10 Crazy Wrestling Scandals You've Never Heard Of

Whether on the other side of the Pacific, the border, or in the bleak suburbs of the

independent scene, the dark underbelly of the industry exists everywhere. So with that said, I am Gareth, this is WhatCultureWrestling

and here are 10 crazy wrestling scandals you've never heard of. Number 10, the Antonio Inoki embezzlement scandal

At WrestleKingdom 17, New Japan Pro Wrestling announced that a feature film depicting the

life of company founder Antonio Inoki is in pre-production, but there is just not enough

time to fit that man's story into just a film. Inoki founded, oversaw, and starred in the biggest

puro promotion ever for decades. To grasp the scale of his legacy, he was both Vince McMahon

and Hulk Hogan at the same damn time. In the early 1980s, New Japan Pro Wrestling was a monster of a

success, turning an incredible profit, but Inoki almost tanked the entire company. His side business

a biotechnology company operating under the name Anton Hissl, was floundering. In response, he embezzled and siphoned cash from New Japan's LiveGate to keep it afloat

The interloping Ishing Gundan stable were incensed, New Japan Pro Wrestling's hottest angle was abandoned

and Inoki stepped down as president, though still performed as a talent

Business plummeted for a few years with the best thing going dead, but Inoki soon found himself back in power

as a result of what many deemed clandestine political machinations. Now I've got a quick question for you, what wrestling figure do you want to see have a movie made about their life

We've already got an Inoki one incoming, but I want to know which one you want to see in the comments section down below

Number 9, the Atsushi Onita threesome. In a less bleak but equally wild story as most of the other entries on this list

FMW founder and top star Atsushi Onita also found himself in a scandal misappropriating funds

Onita was one of the coolest professional wrestlers of all time. He pioneered the exploding barbed wire deathmatch, the most demented badass spectacle in pro wrestling history

He was practically a cult leader with his awesome ability on the mic. Even if he can't understand a single word of Japanese

he would run through a brick wall if you read his bank statement out to you in a raised voice

That's how effective his delivery really was. His look should by right have stumbled into cliche

He smoked and wore a leather jacket, but he simply pulled it off. There is no coolerer sight in pro wrestling history than Onita walking into the lion's den of the Tokyo Dome

as an artless garbage wrestling interloper and laughing his ass off as the New Japan fans pelted him with rubbish

Onita also entered the political arena with a similarly brash attitude. This is a man who once had a threesome with a pornographic actress

and an employee of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation in accommodations provided by the government

This forced him out of the diet, but in an indirect way, when the New Japan Pro Wrestling crowd told him to get effed, he did precisely that on their dime

Number 8, The Dragon Gate Animal Abuse Controversy. In a phenomenally cruel story, it was revealed in 2009 that a group of wrestlers from the Dragon

Gate Dojo had ritually physically abused a monkey kept as a pet mascot Oh yeah and just a bit of a content warning here there is going to be some graphic description of animal abuse While the official report broken by Mainichi Daily News only confirmed that the abuse included that the monkey was burned with a lighter and spread with deodorant

it is also rumoured that it was scalded with boiling water and trapped in a box

Yohei was stupid enough to upload footage of the abuse online. This evidence of his sickening, reprehensible behaviour enabled justice to be served at least

He was fired for his role in a systemic abuse case that spanned years

and the monkey was immediately rehomed. Dragon Gate President Takashi Okamura took a self-imposed

pay cut as penance. The extent to which wrestlers more known to the audience played a role

the likes of Shingo Takagi and Akira Tozawa, is debated. Shingo shaved his head as an act of

contrition, and had himself uploaded a vile blog post in which he forcibly restrained the monkey

by the neck after, and how heartbreaking is this it had attempted to escape. At the very least

