Original subtitles

I don't know that there's been any family in wrestling, either related for

or professionally, that had as much impact, as much reach, and as much

as the Graham family did. Graham was the hardest punch in wrestling history.

Eddie Graham was not only a great wrestler and a great promoter, he was a

visionary. Eddie is a championship president from Florida. It was built on

wrestling, and the main events were violent.

He gave the people the circus.

Eddie Graham was a titan of professional wrestling who ruled his era and

passed on his iconic legacy to his only son, Mike.

The son of any great athlete, they've got the scrutiny on him. But Mike Graham

didn't take shit off anybody.

I think maybe he felt like he had to be as good as his father.

Mike Graham followed in his father's footsteps to wrestling greatness.

and also descended into his own dark world of pain, addiction, and grief.

The wrestling culture is very cutthroat. You have to have this thing about you

where nothing's going to break you.

He was under tremendous pressure from so many different angles.

Mike kept the shit to himself, too, like his father.

The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Mike gets pushed under the rug in certain families. Who are you supposed

to for help?

The tragic legacy of a wrestling dynasty haunted by self -destruction and

suicide. It is with a deep sense of regret that I announce the untimely

a friend, colleague, and a leader.

It was like somebody dropped a bomb on all of us.

We're a father, father, and we're the kids.

That runs for the family genes, right?

Once that spotlight's gone or once you don't have that ring, like, it's

emptiness.

Championship wrestling from Florida was one of the most respected and successful

wrestling promotions of modern times. The legacy of the Graham family in

is they meant professional wrestling to millions of people all over the state

for almost 30 years.

One member of the Graham family was on the card or in the main event or behind

the scenes in the glory years when they were selling.

A million tickets a year just in the state of Florida to see live matches.

And their TV ratings were Super Bowl level.

I guess I was used to it. Like, when you don't know what's different, it's just

what your life is. And I just knew that that was a huge part of, like, my

grandfather and my dad's life.

I am Nicole Gossett, and Eddie Graham was my grandfather, and Mike Graham is

father. And that's Eddie Graham in the center of the ring now, his son Mike,

watching very carefully.

Every Sunday, they'd have matches with Eddie Graham Stadium.

And the first phone call in the morning was my grandfather calling my dad to

talk about the night.

We'd wake up, and we'd walk into, like, our family room to see who was crashed

out on our couch for a little while, you know, because we had different

wrestlers sleeping on our couch at times.

Magnum TA, Terry Allen, when he first started, he slept on our couch, and he

so sweet. And so I was pretty accustomed to having big, boisterous personalities

and people around.

The one that scared me was Andre the Giant.

When he came, like, crouching through our front door, he freaked me out, yeah.

was scared.

That was the family business.

Everybody wanted to be on the roster of championship wrestling from Florida,

both for the money, for the weather, for the girls, and also to learn from Eddie

Graham.

I'm Jim Cornette. I've had a 40 -year career in professional wrestling, but

even longer than that, I've been a collector and an historian.

Eddie could make you believe that he was the toughest man in the state of

Florida, which is exactly what most of the fans believed.

He just had a magnetism about him, and he was somebody that you wanted to

to, and if you were working for him, you wanted to follow. A leader, a general.

I was born up in the Tennessee mountains, brother. If you didn't have

desire, you were finished to begin with.

So I ain't going to lay down and quit.

That's my bottom line.

There you have it.

The comments from Eddie Graham.

There goes a wrestler and one hell of a man.

Eddie was a legend in Florida.

He could get a reaction just walking to the ring.

My name is Kevin Sullivan.

I worked for the Graham family for decades, and I've been a wrestler for

years. Your nightmare is just starting.

Eddie was about 5 '10 1⁄2", wide shoulders, leech blonde hair, and he

presence about...

Nobody else was ever in his class.

The genius of the business, R. Einstein.

Eddie was from the hills in Chattanooga. Very difficult life.

His father died young.

Eddie came up through the College of Hard Knocks. Just a good old tough

boy.

My name is Dottie Curtis, and I am the wife of the late Don Curtis.

Don was...

a very, very knowledgeable wrestler.

Don and Eddie met back in around 52, I think it was.

They became friends, and Eddie asked Don to come up here to Jacksonville, and he

was the promoter up here for quite a few years.

