Wrestling With Sin: 563

Brian Damage

This is the 563rd 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.

Number One With A Bullet

In 1976, Roddy Piper was one, if not the top heel in the Los Angeles territory. His feud with Chavo Guerrero Sr was a box office success in L.A.. With that said, Piper became very familiar with fans trying to hit him while walking down the entrance way at the famed Olympic Auditorium and receiving a number of death threats. On one particular evening, a simple verbal threat could have become so much more.

While Piper was inside the ring waiting for his opponent to be announced by Jimmy Lennon Sr, a fan was forcing his way to ringside. Jimmy Lennon noticed this and felt that there was something odd and suspicious with the fan’s need to get up front. That’s when Lennon saw the fan reach into his pocket and pull out a gun. Quick on his feet, Lennon stood in front of Piper, shielding him as he continued with the ring introductions. The fan began screaming at Lennon to move out of the way, but Lennon acted confused and remained in front of an unsuspecting Piper.

Police were able to spot the gunman and arrested him before he fired a shot. Roddy Piper later heard from police saying that the fan’s gun had only one bullet in the chamber. Apparently, the fan had scratched the name “Piper” on that one bullet.

Lost Vegas

Marty Jannetty talked about working television tapings in Las Vegas for Verne Gagne and the AWA in the late 1980’s. Jannetty said that many of the wrestlers loved going to Vegas because it was a party city. He said as soon as the talent got off the plane and into the Las Vegas airport, there was a major drug dealer there to greet them. The dealer would always shake the wrestlers hand and slip them a free eight ball of cocaine.

While many of the wrestlers were treated like kings, Jannetty said he and his tag team partner Shawn Michaels were treated the best. The dealer would always supply them with drugs, strippers and a hotel suite. Jannetty remembered one time entering a fancy hotel suite and on the table was a huge M (For Marty) and S (For Shawn) written out in cocaine for them to indulge.

While both Marty and Shawn enjoyed the lavish treatment they received, they knew they had to cut it off, after visiting the drug dealer’s mansion. Marty said the dealer told him to open the closet for a big surprise. Jannetty thought a stripper was behind the door, but instead were bricks and bricks of cocaine that filled the closet from the floor to the ceiling. It was a wake up call that if the police raided the dealer’s home, the duo could face serious jail time.

Defaced

Tetsuo Sekigawa, best known as ‘Mr. Pogo’, wrestled for various Japanese promotions from the 1970’s until 2016. According to friends and colleagues, Pogo was a hardened veteran wrestler, who believed in old school traditions. One of those ways was expecting “young boys” or trainees to completely obey the veterans and if not, be physically punished. In 1992, while competing for Japan’s W*ING promotion, Pogo’s beliefs nearly landed him in prison.

According to witnesses, a young boy messed up a demand made by Pogo. This led Mr. Pogo to take a razor blade out of his pocked and repeatedly slash the face of the young boy. It was so severe, that the young boy was rushed to the hospital. The parents of the trainee wanted to press charges against Pogo, but the young boy himself talked his parents out of making the incident into a legal matter.

GLOW Away

As the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) was becoming more and more popular, the promotion began touring the country. One night in Nebraska, all legitimate fight broke out after a match between Sally the Farmer’s daughter and Hollywood. According to Jeanne ‘Hollywood’ Basone, her and Sally did not get along backstage at all. She said it all dates back to the two of them attending the same local high school in Los Angeles. Basone said that they were rivals in high school and continued being rivals as both trained to become wrestlers and it grew even worse when both made it to GLOW.

 The match they had in Nebraska got ugly as soon as Sally the Farmer’s Daughter carelessly threw Basone over the top rope and onto the concrete floor. Despite being hurt, Basone jumped back in the ring and kicked Sally as hard as she could into her stomach. The heavily choreographed match soon became a shoot fight with both wrestlers legitimately brawling with each other on the outside of the ring. Mt. Fiji had to get in between the two women and separate them. 

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