Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 434th 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.
The Coke’s on You!
Teddy Long recalls being on the road with WCW managing Doom of Butch Reed and Ron Simmons. They were in St. Louis hanging out with the Junkyard Dog and looking to party. They all met up with a local drug dealer who was a wrestling fan and the dealer invited the wrestlers back to his place. While in the dealer’s home, they all did a bunch of cocaine. The dealer allowed them all the coke they wanted, with JYD allegedly doing the most out of the group. Not only did JYD do a ton of cocaine, he also ate the dealer out of house and home.
The wrestlers ended up partying all night long without sleep and had to get to the arena for a show the next day. Long claimed that the whole ride there, the boys continued to do coke. As they were parked in the lot, the Steiner brothers popped out of nowhere scaring Long who accidentally spilled cocaine all over his rental car. Long, Reed, Simmons and JYD decided to skip the show and returned to the dealer’s house to party some more.
Keeping An Eye On Harley
Wrestler, trainer, promoter Eddie Sharkey recalled a riot that broke out at a show in Denver, Colorado back in the early 1970’s. Sharkey couldn’t remember what started the riot, but vividly recalled what happened during it. An angry fan grabbed Race from behind and took him down to the floor. A woman then took off her high heel shoe and began repeatedly hitting Race on the back of his head. Eddie Sharkey saw this and ran to help his fellow wrestler out. He shoved the woman down and then got on top of Race’s attacker.
Sharkey was having a tough time getting the assailant off of Harley, so Sharkey decided to gouge the fan’s eye. As Sharkey put his finger into the fan’s eye socket…he realized the man’s eye was popped out. Harley had already ripped the man’s eyeball out of the socket. Unfortunately for Race, the fan had nearly bit off one of Harley’s fingers in the melee.
Both Sharkey and Race were able to escape to the back, although Race with a half bitten off finger wanted to stay and continue fighting. The end result according to Sharkey, was that both he and Race were banned from wrestling in Denver for three months.
Win, Lose and Draw
During the late 1980’s, a young Shinya Hashimoto was sent from Japan to wrestle overseas to gain experience. One of those stops was in Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. While in Stampede, Hashimoto wrestled under the alias of ‘Hashif Khan.’ Hashimoto was not well liked during his tenure with Stampede, because of his hard hitting, stiff style…he injured a few of his opponents.
Stu Hart’s breaking point came when Hashimoto was at ringside signing autographs for fans. In this particular incident, Hashimoto allegedly did an obscene drawing for a young female fan. It wasn’t clear what the drawing actually was or if it was a joke gone wrong, but the young fan’s parents were outraged. They took the drawing to management and threatened to legal action. Shinya Hashimoto was sent back to Japan and never returned to Stampede.
Taking His Shot
Irish born pro wrestler Debbie Keitel accused her former trainer Alexander Dean of unwanted sexual advances. She came forward with accusations of gaslighting, stalking and abuse towards her in training. Keitel says when she turned Dean down…that’s when things turned violent.
While in the ring with Dean for a training session, she alleged that Dean “shot” on her and brutalized her physically. Alexander Dean was subsequently banned by several promotions in Ireland and England.