Now it's Graham for the good solid chop across the throat.

Eddie Graham is probably one of the finest wrestlers that was around in his

time.

I don't think there'll ever be another Eddie Graham.

Though born Edward Gossett, Eddie's wrestling career is forever altered when

adopts the Graham name from one of the ring's top stars.

The originator of the Graham wrestling family dynasty was Dr. Jerry Graham.

He had the bleached hair and he carried himself like a star, and what's more, he

had the gift of gab.

We will be the international tag team champions as soon as that match comes

and it's going to be the greatest match. Brother teams in New York were over at

the time. But if you could find a guy that looked something like you, nobody's

reading your birth certificate, just say it's your brother.

Eddie Gossett was in Texas wrestling as Rip Rogers, and a lot of people told

him, you look like Jerry Graham.

Jerry and Eddie connected, and in 1958, the Graham Brothers, the Golden Grahams.

As a team ruled the roost in wrestling in the biggest TV market in the country,

where wrestling is already red hot, being presented in the most famous arena

the world, Madison Square Garden.

Dr. Graham has just the treatment for that tired, nagging backache. Eddie

performs the surgery while Jerry looks on approvingly.

If you could sell out Madison Square Garden, you could sell out anywhere.

Eddie and Dr.

Jerry made a fantastic duo, aided by everybody, and just really drew the

crowds in.

And just main eventing Madison Square Garden, they were probably making close

six figures per year in 1958 and 1959, and that would translate into somewhere

over a million bucks apiece in today's money.

With money and fame to burn, Eddie and Jerry are box office sensations.

But before long, Dr. Jerry's behavior outside the ring becomes even more

notorious than his matches.

Dr. Jerry Graham, as big of a genius as he was in wrestling, was an alcoholic,

was mentally ill, and he got in a lot of trouble and caused a lot of trouble.

Jerry Graham, to impress fans, used to light his cigars with $100 bills.

Or he would walk into a biker bar and walk right up in front of a guy and say,

Hey! My name's Balls. You got any?

But the most shocking incident involving Jerry Graham transpires years later in

his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.

One day he got the word that his mother was sick and in the hospital.

And he called the hospital and he told the doctor that his mother better come

out of that hospital in good health.

And then she died.

So Dr.

Jerry Graham shows up with a 12 -gauge shotgun, a .38 caliber revolver, and an

-inch long hunting knife.

And appears in the intensive care unit where he fires a shot at the doctor.

And then goes down the hallway and grabs the gurney that his mother's body is

on. And as he's taking it down the hallway, here come the orderlies and the

interns.

And they're trying to tackle him.

So he grabs his mother's corpse and slings her over his shoulder.

And he's screaming, I just want to take her and bury her.

Jerry Graham was so good at his chosen profession that he was also completely,

utterly insane.

After two years, Eddie Graham...

could not put up with being partners with Jerry Graham anymore.

And he had to leave the greatest spot that he'd ever had.

In 1960, Eddie uproots his family from New York and settles in Tampa, the hub

championship wrestling from Florida.

He was a visionary. He said to himself, I know my capabilities as a wrestler.

I can get over here. I can be the star.

And this whole thing can be bigger. And over the next 25 years, not only did he

become the most successful wrestler in the history of Florida and the most

popular, but he worked his way into being able to buy into the promotion,

taking it over completely and expanding wrestling in the state of Florida and

made it the place that everybody wanted to go to wrestle and to learn.

Eddie probably bought the territory just knowing that he had the wherewithal,

the brains, the connections with the talent to take the territory to another

level.

Hi, I'm B. Brian Blair, and I started wrestling in Florida in 1977. Got my

right here in Tampa. The armory was hot.

I would call it like Saturday Night Fever. It was so entertaining.

Tonight, we're in a jam -packed armory in Tampa, Florida, the home of

Championship Wrestling.

All the wrestlers from Championship Wrestling from Florida gave their all

Tuesday night at that place.

Growing up in Tampa, the wrestlers were just huge.

Fans wouldn't come up to them. We couldn't go anywhere without someone

to talk to my dad or my granddad.

And it was telling that Eddie Graham would have continued good relations with

Vince McMahon Sr.

And later on with Vince McMahon Jr., he was someone that the other promoters all

called to ask for advice.

