Wrestling with Sin: 600!!!

Brian Damage

This is the 600th 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.

Knightmare

Jason Knight has been a wrestler, a manager, a trainer and a promoter. He is most known for his time appearing in the original ECW, where he was nicknamed ‘The Sexiest Man on Earth.’ For a few years, Knight kept a very low profile on social media and in person due to an incident that happened in October of 2022.

At the time, Knight was living in Tennessee with a female roommate named Sherron. According to Knight, the two got into a heated argument where he made his intentions known that he was moving back to Pennsylvania. A little while later, Knight said he was taking a nap on the couch. That is when Sherron allegedly brandished a knife and began stabbing Knight repeatedly. 

Police were called to the scene where the officers discovered Knight a few houses down standing by a mailbox bleeding profusely from his hand, arm and face. One officer placed a tourniquet on Knight’s arm to slow the bleeding. Knight was rushed to a nearby hospital where he told them of the knife attack from his roommate. Police questioned Sherron about the incident and denied responsibility despite officers noticing blood on her shirt.

Sherron was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. She was released from jail after she posted a $25,000 bond. When the case was brought up to the prosecutor, Jason agreed to drop the charges if she stayed away from him. That apparently didn’t stop Sherron as she was accused of stealing Jason’s cell phone before he moved out of their home and allegedly hacked his Facebook page where she made posts calling Jason gay and sleeping with underage boys. 

In 2024, Sherron was arrested for a similar incident involving a different man where she allegedly threatened to stab him. As for Jason Knight, he said the incident caused serious trauma to which he went into hiding and stayed away from pro wrestling for a couple of years. 

Put on Ice

In September of 1987, two 11 year old boys were playing by a river in Brampton, Ontario, Canada when they stumbled upon a large cooler that was tied up with a yellow cord. The young boys opened the cooler to discover the body of a female. Two days later, the body was identified as 34 year old Janet Mary McKinney. McKinney worked as a crossing guard and wrestled part time on weekends. She was trained and worked for wrestler/promoter Duncan MacTavish.

90 minutes after the body of McKinney was identified, the police announced the arrest of 27 year old warehouse worker named Karl Kynast. The person that led police to Kynast was McKinney’s 16 year old daughter Marlo Fisher (a wrestler herself) who competed under the name of ‘PJ Jackson.’ Marlo revealed that Kynast and her mother were in a two year relationship before breaking up after McKinney discovered Kynast having an affair with Marlo, her own daughter. Marlo said she was 13 at the time the affair started.

When Janet McKinney found out about her underage daughter and Kynast’s love affair, she immediately split up with him. McKinney had threatened to report the affair to police. That is when Kynast struck McKinney with a blunt object and then strangled her with a telephone cord. After killing McKinney, Kynast shoved her 150 pound body head first into a cooler, tied it up and drove to bury the body a few miles away from her home. Kynast had car troubles, so instead of burying the cooler, he tossed it over the Churchville Bridge and into the river below.

According to police reports, he then went back to the apartment he now shared with Marlo and the two had a few beers together. Marlo was originally charged with an “accessory to murder after the fact,” but cooperated with police and the prosecutors. Kynast confessed to the murder and pled guilty to the charge of second degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. He would be eligible for parole after serving 10 years.

For Better or Wuertz

Drake Wuertz aka Drake Younger was wrestling on the independent circuit for several years, most notably in death matches. The brutal beatings he put his body through caused him to abuse drugs and alcohol to deal with his pain. His addiction became a concern and close friend Jon Moxley who was wrestling for WWE at the time as ‘Dean Ambrose’ helped Wuertz get clean and sober. Once healthy, Moxley convinced Wuertz to give WWE a try and put in a good word to help him get hired.

Wuertz would get hired and transitioned from wrestler to referee starting in 2014. Wuertz worked his way up to becoming the senior official of WWE’s developmental brand NXT. Wuertz was inserted into most of NXT’s biggest matches during this period. Once the pandemic hit in 2020, Wuertz’s behavior began to change. He became very vocal against wearing masks and getting the Covid vaccine and would preach to the wrestlers and staff not to comply which irritated some behind the scenes.

Wuertz also attended various meetings and town hall’s at the expense of the company. At times, leaving the Performance Center early and other times no showing events. He got into a verbal altercation with wrestler EJ Nduka while setting up the ring and allegedly called him “boy” during the argument which almost led to a physical confrontation. Several NXT wrestlers of color voiced their complaints to the training staff that Wuertz was racist towards them.

Those concerns led Triple H to have a backstage meeting with talent and staff and stated that all races and religions were accepted in WWE and racism would not be tolerated. Wuertz allegedly got up from the meeting grabbed his bags and walked out. Wuertz would soon be fired from the company. Wuertz decided to run for political office but lost. He returned to the independents and was rumored to have an extramarital fling which his wife found out about and separated from him. As his life was once again spiraling out of control, Wuertz admitted to doing drugs his last years in WWE.

Trying to get his life back to normal, he turned back to WWE and asked for help and they placed him in rehab. Wuertz credits the company for saving his life.

Wake-A-Mania

The death of Hulk Hogan certainly shocked many fans and was the talk of the wrestling world and beyond when it was announced. Fan or not, Hulk Hogan was definitely a lightning rod of some controversy late in his life. Whether it was having a fling with his best friend’s wife, suing the website who posted the sex video into bankruptcy or being recorded using racial slurs. After his unexpected death, the controversy followed him to his grave.

During the memorial service for him, a confrontation occurred between his ex wife Linda and the wife of Brutus Beefcake in Missy Leslie. According to both Brian Blair and Hogan’s son Nick…Missy and Brutus walked up to Linda to pay their respect. Linda apparently brushed them off and ignored them. That is when Missy supposedly called Linda a “cunt.” It was said loud enough where it was supposedly heard from across the room.

Linda then walked over to security handling the memorial service and demanded that both Beefcake and Missy be removed from the service which they were without incident. Missy denied that was true, saying…“Was NOT thrown out. Linda attacked Brutus and put her hand in my face… She was yelling for security… When security got to us they said ‘take your seat it’s ok’ ‘we will handle Linda.’” Missy said they did leave the memorial service early due to Brutus suffering a panic attack and left to get some air. When they tried to re-enter the building they were denied. Linda and Missy have had issues with one another since Beefcake’s divorce from his first wife Barbie who was friends with the Hogans. 

To read other articles in the Wrestling with Sin series…Please Click Here.