Times when wrestling was "too real"

[Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃]

Nov 26, 2015 16:38:58 GMT -5 héad.casé said:

I remember Flair telling a story on his Highspots shoot where he was defending the NWA Title in Puerto Rico, and brought Roddy Piper with him as back up because he didn't want to go alone. Anyway, the match is going on and there are armed guards around the ring with their guns trained on the crowd. Piper does the heel thing and trips the local wrestler from outside the ring as he's running the ropes. Suddenly the armed guards turn their guns from the crowd right to Piper's head. Flair quickly let the local pin him for the title before Piper got his brains blown out and got out of there with Piper. I think he said he didn't even go back to win the title back because of that, they just sent him the belt back/made him a new belt since only that audience would've seen it.

Was that the Jack Veneno "ghost" title victory you're referring to?

[Joe Neglia]

Nov 26, 2015 10:10:51 GMT -5 Reflecto said:

Nov 25, 2015 10:25:21 GMT -5 Burst said:

In the sense of kayfabe-era incidents of wrestlers being threatened or attacked due to people getting fully involved with the kayfabe of the various feuds. You could argue this is one of the benefits of the post-kayfabe era, that wrestlers (for the most part) don't have to worry about being knifed on the way back from the ring or attacked after the show.

I read an interview with Stan Hansen recently where he was talking about the time he broke Bruno Sammartino's neck, and how vicious the crowd was in MSG afterwards. What stood out to me was that apparently, Bruno told him afterwards that he (Bruno) had gotten offers from various presumably mafia-type figures to "take care" of Stan for what he did to him, but was able to defuse it by basically saying "No, I can handle him, I'll get him next time".

It's not quite as direct as wrestlers having batteries thrown at them in Puerto Rico, but it's still a bit unsettling.

Similar to that story from the same area:

Lou Albano and Tony Altimore start up a new tag team gimmick of two guys who are in the Mafia- not even hinting at it like some vaguely-underground gimmicks, even going far enough to wear long black gloves, hold their hands up and say "MAFIA!"

Some members of the Gambino? family then eventually met them after a show and "informed them" what they were really like.

Suddenly, the two were not members of the Mafia anymore.

(Similarly- Tajiri having Kyo Dai killed quickly because he feared the Yakuza seeing it and retaliating.)

On a similar note, there was a tag team back in the late 60s called the Chain Gang (aka the Dillingers) who wore Hell's Angels attire. They were invited to a bar after their match one night, and as soon as they entered the bar, the real Hell's Angels ambushed them. One managed to escape by jumping into a river and the authorities found the other one shot but alive, dumped in nearby town. His leg had to be amputated.

[ERON]

Nov 25, 2015 22:13:54 GMT -5 mysterydriver said:

Nov 25, 2015 20:53:44 GMT -5 agent817 said:

I have read somewhere that when Sgt. Slaughter was doing his Iraqi-sympathizer heel run that he was asked to stay at the arena until after hours, like say, around 1 a.m. to ensure that there were no marks out there ready to attack him for sympathizing with Iraq during Desert Storm. Is this true?

I don't know of that specifically, but Slaughter has told stories of where people took the effort to find out where he lived and constantly defaced his house, so the idea of people wanting to 'wait' for him is a very likely scenario.

My dad says he overheard a dude at a house show back in '91 bragging in the men's room about how he had a shotgun in his pickup with Sgt. Slaughter's name on it.

[Mozenrath]

Stuff like that makes me think the Sgt. Slaughter bomb scare is more plausible than it tends to be treated, but it's the sort of thing they might have otherwise ignored. Here, it may have been a convenient excuse if selling out the original arena wasn't feasible, or providing adequate security for it was beyond their means ot not worthwhile. It doesn't take a whole lot to claim you'll blow something up.

[thecrusherwi]

Nov 25, 2015 23:45:13 GMT -5 Joe Neglia said:

Mid-South fans would fill up water guns with Drain-O and aim for the heels' eyes at shows.

Allegedly, during the JYD/Freebirds feud, a fan pulled out a gun during a match when the Dog was in trouble, hoping to even the odds before security got him.

One I personally witnessed was in 1986 at Gilley's during a Texas All-Star show. Megaheel "Sheepherder" Jonathan Boyd had a verbal altercation with a drunk cowboy at ringside that ended up with the cowboy being escorted out of the building. A few minutes later during Boyd's match, there was a commotion near the building's entrance involving security - the cowboy had returned with a gun. Think he got arrested that time.

Oh, and there's this:

Holy shit! I had never seen that video before. I must say, even I was starting to get uneasy after those continuous heart punches and Ernie Ladd(?) laying there selling it like he died.