The president of the NWA, Eddie Graham, now describing the conditions in the

contract. Both wrestlers are to post. The National Wrestling Alliance was an

organization of promoters from regional territories all over the country. There

was no major decision made in the NWA without consulting Eddie Graham.

He was president twice.

He was well respected.

But he was a complicated guy, and he would do some violent things.

He was a tough, tough person.

You either did what he told you to do, or you were out.

Now, there was the side of Eddie Graham that did want to keep the credibility of

the wrestling business, and guys were expected to lay shit in, to make people

believe what they were doing was real.

Eddie Graham was a stickler. He said, If anybody here gets their ass kicked by a

mark, you're fired.

In other words, you get your butt kicked by a wrestling fan, you're out of here.

You protect the business at all costs.

I guess you could call it maybe a horror chamber down there at the

exportatorium. But fellas would say they want to wrestle, and they figured all

you had to do was get in the ring and perform.

They'd put them through their paces.

And, you know, some of them were just, they couldn't take it. I had to do

that I'm not proud of, that I didn't like to do. A couple of them I did.

Well, they wanted you to break people's bones.

Somehow,

this guy got booked for TV.

He said, oh, I've worked some local shows.

I'm a busher by trade.

And I see Eddie's hair is broke up like a dog's. And the guy says, I'm going to

make you look good. I'm going to tell all the guys you're a nice guy.

So the guy just off in the corner, and he said, if he doesn't come back

bleeding, you're through.

I kept my job.

Your marching orders were to make this guy bleed. I had a family.

At that period, it was my livelihood.

It wasn't his livelihood.

He was going to go back to that job no matter what.

Worst thing I probably ever did.

Eddie's hard -nosed ambition to dominate the wrestling trade is all -consuming,

but his desire for power is far from his only flaw.

Wrestler and promoter Eddie Graham is known for his unrelenting drive,

ambition, and his determination to legitimize the business.

Eddie was a go -getter.

He had a portfolio of a lot of property.

He expanded outside of the wrestling business. He wanted to write checks

than receive checks.

Eddie wanted to elevate the perception of wrestling.

That's where he started getting involved with the Boys Ranch and with charitable

organizations in every town and every county in Florida.

They're furthering amateur wrestling programs.

Eddie was a rock star in Florida.

I mean, politicians were kissing Eddie's ass.

To be seen on Championship Press in Florida when you're running for office

big deal.

And I'm sure Eddie got favors from that, too.

Eddie was involved in everything.

I think Eddie put a lot of pressure on himself.

He never wanted to fail in anything he did. And for most of the things that he

did, like flying and being a boatsman and that, diving, he was fabulous.

His only problem was that alcohol got to him.

One night, Eddie was drinking and decided he was going out on his boat.

And his son, Mike, was panicking because he took off in the car.

And so Mike, as a young boy, he got on his bicycle, and he drove to a

crossbridge over the water.

And his idea was he was going to jump off that bridge and onto the boat

he was afraid his father would kill himself out in the water. And thank God

missed the boat.

I mean, it wasn't there, because if he'd have jumped off of that bridge, he

would have possibly drowned in the water.

That scared Eddie. That was one of his sobering moments, if you want to call it

that.

Mike idolized his father, and vice versa.

I believe you told me that your own boy does quite a little wrestling.

Well, yes, he does. In fact, I'm hoping he'll take the state tournament in the

95 -pound division.

How old is he?

He's 10 years old. Even though he's a lovable father, he was demanding.

He put high expectations on Mike.

And then when my dad started wrestling, he obviously started wrestling under

Mike Graham.

So maybe that gave him a little bit more of a chip on his shoulder at times.

At 222 and one half pounds, Mike Graham, Mike Graham. He gave me all the tools

to get as good as I could get before I turned pro.

But even at that, the pressure really, and a lot of it came from him. I loved

going someplace where he wasn't going to be because I knew I could go out, I

could wrestle, I could come back, and it wasn't constant scrutiny.

My grandfather did throw my dad in the ring, like, okay, let's see what you

Graham breaking it up again, arm drag takedown.

I remember my dad always saying, Nicole, don't worry. The bigger they are, the

harder they fall.

So he was not intimidated by anyone's size.

