Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 417th 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.
Hard-y Times
Current AEW star Jeff Hardy was arrested in Volusia County, Florida on multiple charges including a DUI…his third in 10 years. He was booked around 12:45 am on Sunday June 12th, 2022 on charges of Driving While License Canceled/Suspended/Revoked, Violation of Restrictions Placed on Drivers License, and DUI Alcohol/Drugs. The arresting officer said he noticed Hardy’s car swerving and almost going off the road completely. When stopped, he smelled of alcohol and admitted he had been drinking earlier. Hardy was unable to complete any of the sobriety exercises without stumbling and/or falling. The officer administered a breathalyzer test twice and came up 0.294 and 0.291. The legal limit in Florida is .08.
As of this writing, Hardy was still in custody and has been issued a surety bond totaling $3,500 for all three charges, including $2,500 for the third DUI offense charge. AEW management have suspended Hardy without pay and have stated that he must go and complete rehab and show he is sober before returning to the company. Sadly, Hardy has been in situations in and out of the ring and trouble with the law numerous times that have involved his drug and alcohol abuse.
…But I Did Not Shoot On The Deputy.
Wrestler/booker Mike Graham was involved in a one sided bar room brawl in June of 1989 in Tampa, Florida. The fight involved Graham and an off duty deputy named Lon Atkins. According to police reports, the two individuals got into a brief argument which led Atkins punching Graham and knocking him to the floor. The deputy then continued to punch Graham while he was down until bystanders pulled him off. Graham suffered cuts and bruises above his right eye.
The off duty deputy and his friend…an off duty military policeman claim that Graham was intoxicated and began harassing them. They then claimed that the wrestler made a move to strike them and that is when Atkins hit Graham. Mike Graham, on the other hand, had a different story. He claimed that the two men were acting rowdy and obnoxious and Graham simply asked the two ‘What was there problem?’ That question led Atkins to assault him. Graham also claimed that the men tried to persuade the investigating officer not to talk to him. On the police report it states that Graham was intoxicated and refused to be interviewed.
Graham also claimed that while receiving treatment in an ambulance on scene…the two men convinced the EMTs not to treat Graham’s wounds and was subsequently kicked out of the vehicle. The wrestler had to call his wife to take him to a local hospital. The police report stated that Mike Graham refused treatment. Graham said that he was pursuing criminal charges against both men. The commanding sheriff said that he was personally going to investigate the case. No word on whether anything transpired after the initial incident.
Girlfiend
In March of 1955, during a match in Washington D.C. pitting Freddie Blassie versus Mr. Moto, a woman sitting at ringside slashed the leg of Mr. Moto and was subsequently arrested for ‘assault with a deadly weapon.’ The woman in question was named Mary Eleanor Clements, a secretary and model. She was also the then girlfriend of wrestler Freddie Blassie. According to reports, Clements was at ringside supporting her boyfriend, when she witnessed Mr. Moto pummeling Blassie inside the ring. Mary Clements was not “hip” to the fact that the match was all staged and proceeded to take a small mirror out of her handbag and break it on her chair.
She then took a sharp broken piece of the glass and rushed to the outside of the ring and slashed Moto in his leg to break up the attack. Moto got off of Blassie and summoned police to arrest Miss Clements. She was eventually released from jail on a 1,000 dollar bond from an unidentified person. The charges on Mary Clements were eventually dropped when Mr. Moto declined to testify on his own behalf.
Off A Cliff
Cliff Lilly had a brief wrestling career that began in 1972 up until 1979. He mainly wrestled in the Kentucky and Tennessee areas. He worked for Gulas-Welch in 1976, where he donned a mask as one of the Dominoes managed by JC Dykes. After Lilly left the territory, Pepe Lopez replaced him in the Masked Dominoes tag team with Frank Hester. The new team would ultimately meet their demise in a car crash just two months later as covered here.
Lilly retired from pro wrestling and got himself involved in several business ventures which included opening up a tavern and a boarding house in Kentucky. In February of 1992, FBI agents arrested Lilly on charges of attempting to pay for the kidnapping and murder of two former business associates. According to reports, an undercover FBI agent met with Lilly in a parking lot in Cincinnati, Ohio, Lilly was allegedly trying to recruit the agent “to kidnap, extort money from and eventually kill the two men.” The men were from Warsaw, Ky, and Orlando, Fla, but the FBI declined to name them. He was charged with interstate transportation in aid of racketeering and murder a crime that carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. No other information was found on the incident. Cliff Lilly passed away in 2012.