Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 442nd 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.
Going Ballistic
Yutaka Mukaiyama was a life long wrestling fan, who applied and was accepted into New Japan’s Dojo after graduating high school in 1985. Unfortunately, he suffered a back injury while training and had to drop out of the dojo. Yutaka’s other passion was acting, so after his dreams of becoming a pro wrestler failed, he began going on auditions for movie and TV roles.
In January of 1990, Yutaka went on an audition, not realizing it was for a role in a porn movie. He landed the role and went on to having an extremely successful adult movie career for over 17 years and 6,000 films. He was an attraction in porn because, he was more muscular than the average male adult stars out there. That made him a lot of money, so much so…at one point was the highest paid adult film star in Japan. He reportedly earned 20 million Yen a year at the height of his career or roughly 150,000 dollars American.
The wrestling bug never left his system and decided to give it a go one more time in 1999. This time, however, he was already a known, established celebrity. He joined Atsushi Onita’s Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling (FMW) and had a pretty successful run until 2002. He wrestled under his given porn name of ‘Chocoball Mukai’, which was a reference to his dark skinned genitals.
While wrestling for FMW and several other Japanese independent promotions, Chocoball continued with his lucrative porn career. In 2004, Chocoball and fellow porn star Eimi Kuroda were arrested for having sex in public as a publicity stunt. Chocoball was found guilty of public indecency and sentenced to five months in prison. He officially retired from porn in 2017.
Stick a Fork in Him…He’s Done!
The late Gene Okerlund recalled an incident involving ‘The Texas Tornado’ Kerry Von Erich that may have led to a short reign as the WWF Intercontinental champion. Okerlund said that once Kerry won the IC title, he was scheduled to make some sort of an appearance in New York City. Unfortunately, Kerry showed up to the even completely high on some type of narcotic.
Gene Okerlund said that he just sat there and watched Kerry try to eat dinner. Every time he scooped food up with his fork, he continually missed his mouth and food was all over Von Erich’s dress shirt. This went on for what seemed like several minutes. Finally, someone from the WWF’s Public Relations department was able to get Kerry out of the room. Okerlund believes this is one of the main reasons why the Texas Tornado did not have a long reign as Intercontinental champion and perhaps shortened his WWF career in the process.
Brian Pillman’s CHAIR-ity
While both were wrestling for Stampede Wrestling in Calgary, Alberta, Canada…Steve Blackman remembered an incident involving his friend Brian Pillman. Blackman was meeting Pillman at a local bar in Calgary, when he saw Pillman through the window arguing with a group of hockey players.
According to Blackman, the next thing he saw was Pillman getting into a brawl with the group of about five of them. Blackman says that before he could run in and assist Pillman in the fight, Brian had laid out all five of them by using a chair. Blackman came in and helped fend off other players from jumping in and the two took off before police were called to the scene.
Fall in Line
Oklahoma State amateur wrestler and NCAA Champion AJ Ferrari was one of WWE’s first signings for their ‘Next in Line’ program in December 2021. The NIL program is explained as “All athlete partnerships will feature access to the state-of-the-art WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Fla., in addition to resources across the organization including brand building, media training, communications, live event promotion, creative writing, and community relations. Upon completion of the NIL program, select athletes may earn an exclusive opportunity to be offered a WWE contract.”
In July of 2022, Ferrari was accused of sexual assault by an unnamed woman and a restraining order was issued. Ferrari, decided to flea police, but eventually turned himself in about two weeks later. Ferrari was kicked off of Oklahoma State’s wrestling team and was released from custody on a bond.
AJ Ferrari’s attorney issued a statement saying…
“The allegations against AJ are false.
“It is unfortunate that a student athlete can become a target, primarily because of their status as an elite athlete. AJ is cooperating with law enforcement and is confident the truth will come out. He appreciated his time at Oklahoma State, but he and the University mutually agreed a change was appropriate.”
The criminal investigation was still ongoing as of this writing. No word if AJ Ferrari is still under the WWE’s Next In Line program during this investigation.