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Dark Side of The Ring 4 August 2026 (Full Episode) - Dark Side of The Ring August 4th 2026 (Full Show)
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00:00Jimmy Hart is programmed to terminate onside!
00:06Get ready to feel the power of the Renegade!
00:12In the mid-90s, Rick Wilson dreamed of wrestling style.
00:17He put his heart and soul into everything he did.
00:20He wanted to be a wrestler so bad.
00:23Only to be offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
00:28That's right! The Renegade, you idiots!
00:31What aspiring wrestler would turn down the spot to be Hulk Hogan's wingman?
00:37That's the dream job.
00:39The mystery and intrigue that surround Renegade will add even more excitement.
00:43The shot of the spotlight quickly spirals into disaster.
00:49Rick Wilson was tired because he resembled a really popular character from several years earlier.
00:55I say, you look like that Ultimate Warrior guy.
00:57He goes, yeah, that's the look they want.
00:59No matter how you dress this guy up...
01:01It's false advertising.
01:03It was a rip-off.
01:05Inexperienced in the ring, the Renegade is rejected by fans.
01:11And eventually by the company that created him.
01:14You're nothing! You're fabulous, man!
01:16Why would you humiliate the kid?
01:18You're the ones that shotgun into the town.
01:20God.
01:21That had to be devastating for him.
01:24Unable to escape the fallout, Wilson descends into self-destruction.
01:29There were two people in that house, and one of them did not leave that house.
01:34I can't tell you what demons he was carrying around.
01:38Obviously, he was a very disturbed young man.
01:40Few could have known how far the Renegade would fall.
01:43Sitting on the outside looking in, thinking, oh, this guy sucks, he's a dick.
01:47Well, I was wrong. I didn't know what was going on.
01:49They put him in a tough spot, almost unwinnable spot.
01:53He was a human being. He had a heart.
01:56And I think wrestling just tore him up.
02:12In the summer of 1994, Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling searches for a new identity
02:19in an increasingly competitive industry.
02:23Check it out!
02:25I think if you step back and you really looked at what was the WCW doing?
02:30Oh, double-team!
02:32Creatively.
02:32I've never seen who our bands come to wrestling.
02:35We were limping along, trying to be competitive with WWF.
02:39But I felt like if we were really going to turn the corner, I had to shift the focus.
02:46And there's the Hulkster!
02:49I'm Eric Bischoff.
02:50In 1994, I was vice president of WCW.
02:54When Hulk Hogan runs wild at WCW!
02:58People on the outside of the business were very critical of me bringing in Hulk Hogan.
03:04Because they thought that Hulk Hogan's career was over, he's done, he's washed up, he left WWF.
03:09Well, that worked out pretty good.
03:17After the introduction of Hogan, all of the guys that you had grown up with in WWF were
03:23now starting to populate the WCW screen.
03:25He signed Randy Savage and your John Tenta's and Ed Leslie's.
03:30Everything from Hulk Hogan's past is now WCW's future.
03:35Everything that was old is now new again, brother.
03:38And people were just naturally thinking, of course, the Ultimate Warrior would make his way over here as well.
03:47The Ultimate Warrior, for a period of time, was as popular a figure as the WWF had.
03:54This place has gone bananas!
03:57He becomes this phenomenon, headlining WrestleMania VI.
04:01He's going for the Gorilla Press!
04:02All the way up to becoming WWF champion.
04:06One, two, and go!
04:09The Warriors won the title!
04:11And then, almost as quickly as he rises to the top, he just disappeared.
04:18I think the best case scenario for WCW was to have Hulk Hogan, in theory, avenge that loss to the
04:24Ultimate Warrior.
04:26So, in 1995, WCW was going into a pay-per-view called Uncensored.
04:33And Hulk Hogan began teasing the Ultimate Surprise.
04:38See my ultimate surprise, brother!
04:42I'm the Sinister Minister, Father James Mitchell, and I worked with the Renegade, Rick Wilson, in WCW.
04:50Hulk Hogan was filming vignettes in a smoke-filled room, and there was this very familiar shadowy outline of a
05:00guy with the long, Bon Jovi, heavy metal hair.
05:04But right now, I'm standing on the dark side, brothers, with the most powerful man I've ever met in my
05:10life.
