Melanie Pillman has died

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

I’m glad her and Brian Jr were able to make peace before she went.

[Display Name]

After her appearance on Dark Side Of The Ring, this isn’t shocking. RIP

[Big BosskMan]

Gotta wonder if this is what Jr. obliquely referenced in his in-ring promo the last time he was on TV, something along the lines of personal problems/being in a bad place.

[kingoftheindies]

Jun 2, 2022 14:36:04 GMT -5 Big BosskMan said:

Gotta wonder if this is what Jr. obliquely referenced in his in-ring promo the last time he was on TV, something along the lines of personal problems/being in a bad place.

Jr had a rough year. His girlfriend left him, also lost his apartment to a fire, now this. Thoughts are with him

[James Fabiano]

A complicated person to be sure, but RIP nonetheless.

Her and New Jack being gone, too...was there anyone else recently on DSOTR?

[Mozenrath]

I hope she finds the peace that eluded her in life.

[sportatorium]

RIP- & sending good thoughts to all of the Pillman family.

[David-Arquette was in WCW 2000]

Jun 2, 2022 14:14:40 GMT -5 Display Name said:

After her appearance on Dark Side Of The Ring, this isn’t shocking. RIP

Yeah I'd not seen any photos or footage of her besides stuff from 1996 and 1997 and had no idea she was in the state she was. Very surprised.

RIP

[Muskrat]

I feel awful for Brian Jr and his siblings. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it actually caused me to yell out “what the shit?!?” when I read this

[Muskrat]

I feel awful for Brian Jr and his siblings. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it actually caused me to yell out “what the shit?!?” when I read this

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Yeah I wouldn't be shocked if we don't see Pillman for awhile. Dude's had a really rough year and it has majorly effected his in ring work.

Glad he made peace with her before she passed. She was, by and large, a pretty terrible human being, but I'm still glad Brian was able to make peace with her despite all the bullshit in the end.

[Aceorton]

I don't think I've ever shared this story here before, at least not in any detail.

On Oct. 21, 1996, when I was a freshman in college, two friends and I drove from DeKalb, Ill., to Fort Wayne, Ind., for the live RAW plus three more weeks of tapings the night after Buried Alive in Indianapolis. (I had been at Buried Alive, too, with a different pair of friends.)

Brian Pillman was tops on the list of people we wanted to see that night. One of my friends, whom I'd just met the month before, was absolutely nuts for Pillman, starting with the Loose Cannon stuff in WCW and then really picking up after the brief ECW stint. He made a large posterboard sign that said "PILLMAN IS GOD." This was a couple of years before everyone and their brother had a "[INSERT NAME HERE] IS GOD" sign.

About halfway to Fort Wayne, we blew a tire on the highway in northern Indiana, out in the middle of nowhere. We all groaned because it seemed like we would now miss the show. Then we looked across the road and realized we were literally within sight of a tire place. I am not religious, but it felt eerily like divine intervention. In less than an hour, we were back on the road.

We arrived a few minutes late, during a British Bulldog-HBK match that they were taping for a RAW a few weeks out. The live show began with a countdown at 9 Eastern. This was the night Bret Hart returned and announced he'd decided to stay with the WWF. It was also the night Mr. Perfect was supposed to face Hunter Hearst Helmsley after months of teasing a feud. Our seats were right on the aisle (this was the pre-ramp era for RAW), and anytime someone walked to or from the ring, my friend had his Pillman sign right there for the cameras.

At some point during the live broadcast, after the Bret speech, I noticed a woman had called my friend over from the open area behind our seating section and was asking him questions, apparently about the sign. He was nodding. The next thing I know I'm being aggressively nudged. "Umm, this is Brian Pillman's wife," he said. "She wants to know if we want to meet him."

I had been conditioned to believe that NOBODY outside the business got to go backstage at wrestling shows, and certainly not WWF shows. Forbidden territory. Don't even dream about it. And now this woman claiming to be Pillman's wife was inviting us there during a live RAW.