Mike. was shorter and didn't have the same over -the -top personality, but he

had the wrestling knowledge in there growing up with Eddie Graham.

So he was a very good worker.

He was in plenty of great tag teams, but the attention never went on him

specifically. And to be honest, he didn't want to be the top guy. He didn't

to be the big star because people would have said it was because of his father.

Mike swallowed a lot of shit, you know, and let things go.

He did it as well, if not better than anybody I ever saw being a promoter's

to blend in with the guys.

I had the pleasure of being his partner, and I had the pleasure of being his

opponent.

If you go to Mike's bad side, you're on his bad side, and he wasn't going to

back down.

He knew the pressure he was under. He couldn't go home if he got his ass

My grandfather was bloody all the time, right?

My dad also was bloody.

So mornings in my house, my mom would get my brother and I up.

My dad would be in bed because he'd get home so late, and he was just hungover

and beat up. And we'd go in to kiss my dad goodbye in the morning.

And there'd be tape on his forehead with blood.

bite marks on his finger and the smell of alcohol oozing from his body.

And we kiss him goodbye.

See you later, Dad. Have a good day.

Let me turn right now to Mike Graham because I know he's... As the 1980s

Mike Graham joins Eddie in steering the ship at Championship Wrestling from

Florida as the company becomes a breeding ground for wrestling legends.

including Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and Dusty Rhodes.

I am the dream.

I am the man.

Go home with it, baby.

Dusty was like the original surrogate son.

He loved Dusty, and Dusty loved him, too.

Dusty Rhodes, of course, was always around.

We all got to the beach together.

Dusty would always say that fat looks better tan.

Eddie Graham took Dusty under his wing, and he became the most popular wrestler

in the history of the state of Florida.

When Dusty turned babyface, the territory was on fire, and all of us

close. We were like family.

And now the ring beginning to fill.

Jerry Briscoe charges in, Don Serrano, Brian Blair, and a host of others. As

this younger generation elevates the territory to a whole new level, Eddie,

in his 50s, decides to quit the ring for good.

Just as his pursuits outside of the business begin to bring him trouble.

There were a lot of things going on in Eddie's life. He was torn between two

women. He was in business with some shady characters.

I could tell that Eddie was drinking too much. He was maybe taking too much

medication. He had a lot of struggles in his life, personally.

When he came back in the plane at nighttime, there was a

store that was open, and he could get a cheap bottle of wine there.

Every time he was driving, he would chug along that wine down, and he would take

the bottle, and he'd throw it out of the car into the grass.

And he came home one night, and the place wasn't open, and he was so

He went out into the field there, and he groveled around in the dirt and

found all these bottles.

And he sat there in the field and drank the dregs out of those bottles.

By this time, alcohol had taken over. He couldn't stop.

Consumed by his alcoholism and burdened with personal and professional troubles,

Eddie Graham struggles to find meaning beyond the ring.

Over time, people forget who you are, right?

My grandmother told a story about how they had gone to a restaurant and they

didn't know who he was.

He wasn't in the spotlight anymore, but I remember my grandmother being like how

he was not himself after that encounter.

When that career is over, who are you?

He's looking back in the mirror.

One of the last checks my grandfather wrote was to a liquor store for $8, and

the memo it said peace of mind.

I think if anyone's had time of their life and they just can't find comfort

within themselves and they feel like everything's out of control, you just

have that peace of mind, and he couldn't find it.

He turned 55.

And I had gone over to my grandparents' house and I was roller skating. And so

I was like skating around him in circles. And I'm like, so what'd you get

your birthday?

He's like 55. And I was like, 55 what?

He said 55 years.

Looking back, I realized he was telling me that he was done.

That he got 55 years is what he had.

I was at the Super Bowl. The Miami Dolphins were playing the San Francisco

49ers.

They paged me, Mike Graham, Mike Graham, please come to the box office.

I walked into the box office and said, hey, my name is Mike Graham. They paged

me, and the woman goes, oh, yeah, you've got to call home.

Call home.

What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong?

It's your dad.

Dad. It's all my dad.

His wife, Lucy, went out is what she told my daughter.

And when she came back, he had shot himself not once but twice.

That's what I heard from what the coroner said.

And I will spare you the gory details about the bedroom.

