To the shock of no one, this made Mansfield public enemy number one.
Mansfield wanted to expose the shady promoters and the underhand, carny aspect of the business, but instead got roped into showing the faker aspects of pro wrestling. But it seems this didn’t go the way he wanted.
He threatened to go on national TV and expose the business – and that he did. He was the third man in this story, a disgruntled former wrestler who held a grudge after problems with payoffs for sold out arenas and that there was no health insurance. We learn about another player in this story by the name of Eddy Mansfield. This was a complete set-up by Vince to either protect the business or more likely, scare Stossel. That he did, staying completely in character before Stossel asks the infamous question of if wrestling is ‘fake’. We find out that Vince sent Schultz out to talk to Stossel, with instructions to ‘tear his ass up’. Something else we found out, was that the incident itself wasn’t a case of Stossel grabbing a wrestler for an interview and what happened happened. We now take a look at the incident itself. This included him rubbing his own feces into his armpits and locking a side headlock on his opponents.
A man who was trained by some of modern professional wrestling’s pioneers, Jim Cornette described him as a ‘salty and mean bastard’. This went to such a degree that, during a segment on Tuesday Night Titans where he verbally berated his ‘wife’ and ‘son’, the police were called to Titan Towers to ask where Schultz’ house was.Īnother disgusting insight was the ‘tactics’ employed by Schultz’ trainer, Herb Welch. He made everyone believe that he was this crazy redneck that hated everyone. Before this documentary, I only knew the name from the slap itself, but in reality, Schultz was a phenomenal heel in his day, keeping kayfabe to the enth degree. The first interesting note was how big of a deal David Schultz was. We learned how we got to that moment, players that we didn’t know existed and all the fallout following this brief moment in time. Cleverly done, athletic bullshit, but lies.”.īut, this was more than just an hour-long blow-by-blow account of that brief interaction between Stossel and Schultz. He planned to expose that, in his words “This big, growing, successful business was based on bullshit.
The reporter in question was John Stossel, who fronted ABC’s 20/20 and had made a name for himself by exposing shady businesses and businessmen.ĭuring the interview, he talks about being an amateur wrestler in high school and the fact that people thought pro-wrestling was real annoyed him. The latest edition of Dark Side of The Ring took a look at one of professional wrestling’s most infamous moments when Dr “D” David Schultz slapped a reporter who asked if wrestling was fake.