Headfirst

The crack of a solid steel chair rings through the air as it collides with the back of a dazed man’s head.

Not long ago, this was a common sight in the world of professional wrestling.

It’s now widely known that the outcomes of wrestling matches are planned in advance for an audience’s entertainment, with a common criticism being that it’s ‘fake’. The concussions and head trauma performers can suffer though, are extremely real.

In recent decades, a number of former professional wrestlers have been diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, as a suspected result of the repeated head injuries they experienced in the ring.

But now, could the latest science and changing attitudes towards head safety in wrestling mean it’s becoming the example other sports should follow?

In this documentary, professional wrestler Mark Andrews explores the troubled history of concussions in wrestling, and confronts his own personal experiences of head injuries in the squared circle.

He speaks to the neuroscientist who’s led the charge in studying head injuries in sport, Dr Chris Nowinski, the founder of the Concussion and CTE Foundation, and visits Loughborough University to meet the scientists there studying concussions in sportspeople.

Mark also hears from wrestlers on the British independent circuit about their experiences, and asks if wrestling could be moving from being one of the worst offenders in sporting head injuries to a leading light in preventing them.