What do you say? You don't say anything. You just shut up and FOLLOW HER.

She had a boy with her who was maybe 3 or 4. "Little Brian," she called him.

The next three minutes (and as many times as I've replayed it all in my head over the last 25-plus years, the whole experience couldn't have lasted any more than that) were possibly the most surreal of my life. We followed the woman out of the arena into the concourse and past a barricade with security people who seemed to know she was with the crew. They let us pass without a word. Aldo Montoya was on the other side of the barricade in full gear, talking to a couple of kids. We cut sharply through a doorway into a backstage corridor, behind the entrance curtain and what I now know was the gorilla position. The Iron Sheik (the goddamn Iron Sheik!) was standing there like a host at a restaurant with his suit and headdress and a big flag. He had just come back to the company to manage The Sultan. He nodded hello. We nodded hello. Ten feet away, Michael Hayes was going over the bullet points of a promo with Mankind, Paul Bearer and the Executioner (I didn't realize it was Gordy). Goldust walked by in only face paint and the bottom half of his bodysuit, shouting a question to somebody. Fake Diesel and Bob Holly were sitting on folding chairs watching the match in the ring on a large monitor. At this point my head was basically melting.

We followed her past all these guys, none of them except the Sheik paying any sort of mind to us being there, and cut through another door on the opposite side of the corridor, then another door. We had no time to ready ourselves: Alone there in a side hallway was Brian Pillman, wearing a Yankees cap and looking pretty glum.

He took note of the sign and shook our hands. We gushed like idiots for 15 seconds or so. He said he appreciated the support or something like that -- very polite, brief, quiet.

And then Melanie Pillman, whom we of course thanked profusely, pointed us to a door that would take us back out into the concourse. We got back to our seats just as Mr. Perfect and HHH were screwing Marc Mero out of the IC belt.

As we pinched ourselves over what had just happened, my friend recapped the initial conversation he'd had. Melanie had spotted the outrageous sign (on a monitor, I presume) and wanted to bring the fans backstage to try to cheer Brian up because he'd just gotten some bad news about his ankle. We found out later that it needed to be rebroken, which would delay his in-ring return significantly. Austin "Pillmanized" it at the TV taping the next night in Cincinnati so they could write Pillman off TV for the surgery.

A few weeks later, our jaws hit the floor as we were watching RAW in the dorms back at school: Melanie Pillman was on TV, now officially known to the wrestling world, as her cursing husband whipped out a pistol in their living room and threatened to kill Austin.

For nearly the next year, we took the sign to every show we went to: Des Moines, Omaha, Chicago, Rockford, Peoria. If that particular friend had to work and couldn't go, I dutifully brought it and held it up myself. Pillman was doing commentary for Shotgun Saturday Night by the spring of '97 and acknowledged the sign on the air one week. I've always wondered if he knew it was the same sign, held up by one of the same two guys he'd met in Fort Wayne.

About six months later, Pillman was dead, and Melanie was back on live TV as Vince milked her grief the night after Badd Blood. We watched in quiet sadness and discomfort.

She had it rough later. Their family was in bad shape. We could tell things weren't good when we went to two of the Pillman Memorial Shows. And then, last year, Dark Side of the Ring really blew the lid off how far she fell.

Now she's gone, too. And "Little Brian" is 28 with a wrestling career of his own.

It's crazy that for that one little sliver of time, that completely improbable few minutes, we had an up-close view into their real lives: a wife trying to help her injured and depressed husband feel a little better about the future by introducing him to a couple of grinning doofuses who still believed he was the greatest thing in wrestling.

The world is full of weird turns.

[chazraps]

Jun 3, 2022 0:15:54 GMT -5 Aceorton said:

I don't think I've ever shared this story here before, at least not in any detail.

On Oct. 21, 1996, when I was a freshman in college, two friends and I drove from DeKalb, Ill., to Fort Wayne, Ind., for the live RAW plus three more weeks of tapings the night after Buried Alive in Indianapolis. (I had been at Buried Alive, too, with a different pair of friends.)

