Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 346th 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.
Death Wish
In 1999 in WCW, the band the Misfits were brought into the company to work with Vampiro. According to Vampiro, the band was satisfied just making their appearances and collecting a check. The exception, however, was the Misfits bassist Jerry Only who requested that he be more involved in the physicality of the matches. Only kept on going to WCW management requesting to wrestle and it was finally granted.
The only caveat, his match was against ‘Dr. Death’ Steve Williams and it was inside a steel cage. Vampiro realizing this was a big mistake on Only’s part…tried to talk the musician out of the match. Vampiro’s pleas apparently fell on deaf ears by Jerry Only and the match took place on an episode of Monday Nitro. As Vampiro feared, Dr Death wasn’t about to take it easy on Only and worked the match extra stiff.
Jerry Only was beaten up considerably during the course of the match. To his credit though, while Williams obviously wanted to send a message to the non wrestler (which he did) Only didn’t complain much about the legitimate beating he received.
Race of Spades
Harley Race was a man who took a few things very seriously. Wrestling of course, but another was playing cards. During a friendly game of poker with a few fellow wrestlers, Race noticed one wrestler attempting to cheat. The wrestler in question was ‘Crazy’ Luke Graham. Harley became upset and confronted Graham by yelling at him in front of everybody in the room.
Feeling humiliated, Luke Graham decided to get even with Race…but apparently knew he couldn’t take Harley on a one on one fight. A while later, Race entered an elevator with the Brisco brothers (Jack and Gerry). As the elevator doors closed, the Briscos allegedly attacked Race to even the score with Luke Graham who was good friends with the brothers. Ric Flair said he heard two different versions of this story…one from Race and the other from Jack Brisco. Each story had a different ending with Race saying he beat up both brothers and Brisco saying they beat up Harley.
Falling Starrs
Chicky and ‘Rambo’ Ron Starr were two of the biggest heels in Puerto Rico during a period of time. The duo won the World Wrestling Council tag team titles on two occasions. One night, the Starrs faced off against Invader I and III at a stadium show. Ron Starr noticed that the crowd was getting crazy and sensed that a riot was about to break out. Ron instructed his valet ‘Miss Peaches’ who was also his real life wife, to head to the dressing room and grab all of the team’s gear and meet them in the back parking lot.
As Starr had predicted, a full blown riot broke out in the stadium….the match was stopped and Chicky and Ron ran out of the stadium and into a waiting car with Miss Peaches behind the wheel. As their car was driving off to safety, a large group of fans blocked their path and started banging on the vehicle. Before long, the fans were able to tip the wrestlers car over to its side.
Fearing death, the wrestlers started hearing sirens…as the riot police arrived and began firing shots into the air. The large crowd scattered and the police escorted the wrestlers to safety.
Battling Through The Storm
Jeff Warner wrestled for various territories as well as WCW and the WWF. In WCW, Warner wrestled most notably as J.W. Storm. Warner said in various interviews that he was abused as a child and that led him to abusing both drugs and alcohol. Something that followed him during his wrestling career. Warner credits meeting his wife and her taking him to church where he was able to get clean and sober.