05:11The idea was to keep this mystery of who is this person, but nudging you, hey, it's the Ultimate Warrior.
05:21That's what the audience was being sold.
05:24The entire world was expecting the Ultimate Warrior.
05:30Music fires up, and out comes the Renegade.
05:37All right! That music means it's time for Renegade!
05:44Ta-da! It's Rick Wilson, who most fans had never heard of.
05:50Who is this Renegade?
05:52First of all, it was bait-and-switch advertising, and the crowd immediately noticed something wasn't right.
06:01It's a wedding picture.
06:04These are kind of far back.
06:06This was closer to the time that I first met him.
06:09It was beautiful.
06:11My name is Kimberly Morrison, and I was once married to the man you know as Renegade.
06:17From the day I met Ricky, he wanted to be a wrestler, and famous, and well-known.
06:25I don't know if it came from his childhood.
06:27Maybe there's some deep-down issue that you want to be paid attention to and validated.
06:34But I think he may have felt unwanted.
06:40Ricky's mom had him at 15 or 16.
06:43He felt as though she blamed him for having him at such a young age.
06:50He was unsure about who his biological father was.
06:53He was told that it was a professional golfer.
06:57He never knew for sure.
07:00Coach West was the coach at his high school.
07:04He was a father figure to him.
07:07He came from the line when he was about 13.
07:09He weighed about nothing now, so go ahead.
07:13But he didn't want to go home. I didn't know why.
07:16And I said, what's wrong with you, boy?
07:20Get his hand outside his head.
07:22I pulled his hand out of the way I thought what it was.
07:26His cheek was red, black and blue.
07:30The stepfather abused him.
07:34I think after somebody goes through any kind of violence in the home, their brain changes.
07:42He was dirt at home, and that probably added to Ricky wanting to be big, be tall, be somebody, be
07:52important.
07:53My name is Eric Henderson, the man you know as Renegade, the wrestler.
07:58I knew as Rio the dancer.
08:02He worked out, drew his hair out, and he became special.
08:07He became Rio.
08:12Back in the 80s, I had a dance group that was working at Club La Vila in Panama City Beach.
08:18And we came up with the name, Ultimate Fantasy.
08:24We didn't do the standard stripping.
08:26Everything had to be choreographed, all of it in tuxedos.
08:31We wanted to give the women a burlesque, classy show.
08:35One afternoon, out on the beach was this huge guy.
08:39Six, five, long hair, and his body was just so tight.
08:43And I said to myself, I gotta have that guy.
08:48All right, ladies, one more time.
08:50Six foot four and hung to the floor.
08:52Let's let it rock for Rio!
08:58Rio loved being a showman.
09:00He would do a warrior routine, and he had this big fur cape, big huge sword.
09:06And he'd go, here I am, rock you like a hurricane, and the place would erupt.
09:14He was very sexy. He was a very sexy...
09:17Now, I used to laugh and say he wasn't sexy at home.
09:21That's one thing he was.
09:23He was a totally different person at home.
09:27He was a polite, southern gentleman.
09:31He was very thoughtful.
09:32And we got married on June 2nd, 1992.
09:37But he had a lot of trust issues.
09:39I think he really had that abandonment wound in him.
09:44I was placed to come home to.
09:48While he was going on tour with Ultimate Fantasy,
09:51he got a journal and started writing to me.
09:55Hey, Kim, wish I was with you.
09:57I can't believe how much I care about you.
09:59It really scares me.
10:01I'm hungry for my destiny, and I'm gonna make it happen.
10:05I hope you agree and want to stick it out with me.
10:09Dancing was just something that provided him an income
10:12to allow him to pay for wrestling school.
10:16And he would do anything to get into that world.
10:20Stepping into the ring, Wilson's ambition doesn't lead to instant success.
10:25From Columbus, Georgia, Ricky Wilson.
10:27We trained at Oates' gym in Columbus, Killer Kowalski's gym in Boston.
10:33Financially, it was tough on him.
10:35We used to go to some shows.
10:37We'd drive two hours, and he was gonna get $100.
10:43Then he went to Japan.
10:47He went anywhere to do anything, just waiting on that big break.
10:53And I think he got disappointed so many times.
10:59His wrestling character was real lord of the jungle.
11:02He would come out kind of screaming like the ultimate warrior.
