Post by Stu-E Price on Sept 18, 2007 17:29:33 GMT -5
AGGRAVATED ASSAULT
In July of that year Davey was facing a seven-to-14-year jail sentence over an altercation in a bar with a guy named with Kody Light. Kody claimed Davey manhandled him. Specifically he alleged Davey smashed his head into the wall, pile-drived him into the floor, and powerbombed him. All these accusations were untrue. You cannot put these moves on a civilian. It takes two to create certain holds.
It's not like Davey was looking for a fight that night. But we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a Saturday night. We were tired from a day trip to the Rockyford Rodeo. This was during the time he was working at the WCW and wrestling in title shots against Van Vader. He said like he felt his back was going to shatter.
Davey and I had stopped into the Back Alley Night Club. We rarely went out to nightclubs because fans would pester us, but this night a friend of ours wanted to buy us a drink in order to impress her friends. I don't drink so I got up to dance with Adam, our friend's teenage son.
A complete stranger named Kody Light who had been drinking there since the bar opened that evening and had a blood alcohol level six times the legal driving limit, approached us on the dance floor and began harassing us. He was slurring his words.
"When a beautiful chick like you and a geek like that are screwing, who's on top?"
Adam looked embarrassed and I told him to ignore this idiot. Kody began lunging at my chest. Meanwhile, Davey had wandered over to find me. Totally unaware of what Kody was doing, he tapped his watch to indicate we had to get going.
Light confronted Davey. "Hey, I'm talking to the lady."
"That's my husband," I snapped.
"That's my wife," Davey added.
Light smirked. "You've got a nice fucking wife." Then he grabbed Davey's hand and squeezed. Davey tried to free his hand, but Light wouldn't let go. Enough was enough. Davey put him in a front face lock and walked him 10 feet over to the bouncers. Then abruptly let him go. Light stood up and as the blood rushed back to his head, he weaved and fell backward. There was glass from broken beer bottles all over the floor and some of it became embedded in the back of his skull.
An ambulance came, and while we waited, Kody's friends began taunting Davey, challenging him to fight. The bouncers instructed us to leave before things got out of hand.
We returned to Florida Monday night as planned and it wasn't until four months later, during a Christmas phone call to Bret, that we found out the police were looking for Davey. Davey flew back to Calgary and turned himself in. He was locked up on charges of aggravated assault. He spent the weekend at the Remand Center and I posted $7,000 bail. My dad had to put up a $500,000 assurety bond for Davey to get his passport back.
By November, Davey still had not received his promised bonus for his European tour. Eric Bischoff took Davey up to a suite at the Marriott Residence Inn in Orlando to meet with him, Bob Dhue, one of WCW's top managers, and Bill Shaw, another suit. I was there because the WCW had rented the whole courtyard at the Marriott for a wrestling party.
I remember talking to Brian Pilman and his new bride Melanie. She was expecting Brian's first son. I felt like a third wheel hanging around them because they were sort of in that newlywed stage.
Davey came back fuming. He said when he asked for his bonus, Eric pulled out his false teeth and slapped them on the table and said, "I have my black belt in karate and I know you killed a man up in Calgary, but if you want to fight me over your money, then let's do it right now."
Davey said that initially Eric had been leaning toward paying him but that Bob Dhue refused and had acted like a complete asshole. Eric worked for Bob and Bill, so he switched horses and challenged Davey to a fight.
Davey left the WCW shortly after that. They claimed he failed his drug test for steroids and cocaine and insisted he either enter rehab on Peach Tree Street in Atlanta or leave. Davey refused. He didn't want to work for them anymore anyway. The only thing Davey felt bad about was that the previous November Davey had beaten Rick Rood aka Rick Rude. Davey was scheduled to return the favor and in the time-honored tradition lose to Rick at Starcade. He called Rick to apologize but Rick said, "Ahh, don't worry about it."
By January of 1994, Davey was on his way to England to work for Max Crabtree.
