Usually, when it comes to professional wrestling, words like shocking, heartbreaking, sad and appalling are used every day to describe a pay-per-view or a Monday night show. I am using those words however, to describe this month in professional wrestling, which seems to be getting stranger with each passing day.

Let's start with the most shocking event of the month - at least so far anyway - and that would be Vince Russo and Ed Ferrera leaving the WWF by quitting over the phone the night before they are scheduled to come to work and taking jobs at WCW. Whether you think that what they did and where they went will have an impact on the wrestling war or not, you can not disagree with me that no one expected it - not even Vince McMahon.

If that was not enough to send the wrestling world on it's ear, just a few short days later, during a routine taping of WWF Smackdown, Darren Drozdov broke his neck in a missed spot by D'Lo Brown and wound up in the hospital nearly paralyzed. While my prayers and well wishes go out to Droz and his family, my dismay and disgust goes out to the wrestling fans who screamed, "We want refunds" while the paramedics spent twenty minutes in the ring trying to save Droz from permanent paralysis. I have heard some nasty chants in my day, but to complain while a man's career and maybe his life hang by a thread is just wrong. Remember, Droz's fiancée and family were at ringside and instead of watching their pride and joy go over, they're watching him lying in a hospital bed. Watching, waiting and hoping that he gets well.

On the heels of those two events, the world then learned of the loss of one of the greatest personalities in wrestling when Gorilla Monsoon, at the age of 62, died of complications resulting from his recent heart attack. No one in this business likes to hear when someone they have worked with, respected, or maybe just admired, passes away. Gorilla was a colorful, flamboyant man who entertained the fans from behind the microphone when he could no longer entertain them in the ring. The matches he commentated were some of the most memorable in this sport's history, and although he is no longer with us, what he did for the sport of professional wrestling will live on forever. God bless you Gino.

From shocking, to heartbreaking, to sad we turn to the most appalling event to take place in this month of madness, and for this we turn to the Heroes of Wrestling pay-per-view. I will say this, for their first pay-per-view, the promoters and everyone involved did a tremendous job - everyone that is - but Jake "The Snake" Roberts. It takes a lot to shock me, because being in this business, I usually know what to expect, but I don't think anyone expected what happened when it was Jake's turn to dance. From the opening seconds of his pre-match interview, it was clear that the "clean and sober" Jake Roberts we knew was neither. His slurring speech and stumbling appearance gave a clear impression that he was not fit to perform and once he hit the ring, things went from bad to worse. He totally forgot the gimmick and basically stumbled around playing with the audience, Damien and himself so much that the promoters had no choice but to abandon the main event, which was a much anticipated and heavily promoted "Battle of the Giants" between Yokozuna and King Kong Bundy and send the two bullheamoths into the ring during Jake's match to try to save the pay-per-view any way they could. All I can say about what Jake did is that I wish I could have been there when he woke up the next morning and watched the tape. If I can borrow a line from the WWF, I think it is fair to say that in this case, Jake Roberts screwed Jake Roberts.

What next?