- 5 months ago
WWE's IYO SKY once had a literal brush with the law...
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00:00Whether on the other side of the Pacific, the border, or in the bleak suburbs of the
00:05independent scene, the dark underbelly of the industry exists everywhere.
00:10So with that said, I am Gareth, this is WhatCultureWrestling,
00:14and here are 10 crazy wrestling scandals you've never heard of.
00:18Number 10, the Antonio Inoki embezzlement scandal.
00:22At WrestleKingdom 17, New Japan Pro Wrestling announced that a feature film depicting the
00:27life of company founder Antonio Inoki is in pre-production, but there is just not enough
00:32time to fit that man's story into just a film. Inoki founded, oversaw, and starred in the biggest
00:38puro promotion ever for decades. To grasp the scale of his legacy, he was both Vince McMahon
00:44and Hulk Hogan at the same damn time. In the early 1980s, New Japan Pro Wrestling was a monster of a
00:50success, turning an incredible profit. But Inoki almost tanked the entire company. His side business,
00:56a biotechnology company operating under the name Anton Hizzle, was floundering. In response,
01:02he embezzled and siphoned cash from New Japan's live gates to keep it afloat. The interloping
01:07Isshin Gundan stable were incensed, New Japan Pro Wrestling's hottest angle was abandoned,
01:12and Inoki stepped down as president, though still performed as a talent. Business plummeted for a
01:18few years with the best thing going dead, but Inoki soon found himself back in power,
01:22as a result of what many deemed clandestine political machinations.
01:26Now I've got a quick question for you, what wrestling figure do you want to see have a
01:30movie made about their life? We've already got an Inoki one incoming, but I want to know which
01:34one you want to see in the comments section down below.
01:37Number 9, The Atsushi Onita Threesome
01:39In a less bleak but equally wild story as most of the other entries on this list,
01:44FMW founder and top star Atsushi Onita also found himself in a scandal misappropriating funds.
01:50Onita was one of the coolest professional wrestlers of all time. He pioneered the exploding barbed wire
01:56deathmatch, the most demented badass spectacle in pro wrestling history. He was practically a cult
02:02leader with his awesome ability on the mic. Even if he can't understand a single word of Japanese,
02:06he would run through a brick wall if he read his bank statement out to you in a raised voice.
02:11That's how effective his delivery really was. His look should by right have stumbled into cliche.
02:16He smoked and wore a leather jacket, but he simply pulled it off.
02:19There is no coolerer sight in pro wrestling history than Onita walking into the lion's den
02:24of the Tokyo Dome as an artless garbage wrestling interloper and laughing his ass off as the New
02:29Japan fans pelted him with rubbish. Onita also entered the political arena with a similarly brash
02:35attitude. This is a man who once had a threesome with a pornographic actress and an employee of
02:39the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation in accommodations provided by the government.
02:45This forced him out of the diet, but in an indirect way.
02:47When the New Japan Pro Wrestling crowd told him to get effed, he did precisely that on their dime.
02:53Number 8. The Dragon Gate Animal Abuse Controversy
02:56In a phenomenally cruel story, it was revealed in 2009 that a group of wrestlers from the
03:01Dragon Gate Dojo had ritually physically abused a monkey kept as a pet mascot.
03:06Oh yeah, and just a bit of a content warning here, there is going to be some graphic description
03:09of animal abuse. While the official report broken by Mainichi Daily News only confirmed that the
03:14abuse included that the monkey was burned with a lighter and spread with deodorant, it is also
03:19rumoured that it was scalded with boiling water and trapped in a box.
03:23Yohei was stupid enough to upload footage of the abuse online. This evidence of his sickening,
03:28reprehensible behaviour enabled justice to be served at least. He was fired for his role in a systemic abuse
03:34case that spanned years, and the monkey was immediately rehomed. Dragon Gate President Takashi Okamura took a
03:40self-imposed pay cut as penance. The extent to which wrestlers more known to the audience played
03:44a role, the likes of Shingo Takagi and Akira Tozawa is debated. Shingo shaved his head as an act of
03:51contrition, and had himself uploaded a vile blog post in which he forcibly restrained the monkey by the
03:56neck after, and how heartbreaking is this it had attempted to escape. At the very least,
04:01Shingo used sickening excessive force and bragged that he had done so. Shima brought the monkey to the
04:06dojo, and while he wasn't directly implicated, as the monkey was under his care, he also shaved his head.
