Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
This is the 500th 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.
Coming Out Smelling Like A Rose
Randy Rose was a member of the original version of the Midnight Express with Dennis Condrey and Norvell Austin back in 1980. He and Condrey went on to win the AWA world tag team titles managed by Paul E. Dangerously in 1987. Overall, Rose wrestled for over 40 years or various territories across the United States.
In February of 1986, Randy Rose’s vehicle collided with another vehicle in Pensacola, Florida. The collision killed the passenger in the other car…a 21 year old female named Leslie Potter. Rose was arrested at the scene of the crash under the suspicion of driving while intoxicated. The police administered a blood test at the police station, where Rose had a blood/alcohol level of 1.9…nearly twice the legal limit.
As Rose was facing 3 to 7 years in prison for vehicular manslaughter, the prosecutor in the case offered him a plea deal. Rose and his attorney accepted the plea and were sentenced to 2 years under house arrest, followed by 2 years probation. The prosecutor claimed that there simply wasn’t enough evidence to charge Rose with vehicular manslaughter. Witnesses had stated that the driver of the other vehicle that Leslie Potter was a passenger in was really at fault and a collision would have occurred regardless if Rose was drunk or not. The father of the victim was so livid with the sentence, he took a baseball bat out of the trunk of his car to assault the prosecutor and defense attorney outside the courthouse. His wife stopped him before the assault took place.
A few months later, the judge reduced Rose’s sentence to just 2 years probation. Rose’s defense attorney claimed that Randy Rose was truly sorry for his actions and repeatedly visited Potter’s grave to deliver flowers. The backlash to the light sentence caused the prosecutor in the case ( who offered the initial plea deal) to be removed from office from his superiors and placed on suspension.
Dark Cloud
Jesus Lopez was a pro wrestler who competed under the aliases of ‘Pat Valentino’ and most notably as ‘Chief Thundercloud.’ Lopez wrestled for various NWA territories including Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Missouri starting in the late 1960’s until the early 1980’s. Two of his sons followed him into the wrestling business and teamed with their father including his son Mario who wrestled as Chuey Little Fox and his younger son Luis, who wrestled as Chatto.
In 2004, several years after his retirement from the wrestling business, Jesus Lopez and his son Luis were arrested in a major cocaine bust in Texas. Both father and son were sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for cocaine trafficking.
Well Bully For You
Brooke Hogan revealed that when she was working for TNA Wrestling back in 2013, her and Mark LoMonaco aka ‘Bully Ray’ became good friends. She said she found Bully Ray to be charming and funny and a couple of years later the two started dating. Bully even went as far as to ask her father Hulk Hogan for permission to date her. After a few dates, Brooke said she started getting weird vibes and later discovered that Bully was already in a serious relationship with fellow TNA wrestler Velvet Sky.
Brooke stated that she quickly ended their relationship after that…but claimed that Bully still randomly texted her despite being engaged to Velvet Sky. Bully and Velvet eventually ended their relationship in 2021 and it appeared to end amicably. That is until 2023, when recently retired Velvet Sky took to social media and opened up about her past relationships being toxic. She wrote….
“So disgusted with the choices I have made throughout my life when it comes to the men I have dated that I had inadvertently allowed to drag me down to the darkest mental and emotional places, ever. Never again. It really takes its toll on your mental health, even more so when you reflect.“
While she didn’t name Bully Ray or her past relationship with other TNA wrestler Chris Sabin specifically…she did say that she was working on her autobiography that will detail her past bad relationships.
Back to the Street
In 1996, Terry ‘Bam Bam’ Gordy had a brief run with Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). By this time, Gordy was becoming a shell of his former self due to years of drug and alcohol abuse in which he overdosed a couple of times. Several wrestlers recalled Gordy’s odd behavior behind the scenes in ECW. He wasn’t the loud, brash persona many loved him and known him to be in years past. He was more quiet and reserved.
In one bizarre instance, Gordy was backstage drinking a few beers, when all of a sudden he went into what looked like a deep trance. His eyes and mouth were wide open, but wasn’t acknowledging anyone who was trying to call his name. Before an ambulance was called, Gordy snapped out of the trance and began talking about his days as a Freebird working for World Class and the Von Erich family as if nothing had happened.