Brian Pillman was tops on the list of people we wanted to see that night. One of my friends, whom I'd just met the month before, was absolutely nuts for Pillman, starting with the Loose Cannon stuff in WCW and then really picking up after the brief ECW stint. He made a large posterboard sign that said "PILLMAN IS GOD." This was a couple of years before everyone and their brother had a "[INSERT NAME HERE] IS GOD" sign.

About halfway to Fort Wayne, we blew a tire on the highway in northern Indiana, out in the middle of nowhere. We all groaned because it seemed like we would now miss the show. Then we looked across the road and realized we were literally within sight of a tire place. I am not religious, but it felt eerily like divine intervention. In less than an hour, we were back on the road.

We arrived a few minutes late, during a British Bulldog-HBK match that they were taping for a RAW a few weeks out. The live show began with a countdown at 9 Eastern. This was the night Bret Hart returned and announced he'd decided to stay with the WWF. It was also the night Mr. Perfect was supposed to face Hunter Hearst Helmsley after months of teasing a feud. Our seats were right on the aisle (this was the pre-ramp era for RAW), and anytime someone walked to or from the ring, my friend had his Pillman sign right there for the cameras.

At some point during the live broadcast, after the Bret speech, I noticed a woman had called my friend over from the open area behind our seating section and was asking him questions, apparently about the sign. He was nodding. The next thing I know I'm being aggressively nudged. "Umm, this is Brian Pillman's wife," he said. "She wants to know if we want to meet him."

I had been conditioned to believe that NOBODY outside the business got to go backstage at wrestling shows, and certainly not WWF shows. Forbidden territory. Don't even dream about it. And now this woman claiming to be Pillman's wife was inviting us there during a live RAW.

What do you say? You don't say anything. You just shut up and FOLLOW HER.

She had a boy with her who was maybe 3 or 4. "Little Brian," she called him.

The next three minutes (and as many times as I've replayed it all in my head over the last 25-plus years, the whole experience couldn't have lasted any more than that) were possibly the most surreal of my life. We followed the woman out of the arena into the concourse and past a barricade with security people who seemed to know she was with the crew. They let us pass without a word. Aldo Montoya was on the other side of the barricade in full gear, talking to a couple of kids. We cut sharply through a doorway into a backstage corridor, behind the entrance curtain and what I now know was the gorilla position. The Iron Sheik (the goddamn Iron Sheik!) was standing there like a host at a restaurant with his suit and headdress and a big flag. He had just come back to the company to manage The Sultan. He nodded hello. We nodded hello. Ten feet away, Michael Hayes was going over the bullet points of a promo with Mankind, Paul Bearer and the Executioner (I didn't realize it was Gordy). Goldust walked by in only face paint and the bottom half of his bodysuit, shouting a question to somebody. Fake Diesel and Bob Holly were sitting on folding chairs watching the match in the ring on a large monitor. At this point my head was basically melting.

We followed her past all these guys, none of them except the Sheik paying any sort of mind to us being there, and cut through another door on the opposite side of the corridor, then another door. We had no time to ready ourselves: Alone there in a side hallway was Brian Pillman, wearing a Yankees cap and looking pretty glum.

He took note of the sign and shook our hands. We gushed like idiots for 15 seconds or so. He said he appreciated the support or something like that -- very polite, brief, quiet.

And then Melanie Pillman, whom we of course thanked profusely, pointed us to a door that would take us back out into the concourse. We got back to our seats just as Mr. Perfect and HHH were screwing Marc Mero out of the IC belt.

As we pinched ourselves over what had just happened, my friend recapped the initial conversation he'd had. Melanie had spotted the outrageous sign (on a monitor, I presume) and wanted to bring the fans backstage to try to cheer Brian up because he'd just gotten some bad news about his ankle. We found out later that it needed to be rebroken, which would delay his in-ring return significantly. Austin "Pillmanized" it at the TV taping the next night in Cincinnati so they could write Pillman off TV for the surgery.