He's in the hospital. He's hooked up to machines.

A family member has to say to unplug him or keep him alive.

And I got back home the next morning and walked to the hospital, and there he

sat back in the corner, his head all bandaged up and everything.

I said, well, it was no accident.

So I looked at Mom, and I said, Mom,

you know, you've got to do it.

He wouldn't want to be here like this.

So we went out. I said, okay, bullet.

And he lived about.

Ah, five minutes.

It was shocking.

I mean, everybody was in a state of shock.

It is with a deep sense of regret that I announce to you at this time the

untimely death of a friend, a colleague, and a leader, Eddie Grant.

I immediately

Started crying.

I couldn't believe it. I mean, why?

Why, Eddie? Why would you do that to your son?

To your grandchildren?

We were young, but my brother was like, if he loved us so much, how could he do

this?

My brother was very attached to my grandfather.

Yeah, very attached.

I think that people knew he was depressed, but they never thought he

that far.

He was keeping that to himself.

I think he bottled a lot of it up because he didn't want people to know he

wasn't as strong as his outside persona was.

He realized that if he let people know he was weak, that there were people that

would love to have just walked in and taken over.

And I think he was probably fighting for the territory, too.

We hear the news.

Eddie Graham's dead.

And holy shit, what's going to happen to Florida?

We found out within a year, Florida was on its last legs.

Vince McMahon was starting the national expansion in 1984.

And the territories were going out of business because Vince was trying to

up all the talent.

started robbing the territories.

Eddie saw the writing on the wall probably much earlier than most of the

did.

A year before Eddie passed away, the territories started struggling?

Yeah, big time.

Tell me about that.

Well, Dossie left.

Took the whole crew with him.

Dad had spent years getting Dusty over and creating Dusty Rhodes. But when

left, he took half the territory with him. And that really made Dad mad.

It was like he was almost trying to kill the territory for taking all the talent

with him.

In 1984, Dusty Rhodes leaves Florida to work for Jim Crockett Promotions. With

the wrestling industry in chaos, Mike Graham is still reeling from his

death when he inherits the daunting task of leading the territory.

Mike picked up like a man, ran the territory, and, you know, life

went on.

Mike was obviously attempting to fill his father's shoes. It wasn't just him

trying to do everything, but it just, it wasn't the same place.

Where have you been? You've been home.

Hey, shut up a second.

They even ran an angle after Eddie's death. The Freebirds were down there and

they were trying to heat things up. And they thought, well, if we desecrate the

memory of Florida's most popular wrestler ever, then the fans will hate

Eddie would have wanted Mike to use

his death in something that enhanced wrestling.

I'm going to prove to you that he was more of a man than the three of you will

ever be.

As long as you live, your asses are mine.

It was too far. It was too much.

The fans could tell it was desperation because they could see the crowds had

shrunk.

At the time, things were already shifting.

I guess cable TV was starting to come out. And my dad was just trying to keep

afloat. And no matter what he did, it wasn't going to quite stay afloat.

Struggling under the weight of Eddie's absence, the once great territory lasts

just two more years before closing its doors.

Eddie would have been the only one to be able to save it because of all of the

NWA promoters of every other territory in the country, the one guy that had the

best relationship with Vince McMahon Sr.

and would have had one with Vince Jr.

was Eddie Graham, and he was gone.

Mike and I were at a bar having a couple beers.

Just talking about his dad, and all of a sudden he broke down. I could tell that

his dad not being there weighed heavy on Mike every single day.

Already grieving the death of his father and the loss of their family's

wrestling empire, Mike Graham is soon to face another devastating tragedy.

Following his father's death and the collapse of their company, Mike Graham

now forge a new path outside the promotion that has defined his life's

This should be an interesting matchup. Mike Graham and Diamond Dallas Page to

take on Bill Kazmaier and Jusin Thunder Liger.

By that point, Mike was closing in on 40. He got a position with WCW and he

trying to help mentor some of the younger guys.

Obviously, people who knew Mike and knew Eddie respected him and et cetera. But

I think, unfortunately, he never made his mark in WCW as anybody with a lot of

pull because he was just one of the soldiers at that point. I think that

shifted and it was more.

It was being written by people that had no idea about wrestling.

He got a little bit bitter because he was old school.