11:06He didn't have any makeup on his face, but he had the strings around his arms.
11:10He would get little digs about that.
11:13A wannabe warrior.
11:16And that bothered him.
11:20But one time, I saw him wrestle where the ultimate warrior was there.
11:27The invitation is the highest form of flattery.
11:31If so, Rio wanted a jungle.
11:34Just pump it up with warrior intensity.
11:41Rio was very excited about it.
11:44It was a pretty big deal.
11:46Let's have these two fights right now.
11:49Word of Wilson's resemblance to the ultimate warrior reaches Hulk Hogan's on-screen manager, Jimmy Hart.
11:57Who sees an opportunity.
12:00Oftentimes, people that are in the creative side of the business will go back to formulas or characters that have
12:06worked for them in the past.
12:09I knew that Hulk and a couple of the other key talents were, you know, interested in having warrior.
12:14Because there's more storyline potential.
12:16But, warrior had a lawsuit going on with WWF.
12:19There was no way of knowing how that was gonna turn out.
12:24Jimmy Hart said that they wanted Ricky to come in and they were flying him to Tampa.
12:29He was so excited that he was chummy with all these Hulk Hogan and all the other wrestlers. They were
12:35his heroes.
12:37I think Jimmy saw Rick's hair in the way he carried himself.
12:42And I think Jimmy, with a lot of support from Hulk, thought, wow, what if we kind of turned him
12:46into a ultimate warrior clone and recreate some of that magic.
12:53I've always believed that you should never steal somebody's gimmick.
12:58You will be perceived as a knockoff.
13:01I think Rick Wilson would have played any character that they offered to him.
13:05It sure beats the alternative, which is just continuing to work independence.
13:09And you're gonna take a gamble. Like, maybe this thing will take off.
13:13In just a little while, brother, I'm gonna let the whole world know exactly what Hulk Hogan's ultimate surprise is,
13:23brother.
13:24He was like, it's happening. It's happening right now.
13:31The audience liked his debut, and Rick was excited.
13:38Hi, I'm Joe Gomez, and I used to tag with Rick Wilson, the Renegade.
13:43He had the big hair, and he came out acting really fired up.
13:48Face-painted, tasseled bright colors like Warrior did.
13:52The man's name is Renegade. What powerhouse he is.
13:55Fans bought into it.
13:57It's not surprising that Rick Wilson was picked out of a lineup to play this character.
14:05But at the end of the day, this was, in many ways, the bargain bin version of the Ultimate Warrior
14:13coming to WCW.
14:15And it was only downhill after that.
14:18Imagine you've been brought in as Hulk Hogan's best friend.
14:24It's your life dream. It's what you've always wanted to do.
14:27That's a great spot.
14:29But how many people would have the wisdom to realize they weren't ready for that spot?
14:36What you gonna do when Hogan and the Ultimate Surprise destroy you?
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16:00The true West has no fences.
16:04There's an edge, but you gotta find it.
16:08Find comfort from the traditions that help define it.
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16:17But being brave isn't about being different.
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19:03After his debut, the renegade's dream of stardom becomes real.
19:07We are rockin' and runnin' in St. Peter!
19:11In the middle of the club, man!
19:13If you're up there with Hulk Hogan, you made it.
19:16Everybody wants to know all about the renegade!
19:19To be respected and international, that's exactly what he wanted.
19:24...with the mysterious renegade in their corner.
19:27I was happy as hell for him, you know. I was like, good for you, man.
19:33I'm Marty Jannetty, formerly of the Rockers.
19:36I met the renegade when he first was getting into wrestling.
19:39A lot of loud on you!
19:41Oh, yeah!
19:44All of a sudden, he's buddying up with Hulk Hogan and he's the top dog.
19:49If it was me and I've only just started, I'd be scared to death.
19:54At the same time, the comfort in it would be, I'm protected.
19:59Can't nobody touch me.
20:01But everybody else in the dressing room is gonna be sitting there tapping their fingers like,
20:06I've been here the whole damn while and I get a chance like this.
20:09You know, so there's gonna be a lot of jealousy.
20:13Pro wrestlers are like a bunch of teenage girls.
20:17Very catty.
20:18A lot of drama, politics, backstabbing.
20:22Trying to work your way up the popularity, food chain.