A few weeks later, our jaws hit the floor as we were watching RAW in the dorms back at school: Melanie Pillman was on TV, now officially known to the wrestling world, as her cursing husband whipped out a pistol in their living room and threatened to kill Austin.

For nearly the next year, we took the sign to every show we went to: Des Moines, Omaha, Chicago, Rockford, Peoria. If that particular friend had to work and couldn't go, I dutifully brought it and held it up myself. Pillman was doing commentary for Shotgun Saturday Night by the spring of '97 and acknowledged the sign on the air one week. I've always wondered if he knew it was the same sign, held up by one of the same two guys he'd met in Fort Wayne.

About six months later, Pillman was dead, and Melanie was back on live TV as Vince milked her grief the night after Badd Blood. We watched in quiet sadness and discomfort.

She had it rough later. Their family was in bad shape. We could tell things weren't good when we went to two of the Pillman Memorial Shows. And then, last year, Dark Side of the Ring really blew the lid off how far she fell.

Now she's gone, too. And "Little Brian" is 28 with a wrestling career of his own.

It's crazy that for that one little sliver of time, that completely improbable few minutes, we had an up-close view into their real lives: a wife trying to help her injured and depressed husband feel a little better about the future by introducing him to a couple of grinning doofuses who still believed he was the greatest thing in wrestling.

The world is full of weird turns.

Thank you for sharing this.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

My condolences to her family and friends.

[DZ: WF Legacy]

Jun 2, 2022 17:04:36 GMT -5 James Fabiano said:

A complicated person to be sure, but RIP nonetheless.

Her and New Jack being gone, too...was there anyone else recently on DSOTR?

Not recent-recent, but Road Warrior Animal lived long enough to tell the story of LOD & Hawk on DSotR and then died later that same year in 2020.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Jun 3, 2022 0:15:54 GMT -5 Aceorton said:

I don't think I've ever shared this story here before, at least not in any detail.

On Oct. 21, 1996, when I was a freshman in college, two friends and I drove from DeKalb, Ill., to Fort Wayne, Ind., for the live RAW plus three more weeks of tapings the night after Buried Alive in Indianapolis. (I had been at Buried Alive, too, with a different pair of friends.)

Brian Pillman was tops on the list of people we wanted to see that night. One of my friends, whom I'd just met the month before, was absolutely nuts for Pillman, starting with the Loose Cannon stuff in WCW and then really picking up after the brief ECW stint. He made a large posterboard sign that said "PILLMAN IS GOD." This was a couple of years before everyone and their brother had a "[INSERT NAME HERE] IS GOD" sign.

About halfway to Fort Wayne, we blew a tire on the highway in northern Indiana, out in the middle of nowhere. We all groaned because it seemed like we would now miss the show. Then we looked across the road and realized we were literally within sight of a tire place. I am not religious, but it felt eerily like divine intervention. In less than an hour, we were back on the road.

We arrived a few minutes late, during a British Bulldog-HBK match that they were taping for a RAW a few weeks out. The live show began with a countdown at 9 Eastern. This was the night Bret Hart returned and announced he'd decided to stay with the WWF. It was also the night Mr. Perfect was supposed to face Hunter Hearst Helmsley after months of teasing a feud. Our seats were right on the aisle (this was the pre-ramp era for RAW), and anytime someone walked to or from the ring, my friend had his Pillman sign right there for the cameras.

At some point during the live broadcast, after the Bret speech, I noticed a woman had called my friend over from the open area behind our seating section and was asking him questions, apparently about the sign. He was nodding. The next thing I know I'm being aggressively nudged. "Umm, this is Brian Pillman's wife," he said. "She wants to know if we want to meet him."

I had been conditioned to believe that NOBODY outside the business got to go backstage at wrestling shows, and certainly not WWF shows. Forbidden territory. Don't even dream about it. And now this woman claiming to be Pillman's wife was inviting us there during a live RAW.