Shingo used sickening excessive force and bragged that he had done so. Shima brought the monkey to

the dojo, and while he wasn't directly implicated, as the monkey was under his care, he also shaved

his head. Number 7, the Io Shirai Drugs Gate You wouldn't think Nails and Io Shirai, two wrestlers of opposite quality, would have something

in common. But they do. In an astonishing story, the details of which have recently resurfaced

online, WWE's Io Sky, then working under her old ring name of Io Shirai, was imprisoned for three

weeks in 2012 after being, as it transpired, falsely accused of smuggling drugs into Japan

from Mexico. She did technically smuggle 75 grams of cannabis, but she was an unwitting patsy

Shirai was gifted two paintings alongside then-partner Nasawa by fans. Unbeknownst to her

the drugs were hidden between the painting and the frame. Adamant that she was innocent of any

wrongdoing because she was, the fandom did not believe her. She was granted the opportunity to

field a press conference, three weeks after being held for a crime far more severe on that side of

the Pacific, in which she professed her innocence and refused to retire. Shockingly, it was revealed

by wrestler Takuyi Sugi that it was a quite literal frame job. Sugi disclosed that Masahiro

Hayashi, a talent agent with a personal vendetta against Nasawa, had orchestrated the framing to

which he agreed in exchange for more work. The confession convinced the police to drop all

charges. Thank goodness. Number 6, the Hardbody Harrison 9 Count Federal Indictment. Only old

super hardcore fans of WCW will be familiar with the work of Hardbody Harrison, or Hardbody Harris

Trained by the power plant, he was only considered TV-ready by those unqualified to make the

assessment. As an ex-platoon and motor sergeant, he was tough enough to withstand the pain of his

training, which emphasized extreme fitness over technique to an extent that literally sickened

most aspiring wrestlers on the first day. Incredible physique, goofy, overly animated

selling, Harrison, as recounted on Talk is Jericho recently, was a quote-unquote character

Hot-headed, he had aspirations of playing a rival for Sting, named Stang, but never made it beyond

getting destroyed and flailing about in prelim matches. After tumbling into obscurity, he was

indicted in October 2005 for false imprisonment and trafficking women for commercial sex acts

and in November 2007 was found guilty on charges related to imprisoning eight women as slaves for his own sexual gratification He represented himself contending that the women that lived with him were undergoing wrestling training

This was found not to be the case. He raped them, pimped them out, and kept them under his debt for a failure punished by fines to complete mandatory, quote-unquote, chores

He remains imprisoned himself after being locked up on a life sentence in 2008

Number 5, The Lucha Libre Serial Killer Juana Barraza lived an early life of unfathomably bleak torment

Barraza's biological mother, an alcoholic, sold her as a child to a man who raped her while in his care

He gave her three cans of beer in exchange. Whether born evil or having lived a life in which goodness as a value was impossible to fathom, Barraza embodied and conducted evil

After a brief career in Lucha Libre, working only the most remote outpost of the scene to very little recognition

Barraza devised a different means of making money. Devious and reprehensible, she targeted elderly women and was suspected to have posed as a government official

and preyed on their desperation for welfare. After earning their trust and being allowed entry into their homes

she robbed and bludgeoned or strangled to death an official number of 16

although estimates put the number in the range of 40, before being sentenced to 759 years in prison in 2008

4. The Mike Levy Incident A bullish Mike Levy grifted the message boards and said he could be a Deathmatch star

in a bid for notoriety. Bani was successful in the most ironic definition of that word imaginable

Promoter Ian Rotten, considered by many who have dealt with him on the independent scene to be

worthless, irredeemable scum, flew Levy in to complete the publicity stunt. At IWA Mid-South

Queen of the Death Matches 2008, Levy was booked to work Mickey Knuckles. It was an artless

gruesome match, the clear objective of which was to put him in his place. But a semblance of kayfabe

was maintained. As far as a one-sided match and an invitation to a snake pit goes, it was vaguely

cooperative. Knuckles gave him something, but being untrained, he was a bit clumsy. In the post-match

the pieces were rearranged in the world's most idiotic game of chess. The trap was set, and Levy

was violently assaulted by wrestlers Devon Moore and Tank, who jumped off the top turnbuckle and

curb-stomped his face against the ladder with excessive, hell-unrestrained force. Whether in a

to prove his toughness in experience, or an attempt to emerge from the scene with Caché