20:26People would shake your hand out of social decorum.
20:29But if they really resented you, they'd say something shitty to you.
20:34So he felt a little disrespected.
20:40As Wilson's success becomes real, new temptations follow.
20:46I had gone to our apartment and underneath the kitchen cabinets was alcohol.
20:52We didn't drink.
20:54And then on top of the refrigerator, I found a card.
20:59And it said, I can't wait to swing from your 10-inch vine.
21:08I destroyed our apartment.
21:10I destroyed it.
21:11I put a waffle iron through the television.
21:14And I destroyed clothes.
21:19And then when he called me and said, come to Tampa and bring me some clothes, I was like,
21:23hmm, you don't have a lot of clothes left here.
21:30When I got to the hotel, we had a huge blowout.
21:34And I took my wedding ring off and I left it on the counter and I left.
21:39I do think we would have lasted if he hadn't gone into wrestling.
21:42Because he evolved into someone I didn't know.
21:47Separated from his wife, Wilson throws himself into his wrestling career.
21:57He told us that somebody was sort of giving him ultimate warrior lessons.
22:05Saying do a little more of this and a little less of that whenever it was going on with his
22:10hands.
22:11He was doing exactly what he was told.
22:13It was very clear that they were committed to trying to go with this guy.
22:23And putting the television title on him was step one in that process.
22:28Your thoughts on this big title opportunity.
22:31Get ready to feel the power.
22:33I'm going to pledge you to sit in the ring.
22:35I'm going to die from the heavens.
22:36And then you will know what this is all about.
22:42You always ask, well, what's his background?
22:46Nobody knew.
22:47And apparently he was a dick dancer in Boston, Massachusetts.
22:53This is professional wrestling.
22:55I expect him to be a professional wrestler, not a dick dancer.
23:01This is Arn Anderson, the enforcement of the Four Horsemen.
23:05I wrestled the Renegade many times.
23:12I went and got him, went and found somewhere quiet.
23:14I just was trying to get a feel of, is he nervous?
23:18What do you want to do?
23:20What can you do?
23:22He didn't say much.
23:23Come to find out, he didn't know much.
23:29The bell and here we go.
23:31You want to have a good match with everybody, period.
23:34That's your job.
23:36There's so much mystery and intrigue about this Renegade.
23:39We don't know that much about him.
23:40But he was a blank slate.
23:43It wasn't filled in yet.
23:46He knows the wrestling holds.
23:47He really does.
23:48He was in the ring of Arn Anderson.
23:50One of the top five workers of all time, in my opinion.
23:52When you're in the ring with something like that and they can't get a good match out of you, it's
23:55tough.
23:56You're gonna look at the crowd at Pera Arena.
23:59Who's kind of northwest of Dayton, Ohio here.
24:03He's still very early in his career.
24:05And you're seeing someone that's largely just trying to understand the basics of working a wrestling match.
24:12But now it's happening on national television.
24:15There's no fire.
24:17There's no intensity.
24:18He's just going through moves.
24:20Picks up double A.
24:23That was not the collision it should have been.
24:25And there's only so much I can do.
24:28That's hard to watch.
24:35I got to be honest with you, I never been so glad for a match to be over in my
24:39life.
24:40The Renegade becomes the world television champion.
24:45Can you imagine this?
24:45That's basically the high point of the Renegade's run in WCW.
24:54So I get back to the curtain.
24:57Who do I see?
24:58Someone I've respected my whole career.
25:02And who's a real badass?
25:04Paul Orndorff.
25:05He went, oh, Jesus, Arnie, that sucked.
25:11Yes, Paul, I'm aware of that.
25:15Jimmy Hart has programmed me to T-O-S. Terminate on side!
25:24The next big show in his first defense, Paul Orndorff against the Renegade.
25:30This guy's wired like a cheap watch.
25:32The match gets started quickly as anticipated and Orndorff wakes no time.
25:36This was the Bash at the Beach event in 1995.
25:39Crush him!
25:40And here is the Renegade, the babyface to save the day here on this sunny day on the beach.
25:47That drop kick!
25:48We didn't get him good.
25:49Did not.
25:50But one of the few memories of this show is Paul Orndorff delivering a piledriver to the Renegade.
25:55Drop him!
