AEW: Dean Malenko reveals some bad news during Starrcast III

Since I started writing articles, I always try and write positive articles. However, this is one of those articles that kills me to write. During his Q&A segment at Starrcast III, Dean Malenko announced that he is suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Dean Malenko had a nineteen year run in the WWE as a road agent that came to an end in April. AEW signed him in May to serve as a senior producer for AEW. Prior to his time behind the scenes, he was a wrestler from 1979-2001. He worked for promotions like ECW, NJPW, WCW, and WWF. If you think of technical, ground based wrestling; Dean Malenko’s name will come up. A prime example of this is his legendary ECW match with Eddie Guerrero that was a two out of three falls match. It would be both of their final matches in ECW. It’s also worth noting that Dean Malenko had his pulse on much of the future superstars of the industry who came in after he did. He is known for training such wrestlers like Brock Lesnar, Kane, Molly Holly, Sean Waltman (aka 1-2-3 Kid and X-Pac), and Shelton Benjamin to name a few. People at the Malenko event at Starrcast noticed that they had a mic stand for him and his left arm didn’t move at all.

It’s worth noting that Dean Malenko isn’t the only wrestler who has Parkinson’s Disease. Masa Saito, wrestler from Japan, also has Parkinson’s. It’s worth noting that Ed Gallagher, legendary wrestling coach at Oklahoma died from Parkinson’s at the age of 53. While those are the more notable wrestling people, there are many other famous people who have it. Some of them include Neil Diamond, Kirk Gibson, Alan Alda, and Michael J. Fox are few of the more notable people who have Parkinson’s disease.

AEW is set to begin TV on October 2nd and Malenko is expected to play a big role behind the scenes.