The key to professional wrestling, according to David Arquette, is learning how to take a hit. Which is almost too perfect a metaphor for his wrestling career—a fighter who just can’t figure out how to go down smoothly. In 2000, Arquette first entered the ring as a publicity stunt to promote a buddy comedy called Ready to Rumble. Less than two weeks later, he found out he was booked to win the heavyweight championship, which he knew would irritate serious fans. Sure enough, ever since he thrust that WCW belt into the air, a pair of low-rise leather pants clinging to his waist and his bruised eyes glazed over in a stupefied grin, he’s been ridiculed by fans as one of the biggest punks wrestling has ever seen.
In reality, Arquette says, he had all the respect in the world for wrestling. And so, in an effort to redeem himself in the eyes of a fan base that credits him with tanking the WCW and degrading the integrity of the entire business—and fresh off a heart attack that earned him two stents—the 46-year-old decided he was getting back in the ring. This time, he would do it right: He headed to Tulum to do yoga with Diamond Dallas Page, then to Tijuana to fight with the Mexican luchadores. He picked up boxing and jiujitsu to learn the instincts he needed. By the time he hit the independent circuit, he was 50 pounds lighter and completely sober.
Arquette’s few months back in the ring are chronicled in his new documentary, You Cannot Kill David Arquette, which was set to premiere at SXSW and will now come out in drive-in theaters this Friday. The film culminates in a gory November death match where, after taking a smashed light tube at the wrong angle, Arquette stumbles out of the ring with blood gushing from his neck—only to climb back in and finish up the match once he figures out he’s not about to bleed out. The incident put his wrestling career on pause while he recovered, and it brought up another wave of backlash from fans who still saw a half-cocked actor nearly dying because he got in way over his head.
But for Arquette, the minutes he spent thinking he was about to die made him all the more dedicated to learning how to wrestle well—after all, if he’d known how to take that hit, his neck would have stayed intact. Ahead of the documentary’s release, Arquette told GQ how he prepared for his shot at wrestling redemption.
For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in between about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.
When you first entered the ring in 2000, had you trained at all?
I didn't have an opportunity to train. My run there was just a storyline, they didn't really want me involved. I heard there was a big insurance policy on me, so I couldn't get hurt. That also led me to want to properly train and learn how to wrestle so I could do it in the future. I wasn't in great shape back then, to be honest.
And then in 2018, you got serious about returning to wrestling with the proper training. Where did you start?
I started out doing DDPY, which is Diamond Dallas Page's yoga app. It got me ready to start losing weight. It's a form of yoga that involves tensing your muscles up a lot. He's a really inspirational guy. He inspired me as a wrestler, but he also inspired me to get in shape. I went to a retreat he had in Tulum, and I met with him and he inspired me more there.
Then I trained jiu-jitsu with Rigan Machado, an amazing jiu-jitsu champion. I trained with a multi-championship boxer named Ricky Quiles. And then I trained with Peter Avalon, as a wrestler. I did each at least once a week for an hour or two, but wrestling, I probably did two or three times a week.
So, that's tons of cardio. I got into weights too, every day. I don't do heavy weights, I do about a 35 pound barbell. I don't typically work out my legs because I have big legs to start with. I do squats and a lot of bench stuff, lot of curls, lot of pushups, a lot of sit-ups. But I’m consistent. And I did a hike every day.
What was the actual wrestling training like?
There's a lot to learn when you really study wrestling. A lot of it's falling in a way that you're not going to hurt yourself, getting your body accustomed to hitting the mat often. Learning how to take hits so you can protect yourself is an instinct rather than something planned. When you get hit, you have to throw yourself back on the mat and you're supposed to distribute the impact in different parts of your body so you don't take it all on your back. Tucking your chin's a big part of taking a bump in wrestling.
The muscles in your eyes also need to adjust to this new dynamic where your eyes are going to be moving around a lot. Before they do that, you'll get dizzy. It takes repetition, rolling over and over.
As you gain more experience, do you find it easier to tap into the right instincts, even when they come as a surprise?
Yeah. It also really matters who your opponent is. When you wrestle with legends, they make it so easy. One time, I threw my arm the wrong way on Colt Cabana and he readjusted it within a split second, right as the move was happening. These guys, they'll hit you and it'll look like he just killed you, but you'll barely feel it. It's like working with a really skilled actor. They make you look good, you make them look good, you're working in a dance together.
How did you change your eating habits in conjunction with all this training?
I eliminated carbs completely. I’d avoid having big dinners, instead having smaller meals throughout the day, and making lunch or breakfast the biggest of those meals, something on the earlier side of the day so that you burn it all off by the time you go to bed. I tried to not eat within three hours of going to bed, and if I did have to eat, I had something like egg whites or celery.