In August 1994, Vince won his grand jury case ending their quest to indict him and shut him down. In my opinion they never had a case against Vince. They were using him to make it look like the US government wanted to get tough on drugs.
Owen had wrestled Bret at Madison Square Garden at Wrestlmania Ten, "Brother Versus Brother." By August they were facing each other again at the brand new United Center in Chicago. WWF was looking at ways to intensify this big match so they flew our whole family down and included Davey and me. Davey was over the moon. They wanted him back.
Ironically Hulk Hogan reached Davey on his cell phone while he was on the landline in his mom's kitchen in England with J.J. Dillion of the WWF. He had both federations on the phone simultaneously, one talking into each ear. Hulk had recently split from the WWF and was trying to recruit Davey for the WCW. Davey flatly refused.
"I ’ad nothing but trouble with them. No way."
Hulk was persistent. "I'll look after you Davey Boy, even if I have to pay you out of my own bank account." Hulk was always good to Davey. He had even landed him a guest spot on The A Team television series in 1985.
Davey was tempted because he liked and trusted Hulk, but his heart was with the WWF and my family.
Davey and I, my mom and dad, Smith and his son Chad, Bruce, Wayne, Georgia, Ross, Martha, Oje, Jim Neidhart and Ellie were all placed at ringside. The angle was that Jim, Martha and Oje were to cheer for Owen while the rest of us rooted for Bret. When Bret won the match, we all stood and cheered and Jim as planned, went ballistic and clotheslined Davey and me from behind over the railing into the ring.
This set the scene for the tag matches between Jim and Owen and Davey and Bret. It was an excellent way to reintroduce Davey back into the WWF after his two-year hiatus. He was 265 pounds and ripped. His hair was long and curly. He never looked better.
Bret had been pushed as their main event since Davey left and he had developed quite an ego. The first thing Bret said to Davey in the dressing room just before the show was, "Cut your hair and lose some weight."
Because Bret and Davey hadn't yet had a return match after Davey's win at Wembley in 1992, the seed was planted for them to wrestle each other. Davey called me up in the fall of 1995 and said, "Vince wants you to come out. We're going to do this angle again with Bret and me. This time I'm going over as super heel."
I was just delighted. I was thrilled. I remember Bret sitting me down quite sternly saying, "Are you ready? Are you prepared? Are you prepared to get a nanny? Are you prepared to go on the road with this?"
I said, "Oh yeah, but what are you talking about Bret?"
Bret didn't like it, but what the WWF wanted me to do was present a bouquet of thorny roses to Bret and then turn on him, going berserk, attacking him and getting him all scratched up. Davey was to come in and finish him off leaving him in a heap of stems and petals. The idea was that I was a really villainous, rotten heel female jealous of my brother Bret.
My mom was aghast and my dad, though he saw the potential, didn't think it was a good idea either. Bret didn't go for the idea of his sister or anyone in his family not liking him even though he had milked the angle between him and Owen for all it was worth. I think Bret thought that people would start thinking he was an asshole, because his little sister and brother didn't like him.
I was willing to go ahead and so was Davey, but Bret had more juice with the WWF than we did so they modified my participation to interviews where I bragged about how great Davey was.
Just before the WWF "In Your House" pay-per-view which pitted Davey against Bret, Bruce and Ross gave them a trial run up in Calgary at the tribute show they held for my dad's 80th birthday.
It was held for cerebral palsy although I gather Bruce slipped Andrea a fair amount of cash from the merchandising. The show was chock full of wrestling stars: “Razor” Ramon, “1-2-3 Kid,” Keith, Owen, Mike Shaw aka Makhan Singh, Chris Benoit, Louie Spicoli aka “Rad Radford,” Terry and Dory Funk, Dan Kroffat, Rhonda Sing, aka “Bertha Faye.” The main event featured Bret and Davey.
