Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 481st 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.
Too Good To Be Olu
Joe Pedicino was a passionate wrestling fan, who turned his love for the business into becoming a wrestling host, play by play announcer and a promoter. Pedicino would co-host a weekly syndicated recap show with the legendary Gordon Solie called Pro Wrestling This Week and also get briefly hired by World Championship Wrestling. In 1990, Pedicino was approached with an opportunity of a lifetime…become a promoter. A Nigerian businessman named Olu J. Olayemi came to Pedicino wanting to invest in professional wrestling.
Olu had a corporation based out of Nigeria called ‘Kongi Sports and Entertainment Incorporated.’ Olu promised to financially back Pedicino in starting a wrestling promotion with over 25 million dollars as a budget. Originally, Pedicino was to purchase the USWA promotion from Jerry Jarrett and turn it into what would be known as the Global Wrestling Federation. That deal eventually fell through and Pedicino and Olu went to work on creating something brand new from scratch. Joe Pedicino had visions of making the GWF into the number 2 wrestling company in the United States behind the almighty World Wrestling Federation.
Pedicino had bragged to friends and colleagues that a big stadium show would eventually take place in Nigeria that held over 125,000 fans. While some friends, including Jim Cornette was very skeptical of the Nigerian businessman, Pedicino assured Cornette and others that everything was on the up and up and completely legitimate. Unfortunately, for Pedicino that wasn’t the case at all.
It eventually turned out that Olu Olayemi did not have millions of dollars in the bank to pay for talent and other expenses and soon disappeared leaving Pedicino to fend for himself. Joe would pay for the wrestlers and the venue which was the renamed Dallas Sportatorium aka ‘The Global Dome’ mainly out of his own pocket. The GWF would see a few young wrestlers become future stars , but ultimately Pedicino sold the promotion and for the most part left the wrestling business altogether.
Cornette said that many of his friends in the business began questioning Pedicino, as if he was in on the scam. He was labeled as either a “fool or a liar.” Cornette said that Pedicino lost his passion for pro wrestling for a very long time after the incident took place. The Olu Olayemi situation was always a very sore subject with Pedicino, who refused to talk about what went on and was buried with that information after he died in 2020.
Split Personality
Former WWE star Melina Perez was allegedly involved in a physical altercation during Wrestlemania weekend in Los Angeles in April of 2023. It was reported that Melina attended WWE’s Friday Night Smackdown show the night in question and was allegedly inebriated.
When she returned to her hotel, she was allegedly being very loud and that led to some sort of physical altercation with some unidentified people. Hotel security was called and Melina was asked to leave the property. Because she was removed from the hotel, Melina was unable to honor her commitments the next day for the Wrestlecon convention.
Stabbed in the Back…Literally!
In September of 1959, tag team partners ‘Mighty Jumbo’ aka Sam Hesser and ‘Tokyo Joe’ aka Patrick Sasoki found one wrestler in the hospital and his partner in jail. The incident took place after a show in Long Island, New York when the tag team returned to their hotel in Manhattan. The wrestlers were drinking at the hotel bar, when Hesser claimed that Sasoki became violent and physically threw him out of the bar and down a flight of stairs. When Hesser returned to the bar, he claims that Sasoki grabbed a knife from the bar and tried to stab Hesser with it.
The much larger Hesser said he was able to get the knife away from Sasoki and stabbed Sasoki in the stomach and back in self defense. Pat Sasoki was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was listed in serious condition. The 500 pound Hesser was charged with felonious assault.
Kidd Games
A Dallas, Texas based independent wrestler named ‘Phoenix Kidd’ has been accused of grooming underage fans. One of those fans said she was just eleven years old when she claimed to be propositioned by Kidd. According to the fan, Kidd asked her for her phone number, when the fan replied that she was only eleven, Kidd allegedly told her that age was just a number and continued to ask for her number. Another female fan gave Kidd her number and he then allegedly text her asking her to show him nude photos of herself.
The accusations led a Texas based indie promotion to remove Kidd from its roster and scheduled main event for an upcoming show. Phoenix Kid denied the accusations against him and went on to make this statement about his accusers…
Despite the accusations made towards him…Phoenix Kidd continues to take bookings and wrestle. He remains defiant and steadfast that he never did any of the things he has been accused of.