Levy continued to sit up, and the beatdown continued regardless, with Rotten as the ringleader

It should be noted that no criminal charges were filed. 3. The Lucha Libre Brick Attack

On November 19th, 2018, in a match against El Cuervo for Lucha Libre Boom, Angel Odemonio

threw a brick against his opponent's head. In what was almost an astonishing and grotesque

irony, the incident unfolded in a casket match. The gimmick, of course, was very nearly all too

literal. Demonio was interviewed after the fact, and after first blaming the incident on his bad

aim, somehow contrived to suggest that Crevo deserved it. Demonio was indefinitely suspended

by the Mexico City Boxing and Wrestling Commission, but he resurfaced on the scene a month later

And because pro wrestling will always remain a disgusting carny racket somewhere or other

Ciudad Juarez Arena Juarez promoted the show around Demonio newfound notoriety literally using a still from the incident when promoting their next show on Facebook This show wasn outlawed the commission just allowed him back

He was blackballed for 34 days, but in another strange beat of a complex story

his peers just welcomed him back. The brick became his gimmick. Demonio ultimately died of COVID-19 in 2021

Number 2, The Death of Hiramitsu Gonpei The New Japan Dojo system was once so legendarily barbaric

that Chris Benoit despised training there. According to the book Ring of Hell

from details imparted by graduate Osamu Nishimura, sessions began at 10 a.m. after a crack of dawn wake-up call

followed by a daily deep clean of the facility with 1,000 Hindu squats

Trainers battered the legs of students with bamboo swords as the agony coursed through their muscles

500 push-ups followed. At the merest hint of selling the pain, a student was ordered to increase the regimen on the spot

If an exercise was not carried out perfectly, a physical assault followed

Verbal abuse of a repugnant stripe was doled out frequently in order to weed out the uncommitted

Following a workout that would hobble all but the most determined after less than one hour

students in the early phase of their training were told to bump and bump and bump

until their urine turned red with blood. It was under these abhorrent conditions that Hiromitsu Gonpe died

After being subjected to the usual sadistic daily routine, the dojo, per an anonymous source of Ring of Hell author Matthew Randazzo's

was visited by then New Japan Pro Wrestling booker Riki Choshu. Knowing that a poor inspection would reflect poorly on the trainers

who were intent on proving they were up to the task, the brutal training regimen was restarted, in full

Gonpei was too physically exhausted to reach the standard expected of the dojo

and was punished by inadvertently being suplexed to death by Kensuke Sasaki

Allegedly, it was all covered up. Number 1. The WWE Development Scandals

various. The contrast between WWE's glamorous big stage and the feeder system over which it

presided for years and years is staggering. As WWE operated an enormous monopoly prior to the

launch of NXT and after an experimental soft launch in Memphis, WWE formalized its talent

development operations in Ohio Valley Wrestling. Full-blown scandals swamped both the Deep South

Wrestling and Florida Championship Wrestling feeder groups deeper into the 2000s. Deep South

was literally shuttered overnight in a clandestine operation when it emerged that owner Jodie

Hamilton lied about putting on house shows and effectively left the operation in a state of

neglect. Former WWE referee Nick Patrick claims that Jodie arrived on the scene armed with a gun

to ensure that none of his personal property was taken when WWE backed up the trucks. Before WWE

got wise to it all, Luke Gallows once gave a quote-unquote stink face to both Zack Ryder and

Melissa Coates, with only a jelly donut separating their faces from his bare ass to get out of

training that was considered power plant level intense. FCW meanwhile did book house shows

but in bars a lot of the time, and a major party culture developed as a result

with mercifully zero lethal consequences. The multiple DUI arrests of the FCW roster

could have ended tragically. Did you enjoy this crazy wrestling scandals you've never heard of video? Well check out these other 10 wrestling

scandals you've probably never heard of here. Bye bye