I think of the ideal wrestler’s body as much more bulky than lean, but it sounds like your main priority was taking weight off. Were there particular muscles you needed to bulk up to wrestle?
In wrestling, you want to have muscles, you want your muscle mass. But one of my favorite figures out there, sports figures or athletic figures, is Bruce Lee. And Bruce Lee isn't known as being incredibly muscular. He's incredibly lean, and that's the sort of look that I was going for. To put on muscle, right after your workout, I would eat some protein immediately within the first half hour. I drank bone marrow protein shakes, which give you a lot of nutrients.
After your big public return match with RJ City, you had a pretty exciting run on the independent circuit. Once you’re fighting frequently in matches, are you keeping up the same fitness routine?
You spend a lot of time in the ring, training and then actually fighting. So you get a lot of cardio there. You end up mainly focusing on trying to hit the weights and do your daily routines. You have to figure it out even if you don't have a gym. DDPY comes in handy because you can find a workout by just opening your phone.
I didn’t book myself like wrestlers truly do, where they go out on the road and do, like, four matches a week. I did one or two matches a month. I was doing a film in upstate New York, so on the weekends I’d sneak off and do a wrestling show. People freak out on a movie if you talk about doing a wrestling match…
Let’s talk about those risks more. Even before your death match, the film captures you suffering some pretty hefty injuries. Are those just inevitable side effects of wrestling, or can you learn to avoid them?
I fractured three ribs in Tijuana, and I also had to remove a bursa from my elbow, which got infected from just all these rolls. There's all these little tricks along the way you learn. When you're jumping, you do a crossbody, so your body's going into everyone in the least dangerous way. The way I jumped in Tijuana, it was straight on top of everyone, which is probably the most dangerous way for me and for them. When you do crossbody, you learn your arm can catch their shoulder and help break the fall, and I can get my legs down quick enough so it helps the impact.
There's also this element with wrestling that if you don’t really commit, you land right on your head. You can't second-guess yourself, or you're going to half-ass it and probably hurt yourself or them. So it's a matter of having that trust in yourself. There’s a bunch of matches I did that are pretty embarrassing because it's me learning how to do all this stuff in front of a camera.
During your death match with Nick Gage, when that shard slices your neck open, you jump out of the ring to basically figure out whether you’re about to die or not. Do you make those decisions on a smaller scale in most matches—whether it’s safe to keep fighting or you need immediate care?
That’s exactly what I was doing. But you are making calculations throughout every match, for sure. Time speeds up in a wrestling ring, so you need to slow it down. When you're beginning, you rush everything, and that can botch a move.
I learned a really solid lesson in that death match, and that's always stick to the plan. It was my fault that I got stabbed in the neck. I pulled his legs when I wasn't supposed to. Also, I'll never fight with glass again. I was in over my head.
I did a lot of self-exploration after that match. I realized I'd been beating myself up my whole life in one way or another. I found a way, through a lot of therapy and working with different doctors including a holistic psychiatrist who got me on some natural medications, to be more positive toward myself.
There’s a scene in the documentary where you get a ketamine infusion treatment, which is a pretty new but potentially life-changing treatment for all kinds of serious mental illness. Are you still getting those treatments?
It's a little bit tricky because if you have addiction issues like I have, you have to be really careful with it. I can get addicted to almost anything. The infusions they did were pretty high dosage. It's supposed to reset your neurotransmitters and balance you out. I did those a couple times, and then I started doing a therapy session with a shot of ketamine, which was really helpful. You're awake for it, you can talk, you're communicating with a professional therapist in the room, and that helped a lot.
Outside of treatment, what are the day-to-day habits that help you stay in a positive space?
Meditation is really one of the greatest tools, and retraining your brain to not beat yourself up. Exercise, too—the endorphins you get from exercising or even light meditation or light yoga is really life-transforming.
Not drinking has helped a lot. Through those ketamine treatments I realized a lot of the pain and regret or shame I felt about certain periods in my life where I've done things that I've regretted, all of them were attached to alcohol. So I made a conscious decision not to put myself in that place anymore.
There were a couple moments in the film where I kind of fell off the wagon. I'd get an injury and then you'd have to take the pills because you're in extreme pain, and then you don't want to get hooked on opiates, so you stop. And then I drank too much. So that was a cycle I had to break.
Between the slipperiness of caring for your injuries while staying sober and the way wrestling can lead to beating yourself up, do you think it’s possible for you to keep wrestling and live a healthy, balanced life?
Absolutely. Sting does it really well. And Jack Perry [son of the late star Luke Perry, a close friend of Arquette’s] is an incredible wrestler. He’s never smoked or drank in his life. It’s really inspirational to see how he does it.
The Louisiana native gets into fighting shape with kombucha and cleaned-up takes on gumbo and red beans and rice.