25:59The fact that the audience is cheering this, it's the worst case scenario for a babyface
26:04when the audience is metaphorically turning its back on you and backing the heel.
26:12The winner of the Bash!
26:14And still, World Television Series!
26:16After Bash at the Beach, I think everyone knew that this Renegade character
26:20was not going to reach anywhere near the aspirations that WCW had when they brought him in.
26:28I think it was a lesson for pro wrestling that it is the person that makes the character
26:35and not always the character that makes the performance.
26:40As the Renegade fails to connect with fans, he loses the support of his biggest ally.
26:48Paul was pretty self-centered, and I think he just decided I was going to step away from it.
26:53There's the diamond cutter!
26:55He's on his own.
26:56Two, three, it's over! It's over!
26:59You know, to every beginning, there must be an end.
27:03Renegade had a firm ending.
27:06The end of the Renegade character, for all intents and purposes, happens in November of 1995.
27:14He got him, boy!
27:16They have a match on television where Kevin Sullivan beats the Renegade,
27:20and after the match, Jimmy Hart pours water over the face paint of the Renegade.
27:25Listen to Jimmy Hart!
27:27Listen to Jimmy Hart!
27:29That's what I'm talking about!
27:30I'm talking about how it comes!
27:31Who you are!
27:31He's just playing!
27:33Oh, shit!
27:35I know God!
27:36The symbolism of wiping that paint off was we gave you a shot,
27:42and you failed us miserably.
27:46You know what he did? He just destroyed that man's identity!
27:50You would have to know, after that kind of humiliation, there's no coming back from it.
27:55He's just one old wreck, baby! He's finished!
28:04You're gonna believe whatever I tell him.
28:06I just think I go kill this guy.
28:08This story right here is gonna knock you out.
28:11They built the sport.
28:13I turned myself into a monster.
28:15This is what it cost them.
28:17My life is over.
28:18My lawyers would not appreciate me doing this interview.
28:21Apparently, he had killed his girlfriend.
28:23Dark Side of the Cage.
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31:04After his character is publicly humiliated on WCW television, Rick Wilson is left to pick up the pieces.
31:11It had to be demoralizing for Rick Wilson.
31:14He had gotten in the door at WCW, but there was no demand for this character.
31:20This felt like an admission by WCW that this was a failed experiment.
31:26You had to salvage something, and it was time to get a return on that investment.
31:32But there was no heat off of it because the fans had already gave up on him.
31:39When he'd go into the change room, people wouldn't talk to him, wouldn't look at him.
31:44The guys had moved on.
31:45It had been established what he had brought to the table, and that wasn't much.
31:51He disappears off television for a few months, and the Rick Wilson that would return, yes, he is billed as
31:57the renegade, but he's a far cry from their hopes that they had a year prior.
32:01The renegade making his way to the ring, I'll tell you what.
32:05You can't even get him to cheer you coming out.
32:08Uh-oh.
32:09If you go out and there's no pop, the crowd don't care about you, that means people ain't buying tickets
32:14to see you.
32:15In the mid to late 90s, there was a lot you could have done with a Rick Wilson.
32:19There are ways that you could camouflage his limitations, like putting him in a tag team.
32:25Joe Gomez was a journeyman wrestler, and they were paired as part of this group called the in-crowd.
32:35They were not that in, to be quite honest. They were never quite in style.
32:39When they put us together, we were both excited because I truly think they wanted it to work.
32:44And the renegade, they are.
32:45That was a big mistake. I know one.
32:48I got it on great with Rick, but we were both green.
32:51I was taking it all for granted.
32:55And I don't think Rick had a firm grasp on it, to be honest.
32:59The smarter guys, they really work hard at it, and they live it, and they breathe it.
33:05Rick and I didn't take it seriously enough to hone our craft.
33:09We had every opportunity in the world to shine and just chose not to.
33:13A little renegade overzealous just made a mistake, Tony, of inexperience.
33:18And unfortunately...
33:20When you're brought in, and you're promised the world, and it doesn't materialize,
33:25I'm sure that played a lot of games on his head of how committed he was going to be to
33:30professional wrestling.
33:32This is where he gets into the wrestling lifestyle, which included drugs, which included drinking, and partying.
33:41Part of the business is to be social and always be in the hotel bar after and buy the veterans
33:46around.