Several dignitaries including Premier Ralph Klein came to the show. Ralph's father Phil Klein refereed for years for my dad and they were dear friends. Bruce went overboard while tagging with Brian Pilman against Terry and Dory Funk. By the end of the match, Bruce and Brian were bleeding profusely. They staggered around the crowd, throwing garbage and chairs and Bruce instructed Brian to go over to Premier Klein and bleed all over him.
My dad was absolutely livid. Later he gave Bruce hell in the dressing room. "That's the very gaddamn reason I got out of this business!"
Bret and Davey were also mad at Bruce because it's tough to follow a blood bath with a technical bout.
Two days later on December 17, 1995 Davey and Bret were the main event at WWF's pay-per-view in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Bret and Davey met before the match at a German restaurant to plan the bout. I was with Davey. Bret asked Davey for a hit of speed because he didn't want to be tired while he was wrestling. They went over their spots. Again Vince allowed them to create their own finish as long as Bret was the winner.
Owen had wrestled one of the Hog Men just before the main event so there was slop, salad dressing and milk, all over the ring. The caretakers had tried to mop it up, but the mat was still slick. Davey threw Bret outside the ring, then jumped over the ropes and threw Bret into the metal stairs. But Bret lost his footing and fell head first on to the bottom stair. Just like Bruce two days before, Bret was covered in blood when he stood up.
The TV cameras kept cutting to me, in order to censor all the blood. I was straining my neck to get a better look, but it appeared from where I sat that Bret had split his eye open. I thought he had lost an eye. I was horrified. My parents would never forgive Davey for this. I began weeping. Thankfully it wasn't Bret's eye that was bleeding—it was his hard head.
Bruce Pritchard, one of the WWF bookers told me he was captivated by my facial expressions and remarked how, while Davey was such a blatant heel, I in contrast looked so innocent and fooled by it all. They started flying me out on a regular basis for TV tapings and for pay-per-views, but not for regular shows. That way I stayed home with Harry and Georgia, but I went on the road with Davey when it was televised. I had the best of both worlds.
It took three years for the Kody Light case to come to trial. It lasted 10 days. Crown prosecutor Gary Belecki’s courtroom theatrics would have been laughable if the situation hadn't been so serious. He screamed and yelled so much, our seven-year-old daughter Georgia, nine-year-old son Harry and their 12-year-old cousin Matt fled the courtroom in tears. He questioned my testimony, accusing me of lying to keep Davey out of jail so he could continue earning a lot of money.
"He makes a pretty good living. You and your husband live very comfortably in your Tampa home don't you?"
"We have a nice home, because we make it a nice home," I answered.
Mr. Belecki's skewed logic put Davey on the spot. He asked Davey whether wrestling was fake, expecting Davey to deny it was. He wanted to show that Davey was capable of picking someone up and throwing them across a room. But Davey reluctantly threw Mr. Belecki a curve ball when he admitted it wasn't all real.
Mr. Bilecki fumbled around a moment and then accused Davey of making his living based on lies and suggested Davey was lying on the stand.
Justice Waite interjected, reminding Mr. Bilecki that Davey took an oath and that to suggest he was lying was belittling that oath. Of course the next day's headlines around the world reported, "Davey Boy Smith exposes wrestling!"
Carl Moffat, the wrestler who had been whimpering about the spare tire hitting his leg in Davey's 1989 car accident, called the prosecutor and volunteered to come down and testify that Davey was capable of throwing a man 30 feet. So we had to call my brother Ross as a rebuttal witness to testify that Carl was vindictive because Davey wouldn't support him in a lawsuit against Ross and my dad relating to the 1989 accident.
We also asked Ed Whalen to write a character reference for Davey. Ed had made thousands of dollars over the years with the family's wrestling promotion and it was the first time any of us had asked a favor in return. But he turned us down. He said he couldn't get involved because he might want to run for politics some day and it could come back to haunt him.
It cost us half a million of our hard-earned US dollars to defend Davey. In the end, Justice John Waite acquitted him. He was adamant in his opinion that if anyone was victimized it was Davey.
"Light's actions could be properly characterized as an assault on Smith. The rights of a professional wrestler are no different than any other citizen and Smith's conduct throughout was entirely justified."
