Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 398th 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.
Road Ruhl
Dave Ruhl wrestled from 1946 until 1974 and mostly competed in Canada and Japan. He was an eight time NWA Canadian Heavyweight champion. For many years, Ruhl was the right hand man to Stu Hart booking his Stampede promotion in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He controlled all the bookings of the promotion, until Hart’s sons were old enough to takeover.
In 1974, Ruhl was driving three other wrestlers to a show in Saskatoon….Ruhl and the others were drinking beers during the ride. During the trip, Ruhl lit a cigar and the car quickly filled up with smoke. One of the passengers in the back seat was a young, up and coming 25 year old wrestler named Carlos Colon. The cigar smoke began to make him nauseous, so Colon rolled down his window. Ruhl yelled at him to close the window because it was freezing outside. Colon refused unless Ruhl put out his cigar. The two wrestlers started yelling at each other and Ruhl decided to pull over on the side of the road to settle things.
Both Colon and Ruhl squared off and began throwing punches at one another. Colon connected with a punch and Ruhl rocked backwards and slipped on the icy road. Ruhl’s head cracked on the pavement and was knocked unconscious. The wrestlers eventually made it to Saskatoon for the show, But Dave Ruhl was unable to compete due to his head injury. The next morning Ruhl woke throwing up blood and was rushed to a hospital. He was diagnosed with a severe concussion. So severe, he never wrestled another match again. Carlos Colon said years later, that he always wanted to apologize to Ruhl, but never got the opportunity. Dave Ruhl was said never to be the same after that injury and would often go into dazes. He died in 1988 at the age of 68.
The Rico Act
Rico Constantino was first introduced as the hair stylist to the WWE tag team of Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo in 2002. He would eventually become a wrestler himself in 2003, adopting a flamboyant gimmick with a lot of homosexual overtones. According to his former tag team partner and friend Charlie Haas, it was that gimmick that caused a lot of problems for Rico. Haas claims that many other tag teams refused to work with them because of the gimmick.
If other teams were forced to work against Rico and Haas, the other teams would take physical liberties on Rico to send a message. Many times, Rico would return to the dressing room beaten and battered both physically and mentally. Haas said that Rico suffered a number of unnecessary injuries at the hands of opponents including several concussions. They were all due to Rico’s gimmick, that many treated as if it were his real personality. WWE management apparently did nothing to address the issues.
Web Sight
An erotic video of Major League Wrestling’s Davey Richards surfaced in January of 2022. The video was seen on a homosexual oriented website. Richards was nude and masturbating under the alias of ‘Adrian Lawrence.’ It led to speculation that Richards had gotten into the porn business. When questioned about the video, Richards responded on social media.
He wrote…“Well lol the vid was supposed to be a private one for my wife that apparently is now not so private lol Oh well, it’s a wiener- they can look if it makes their day. But no, I don’t do porn – well pro wrestling can be … meh nm. I should have sold that to get paid. Wieners = $$$”
The video has since been taken down by the website. This is not the first time an erotic video involving Davey Richards have surfaced on the web. A few years back, a sex video of him and his now ex wife…fellow wrestler Angelina Love made the rounds as detailed here.
Paco Pummeled in Paris
Paco Pardinez was a professional wrestler from the 1970’s and 80’s, who was born in Spain. Pardinez wrestled throughout Europe and in Mexico for EMLL. A year after retiring from wrestling, Pardinez was living in Paris, France. On February, 16th, 1984…Paco Pardinez was involved in a fight on the streets of Paris. After the fight was broken up, Pardinez collapsed on the sidewalk and died from his injuries. Paco Pardinez was just 39 years old at the time of his death.