[sdoyle7798]

The story Bill Watts told in a shoot with Cornette about how he started a riot with a slightly racist promo against Bobo Brazil. I say slightly because he didn't utter a slur, but did the old "carry my bags, shine my shoes" bit.

He won the match by DQ, and fans entered the riding with knives. He had to fight his way through the seats and to the exit (the dressing room isle was blocked with angry fans), and had to run to a service station a mile away, in his gear, and call back to have someone bring him his clothes.

And, after all that, they brought it back.

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

A couple people jumped the barricade at the ECW Arena when Shane Douglas grabbed Pit Bull 1 by the surgical halo supporting his broken neck and threw him to the mat. Came out later that Pit Bull was healed by that point and it was a work, but that seemed very real at the time.

[Mozenrath]

Stuff like the attempted Drano attacks are a big reason why I have little to no sympathy for anyone who gets attacked by a wrestler when trying to get into the ring. I'd rather someone got roughed up than someone getting stabbed by a fan who is demonstrating such poor judgment, they probably would try to take a swing at Elmer Fudd for trying to shoot Bugs Bunny.

["Playboy" Don Douglas]

East Tennessee legend Ron Wright is largely lost to history as he held a full time job throughout his career, so he very seldom left east Tennessee, and what shows were recorded in the first place were either recorded over or simply lost. However, Jim Cornette has described Ron as "having more heat per capita than anyone."

There was an incident where a fan followed him down the road and fired a shot through the back glass of his car.

A fan in Greenville, TN slashed him down the back with a hawk bill knife, opening a wound that required 175 stitches. Cornette and Les Thatcher, who teamed with Ron's arch rival Whitey Caldwell against the Wright Brothers, said the scar ran from the base of his neck to the waistline of his pants, and he used to show it to young guys in the SMW locker room.

Ole Anderson told a story in his book about he and Gene coming to Knoxville for a show and, upon hearing an incredibly loud response, peeked out to see what was happening. The Wrights and their opponents were brawling through the crowd and the local cops were attacking the Wrights with their clubs. Ron escaped, grabbed the house mic, and cut a promo about how there wasn't a man in the building who could beat him or a jail in east Tennessee that could hold him. Ole looked at Gene and asked, "What the f*** did we get ourselves into here?"

To make the towns in eastern Kentucky and make it back to his job in Kingsport, Ron would fly a single engine plane. One night, and I can't remember if it was Hazard or Harlan, the fans beat him back to the airstrip and burned his plane to the ground.

In a more humorous example, he stated in an interview that he had arrived in Corbin, KY a little early one day and ducked into a restaurant. A waitress recognized him, shoved a pie in his face, and refused to serve him.



This is a photo of Ron, I'd say sometime in the early to mid '60s. Right about the time he was in the middle of his vicious feud with local hero Whitey Caldwell, which included the Tennessee Chain Matches that still hold attendance records in some of the venues.



As you can see, Whitey literally has blood on him from head to toe. Les Thatcher said Ron would deliberately piss Whitey off to get him to work stiffer.



And this is Ron when he worked as a manager in Smoky Mountain Wrestling. He would make claims about how his career as a "scientific wrestling Christian athlete" had left him with a list of ailments and needed surgeries that grew longer by the week, interfere in matches, ask the fans to donate money to pay for his treatments, then berate them when they didn't come across....before closing with, "So if you'd like to help a poor broken down wrassler who sacrificed his body to entertain you with good clean wrestling..." It remains some of my favorite stuff from all my years of watching wrestling.

Sadly, as mentioned, there's almost no footage of Ron from his wrestling days. There's a few arena clips with no sound floating around, and this Knoxville clip that was discovered by the grandson of then promoter John Cazana:

[Toilet Paper Roll]

Manny Fernandez getting "revenge" for Brodys death in ring was pretty brutal.


And I'm going to show I forgot more than I remember over the ages but I recall in the days of tape trading getting my hands on a tape, Jake DDT'd masgarita sagrada Jr (I think) spouting a riot. They kept Jake in the arena hours after the show to avoid him getting killed

["Playboy" Don Douglas]

Nov 28, 2015 17:03:36 GMT -5 Toilet Paper Roll said:

Manny Fernandez getting "revenge" for Brodys death in ring was pretty brutal.

Wasn't that a work?

[Joe Neglia]

Nov 28, 2015 17:17:45 GMT -5 "Playboy" Don Douglas said:

Nov 28, 2015 17:03:36 GMT -5 Toilet Paper Roll said:

Manny Fernandez getting "revenge" for Brodys death in ring was pretty brutal.

Wasn't that a work?

Yep, whole thing was worked.

[MrElijah]

The Dudleyz with their near riots in ECW.