In July of that year Davey was facing a seven-to-14-year jail sentence over an altercation in a bar with a guy named with Kody Light. Kody claimed Davey manhandled him. Specifically he alleged Davey smashed his head into the wall, pile-drived him into the floor, and powerbombed him. All these accusations were untrue. You cannot put these moves on a civilian. It takes two to create certain holds.
It's not like Davey was looking for a fight that night. But we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a Saturday night. We were tired from a day trip to the Rockyford Rodeo. This was during the time he was working at the WCW and wrestling in title shots against Van Vader. He said like he felt his back was going to shatter.
Davey and I had stopped into the Back Alley Night Club. We rarely went out to nightclubs because fans would pester us, but this night a friend of ours wanted to buy us a drink in order to impress her friends. I don't drink so I got up to dance with Adam, our friend's teenage son.
A complete stranger named Kody Light who had been drinking there since the bar opened that evening and had a blood alcohol level six times the legal driving limit, approached us on the dance floor and began harassing us. He was slurring his words.
"When a beautiful chick like you and a geek like that are screwing, who's on top?"
Adam looked embarrassed and I told him to ignore this idiot. Kody began lunging at my chest. Meanwhile, Davey had wandered over to find me. Totally unaware of what Kody was doing, he tapped his watch to indicate we had to get going.
Light confronted Davey. "Hey, I'm talking to the lady."
"That's my husband," I snapped.
"That's my wife," Davey added.
Light smirked. "You've got a nice fucking wife." Then he grabbed Davey's hand and squeezed. Davey tried to free his hand, but Light wouldn't let go. Enough was enough. Davey put him in a front face lock and walked him 10 feet over to the bouncers. Then abruptly let him go. Light stood up and as the blood rushed back to his head, he weaved and fell backward. There was glass from broken beer bottles all over the floor and some of it became embedded in the back of his skull.
An ambulance came, and while we waited, Kody's friends began taunting Davey, challenging him to fight. The bouncers instructed us to leave before things got out of hand.
We returned to Florida Monday night as planned and it wasn't until four months later, during a Christmas phone call to Bret, that we found out the police were looking for Davey. Davey flew back to Calgary and turned himself in. He was locked up on charges of aggravated assault. He spent the weekend at the Remand Center and I posted $7,000 bail. My dad had to put up a $500,000 assurety bond for Davey to get his passport back.
By November, Davey still had not received his promised bonus for his European tour. Eric Bischoff took Davey up to a suite at the Marriott Residence Inn in Orlando to meet with him, Bob Dhue, one of WCW's top managers, and Bill Shaw, another suit. I was there because the WCW had rented the whole courtyard at the Marriott for a wrestling party.
I remember talking to Brian Pilman and his new bride Melanie. She was expecting Brian's first son. I felt like a third wheel hanging around them because they were sort of in that newlywed stage.
Davey came back fuming. He said when he asked for his bonus, Eric pulled out his false teeth and slapped them on the table and said, "I have my black belt in karate and I know you killed a man up in Calgary, but if you want to fight me over your money, then let's do it right now."
Davey said that initially Eric had been leaning toward paying him but that Bob Dhue refused and had acted like a complete asshole. Eric worked for Bob and Bill, so he switched horses and challenged Davey to a fight.
Davey left the WCW shortly after that. They claimed he failed his drug test for steroids and cocaine and insisted he either enter rehab on Peach Tree Street in Atlanta or leave. Davey refused. He didn't want to work for them anymore anyway. The only thing Davey felt bad about was that the previous November Davey had beaten Rick Rood aka Rick Rude. Davey was scheduled to return the favor and in the time-honored tradition lose to Rick at Starcade. He called Rick to apologize but Rick said, "Ahh, don't worry about it."
By January of 1994, Davey was on his way to England to work for Max Crabtree.
In August 1994, Vince won his grand jury case ending their quest to indict him and shut him down. In my opinion they never had a case against Vince. They were using him to make it look like the US government wanted to get tough on drugs.
