Chris Nowinski has become one of the leading advocates for head trauma research in sports. And he has his own brain damage to thank.

The concussion-related problems that ended Nowinski's short- lived World Wrestling Entertainment career spurred him to form the Sports Legacy Institute, which studies cerebral injuries in athletes. SLI and Boston University School of Medicine generated headlines during the Super Bowl XLIII buildup by announcing the early deaths of six former NFL players can be linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by head trauma.

"To use a football analogy, I feel like we're crossing midfield," Nowinski said Tuesday. "We've gotten so much momentum now with so many players trying to help us and people stepping forward."

Nowinski learned something was wrong with his mind in 2003 after experiencing severe post-concussion syndrome while with WWE. Nowinski, who wrestled as Chris Harvard after a stint on the WWE reality series Tough Enough, couldn't gain medical clearance to continue and retired at 25.

Nowinski later learned he was predisposed to concussions from undetected ones he suffered in high school and college football. He found it so hard to get a proper diagnosis that he researched the issue himself and wrote a book called Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis.

Nowinski joined some of the world's leading brain researchers in pushing for more advanced medical studies of athletes as well as preventive measures aimed at high school football.

"Chris was so incredibly infective that I changed the focus of my career," said Dr. Robert Stern, a specialist in Alzheimer's disease at Boston University who works closely with SLI.

While NFL players are SLI's main focus, research includes pro wrestlers, living and dead. Most notable is the late Chris Benoit, the former WWE champion who murdered his wife and 7-year-old son before committing suicide in June 2007.

Nowinski got permission from the Benoit family for a cerebral study that determined Benoit suffered from severe brain damage before his rampage.

"Chris had the most progressed case of CTE that we found, more than the NFL players," Nowinski said. "I have no doubt that if he didn't have brain damage he wouldn't be a murderer.

"He told me personally he had more concussions than he could count a year or two before the tragedy. In talking to guys who hung out with him the last three to six months of his life, they all have stories about him just being very strange and emotional. Someone told me Chris spent an hour in a hotel hallway in Italy crying about something that was completely pointless. He was unraveling."

Nowinski said wrestlers such as former WWE stars Spike Dudley and Al Snow have agreed to donate their brains for research, joining a list that includes ex-NFL players both living and dead.

"I've gotten great support from the wrestlers themselves," Nowinski said. "They all know something is wrong with getting hit in the head for such a long time ... It's a shame because wrestling is the one place where the fix is so easy. The risks are known and you can limit them."

For more information on Nowinski's work, visit sportslegacy.org.