Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 353rd installment of the ‘Wrestling with Sin‘ series. A group of stories that delves into the darker, underbelly of pro wrestling. Many of the stories involve such subjects as sex, drugs, greed and in some cases even murder! As with every single story in the Sin series, I do not condone or condemn the alleged participants. We simply retell their stories by researching interviews, newspapers, magazines and various other sources of media.
An Apology Holds Weight
In 1982, ‘Bullet’ Bob Armstrong was lifting weights at a gym, when Ted Dibiase purposely kicked the weight bench Armstrong was laying on as a joke. The 180 pounds Armstrong was lifting then accidentally fell on him shattering numerous bones in his face. The injuries were so severe, doctors advised Armstrong to retire from pro wrestling. Believing his career was over, Bob Armstrong went into a deep depression.
He recalled crying for three weeks straight believing that he wouldn’t be able to return to a wrestling ring. Thankfully, Armstrong’s injuries healed properly and eventually returned to wrestling after over a year of being sidelined. What made the entire situation much worse was that according to Armstrong…Dibiase never once apologized for the accident. That caused a rift between the two men that lasted for years after the fact.
Gunning for Orton
At one time, Bob Orton Sr. was one of the hottest heels in all of professional wrestling. He had so much heat as a heel that he sometimes needed police escorts from his hotel to the arena he was wrestling at. Orton also would have to pay off the police around 15 dollars to stay by his side and escort him down to the ring. That’s how hated he was as a wrestler.
One evening, Orton was wrestling a match and a fan threw a folding chair at him from the balcony. The chair hit him in the head, splitting him open and knocking him unconscious. As Orton was laying motionless in the ring, other fans decided to try and finish him off by charging the ring. It took Lou Albano to grab a gun from his bag in the dressing room and rush to the fallen Orton. Albano used the gun to scare off the angry mob long enough for a group of wrestlers to grab Orton and literally drag him backstage.
Last Willie and Testament
Willie Urbina is a broadcaster who has done Spanish play by play for various wrestling promotions including the IWA based in Puerto Rico, TNA wrestling, New Japan and most recently for All Elite Wrestling. In May of 2021, during an edition of AEW’s Dynamite…there was a segment where then AEW women’s champion Hikaru Shida was celebrated for holding on to the championship for over a year. During a commercial break, Urbina’s broadcast partner Alex Abrahantes jokingly asked Urbina to translate the Japanese champion Shida. Urbina then went ahead and did his impersonation using an over the top Japanese accent.
Urbina’s female broadcast partner Dasha Kuret sounded a bit annoyed by Urbina’s Japanese accent and told Urbina…”Stop it! You are mean.” All of this was caught on a live microphone and aired on the Fite TV feed. Urbina’s impression immediately became viral and made the rounds all over social media with many deeming Urbina a racist. The following day after the incident took place…AEW fired Urbina without issuing a statement. As of this writing, Willie Urbina has yet to issue a statement of his own.
The Walking Fled
Josh ‘TKO’ Turner is an independent pro wrestler that started training for his career at the age of 18 years old. Turner moved from his home in Indiana to Louisville, Kentucky where he trained with WWE’s former developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling. Since graduating from OVW’s wrestling school…Turner has wrestled for a number of independent promotions across the country. It was while wrestling in the Los Angeles area that he met some Hollywood executives and they cast Turner in several television shows like The Vampire Diaries, The Originals and his biggest role…17 episodes of the series The Walking Dead. Turner continued to do both acting and wrestling whenever his schedule allowed it.
In February of 2020, Josh Turner was arrested in Knoxville, Tennessee for an outstanding warrant he had in Portland, Oregon. Turner was in jail for an assault charge in Portland, when he was mistakenly released. Josh Turner then allegedly fled to Knoxville, where he was apprehended and extradited back to Oregon.