My dad was definitely not a corporate guy.

Mike never reached the pinnacle of Eddie's dreams, but he still had a very

successful wrestling career, and he was a good businessman.

He had a great lifestyle, lived on the water, had an altitude of boats, and he

won a bunch of offshore races.

My brother loved racing boats. And so my dad and brother actually got the chance

to race a couple times.

My dad never wanted to sit still.

He would always be like, yeah, you sleep when you die.

He got his first tattoo when he was 40.

And it was like a skull with like fire coming out of the head and a lightning

bolt going through it.

And then underneath it, it said, peace of mind.

So my dad would always talk to my brother and I about it.

peace of mind. Like, if you don't have it, you have nothing.

But like his father before him, Mike's search for inner peace often ends at the

bottom of a bottle.

He had two driver's licenses, actually. One legally, under Mike Gossett, and one

under Mike Graham.

So Mike Gossett got one DUI, then Mike Graham got one, and then his drinking

so much worse.

After my grandfather passed away, he was miserable, and it just, he changed.

Normally, you know, my dad was not like that. He never showed that side to my

brother and I. It was always just upbeat.

More tough to, like, my brother, I think, because he wanted him to be a

strong man.

Stephen did have to fight and prove that he wasn't a wimp growing up

because he was.

from a wrestling family, and he did have kind of like a stronger build. I think

everyone expected him to be some tough, mean guy.

I think that hurt him in the long run, but he just kind of never found his

stride.

We talked every day, you know, text, phone call, whatever.

I sent my brother a text in the morning. He didn't respond. I just thought he

was working or doing something.

And then my dad called me asking me if I'd heard from Stephen.

And I was like, I'll go check on him.

And so that's how we found out that he took his life.

When I found my brother, I...

You know, ran outside, and I called my dad first.

My dad was saying he'd be there. I'm like, no, no, don't come here, don't

here.

And so once I was able to leave, I walked into the kitchen with my dad, and

said, he said, it's a good thing you found Stephen, because if I would have

found him, you'd be burying both of us, because that would have taken my life

right then and there.

It just floored me.

I don't know what the demons were that got him, again, out of here.

His sister, poor little Nicole, you know, just distraught.

His dad, everybody distraught, you know.

It just didn't have to be.

I wasn't expecting it at all.

Because Stephen and I went through and saw how hard it was with my grandfather.

We saw what it did to my dad. We saw how it absolutely destroyed our family.

But with my grandfather doing what he did, I felt that it made it an option.

It turned into something that my brother felt, eh, he did it.

Now we have my grandfather and my brother, who is my best friend, you

I found my brother.

So everyone was so worried about me.

But I was worried about my dad.

Haunted by the death of his son Stephen in 2010, Mike Graham struggles with the

pain of losing another family member to suicide.

I think every parent blames themselves.

He said, I must have been a shitty son and a shitty father.

Pretty heavy.

Sometimes we're our own worst critics, and we're hard on ourselves about

different things.

And I think that, you know, there's many things that Mike could have thought

about, and it was just another one of the things just knocking on the bad side

of his brain.

You know, between his dad and now my brother, he just absolutely was crushed.

Mike and I were close, but we weren't that fuzzy, fuzzy, good -feeling close.

He called me up and said, hey, you know, I love you, right?

I said, I love you too, Mike.

And that was it. He hung up the phone.

My dad met my daughter and I at a park, and I was like, Dad, this ends with

Stephen. I'm like, look at her. She doesn't deserve this.

What your dad did was horrible.

What Stephen did, we're never going to recover from it, but this ends now. Look

at her. She doesn't deserve this. And he was like, you're right, Nicole. You're

right, Nicole.

You're right.

But less than two years later, he did the same.

He was in Daytona Beach, bike week or something, with his wife.

And from what I gather,

She went outside and said she was going to go see some friends.

When she got back and opened the door, simultaneously she

heard a gunshot.

And there was Mike, dead.

in his son Stephen's cowboy boots.

He couldn't break the cycle.

You can't see what's behind the person's eyes. They're telling you one thing,

they're smiling, but they may be, you know, they may be just absolutely torn

inside.

Then you realize he's gone.

End of story, you know. No more. There's no more.

