podcast this week, Wilkes told how his pill problem got out of hand quickly. At one point, he was guzzling down up to 120 pills per day, clearly meaning he had an addiction. To his credit, Wilkes doesn't glorify the situation, instead saying it's no way to go about things. That's an incredible amount of drugs, Wilkes is lucky he's still alive.