Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 270th 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.
Strong Arm
In 1983, The Armstrong wrestling family patriarch ‘Bullet’ Bob Armstrong was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama. Armstrong got into a heated argument with a fan at ringside at the Montgomery Civic Center. The argument quickly escalated and punches were thrown. The police that were working security allegedly saw Armstrong strike the fan once and was arrested at the scene.
Some eyewitnesses said that it was the fan who threw the first punch. Unfortunately for Armstrong, the police did not see that. Bob Armstrong was jailed on third degree assault charges and was eventually released on bail.
RVDrunk
2016 was a very bad year for ‘The Whole F’N Show’ Rob Van Dam. First his dog died and then his beloved father passed away. In addition to all of that, his marriage of 17 years fell apart and was headed for divorce. RVD fell into a deep depression and coped the only way he knew how and that was by drinking. One drink led to several and he was consistently drunk every day of the week.
Rob Van Dam admitted that he would often drive his car while completely intoxicated. He also confessed that he wished that he would run his car off the road and crash just to ease all the pain he was in mentally. He credited meeting his current girlfriend and fellow wrestler Katie Forbes as being one of the reasons he was able to come out of his deep depression and get sober.
Precious Moment
‘Gorgeous’ Jimmy Garvin recalled a time he and his valet/wife ‘Precious’ were wrestling in Laredo, Texas. At the time, Garvin was a heel and was red hot. While walking down the aisle to get to the ring, an angry female fan grabbed Precious by her hair and struck her with some sort of blunt object. The crowd went into a frenzy and admittedly Garvin had a very hard time getting to his wife.
Luckily, security apprehended the female fan and Precious was rushed off to a nearby hospital where she received several stitches to her head.
Speak No Evil
Jun Izumida was a Japanese wrestler who competed mainly for All Japan Pro Wrestling. He along with several other wrestlers made a mass exodus and followed Mitsuharu Misawa to form Pro Wrestling Noah in 2000. Towards the end of his career, Izumida was somewhat critical about the Yakuza’s (Japanese mafia) involvement with professional wrestling. He also admitted that he was in dire financial straits as a woman had embezzled 85 million Yen from his bank accounts (roughly 780,000 in US dollars)
In January of 2017, Izumida was found dead in his home. Despite the initial suspicious circumstances, it was officially ruled a heart attack. Jun Izumida was just 51 years old at the time of his death.