04:12Number 7, the Io Shirai Drugs Gate. You wouldn't think Nails and Io Shirai, two wrestlers of opposite
04:18quality, would have something in common, but they do. In an astonishing story, the details of which have
04:23recently resurfaced online, WWE's Io Sky, then working under her old ring name of Io Shirai, was
04:29imprisoned for three weeks in 2012, after being, as it transpired, falsely accused of smuggling drugs
04:35into Japan from Mexico. She did technically smuggle 75 grams of cannabis, but she was an
04:40unwitting patsy. Shirai was gifted two paintings alongside then-partner Nasawa by fans. Unbeknownst
04:46to her, the drugs were hidden between the painting and the frame. Adamant that she was innocent of
04:51any wrongdoing because she was, the fandom did not believe her. She was granted the opportunity to
04:56field a press conference, three weeks after being held for a crime far more severe on that side of the
05:01Pacific, in which she professed her innocence and refused to retire. Shockingly, it was revealed by
05:06wrestler Takuyi Sugi that it was a quite literal frame job. Sugi disclosed that Masahiro Hayashi,
05:12a talent agent with a personal vendetta against Nasawa, had orchestrated the framing to which
05:17he agreed in exchange for more work. The confession convinced the police to drop all charges.
05:22Thank goodness. Number 6, the Hardbody Harrison Nine Count Federal Indictment.
05:26Only old super hardcore fans of WCW will be familiar with the work of Hardbody Harrison,
05:32or Hardbody Harris. Trained by the power plant, he was only considered TV-ready by those unqualified
05:37to make the assessment. As an ex-platoon and motor sergeant, he was tough enough to withstand the
05:42pain of his training, which emphasised extreme fitness over technique to an extent that literally
05:47sickened most aspiring wrestlers on the first day. Incredible physique, goofy, overly animated
05:52selling. Harrison, as recounted on Talk is Jericho recently, was a quote-unquote character. Hot-headed,
05:58he had aspirations of playing a rival for Sting, named Stang, but never made it beyond getting
06:03destroyed and flailing about in prelim matches. After tumbling into obscurity, he was indicted in
06:09October 2005 for false imprisonment and trafficking women for commercial sex acts, and in November 2007,
06:16was found guilty on charges related to imprisoning eight women as slaves for his own sexual gratification.
06:22He represented himself, contending that the women that lived with him were undergoing wrestling
06:26training. This was found not to be the case. He raped them, pimped them out, and kept them under
06:31his debt for a failure punished by fines to complete mandatory quote-unquote chores. He remains
06:36imprisoned himself after being locked up on a life sentence in 2008. Number 5, the Lucha Libre serial
06:42killer. Juana Barraza lived an early life of unfathomably bleak torment. Barraza's biological mother,
06:48an alcoholic, sold her as a child to a man who raped her while in his care. He gave her three
06:53cans of beer in exchange. Whether born evil or having lived a life in which goodness as a value
06:58was impossible to fathom, Barraza embodied and conducted evil. After a brief career in Lucha Libre,
07:04working only the most remote outpost of the scene to very little recognition, Barraza devised a different
07:09means of making money. Devious and reprehensible, she targeted elderly women and was suspected to have
07:15pose as a government official and preyed on their desperation for welfare. After earning their trust
07:20and being allowed entry into their homes, she robbed and bludgeoned or strangled to death an
07:24official number of 16, although estimates put the number in the range of 40, before being sentenced
07:30to 759 years in prison in 2008. Number 4, the Mike Levy incident. A bullish Mike Levy
07:37grifted the message boards and said he could be a deathmatch star in a bid for notoriety. Banny was
07:42successful in the most ironic definition of that word imaginable. Promoter Ian Rotten,
07:47considered by many who have dealt with him on the independent scene to be worthless,
07:51irredeemable scum, flew Levy in to complete the publicity stunt. At IWA Mid-South Queen of
07:56the Death Matches 2008, Levy was booked to work Mickey Knuckles. It was an artless, gruesome match,
08:02the clear objective of which was to put him in his place. But a semblance of kayfabe was maintained.
08:08As far as a one-sided match and an invitation to a snake pit goes, it was vaguely cooperative.
