Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 491st 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.
Cocaine, A Cowboy and A Killer
During a stint wrestling in Texas, ‘The Handsome Half breed’ Gino Hernandez allegedly entered the ring against Ox Baker completely “coked out.” Hernandez supposedly roughed Baker up by working very stiff. After the match ended, Hernandez felt like he still had some fight left in him and went on the house microphone and challenged any fan in the arena to climb in the ring and face him.
A big cowboy who looked to be well over 6 feet tall and weighing over 200 pounds decided to answer Hernandez’s challenge. Realizing he made a big mistake, Hernandez kicked the cowboy in his head while he was entering the ring. The kick didn’t fully connect and the cowboy got into the ring and chased Hernandez out of it. Hernandez ran back to the locker room and supposedly hid in the showers.
Later that night, Hernandez was at a bar near the arena where the incident took place. The same cowboy from earlier, showed up and went after Hernandez. This time, however, Killer Tim Brooks was at the bar and got into a fist fight with the cowboy knocking the fan out. Hernandez in pure heel mode, then started kicking the cowboy while he was knocked out on the floor and had to be pulled off by Brooks.
Navigating Through A Storm
AEW star Toni Storm opened up about her ongoing battles with depression and anxiety stating it all began when she was 16 years old. Already three years into the wrestling business, Storm suffered serious bouts of depression with the death of her grandfather, issues with family and struggling to make it in a male dominated industry.
Things got progressively worse for Storm, as a private video was leaked all over the internet of her masturbating. She felt violated and mortified and feared the video leak could ruin her career. She decided to cut off mostly everyone including some family and friends. Around that time, she won the NXT UK women’s title, but admitted that the title victory was during some of her darkest days. Thoughts of suicide creeped in and out of her mind. Thankfully, she credits a close inner circle of friends and family that helped her through the dark times.
A Life In Living Hall
The son of the late WWE Hall of Famer Scott Hall…Cody Hall was following in his father’s footsteps in more ways than one. According to Kevin Nash, Cody’s wrestling career came to an abrupt ending after suffering a neck injury while on tour in Japan. To add insult to injury, his father died rather suddenly which Nash said put Cody in a downward spiral.
Cody began abusing alcohol and it got to the point where Nash and ‘Diamond’ Dallas Page intervened. Nash knew firsthand of the problems his friend Scott Hall had with booze and also saw his own son Tristen pass away from alcoholism. Nash was happy to report that Cody checked himself into rehab and as of this writing, is doing much better.
Kleen Getaway
Ernie Bemis wrestled for nearly two decades from the beginning of 1960 until the late 1970’s. For a majority of that time, Bemis wrestled under the heel moniker of ‘Brute Belkan,’ but changed his gimmick to that of a wrestler who resembled the trademarked character of Mr. Clean from the famous household cleaning products. As ‘Mr. Kleen,’ Bemis continued to wrestle throughout the various territories across the country as a popular babyface.
For years, Bemis referred to himself as “The Strongest Man In Wrestling.” In the latter part of his career, Bemis was accused of using his popularity to run various tabs at restaurants and health food stores and then running out of town and never paying the bill. He allegedly owed several establishments hundreds to thousands of dollars. No word if he ever got caught and arrested on any of these alleged charges. Bemis passed away in 1985 at the age of 60 years old.