I mean, I was still trying to pick up the pieces after my brother. Again, it

less than two years apart between my brother and my dad.

After the conversations I had with my dad, asking him, telling him, begging

please, this ends with Stephen, it was just a different level of pain.

Mike had been away from wrestling for some time, and I hadn't seen him in

But then the news comes out.

That was a shock.

Even if you're not shocked at anything in wrestling, you still think, well, the

same thing can't happen to two different generations.

They can't do the same thing.

And it happened to three generations.

You just, how much, the same family, what, how much more can go on?

The pattern of suicide that haunts the Gossett family reaches far beyond Eddie,

Mike, and Steven. This heartbreaking cycle of tragedy actually spans four

generations and five men.

A lot of people don't know this, but Eddie's father killed himself.

And also, Eddie's brother Skip killed himself.

It's a very vicious cycle when you have more than one suicide.

One suicide is one too many, but when you have multiple suicides within the

family structure, it's just tragic.

My only explanation or thought, because I'm not a doctor, obviously, but is that

when one happens, then it makes it viable for someone else when they're

hard time, and also the fact that depression and addiction is hereditary,

unless you have someone step in and recognize it and get help, And let them

that it's not normal what you're feeling, but it's going to be okay.

That just wasn't quite happening in my family.

Big time lesson to learn.

Because it isn't just the people that go, it's the people that are left

Heavy burden for Nicole to carry and heavy burden for her daughter.

We are at the Old Armory, which is now the Brian Glazier Jewish Community

Center. And Larry Simon, who was Boris Malenko, who my grandfather had huge

feuds with, his son helped put this together in a way to commemorate all the

wrestlers that came here every Tuesday for many, many years.

So it's pretty great to see, actually.

This is my dad and my grandfather.

Mike and Eddie Graham have won the Florida Tag Team Championship.

Nothing can keep the fans away. This is the home of the Titans of Tampa.

And this will always be the house of championship wrestling for Florida.

I think wrestling fans should know that they

absolutely respected the fans.

And I hope that the fans that met them felt that.

There was so much good. So much laughter.

A lot of good times.

And those are the things that I focus on more than anything else because they

were really exceptional people.

I remember Eddie, my papa, as bare -chested with a cast net off the dock

catching mullet for us.

A lot of love. A lot of love.

My brother, my bestie, my best friend, I just wish he knew how...

Everyone loved him and wanted to be there for him.

Dad.

We had that tough relationship because I called him out on things.

But there was so much love and respect.

I miss my dad so much. I wish he was here to see my daughter grow up.

I guess he's missing out on a lot, but that I miss him.

Some of the best times of my life were with the Grahams. And with all the

that the Grahams brought in, there is a plethora of good times. A plethora of

good times.

Dear friends of mine, enjoyed my time with them.

Wish we could have had a lot more days.

The thing to do is not dwell on the bad.

Dwell on the good.

That's what gets me through.

Nicole, love her.

Love her.

She's the legacy of that family.

My grandfather being silly with me always.

And it took me a while to get to a place where I felt like I could finally offer

some type of assistance.

And so I found the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, and they offer amazing

And I feel that I've come to a point in my recovery and healing that I can

hopefully get a word out there that may strike a chord with someone to make them

call for help or survivors that are struggling to get out of bed because

lost family members to know that they should live their lives to honor those

that they have lost.

There has to be a lesson to everybody that's watching this program that if you

feel suicidal, there's help right around the corner.

And I don't care who you are. Somebody loves you.

Always. You have to just make that step by reaching out to someone just to say,

something's not right. I'm having these thoughts. Just speak up is what I'd ask.

You can have fame, family, money, but if you don't have that peace of mind, you

have nothing.

My grandfather and my...

Dad clearly didn't have it, and my brother didn't have it, but it occurred

less than a year ago that I have it.

And I had been wanting to get a tattoo. I'm not a tattoo person.

And all I wanted was my handwriting that says peace of mind and a semicolon,

which represents mental health, you know, suicide awareness.

Very simple. And it's just an amazing reminder of where I've gotten with my

and how I feel in peace.

I have so much to be grateful for, and I'm going to live my best life because

that's the best way I can honor them.

I am so happy right now.

Things are great. My daughter's thriving, amazing friends, family. Like,

really happy, actually.

Is that a show?