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Randy Orton makes it to this list for something he did before his WWE careerWrestlers get arrested for real offences every now and then, mostly for alcohol or drugs related offences. However, a few wrestlers have committed some heinous crimes in their lives too; crimes which may not define them, but certainly are a blot in their careers.Also read: Is WWE real or fake?So let’s take a look at the worst crimes committed by WWE superstars over the years. We are not nit-picking here and have thus excluded the relatively small offences like drugs et al.
#13 Ric Flair's road rage incident
During the Thanksgiving holiday on 23rd November 2005, Robert Steele was driving to his home from Charlotte, North Carolina. The car behind him was flashing its headlights, seeing which he pulled over. When the other car pulled up to him, Steele recognised the driver as Ric Flair.
"The Nature Boy" went to Steele’s driver side window and grabbed him by the neck before kicking a dent into his Toyota Prius. Flair went on to say: “I’ve got your tag number, and I should knock the s**t out of you” before driving off.
Flair faced charges of assault and damage to personal property, which basically meant that he was not actually arrested.
#12 Randy Ortons court martial
Before making a name for himself in the wrestling universe, Orton had joined the United States Marine Corps immediately after the completion of his high school education. But soon after joining the military, it became clear that Randy was not suited for the rigorous life. In his first year itself he went AWOL twice; he also disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer.
He was court-martialled under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, given a Bad Conduct Discharge and had to spend just over a month’s time in military prison.
After joining the world of wrestling, however, Randy has admitted that he respects the marines while repenting his actions and accepting that he was not cut out to be a marine.
#11 Buff Bagwell assaults a Roadie
Buff Bagwell, who has been in the news recently for switching careers from wrestling to becoming an escort, was involved in an incident where he assaulted a member of the crew.
On 9th May, 2000, following the taping of WCW Thunder, Bagwell along with a couple of other wrestlers were hanging around one of the building exits. The crew were packing the ring and other stuff, when a young member named Darrel Miller made his way towards the exit, while carrying a rolled up piece of carpet.
As the group was blocking his way, the crew member asked for a way past, to which Bagwell replied with an expletive. Immediately after this, another crew member demanded the group to step aside, in response to which Bagwell, thinking that it was the same person from earlier, swore again.
Miller replied, “I wasn’t talking to you”, which infuriated Bagwell even further. He started using abusive and racist language as he punched Miller in the neck, which left an indentation of his fist on the neck.
Bagwell was arrested and charged with assault, and the evidence was concrete, including photographs of the victim’s neck and eyewitness testimony from Lex Luger and Miss Elizabeth.
When the wrestler was questioned about his violent conduct he replied, “He pissed me off, so I punched him upside the neck. He works for us, he shouldn’t be so pushy!”
Bagwell wasn’t required to do prison time, nor was he required to pay any fines; he was just suspended from the WCW for 30 days.
#10 Stone Cold Steve Austin\'s domestic violence
In 2002, Stone Cold Steve Austin did what CM Punk did years later. He walked out of the company claiming he was fed up of the creative direction for him and also said that he felt burnt out.
But in June, 2002 things turned even more sour, as Austin was charged with a case of domestic violence against his then wife, former WWE Diva Debra Marshall.
The police were summoned at Austin’s residence in San Antonio, Texas, where they found Debra bruised and hysterical. Austin was not at the property, and was asked not to return by the officers. Debra accused the wrestler of being a steroid user, while also claiming that the assault was result of “roid rage”.
In August, Austin pled no contest to a charge of domestic abuse, following which he was given a year’s probation along with 80 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.
Debra, meanwhile, had a gag order placed on her by the WWE, as they were worried about the scandal a domestic abuse story would bring. The couple got divorced the following year.
However, this was not the last time that Austin faced charges for domestic violence. In 2004, he was again accused of abuse by his then girlfriend, adult film actress Tess Broussard.
#9 The Great Khali kills a wrestler
In 2001, while Khali was making his name in the American wrestling circuit, he was part of a promotion called All Pro Wrestling, which was based out of California. On the 28th of May 2001, Brian Ong was training with Khali, who at that time wrestled under his original name Dalip Singh.
Ong was suffering a concussion, but instead of advising the aspiring wrestler to seek medical assistance, the trainers marked Ong with a low score for failing to avoid injury and asked him to continue.
When he resumed training, Ong was flap jacked by Khali twice, during which his head crashed against the mat and worsened his concussion. He was declared dead on arrival by the hospital.
It has been widely agreed that Khali was not directly responsible for the death of Brian, and that it was only an accident on his part. The tragedy has largely been blamed on the negligence of the trainers.
