Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 452nd 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.
Grin and Bearcat It
‘Bearcat’ Wright Was an outspoken, controversial, yet very popular wrestler in the 1960’s and 70’s. He helped put an end to segregation in professional wrestling and is considered the first black wrestler to hold a heavyweight title by winning the Worldwide Wrestling Associates (WWA) title based in Los Angeles, California. Bearcat won the title on August 23, 1963…just five days before Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
Wright was considered difficult to work with as WWA champion, as he constantly refused to drop the title to other wrestlers like Edouard Carpentier and Fred Blassie. Promoter Cal Eaton decided to take matters into his own hands and hired ‘Judo’ Gene LeBell (a legitimate Judo champion and known shooter) to physically take the belt away from Wright. LeBell was booked as a last minute substitute for Blassie in a match against Bearcat Wright. Bearcat realized why LeBell was there and refused to enter the ring against him. Because Wright refused to wrestle that night, he was stripped of the title and it was later awarded to Carpentier. Bearcat Wright was fired by the WWA and thusly blackballed from wrestling for a short time.
Walking Riot…Missy Hyatt…Literally
Former valet and personality Missy Hyatt has become a foot fetish model. The one time owner of the adult website ‘Wrestling Vixxxens’ recently did several photo shoots.
Cliff Hanger
Cliff Bartz was a pro wrestling promoter who founded the New England Wrestling Federation in 1990. His promotion was based out of Burlington, Vermont and had local TV in Vermont and portions of Massachusetts. Bartz booked such wrestlers as a young Rob Van Dam and Sabu and had Tera Rizin (Triple H) as one of his champions for a time. Cliff Bartz himself also served as a personality named “Don Bartzini: The Godfather of Professional Wrestling.”
In October of 1994, Bartz was arrested in Florida by the FBI for masterminding a number of armed robberies throughout the New England area. Those robberies included two supermarkets in 1991, a liquor store and a home invasion in 1992. Each time, Bartz came away with thousands of dollars. He was also accused of shooting a clerk at one of these stores twice with a .45 caliber semi-automatic hand gun.
Bartz pled guilty to two counts of conspiracy, one count of possession of a firearm and one count of witness tampering. In November of 1995, Bartz was sentenced to 20 years in prison. After he is out of prison, Bartz will be on supervised release for three more years and must pay restitution to his victims.
The Shameless Maul
Konnan revealed that while in WCW, Raven had a method of getting women to go home and have sex with him. It was something Raven called ‘The Shameless Maul” and would usually involve his good friend Perry Saturn. The two wrestlers would go to a nightclub in whatever town or city they were performing that night. Raven and Saturn would walk around the club grabbing and fondling women that they did not know.
If the women punched or slapped them, they would move on to the next woman. This would continue until a woman doesn’t fight back and that is the person they’d choose to go home with. Konnan said more times than not, they always took a punch or got into a skirmish with the unsuspecting female’s boyfriend/husband…but they always found one or two women in every club they did the Shameless Maul to.