33:47And I think Rick was trying to keep his place in the proverbial pecking order.
33:53We had been separated for a while.
33:56When I saw his wrestling pictures, his body had changed.
34:01He looked bigger and bloatier.
34:05His hair wasn't as nice.
34:07He came to visit me in Panama City one time.
34:11He had a big belly, had a bandana on covering up his lost hair, and he wanted to drink.
34:17And that blew my mind, because Rick never did drugs, he never drank, never did squat.
34:22We did these damn things called purple hooters.
34:25And we did so many of them, that when we were done doing the shot, we started building this wall.
34:32We had so many of those things.
34:34I didn't know my name, I was talking Russian.
34:37And I shit myself, I peed my bed, and it wasn't pretty.
34:46And he stayed and drank, and I'd never seen anybody could drink like that.
34:53As the renegade character falls further into obscurity, WCW enters a whole new era.
35:01In the summer of 1998, this is all hands on deck for WCW.
35:09It is combating what is a thriving World Wrestling Federation.
35:15And they're starting to lose market share.
35:18So, WCW.
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35:22Their instant answer.
35:24Go to the past.
35:27It's the silhouette of a man that we've seen right now.
35:30Oh my goodness!
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35:33It's the Warrior!
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37:56In all my years, I never believed I would ever see this.
38:00After years of anticipation, the ultimate warrior finally arrives in WCW.
38:06There's only one, and that's him!
38:09Eric paid him a lot of money to come in.
38:12Warrior didn't do anything cheap.
38:14For years, I have watched while this industry has tried to recreate what is simply unre-cre-atable!
38:26Warrior was a big player.
38:28He still had great name value.
38:30And the fact that Warrior had beaten Hogan at WWF, that story was there.
38:35And it would have been fresh to WCW.
38:40The Warrior's return spells trouble for Rick Wilson.
38:45It was such a painful pill for Rick Wilson to have to swallow.
38:50He is picked out to play this character of the Renegade.
38:54You failed under this role that we crafted for you as this knock-off version of the Ultimate Warrior.
39:01And then, the actual Ultimate Warrior is finally coming to WCW, and you're gonna be his bodybuilder.
39:06There is the Warrior!
39:10And Hogan got him from behind!
39:13There's no Warrior!
39:14Wait a minute!
39:15How did he do that?
39:16We're gonna build to the WrestleMania VI rematch at that year's Halloween Havoc.
39:21Send him into the rubs.
39:22A little criss-cross going here.
39:24That's a disaster of a match. An all-time disaster.
39:28He tried to blind him!
39:29After all the hype that was built around the Ultimate Warrior.
39:33Hogan! Hogan wins the match!
39:35It's over in three months.
39:38It turns out to be a much bigger financial disaster for the company than the Renegade was.
39:45In retrospect, Ricky wasn't really any worse of a wrestler than the Ultimate Warrior.
39:51And Ricky was a much nicer guy, by all accounts, than the Ultimate Warrior, too.
39:57The first time I really spoke to him was when he hitched a ride back to the hotel room.
40:05And Ricky said he would sit and drink some beer with me, and we just got to shooting the breeze.
40:13I would have thought that he was going to be a bitter know-it-all who had hung out with
40:20Hogan that would tell everybody to shut the f*** up because they didn't know what they were talking about.
40:26But he wasn't that way at all.
40:29He came off to me as a very genuine guy.
40:33We were sharing what it was like to kind of be thrown into a spot you weren't ready for, but
40:40how can you turn it down?
40:41He was a little bitter. He kind of felt like he'd been misled a little.
40:48There was a lot of looking down at his feet and saying, that's just such a b****, man.
40:54But where else are you going to make that kind of money?
40:56And he just laughed at me and he said, do you know what I make?
40:59And I think he said something like $500 or $600.
41:07Every bad thing you see anybody doing wrestling comes down to the creative.
41:14Rick and I completely commiserated on him.
41:23He was dead on arrival because they didn't book him properly.
41:27This is all WCW's fault. That's the way I saw it.
41:32Rick Wilson was green when he got to WCW.
41:35He didn't have a lot of national primetime exposure.
41:39So I think he was thrown to the wolves.