What do you say? You don't say anything. You just shut up and FOLLOW HER.

She had a boy with her who was maybe 3 or 4. "Little Brian," she called him.

The next three minutes (and as many times as I've replayed it all in my head over the last 25-plus years, the whole experience couldn't have lasted any more than that) were possibly the most surreal of my life. We followed the woman out of the arena into the concourse and past a barricade with security people who seemed to know she was with the crew. They let us pass without a word. Aldo Montoya was on the other side of the barricade in full gear, talking to a couple of kids. We cut sharply through a doorway into a backstage corridor, behind the entrance curtain and what I now know was the gorilla position. The Iron Sheik (the goddamn Iron Sheik!) was standing there like a host at a restaurant with his suit and headdress and a big flag. He had just come back to the company to manage The Sultan. He nodded hello. We nodded hello. Ten feet away, Michael Hayes was going over the bullet points of a promo with Mankind, Paul Bearer and the Executioner (I didn't realize it was Gordy). Goldust walked by in only face paint and the bottom half of his bodysuit, shouting a question to somebody. Fake Diesel and Bob Holly were sitting on folding chairs watching the match in the ring on a large monitor. At this point my head was basically melting.

We followed her past all these guys, none of them except the Sheik paying any sort of mind to us being there, and cut through another door on the opposite side of the corridor, then another door. We had no time to ready ourselves: Alone there in a side hallway was Brian Pillman, wearing a Yankees cap and looking pretty glum.

He took note of the sign and shook our hands. We gushed like idiots for 15 seconds or so. He said he appreciated the support or something like that -- very polite, brief, quiet.

And then Melanie Pillman, whom we of course thanked profusely, pointed us to a door that would take us back out into the concourse. We got back to our seats just as Mr. Perfect and HHH were screwing Marc Mero out of the IC belt.

As we pinched ourselves over what had just happened, my friend recapped the initial conversation he'd had. Melanie had spotted the outrageous sign (on a monitor, I presume) and wanted to bring the fans backstage to try to cheer Brian up because he'd just gotten some bad news about his ankle. We found out later that it needed to be rebroken, which would delay his in-ring return significantly. Austin "Pillmanized" it at the TV taping the next night in Cincinnati so they could write Pillman off TV for the surgery.

A few weeks later, our jaws hit the floor as we were watching RAW in the dorms back at school: Melanie Pillman was on TV, now officially known to the wrestling world, as her cursing husband whipped out a pistol in their living room and threatened to kill Austin.

For nearly the next year, we took the sign to every show we went to: Des Moines, Omaha, Chicago, Rockford, Peoria. If that particular friend had to work and couldn't go, I dutifully brought it and held it up myself. Pillman was doing commentary for Shotgun Saturday Night by the spring of '97 and acknowledged the sign on the air one week. I've always wondered if he knew it was the same sign, held up by one of the same two guys he'd met in Fort Wayne.

About six months later, Pillman was dead, and Melanie was back on live TV as Vince milked her grief the night after Badd Blood. We watched in quiet sadness and discomfort.

She had it rough later. Their family was in bad shape. We could tell things weren't good when we went to two of the Pillman Memorial Shows. And then, last year, Dark Side of the Ring really blew the lid off how far she fell.

Now she's gone, too. And "Little Brian" is 28 with a wrestling career of his own.

It's crazy that for that one little sliver of time, that completely improbable few minutes, we had an up-close view into their real lives: a wife trying to help her injured and depressed husband feel a little better about the future by introducing him to a couple of grinning doofuses who still believed he was the greatest thing in wrestling.

The world is full of weird turns.

This was an incredible read, thank you for sharing it, and I'm very happy you got to have such a wonderful experience.

[Sam Punk]

Sad to hear.

[David-Arquette was in WCW 2000]

Jun 3, 2022 0:15:54 GMT -5 Aceorton said:

I don't think I've ever shared this story here before, at least not in any detail.