Owen had wrestled Bret at Madison Square Garden at Wrestlmania Ten, "Brother Versus Brother." By August they were facing each other again at the brand new United Center in Chicago. WWF was looking at ways to intensify this big match so they flew our whole family down and included Davey and me. Davey was over the moon. They wanted him back.
Ironically Hulk Hogan reached Davey on his cell phone while he was on the landline in his mom's kitchen in England with J.J. Dillion of the WWF. He had both federations on the phone simultaneously, one talking into each ear. Hulk had recently split from the WWF and was trying to recruit Davey for the WCW. Davey flatly refused.
"I ’ad nothing but trouble with them. No way."
Hulk was persistent. "I'll look after you Davey Boy, even if I have to pay you out of my own bank account." Hulk was always good to Davey. He had even landed him a guest spot on The A Team television series in 1985.
Davey was tempted because he liked and trusted Hulk, but his heart was with the WWF and my family.
Davey and I, my mom and dad, Smith and his son Chad, Bruce, Wayne, Georgia, Ross, Martha, Oje, Jim Neidhart and Ellie were all placed at ringside. The angle was that Jim, Martha and Oje were to cheer for Owen while the rest of us rooted for Bret. When Bret won the match, we all stood and cheered and Jim as planned, went ballistic and clotheslined Davey and me from behind over the railing into the ring.
This set the scene for the tag matches between Jim and Owen and Davey and Bret. It was an excellent way to reintroduce Davey back into the WWF after his two-year hiatus. He was 265 pounds and ripped. His hair was long and curly. He never looked better.
Bret had been pushed as their main event since Davey left and he had developed quite an ego. The first thing Bret said to Davey in the dressing room just before the show was, "Cut your hair and lose some weight."
Because Bret and Davey hadn't yet had a return match after Davey's win at Wembley in 1992, the seed was planted for them to wrestle each other. Davey called me up in the fall of 1995 and said, "Vince wants you to come out. We're going to do this angle again with Bret and me. This time I'm going over as super heel."
I was just delighted. I was thrilled. I remember Bret sitting me down quite sternly saying, "Are you ready? Are you prepared? Are you prepared to get a nanny? Are you prepared to go on the road with this?"
I said, "Oh yeah, but what are you talking about Bret?"
Bret didn't like it, but what the WWF wanted me to do was present a bouquet of thorny roses to Bret and then turn on him, going berserk, attacking him and getting him all scratched up. Davey was to come in and finish him off leaving him in a heap of stems and petals. The idea was that I was a really villainous, rotten heel female jealous of my brother Bret.
My mom was aghast and my dad, though he saw the potential, didn't think it was a good idea either. Bret didn't go for the idea of his sister or anyone in his family not liking him even though he had milked the angle between him and Owen for all it was worth. I think Bret thought that people would start thinking he was an asshole, because his little sister and brother didn't like him.
I was willing to go ahead and so was Davey, but Bret had more juice with the WWF than we did so they modified my participation to interviews where I bragged about how great Davey was.
Just before the WWF "In Your House" pay-per-view which pitted Davey against Bret, Bruce and Ross gave them a trial run up in Calgary at the tribute show they held for my dad's 80th birthday.
It was held for cerebral palsy although I gather Bruce slipped Andrea a fair amount of cash from the merchandising. The show was chock full of wrestling stars: “Razor” Ramon, “1-2-3 Kid,” Keith, Owen, Mike Shaw aka Makhan Singh, Chris Benoit, Louie Spicoli aka “Rad Radford,” Terry and Dory Funk, Dan Kroffat, Rhonda Sing, aka “Bertha Faye.” The main event featured Bret and Davey.
Several dignitaries including Premier Ralph Klein came to the show. Ralph's father Phil Klein refereed for years for my dad and they were dear friends. Bruce went overboard while tagging with Brian Pilman against Terry and Dory Funk. By the end of the match, Bruce and Brian were bleeding profusely. They staggered around the crowd, throwing garbage and chairs and Bruce instructed Brian to go over to Premier Klein and bleed all over him.
