Three World Wrestling Entertainment athletes are suing the company, claiming that it “has for decades subjected its wrestlers to extreme physical brutality” for entertainment. Though the matches are scripted, the violence, say wrestlers known as Big Russ McCullough, Ryan Sakoda, and Luther Reigns, is very real. “The WWE coerces its wrestlers to work while they are injured by, among other methods, threatening to strip them of their position within the organization if they refuse,” according to the suit, which claims they are “universally encouraged to ‘wrestle through the pain.’”
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