41:43And you know what? I shouldn't even blame that on Rick, because even if Rick would have done the best
41:47job possible with that renegade character, I don't think the audience would have ever bought into it.
41:57Already lost in the roster, Wilson's career unravels after a positive steroid test.
42:04Drug testing was not very prevalent in WCW or WWF at the time.
42:09They knew that physiques were part of the sales pitch to its audience.
42:15And quite frankly, if they were to do a drug test of everybody under WCW contract, the results probably would
42:23not have been pretty.
42:25And he said, everybody's doing it.
42:27There's just no way to be bigger than life like that without them.
42:32But this is how they let you out of your wrestling contract.
42:35They have that little clause in there and it cancels the contract.
42:42Selective drug testing enforcement is very common in the wrestling business.
42:48Those you want to get rid of can be popped at any time.
42:52Renegade's not going to get up, I can tell you that.
42:56He had his contract rescinded.
43:00So that broke his heart.
43:03He became famous doing what he wanted to do.
43:07But, yeah, be careful what you wish for.
43:09And when that gets pulled away, your...
43:11Yeah, your world's going to come down.
43:20Don't forget to breathe in this one, folks.
43:22And away we go.
43:24When he's working that Ducati, it is just poetry in motion.
43:28And he's going to go up the inside.
43:30This is how you do it, kid.
43:31And they all come down to the final out.
43:34Oh, no!
43:36Way down goes your champion!
43:37And all of a sudden, this championship is on its head!
43:42Side by side, down the hill they come!
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46:20Fired from WCW, Rick Wilson spirals into depression.
46:26100% of his identity was wrapped up in the WCW.
46:31That's all he ever wanted in his life.
46:35But I don't think he ever got to the level that he wanted to get to and he felt used.
46:47It's hard to state how much you really lay at the feet of WCW.
46:52Did they mishandle this character?
46:55Definitely.
46:56But that's the industry.
46:59There are going to be stars and then there's going to be people that don't pan out.
47:04And Rick Wilson was part of the latter.
47:07I said, what about WWF?
47:08He says, the reputation's gone.
47:10He's going out on bottom.
47:13He was in a lot of financial debt.
47:16And he didn't know how to talk about how he was feeling.
47:20So he just internalized it.
47:27Disillusioned with wrestling, Rick leaves the business for a fresh start.
47:33His friend, Wes, told me he was learning to shoe horses.
47:39Farrier, they call it.
47:41Very specific job.
47:43He was at peace, working on his own, out in the country.
47:47I thought that'd be great for him.
47:49Splitting up with someone, there's always animosity.
47:52And then as time heals all wounds, you know, I could start seeing him as the person that I liked
47:59to begin with.
47:59He was my friend.
48:01I think both of us were in relationships with other people that we knew maybe weren't quite right.
48:09We did talk on the phone through those relationships.
48:14And it was always him calling me.
48:16I think I was his best friend.
48:20And then I think shortly thereafter, he met Susie.
48:38Susie worked at Gold Club in Atlanta, which was a tremendously popular gentlemen's club.
48:45She's a life of the party kind of girl.
48:47Kind of opposite of Rick, to be honest.
48:51One night, Ricky called me.
48:53And I could tell he was on something.
48:55He was, you know, and breathing heavy and talking in kind of circles.
49:00Could have been some cocaine, too.
49:03I was very uncomfortable.
49:05I'd never experienced that side of him.
49:09Dating girls in that entertainment industry also is a tough deal.
49:14Your girlfriend's out there, you know, shaking and getting tips.
49:19Rick wasn't making that much money.
49:21I'm sure it was exacerbated by his being released.
49:25And it's tough for some guys to deal with that, I guess.
49:30You know, if he had become all f***ed up on drugs, who knows what goes on behind closed doors.
49:39I didn't hear from him for quite a while.
49:44But then in 99, he called me.
49:48He was very back to his normal self, talking to me on the phone.
49:53He did mention he had broken up with his girlfriend.
49:56We were just talking about all kinds of things, about how we had split up.
50:01And I said to him, maybe you should come to Charlotte and see me.
50:06And he said, maybe I will.
50:10And I kind of thought, maybe we'll get back together.
50:15I went to work the next night and a manager came to me and said, do you know Rick Wilson?
50:22And I go, yes, I do.
50:25They said, there's a phone call for you upstairs.
