May 22, 2023 Observer Newsletter: Superstar Billy Graham passes away, AEW Collision show officially announced
Eldridge Wayne Coleman, better known as Superstar Billy Graham, seemingly lived multiple lives, and nearly died multiple deaths.
The wrestler whose influence changed the business completely, had been suffering health issues on and off for decades. There were near-death experiences from drug overdoses, health ailments that he had believed were linked to his heavy usage of steroids, liver failure that he survived with a 2002 transplant, and multiple later issues, and there was even a period in 1981 when rumors spread and were reported in two major newspapers of his death, and speculated on in both bodybuilding and wrestling magazines.
It was a strange paradox. I don’t think anyone would have expected that Graham would live to be one month short of his 80th birthday. Yet, he had survived so many near-death experiences, that even as the reports got worse and worse in recent months during his hospitalization, those who followed him had seen it so many times that it was almost like this was just another incident. There was the feeling that somehow, like all the other incidents, no matter how they read, the end result would be the same and he’d survive once again.
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Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.