On Oct. 21, 1996, when I was a freshman in college, two friends and I drove from DeKalb, Ill., to Fort Wayne, Ind., for the live RAW plus three more weeks of tapings the night after Buried Alive in Indianapolis. (I had been at Buried Alive, too, with a different pair of friends.)

Brian Pillman was tops on the list of people we wanted to see that night. One of my friends, whom I'd just met the month before, was absolutely nuts for Pillman, starting with the Loose Cannon stuff in WCW and then really picking up after the brief ECW stint. He made a large posterboard sign that said "PILLMAN IS GOD." This was a couple of years before everyone and their brother had a "[INSERT NAME HERE] IS GOD" sign.

About halfway to Fort Wayne, we blew a tire on the highway in northern Indiana, out in the middle of nowhere. We all groaned because it seemed like we would now miss the show. Then we looked across the road and realized we were literally within sight of a tire place. I am not religious, but it felt eerily like divine intervention. In less than an hour, we were back on the road.

We arrived a few minutes late, during a British Bulldog-HBK match that they were taping for a RAW a few weeks out. The live show began with a countdown at 9 Eastern. This was the night Bret Hart returned and announced he'd decided to stay with the WWF. It was also the night Mr. Perfect was supposed to face Hunter Hearst Helmsley after months of teasing a feud. Our seats were right on the aisle (this was the pre-ramp era for RAW), and anytime someone walked to or from the ring, my friend had his Pillman sign right there for the cameras.

At some point during the live broadcast, after the Bret speech, I noticed a woman had called my friend over from the open area behind our seating section and was asking him questions, apparently about the sign. He was nodding. The next thing I know I'm being aggressively nudged. "Umm, this is Brian Pillman's wife," he said. "She wants to know if we want to meet him."

I had been conditioned to believe that NOBODY outside the business got to go backstage at wrestling shows, and certainly not WWF shows. Forbidden territory. Don't even dream about it. And now this woman claiming to be Pillman's wife was inviting us there during a live RAW.

What do you say? You don't say anything. You just shut up and FOLLOW HER.

She had a boy with her who was maybe 3 or 4. "Little Brian," she called him.

The next three minutes (and as many times as I've replayed it all in my head over the last 25-plus years, the whole experience couldn't have lasted any more than that) were possibly the most surreal of my life. We followed the woman out of the arena into the concourse and past a barricade with security people who seemed to know she was with the crew. They let us pass without a word. Aldo Montoya was on the other side of the barricade in full gear, talking to a couple of kids. We cut sharply through a doorway into a backstage corridor, behind the entrance curtain and what I now know was the gorilla position. The Iron Sheik (the goddamn Iron Sheik!) was standing there like a host at a restaurant with his suit and headdress and a big flag. He had just come back to the company to manage The Sultan. He nodded hello. We nodded hello. Ten feet away, Michael Hayes was going over the bullet points of a promo with Mankind, Paul Bearer and the Executioner (I didn't realize it was Gordy). Goldust walked by in only face paint and the bottom half of his bodysuit, shouting a question to somebody. Fake Diesel and Bob Holly were sitting on folding chairs watching the match in the ring on a large monitor. At this point my head was basically melting.

We followed her past all these guys, none of them except the Sheik paying any sort of mind to us being there, and cut through another door on the opposite side of the corridor, then another door. We had no time to ready ourselves: Alone there in a side hallway was Brian Pillman, wearing a Yankees cap and looking pretty glum.

He took note of the sign and shook our hands. We gushed like idiots for 15 seconds or so. He said he appreciated the support or something like that -- very polite, brief, quiet.

And then Melanie Pillman, whom we of course thanked profusely, pointed us to a door that would take us back out into the concourse. We got back to our seats just as Mr. Perfect and HHH were screwing Marc Mero out of the IC belt.

