Wrestlers Who Are Actually Terrible People

Stop us if you've heard this before — the heels you see on professional wrestling programming oftentimes turn out to be stand-up people away from the camera. They may lie, cheat, and steal in the world of kayfabe, but when their work is done for the night, they're gracious enough to take photos with fans or sign autographs for them. They can also be locker-room leaders who ensure everyone remains in good spirits even when times are tough, and they can be popular among colleagues despite their despicable on-screen personas.

But just as there are wrestling heels who are actually very nice people in real life, there are those who are real-life villains for one reason or another, and it doesn't matter whether they're booked as good guys or bad guys in the ring. These individuals include all manner of bullies, criminals, and abusers, and in many cases, their behavior outside the ring was more than bad enough to tarnish their legacy as performers. Let's take a look at the most notable examples of pro wrestling's real-world heels, and what they did to deserve such a status.

Billed at 6-feet-8-inches tall and 350 pounds, Grizzly Smith was an imposing presence in the ring. He is also seen as one of the most despicable figures the wrestling business has ever seen because of the real-life misdeeds he has been accused of. His son, WWE Hall of Famer Jake "The Snake" Roberts, told Sports Illustrated that he was conceived after Smith, who was dating his grandmother, sexually assaulted the woman's 12-year-old daughter. "My parents then got married because that's what you did back then," Roberts continued. "She had two more children fairly quick, and before the age of 17, she was divorced with three kids."

Smith's daughter Rockin' Robin followed her older brother and father into the wrestling business, and in an interview with Highspots Wrestling Network, she accused her father of molesting her from the age of 6 or 7 years old onward. "I think it wasn't just me," she added. "It's something that's deeply embedded within a child molester ... there's just something really off there."

It wasn't just unthinkable acts with minors that allegedly made Smith a terrible human being. In his "Dark Side of the Ring" episode, Roberts said that his father would discourage him from becoming a wrestler by belittling and insulting him. "I got humiliated, I got stretched, I got torn up, basically crawled back to the locker room, and my father looked at me and said, 'I'm ashamed of you, you're gutless, and you'll never amount to anything," he revealed.

Finnish wrestler Tony Halme received a decent push during his WWF run in the early 1990s, where he was booked as the foreign heel Ludvig Borga. He also had a brief career in mixed martial arts, most notably losing in less than a minute to would-be MMA icon Randy Couture at UFC 13 in 1997. However, Halme earned most of his notoriety outside the squared circle and octagon.

As a member of the Finnish Parliament in 2003, Halme, representing the nationalist True Finns party, made homophobic comments about the country's then-president, Tarja Halonen, insinuating that she was a lesbian despite being in a heterosexual marriage. He also racked up multiple charges related to smuggling, illegal use of firearms, drug use, and driving under the influence during his time in politics. He even dabbled in music, releasing the single "Viikinki" in 1999; the song made it all the way to No. 2 on Finland's pop music charts despite containing some lyrics that openly expressed his homophobia.

In the aftermath of Halme's apparent death by suicide in January 2010, legendary announcer Jim Ross looked back on his time working with the late wrestler. "Tony obviously had issues and was not a great guy to be around," Ross wrote on his personal blog (via SEScoops). "I personally found him to be somewhat obnoxious and he could be a bully if allowed to be such. Guys like Halme don't mix well in any locker room and need to be removed from the 'team' sooner than later." 

Billy Jack Haynes (pictured above, in yellow trunks) was a solid mid-card hand for the then-WWF in the mid-to-late '80s, with his WrestleMania III "Full Nelson Challenge" match against Hercules Hernandez arguably standing out as the highlight of his stint with the company. Save for his inclusion in a list of dozens of wrestlers who sued WWE in 2016 over long-term brain injuries they purportedly sustained, Haynes' post-retirement years were fairly quiet. That changed tragically in February 2024 after he allegedly shot and killed his wife, Janette Becraft, who was then 85 years old and suffering from dementia.

According to a report from The New York Times, Haynes was arrested following a standoff with law enforcement in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. The former wrestler was described as "uncooperative" after authorities found him at home on the morning of February 8, and was later taken to a hospital for what was expected to be an extended stay for reasons "unrelated to the homicide or his contact with law enforcement." On February 28, he was released from the hospital and jailed for charges of second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon.

Thanks to his business ventures away from the squared circle, you likely won't see John Bradshaw Layfield on any list of surprisingly poor wrestlers. He enjoyed his biggest successes in WWE as a villainous take on his actual background as a rich Texan businessman — sort of like a wrestling version of "Dallas" patriarch J.R. Ewing. However, many co-workers have accused the man often called "JBL" of being a real-life bully behind the scenes.

