Wrestling with Sin: 574

Brian Damage

This is the 574th 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.

License to Steal

James Bell was the senior vice president of licensing and merchandising for the WWF/WWE. Between the years of 1998 and 2002, Bell was involved in a scheme that saw him defraud the company of millions of dollars. Bell received kickbacks from a licensing consultant named Stanley Shenker that totaled $950,000. Bell arranged for an outside WWE licensing agent, Stanley Shenker and his licensing firm, to receive commissions on licensing agreements to which it was not entitled.

Shenker and Bell disguised the payments by falsifying invoices that Shenker had earned the payments by providing consulting services. With the fake invoices, Shenker was able to deduct the payments on his tax returns as purported business expenses. Bell’s kickbacks were placed in a foreign bank account. WWE noticed some irregularities with some of those invoices and launched an internal investigation that led to the company firing Bell and contacting the Federal government to get involved.

Both Shenker and Bell pleaded guilty to their charges with Bell receiving a sentence of 8 months plus 3 years probation and was ordered to pay back the $950,000 he stole and $6,000 in court fees. Stanley Shenker was ordered to pay 2.8 million dollars in restitution and was sentenced to 33 months in prison.

Flippy Shit!

In 1991, World Championship Wrestling held their Starrcade pay per view called ‘Battle Bowl: The Lethal Lottery.’ During the show, Mike Graham teamed with Diamond Dallas Page to take on Bill Kazmaier and Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger. At one point, Liger attempted a dive onto Graham but missed. At first glance, it appeared to be a botch or miscommunication between the two wrestlers…but that wasn’t the case at all.

A few years later, Graham admitted that he purposely moved out of the way of Liger’s spot. The reason he gave was that he was pissed that Liger was doing all this stupid, crazy stuff in the ring and not actually wrestling. To teach Liger a lesson, he intentionally missed catching him after he dove. Graham said Jushin Liger was angry and started screaming things in Japanese.

Mike Graham said that Liger tried to confront him after the match and Graham allegedly laughed in Liger’s face. Graham was asked if the then booker Dusty Rhodes ever scolded him for intentionally ruining a spot in the match and Graham said that he and Rhodes were very good friends and both laughed about the incident behind the scenes. Graham also stated that he was working in the front office at the time and faced no disciplinary actions against him.

The Ex in Sex

Former WWE star turned actor Dave Bautista opened up about his time as a pro wrestler. He said that he stayed away from drugs, but did have an addiction. Bautista confessed that he was a sex addict and slept with a number of WWE divas. It all began while wrestling in WWE’s developmental territory OVW and continued most of his career in the ring. While Batista didn’t go as far as say he cheated on his three ex wives, there were reports as early as his days in OVW that he was cheating on his wife Angie with other female developmental wrestlers.

Batista has been linked to other WWE divas like Melina, Rosa Mendes, Kelly Kelly and Rebecca DiPietro. He admitted that he used many of them just for sex and took advantage of his celebrity as a WWE star to be with dozens of female fans. He said he realized that his addiction was straining relationships with the most important females in his life including his two daughters Leilani and Athena. He said that he broke his sex addiction to be a better role model to his daughters.

Murder in Mexico

Yonathan Aguilar Ramos better known as a luchador named ‘Rey Komodo’ was found dead in a warehouse in the town of La Herradura. Ramos was brutally beaten and stabbed multiple times. Cameras near the murder scene recorded two men fleeing the area in a pick up truck. The two suspects were identified and the main perpetrator was arrested a few weeks later.

When questioned by police, the suspect admitted to killing Ramos. His reasoning was that both he and Ramos were seeing the same woman at the same time. In an act of passion, the suspect decided to lure the luchador to a warehouse , where he was beaten and stabbed. The suspect’s accomplice has also been identified, but as of this writing is still at large and believed to have fled the country. Yonathan Aguilar Ramos was just 31 years old.

You can read all previous ‘Wrestling with Sin’ pieces here.