As we pinched ourselves over what had just happened, my friend recapped the initial conversation he'd had. Melanie had spotted the outrageous sign (on a monitor, I presume) and wanted to bring the fans backstage to try to cheer Brian up because he'd just gotten some bad news about his ankle. We found out later that it needed to be rebroken, which would delay his in-ring return significantly. Austin "Pillmanized" it at the TV taping the next night in Cincinnati so they could write Pillman off TV for the surgery.

A few weeks later, our jaws hit the floor as we were watching RAW in the dorms back at school: Melanie Pillman was on TV, now officially known to the wrestling world, as her cursing husband whipped out a pistol in their living room and threatened to kill Austin.

For nearly the next year, we took the sign to every show we went to: Des Moines, Omaha, Chicago, Rockford, Peoria. If that particular friend had to work and couldn't go, I dutifully brought it and held it up myself. Pillman was doing commentary for Shotgun Saturday Night by the spring of '97 and acknowledged the sign on the air one week. I've always wondered if he knew it was the same sign, held up by one of the same two guys he'd met in Fort Wayne.

About six months later, Pillman was dead, and Melanie was back on live TV as Vince milked her grief the night after Badd Blood. We watched in quiet sadness and discomfort.

She had it rough later. Their family was in bad shape. We could tell things weren't good when we went to two of the Pillman Memorial Shows. And then, last year, Dark Side of the Ring really blew the lid off how far she fell.

Now she's gone, too. And "Little Brian" is 28 with a wrestling career of his own.

It's crazy that for that one little sliver of time, that completely improbable few minutes, we had an up-close view into their real lives: a wife trying to help her injured and depressed husband feel a little better about the future by introducing him to a couple of grinning doofuses who still believed he was the greatest thing in wrestling.

The world is full of weird turns.

Thanks for sharing this. Such a great read.

[msc]

Jun 3, 2022 0:15:54 GMT -5 Aceorton said:

I don't think I've ever shared this story here before, at least not in any detail.

On Oct. 21, 1996, when I was a freshman in college, two friends and I drove from DeKalb, Ill., to Fort Wayne, Ind., for the live RAW plus three more weeks of tapings the night after Buried Alive in Indianapolis. (I had been at Buried Alive, too, with a different pair of friends.)

Brian Pillman was tops on the list of people we wanted to see that night. One of my friends, whom I'd just met the month before, was absolutely nuts for Pillman, starting with the Loose Cannon stuff in WCW and then really picking up after the brief ECW stint. He made a large posterboard sign that said "PILLMAN IS GOD." This was a couple of years before everyone and their brother had a "[INSERT NAME HERE] IS GOD" sign.

About halfway to Fort Wayne, we blew a tire on the highway in northern Indiana, out in the middle of nowhere. We all groaned because it seemed like we would now miss the show. Then we looked across the road and realized we were literally within sight of a tire place. I am not religious, but it felt eerily like divine intervention. In less than an hour, we were back on the road.

We arrived a few minutes late, during a British Bulldog-HBK match that they were taping for a RAW a few weeks out. The live show began with a countdown at 9 Eastern. This was the night Bret Hart returned and announced he'd decided to stay with the WWF. It was also the night Mr. Perfect was supposed to face Hunter Hearst Helmsley after months of teasing a feud. Our seats were right on the aisle (this was the pre-ramp era for RAW), and anytime someone walked to or from the ring, my friend had his Pillman sign right there for the cameras.

At some point during the live broadcast, after the Bret speech, I noticed a woman had called my friend over from the open area behind our seating section and was asking him questions, apparently about the sign. He was nodding. The next thing I know I'm being aggressively nudged. "Umm, this is Brian Pillman's wife," he said. "She wants to know if we want to meet him."

I had been conditioned to believe that NOBODY outside the business got to go backstage at wrestling shows, and certainly not WWF shows. Forbidden territory. Don't even dream about it. And now this woman claiming to be Pillman's wife was inviting us there during a live RAW.

What do you say? You don't say anything. You just shut up and FOLLOW HER.

She had a boy with her who was maybe 3 or 4. "Little Brian," she called him.