Layfield's supposed bullying took center stage in March 2017 when "SmackDown Live" lead announcer Mauro Ranallo abruptly stopped appearing on the show. That came shortly after Layfield called him out on the WWE Network program "Bring it to the Table," poking fun at the fact the Wrestling Observer Newsletter had just named him announcer of the year. While it was a scripted call-out, it rubbed Ranallo the wrong way, though in June 2017, he returned to WWE as part of the NXT commentary team.

Former WWE ring announcer Justin Roberts was also quite open in sharing his negative experiences with Layfield, documenting them extensively in his autobiography, "Best Seat in the House." Roberts took part in a Reddit AMA to promote the book in 2016 and responded to a fan who asked him about Layfield's bullying. "He terrorized me, and a lot of guys," Roberts explained. "He'd make life hell for a lot of guys. He chewed [The Miz and John Morrison] out after they won the [WWE Tag Team] titles for not celebrating enough."

From the 1950s all the way up until the 1980s, the Fabulous Moolah was unquestionably the most dominant woman in all of professional wrestling, with WWE listing her first reign as Women's Champion as lasting almost 28 years. She trained several female wrestlers throughout her decades in the business and remained active as an occasional performer even in the late '90s, winning her fourth and final title in October 1999. On the surface, that sounds like someone the WWE would want to recognize as the namesake of its WrestleMania women's battle royal in 2018. However, fans were well aware of the many alleged abuses she committed over the years, and they successfully petitioned WWE to change the name of the match.

As claimed by multiple wrestlers who had trained under her, Moolah exploited these women financially, taking a hefty cut from shows and leaving her trainees with a comparative pittance. But it wasn't just financial abuse: In an interview with Pro Wrestling Sheet, former Moolah protege Jeannine Mjoseth (aka Mad Maxine) went into some detail about the disturbing circumstances her fellow trainees went through. "A lot of women paid to train at her school and then went out on the road," she shared. "They risked life and limb in their matches and she repaid them with the worst kinds of abuses. She skimmed their money, she ignored women who were badly hurt, she pimped women out to creepy men and on and on."

Starting out in Stu Hart's Calgary-based Stampede Wrestling promotion before signing with WWF in 1984, the late Tom "Dynamite Kid" Billington was one of his era's most innovative in-ring talents, combining a high-flying style with strong technical know-how. As one-half of The British Bulldogs alongside his cousin, Davey Boy Smith, Billington held World Tag Team gold working for Vince McMahon's promotion from April 1986 to January 1987. But as his injuries began to add up, Billington got deeper and deeper into drug and alcohol misuse, and this didn't help his existing reputation as a backstage bully who pulled cruel pranks on co-workers.

"He had a lot of enemies and he did a lot of lousy things to people," said Bret "The Hitman" Hart on his "Confessions of the Hitman" podcast in 2020 (via Wrestling Inc). "He was a real bully and ... he would pick on guys that were minding their own business." Things were even worse at home, where Billington's explosive temper led to a violent argument that culminated in him pointing a gun at his then-wife, Michelle Smadu, who was pregnant at the time. "He went downstairs and got a gun and said, 'If you're not out in 15 f***ing minutes, I'm gonna blow your f***ing head off,'" Smadu recalled in Billington's "Dark Side of the Ring" episode.

Billington dealt with various health issues in the years after he retired from wrestling, and he died on December 5, 2018, on what was his 60th birthday.

After a solid in-ring career where he was mostly billed under the frankly ludicrous ring name Hugh Morrus, Bill DeMott transitioned to a trainer role in WWE. He first appeared in that capacity on the company's reality show "Tough Enough," where he helped mold young talents hoping to achieve their dream of WWE superstardom. When the promotion launched its NXT developmental brand, DeMott continued training others, only for him to resign as head coach of WWE's Performance Center in early 2015 amid a slew of controversies regarding his training methods.

As noted by The Washington Post, several developmental talents, starting with Austin Matelson (formerly Judas Devlin, now known as Luchasaurus on AEW), complained about DeMott's physically and verbally abusive tendencies, which included hitting one wrestler with a legitimate groin shot and making racist, sexist, and homophobic comments toward various trainees. A female trainee, who chose to remain anonymous, also took to Reddit, claiming that DeMott looked the other way when she and other wrestlers reported another coach who was engaging in sexually abusive behavior. She also alleged that multiple female wrestlers were fired for speaking out against the harassment during DeMott's regime as head trainer.

Considering this all took place while WWE was pushing its "B.A. STAR" anti-bullying initiative, it's painfully ironic that DeMott was allowed to mentor up-and-coming wrestlers for as long as he did.

For most of his WWF stints in the 1980s and 1990s, "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka was a beloved babyface, a high-flying daredevil whose style influenced many a would-be grappler. But despite his fan-favorite status, Snuka's personal life was clouded by tragedy and controversy, and it was largely on account of the mysterious death of his then-girlfriend, Nancy Argentino, on May 10, 1983. For three decades, the wrestler consistently denied allegations that he murdered his girlfriend. But as The Daily Beast documented in 2015, there was one thing that didn't remain consistent through the years, and it was Snuka's version of the events leading up to Argentino's death. 