My dad was absolutely livid. Later he gave Bruce hell in the dressing room. "That's the very gaddamn reason I got out of this business!"
Bret and Davey were also mad at Bruce because it's tough to follow a blood bath with a technical bout.
Two days later on December 17, 1995 Davey and Bret were the main event at WWF's pay-per-view in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Bret and Davey met before the match at a German restaurant to plan the bout. I was with Davey. Bret asked Davey for a hit of speed because he didn't want to be tired while he was wrestling. They went over their spots. Again Vince allowed them to create their own finish as long as Bret was the winner.
Owen had wrestled one of the Hog Men just before the main event so there was slop, salad dressing and milk, all over the ring. The caretakers had tried to mop it up, but the mat was still slick. Davey threw Bret outside the ring, then jumped over the ropes and threw Bret into the metal stairs. But Bret lost his footing and fell head first on to the bottom stair. Just like Bruce two days before, Bret was covered in blood when he stood up.
The TV cameras kept cutting to me, in order to censor all the blood. I was straining my neck to get a better look, but it appeared from where I sat that Bret had split his eye open. I thought he had lost an eye. I was horrified. My parents would never forgive Davey for this. I began weeping. Thankfully it wasn't Bret's eye that was bleeding—it was his hard head.
Bruce Pritchard, one of the WWF bookers told me he was captivated by my facial expressions and remarked how, while Davey was such a blatant heel, I in contrast looked so innocent and fooled by it all. They started flying me out on a regular basis for TV tapings and for pay-per-views, but not for regular shows. That way I stayed home with Harry and Georgia, but I went on the road with Davey when it was televised. I had the best of both worlds.
It took three years for the Kody Light case to come to trial. It lasted 10 days. Crown prosecutor Gary Belecki’s courtroom theatrics would have been laughable if the situation hadn't been so serious. He screamed and yelled so much, our seven-year-old daughter Georgia, nine-year-old son Harry and their 12-year-old cousin Matt fled the courtroom in tears. He questioned my testimony, accusing me of lying to keep Davey out of jail so he could continue earning a lot of money.
"He makes a pretty good living. You and your husband live very comfortably in your Tampa home don't you?"
"We have a nice home, because we make it a nice home," I answered.
Mr. Belecki's skewed logic put Davey on the spot. He asked Davey whether wrestling was fake, expecting Davey to deny it was. He wanted to show that Davey was capable of picking someone up and throwing them across a room. But Davey reluctantly threw Mr. Belecki a curve ball when he admitted it wasn't all real.
Mr. Bilecki fumbled around a moment and then accused Davey of making his living based on lies and suggested Davey was lying on the stand.
Justice Waite interjected, reminding Mr. Bilecki that Davey took an oath and that to suggest he was lying was belittling that oath. Of course the next day's headlines around the world reported, "Davey Boy Smith exposes wrestling!"
Carl Moffat, the wrestler who had been whimpering about the spare tire hitting his leg in Davey's 1989 car accident, called the prosecutor and volunteered to come down and testify that Davey was capable of throwing a man 30 feet. So we had to call my brother Ross as a rebuttal witness to testify that Carl was vindictive because Davey wouldn't support him in a lawsuit against Ross and my dad relating to the 1989 accident.
We also asked Ed Whalen to write a character reference for Davey. Ed had made thousands of dollars over the years with the family's wrestling promotion and it was the first time any of us had asked a favor in return. But he turned us down. He said he couldn't get involved because he might want to run for politics some day and it could come back to haunt him.
It cost us half a million of our hard-earned US dollars to defend Davey. In the end, Justice John Waite acquitted him. He was adamant in his opinion that if anyone was victimized it was Davey.
"Light's actions could be properly characterized as an assault on Smith. The rights of a professional wrestler are no different than any other citizen and Smith's conduct throughout was entirely justified."