The family of the deceased wrestler filed a lawsuit of wrongful death against APW and Khali, which eventually made it to court in 2005. APW was forced to pay $1.3 million in damages, as the jury voted unanimously in favour of Ong’s family. Khali was never officially charged with manslaughter (involuntary homicide).
#8 Art Barr allegedly raped 19-year-old fan
Art Barr is best remembered for his partnership with Eddie Guerrero in Mexico’s AAA promotion. In 1989, while appearing for the Pacific Northwest Wrestling, Barr was a star among the younger audience.
On the 16th of July, following a show in Oregon, Barr was left alone in an armoury with a 19-year-old wrestling fan named Angela, with whom he ended up having sex beneath a stairwell.
Immediately after the incident, Barr was charged with first-degree rape, and the details of the charge have been the subject of much debate. It was clear that the two had sex under the stairwell, and while undergoing his polygraph in court, the wrestler admitted that the 19-year-old didn’t give her consent to have sex in that location, although he said that she did want to have sex somewhere else.
But as he had sex under the stairwell at that time, it counted as rape. That resulted in massive media scrutiny, especially since the promoters continued to use him in wrestling shows.
Barr finally settled for a plea-bargain, due to which instead of the first-degree rape that he was charged with earlier, he was now charged with first-degree sexual assault and was fined $1000, along with serving two years under probation and 180 hours of community service.
Following this incident, Barr left the territory and eventually left America. He ended up wrestling in Mexico, where he was considered the dominant heel.
Barr passed away in 1994 due to heart problems.
#7 Booker T robs several Wendy\'s restaurants
Booker T was the youngest out of eight kids, raised by a single working mother in Houston, Texas. He joined Wendy’s flipping burgers when he grew up, but that was not a big enough source of income for the family, and this made him turn towards crime.
Along with his partners, he committed armed robberies across several chains of Wendy’s restaurants. After getting caught in 1987, he along with his partners pleaded guilty.
The prior knowledge of the robbers on the running of the store operations suggested that it was an inside job, while the costume chosen by Booker and his friends was not too clever either – they were wearing Wendy’s uniforms!
Booker was sentenced to five years behind bars, for aggravated robbery, but he served just over one-third of his term before being released. His life wasn’t much easier, as he was a single parent himself, but then wrestling happened. The rest, as we know, is history.
#6 New Jack stabs opponent multiple times
New Jack was a hardcore wrestler, whose matches frequently ended in bloodbaths. In ECW he was famous for carrying a cart full of weapons to the ring, which included things like Wolverine Claws among others.
New Jack has been involved in several controversial incidents, some of which are as follows:
- The Mass Transit incident, where Jack bladed a 17-year-old fake wrestler to the point that blood actually spurted from his head.
- In revenge for a previous injury, in the scaffold match against Vic Grimes, he threw Grimes off, aiming for him to hit the steel turnbuckle.
- In a match against Gypsy Joe, he told the promoter: “I won’t do a comedy match, I won’t do a gimmick match, I will kill him.”
However, the most notorious incident occurred in October 2004 when, while appearing for the Thunder Wrestling Federation in the match against William Jason Lane, he pulled out a blade from his pocket, and stabbed the wrestler a number of times.
The charges were dropped by Lane in exchange for being trained by New Jack. However, following his release from custody, New Jack bailed out of the state.
#5 King Haku bites off a mans nose
Tonga Fifita, better known as Haku or King Haku in the WWF, was probably the most feared wrestler of all time.
Haku was regarded as the toughest man in the world by Bobby Heenan and Andre the Giant. Andre the Giant later went on to state that the only two men he ever feared were Tonga and Harley Race.
When Perry Saturn was asked who the winner would be if all the wrestlers were involved in a bar fight, he replied, “Tonga would kill everyone without blinking.”
Jake “The Snake” Roberts once famously said: “If I had a gun and was sitting in a tank with one shell left and Tonga was 300 yards away, the first thing I would do is get out of the tank and shoot myself, because I don’t want to wound that son of a bitch and have him pissed off at me.”
Haku, an easy-going and friendly man in general, had very little tolerance for people who tested him, and this is evident from the following instances:
- In a backstage fall-out with Jimmy Jack Funk, he allegedly gouged out Funk’s eye with his thumb.
- Haku shoved a cowboy through two sets of doors with one hand.
- In a bar fight, he reached into a man’s mouth with two fingers and broke his bottom teeth.
- In a backstage argument with Brutus Beefcake, he held the latter by the neck two feet off the ground, and only stopped when Hulk Hogan interfered.
- In a nightclub, Tonga leapt over a table and headbutted a guy for getting fresh with a lady.
The most famous of Haku’s ‘episodes’ occurred at the Baltimore Airport, where he was having a quiet drink with Siva Afi. While heading back to the hotel, a group of men asked them, “Are you guys wrestlers? You know, that fake stuff on TV?”