08:13Knuckles gave him something, but being untrained, he was a bit clumsy. In the post-match, the pieces
08:18were rearranged in the world's most idiotic game of chess. The trap was set, and Levy was
08:23violently assaulted by wrestlers Devin Moore and Tank, who jumped off the top turnbuckle and
08:28curb-stomped his face against the ladder with excessive, hell-unrestrained force. Whether in a bid to
08:34prove his toughness inexperienced, or an attempt to emerge from the scene with cachet, Levy continued
08:39to sit up. And the beatdown continued regardless, with Rotten as the ringleader. It should be noted
08:44that no criminal charges were filed.
08:473. The Lucha Libre Brick Attack
08:49On November 19th, 2018, in a match against El Cuervo for Lucha Libre Boom, Angel Odemonio threw
08:55a brick against his opponent's head. In what was almost an astonishing and grotesque irony,
09:00the incident unfolded in a casket match. The gimmick, of course, was very nearly all too
09:05literal. Demonio was interviewed after the fact, and after first blaming the incident on his bad
09:10aim, somehow contrived to suggest that Cuervo deserved it. Demonio was indefinitely suspended
09:15by the Mexico City Boxing and Wrestling Commission, but he resurfaced on the scene a month later. And
09:21because pro wrestling will always remain a disgusting carny racket somewhere or other,
09:25Ciudad Juarez's Arena Juarez promoted the show around Demonio's newfound notoriety.
09:30Literally using a still from the incident when promoting their next show on Facebook.
09:35This show wasn't outlawed, the commission just allowed him back. He was blackballed for 34 days.
09:40But in another strange beat of a complex story, his peers just welcomed him back.
09:45The brick became his gimmick. Demonio ultimately died of COVID-19 in 2021.
09:502. The Death of Hiramitsu Gonpei
09:52The New Japan Dojo system was once so legendarily barbaric that Chris Benoit despised training there.
09:58According to the book Ring of Hell, from details imparted by graduate Osamu Nishimura,
10:03sessions began at 10am after a crack of dawn wake-up call, followed by a daily deep clean of the
10:08facility with 1,000 Hindu squats. Trainers battered the legs of students with bamboo swords as the
10:14agony coursed through their muscles. 500 push-ups followed. After merest hint of selling the pain,
10:19a student was ordered to increase the regimen on the spot. If an exercise was not carried out
10:24perfectly, a physical assault followed. Verbal abuse of a repugnant stripe was doled out
10:28frequently in order to weed out the uncommitted. Following a workout that would hobble all but the
10:33most determined after less than one hour, students in the early phase of their training were told to
10:38bump and bump and bump until their urine turned red with blood. It was under these abhorrent
10:44conditions that Hiramitsu Gonpei died. After being subjected to the usual sadistic daily routine,
10:50the dojo, per an anonymous source of Ring of Hell author Matthew Randazzo's, was visited by then
10:55New Japan Pro Wrestling booker Riki Choshu. Knowing that a poor inspection would reflect poorly on the
11:00trainers, who were intent on proving they were up to the task, the brutal training regimen was
11:05restarted, in full. Gonpei was too physically exhausted to reach the standard expected of the
11:11dojo, and was punished by inadvertently being suplexed to death by Kensuki Sasaki. Allegedly,
11:17it was all covered up. Number 1. The WWE Development Scandals Various
11:21The contrast between WWE's glamorous big stage and the feeder system over which it presided for
11:27years and years is staggering. As WWE operated an enormous monopoly prior to the launch of NXT
11:32and after an experimental soft launch in Memphis, WWE formalized its talent development operations in
11:38Ohio Valley Wrestling. Full-blown scandals swamped both the Deep South Wrestling and Florida
11:43Championship Wrestling feeder groups deeper into the 2000s. Deep South was literally shuttered
11:48overnight in a clandestine operation when it emerged that owner Jodie Hamilton lied about putting
11:53on house shows and effectively left the operation in a state of neglect. Former WWE referee Nick Patrick
11:59claims that Jodie arrived on the scene armed with a gun to ensure that none of his personal property
12:04was taken when WWE backed up the trucks. Before WWE got wise to it all, Luke Gallows once gave a
12:09quote-unquote stink face to both Zack Ryder and Melissa Coates, with only a jelly donut separating
12:15their faces from his bare ass to get out of training that was considered power plant level intense.
12:20FCW meanwhile did book house shows, but in bars a lot of the time, and a major party culture developed
12:26as a result, with mercifully zero lethal consequences. The multiple DUI arrests of the FCW roster could have
12:32ended tragically. Did you enjoy this crazy wrestling scandals you've never heard of video? Well,
12:37check out these other 10 wrestling scandals you've probably never heard of here. Bye-bye!
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