The next three minutes (and as many times as I've replayed it all in my head over the last 25-plus years, the whole experience couldn't have lasted any more than that) were possibly the most surreal of my life. We followed the woman out of the arena into the concourse and past a barricade with security people who seemed to know she was with the crew. They let us pass without a word. Aldo Montoya was on the other side of the barricade in full gear, talking to a couple of kids. We cut sharply through a doorway into a backstage corridor, behind the entrance curtain and what I now know was the gorilla position. The Iron Sheik (the goddamn Iron Sheik!) was standing there like a host at a restaurant with his suit and headdress and a big flag. He had just come back to the company to manage The Sultan. He nodded hello. We nodded hello. Ten feet away, Michael Hayes was going over the bullet points of a promo with Mankind, Paul Bearer and the Executioner (I didn't realize it was Gordy). Goldust walked by in only face paint and the bottom half of his bodysuit, shouting a question to somebody. Fake Diesel and Bob Holly were sitting on folding chairs watching the match in the ring on a large monitor. At this point my head was basically melting.

We followed her past all these guys, none of them except the Sheik paying any sort of mind to us being there, and cut through another door on the opposite side of the corridor, then another door. We had no time to ready ourselves: Alone there in a side hallway was Brian Pillman, wearing a Yankees cap and looking pretty glum.

He took note of the sign and shook our hands. We gushed like idiots for 15 seconds or so. He said he appreciated the support or something like that -- very polite, brief, quiet.

And then Melanie Pillman, whom we of course thanked profusely, pointed us to a door that would take us back out into the concourse. We got back to our seats just as Mr. Perfect and HHH were screwing Marc Mero out of the IC belt.

As we pinched ourselves over what had just happened, my friend recapped the initial conversation he'd had. Melanie had spotted the outrageous sign (on a monitor, I presume) and wanted to bring the fans backstage to try to cheer Brian up because he'd just gotten some bad news about his ankle. We found out later that it needed to be rebroken, which would delay his in-ring return significantly. Austin "Pillmanized" it at the TV taping the next night in Cincinnati so they could write Pillman off TV for the surgery.

A few weeks later, our jaws hit the floor as we were watching RAW in the dorms back at school: Melanie Pillman was on TV, now officially known to the wrestling world, as her cursing husband whipped out a pistol in their living room and threatened to kill Austin.

For nearly the next year, we took the sign to every show we went to: Des Moines, Omaha, Chicago, Rockford, Peoria. If that particular friend had to work and couldn't go, I dutifully brought it and held it up myself. Pillman was doing commentary for Shotgun Saturday Night by the spring of '97 and acknowledged the sign on the air one week. I've always wondered if he knew it was the same sign, held up by one of the same two guys he'd met in Fort Wayne.

About six months later, Pillman was dead, and Melanie was back on live TV as Vince milked her grief the night after Badd Blood. We watched in quiet sadness and discomfort.

She had it rough later. Their family was in bad shape. We could tell things weren't good when we went to two of the Pillman Memorial Shows. And then, last year, Dark Side of the Ring really blew the lid off how far she fell.

Now she's gone, too. And "Little Brian" is 28 with a wrestling career of his own.

It's crazy that for that one little sliver of time, that completely improbable few minutes, we had an up-close view into their real lives: a wife trying to help her injured and depressed husband feel a little better about the future by introducing him to a couple of grinning doofuses who still believed he was the greatest thing in wrestling.

The world is full of weird turns.

That is one of the greatest posts I've read on this forum in years.


And RIP Melanie Pillman.

[ChitownKnight]

Jun 3, 2022 1:41:40 GMT -5 DZ: WF Legacy said:

Jun 2, 2022 17:04:36 GMT -5 James Fabiano said:

A complicated person to be sure, but RIP nonetheless.

Her and New Jack being gone, too...was there anyone else recently on DSOTR?

Not recent-recent, but Road Warrior Animal lived long enough to tell the story of LOD & Hawk on DSotR and then died later that same year in 2020.

Scott Hall was also on the plane ride from hell episode