Offended by the comments, Tonga replied: “I’ll show you how fake it is” before knocking out three of them and grabbing the spokesperson of the group, biting his nose off and spitting it out.
He then returned to his hotel bar and started drinking alongside Warlord. When several police units turned up outside, Warlord went and explained to the police very politely that if they waited for 15 minutes and let Tonga calm down and finish his drink, he would leave quietly. But if they tried to arrest him, he would fight against every single one of them.
The officers duly waited.
#4 Jose Gonzales stabs Bruiser Brody to death
Bruiser Brody was a freelance wrestler in the 80s, who had worked for various promotions in Japan and America. He is remembered for popularising the “brawling style of wrestling” which has been associated with Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Wyatt Family member Luke Harper is considered by many within the industry to be the second coming of Brody.
In 1988, in Puerto Rico, while preparing for a match in the locker room, he was invited into the shower stall by Jose Gonzalez to discuss business. But soon, sounds of a fight were heard from the shower, which were followed by loud groans heard by the entire locker room.
Tony Atlas, another wrestler, went into the shower only to find Brody lying in a pool of blood, holding his stomach, while Gonzalez was holding the knife.
Brody’s last words were: “Tell my little son I love him, and tell my wife I love her too.”
Over the years, Gonzalez has maintained his innocence. He was initially charged with first-degree murder, which was later reduced to involuntary homicide.
When the trial finally took place, Tony Atlas and others refused to testify against Gonzalez, and in 1989 he was acquitted, citing self-defence.
A conspiracy theory regarding the incident has been put forward by several people among the industry, including Dutch Mantell, according to which the Puerto Rican Gonzalez resented the Americans coming and taking over what he considered to be their money.
Mantell even stated that he would testify in court, and was informed that he would be flown back to Puerto Rico to provide the evidence. However, Mantell was not called upon until after the verdict was delivered, which according to him was deliberate. It seems unlikely that there will ever be justice for Brody’s death.
#3 Scott Hall aka Razor Ramon kills a man following bar fight
In January 1983, a 25-year-old Scott Hall worked as a bartender at a strip club in Orlando, Florida where a customer was thrown out of the club, as he got a little boisterous with a girl.
Once outside the club, that customer started smashing the windows of the cars which were parked there, one of which belonged to Hall. Infuriated by this, Hall went out to confront the customer before punching him to the ground.
But the guy was carrying a pistol in the waistband of his pants, for which he reached. Scott wrestled with the man to the ground, before getting hold of the gun and shooting the man in the head.
Hall was charged with second-degree murder, but on grounds of insufficient evidence, the charges were later dropped.
It is believed that the incident has haunted Hall throughout his life, and is probably the reason behind his alcohol and drug abuse. ESPN released a special on him in 2011, wherein he talked about killing the man, and stated that he has never been able to forget the incident.
#2 Bruiser Bedlam blows up police station
Bruiser Bedlam or Johnny K-9, is a Canadian whose real name is Ion Croitoru. Apart from being a wrestler, he was also the President of the Ontario chapter of the “Satan’s Choice” bike gang. He was arrested for assault and cocaine trafficking in the early 90s.
However, that was not the craziest incident of his life. In 1996, he and some of his gang members were ejected out of a strip club for wearing their cuts and colours. In retaliation, the gang planned to blow up the strip club, but in the heat of the moment ended up blowing the local police station. The explosion injured an officer while also causing damages in excess of $130,000.
Not only that, during the course of his trial for the bombing incident, Croitoru also racked up charges for assault, extortion, carrying a concealed weapon and breaking the conditions of his release.
All of these shenanigans attracted the wrong attention of the mafia, and they even sent a hitman after him. He was finally found guilty of the bombing in 1998 and was sentenced to 33 months in prison.
#1 The curious case of Chris Benoit and his family
In 2007, Chris Benoit murdered his wife and child before committing suicide, in what is considered to be one of the darkest days in the history of pro wrestling.
The double murder-suicide occurred over a three-day period ending on the 26th June, 2007. Benoit killed his wife Nancy before strangling his seven-year-old son Daniel, after which he committed suicide by hanging himself. Both Nancy and Daniel died of asphyxiation, as was revealed by the autopsy.
Nancy was bound at the feet and wrists, and was wrapped in a towel, with some blood found under her head. Daniel was apparently strangled while he still lay in bed. Chris had placed copies of the Bible alongside each of the three bodies.
Numerous explanations for the tragedy have been proposed, including brain damage, steroid abuse and a failed marriage.
Following the incident, WWE was taken to court by the media for better health checks among wrestlers. Stringent health checks have now become a part of the procedure, along with concussion testing. While head injuries are given prime importance, steel chair shots to the head have also been banned completely.