50:28When I went up and picked up the phone, he said, this is Wes, Ricky's friend.
50:33And I just want to let you know that he died.
50:37I said, what happened, a car accident?
50:40He said, no, he took his own life.
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53:48He was the closest thing to Superman without the cape.
53:51He saw his body as a temple.
53:53That was his paycheck.
53:54Paul was a rock star.
53:57It was hard to watch him physically deteriorate.
54:00In 2005, I noticed a decline in his memory.
54:04You could tell it was Paul, but Paul wasn't there anymore.
54:06It broke my heart then.
54:07It breaks my heart now.
54:09I didn't know what to do.
54:10He needed care.
54:11And that was the first time I called Adult Protection Services.
54:15Dark Sun of the Ring.
54:16New episode next Tuesday at 9 on Vice.
54:20On February 23, 1999, police respond to Rick Wilson's home in Marietta, where he's found dead from a self-inflicted
54:29gunshot wound.
54:32Shopping.
54:34Never in a million years.
54:37I was like, how in the ****?
54:39What happened?
54:40Well, didn't we just see him a month ago?
54:43It seemed like it had only been a month.
54:49When I went to Rio's funeral, it was an open casket, and his face was sunken in, and his hair
54:58was almost gone.
55:01I didn't even recognize him.
55:04He was not the beautiful man that I was married to.
55:09I told him, go **** yourself.
55:11Call him an ****.
55:14Because he took the coward's way out.
55:18And then his girlfriend, Susie, came in.
55:25And we were all very surprised by what she was wearing.
55:32Everybody else is in black.
55:33And she had on a very short spandex-type dress with really high heels that looked like club wear.
55:45The story that I got was she had his drugs, he wanted them, and he shot himself.
55:54That was all I knew until I read the police report.
55:59A Marietta police report reveals disturbing testimony from Susie Squires about the night of Rick's death.
56:09Ms. Squires advised that, at around 10 p.m., she had dinner and drinks with Mr. Wilson.
56:17Ms. Squires advised that Mr. Wilson was belittled at her paying the bills.
56:23Sometime this morning, Mr. Wilson slapped and pushed her.
56:26Ms. Squires advised that Mr. Wilson slapped her hard again.
56:29He hit me, he hit me, like he would hit a man.
56:35Ms. Squires advised that she went into the bedroom and got a gun.
56:40Ms. Squires stated that Mr. Wilson took the gun from her, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the
56:46trigger.
56:50I never would imagine him hitting someone like he would hit a man.
56:55But if he was that despondent and had all that stuff in his system, he may have done it.
57:02In anger, things happen sometimes.
57:08I think the real collateral damage that comes out of suicide is you don't have answers.
57:13You're left trying to explain the unexplainable.
57:18He is messing with a lot of drugs.
57:21He's abusive towards his girlfriend.
57:24When you put together all of these factors, here is somebody that was probably not in the right state of
57:32mind.
57:34Ricky's death hurts so much because the way that I've viewed Ricky as one of us.
57:42I wish I had reached out to him. I really do. To this day.
57:49I think self-esteem played a huge factor in this and the obsession with becoming a star.
57:58But far more will fail trying to become pro wrestlers.
58:01And some of these performers, they are not equipped to be able to handle that realization.
58:10On that morning, he thought his life was over.
58:14I don't have a wrestling contract. I don't know what my future is going to be.
58:19But there is life after professional wrestling.
58:222.240 pounds from Columbus, Georgia, Rick Wilson.
58:27Several times I was released to the WWE.
58:30So I know the depression that brings.
58:32The only advice I would be able to give is like what you hear all the time.
58:36Let somebody know what you're feeling.
58:38It was really important for me to get out that he was a very genuine, caring person.
58:45I don't know what happened later on in wrestling, but it was a totally different person from the person that
58:50I was married to.
58:54The Renegade, he remembered fondly as a good man with a good heart and got into a really tough business.
59:02I like to remember Rio as being Rio.
59:07The person at the beach laying there in a thong when nobody did that.
59:14He was good at wrestling, but he was a better dancer.
59:22I hope that he is looking down at me telling this and realizing how much he meant to me.
59:28I still love you.
59:29I don't forget any of the good times that we had together.
59:34And I hope you're at peace.
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