In his 2012 autobiography, "Superfly: The Jimmy Snuka Story" (via The Daily Beast), he claimed that Argentino, who had momentarily stepped out of his car, slipped and hit her head after jumping over a stream, and later died in her sleep in their hotel room. Almost three decades prior, Snuka told authorities that Argentino suffered the ultimately fatal head injury while the two of them were play-wrestling in said hotel room. However, that conflicted with autopsy reports that suggested the young woman's injuries "may even be suggestive of mate abuse" due to the many blows to the head she had apparently received.

Snuka was not formally charged with Argentino's death until 2015, and one year later, he was found unfit to stand trial due to his apparent dementia, which prosecutors found suspicious. He died of stomach cancer on January 15, 2017, at the age of 73.

As a mainstay of the hardcore wrestling scene from the 1990s up until his death in 2021, Jerome Young, aka New Jack, was known to be a loose cannon, a competitor who could shoot on an opponent (i.e. legitimately attack them) without a moment's notice. This was most evident in 1996 when he decided to teach 17-year-old Erich Kulas — a fan who got himself booked in an ECW match by lying about his age — a lesson about disrespecting the business. New Jack then brutalized Kulas to the point where he was severely bleeding, and later showed no remorse for his actions, insisting that Kulas' father provoked him by yelling a racial epithet.

New Jack didn't just take his anger out on underaged, inexperienced wrestlers: During a 2003 independent show, he viciously took liberties on 69-year-old opponent "Gypsy Joe" Melendez, who apparently angered him by calling the match in advance. For trying to impart some wisdom on the three-decades-younger ECW veteran, Melendez took several unwarranted chair shots and got beaten with a barbed-wire baseball bat before the match was declared a no-contest.

New Jack's unsavory personality also manifested in his family life, as his child, drag performer Washington Heights, claimed to Vice in 2020 that her father unfriended her on Facebook because he supposedly didn't want his legacy to be sullied by the fact he fathered a drag queen. Although New Jack sent an email to Vice denying the allegations, the outlet noted that the wrestler used a homophobic slur on a Facebook stream a month prior, further telling Heights, "You know who you are and you're not my son."

As one of WWF's top stars of the late '80s and early '90s, The Ultimate Warrior was so dominant, yet mysterious enough to have strange urban legends crop up about him. That, in part, made him such an entertaining fixture of his era. There was nothing entertaining, though, about the many bigoted statements he made after his wrestling career ended. 

These statements included a homophobic rant he made at a 2005 University of Connecticut speaking event, where he declared, "Queering doesn't make the world work." He would then double down on his anti-LGBTQ beliefs in a blog post he shared after the UConn engagement. That same year, he commented that the victims of Hurricane Katrina got what was coming to them; as quoted by Deadspin, Warrior wrote that these individuals were "[r]uined by the bad choices they made over and over." He also used his blog to spew vitriol toward iconic manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and suggest that his cancer diagnosis was karma for his past actions.

Those were far from Warrior's only divisive blog posts. In 2007, he openly wondered why Martin Luther King Jr. has his own holiday, complaining that the civil rights leader wasn't as upstanding a person as people make him out to be and stressing that George Washington still doesn't have a national holiday. And one year later, he sarcastically mourned the death of Heath Ledger and opined that he did his child a favor by dying of a drug overdose. "His kid is without a father, yes, but the negative influence is now removed and his own child has the chance for a full recovery," Warrior wrote. Quite notably, he never publicly apologized for all those offensive comments prior to his death in 2014.

Tammy Sytch burst onto the WWF scene in the mid-'90s, when she and her real-life boyfriend, Chris Candido, were hired as Sunny and Skip, aka the Bodydonnas, a villainous pair of fitness enthusiasts. It wasn't long before Sytch transcended the limitations of the silly gimmick; her undeniable charisma and good looks helped her get over as one of the WWF's most popular talents of her time. 

Tragically, it was during this time in her career that Sytch started heavily misusing drugs and alcohol, and while she was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011 and is recognized as the company's "original diva," much of the press about her over the past decade-plus has centered on her extensive arrest record. She racked up multiple domestic violence charges in the early 2010s and has a far more well-documented history of arrests for driving under the influence. In November 2023, Sytch received a prison sentence of over 17 years for her role in a drunk driving accident that killed a 75-year-old man the year prior.

If you or anyone you know is struggling or in crisis, needs help with addiction issues, may be the victim of child abuse, is dealing with domestic abuse, or has been a victim of sexual assault, contact the relevant resources below:

• Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

• The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

• Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

• Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).