[Thunder]
Abdullah the Butcher was like a nightmare come to life.
He terrified people.
[Screaming]
Just savage, bloody, thirsty machine.
Trying to rip the eyeball.
When Abdullah walked in the ring,
you know you're gonna get blood.
Every match he was in, he bled.
You bled.
[Announcer] Oh my God, right on-
[narrator] One of the most infamous wrestlers of all time,
Abdullah the Butcher left a legacy of violence
and bloodshed wherever he went-
From Puerto Rico to Japan,
and across North America.
-It's Abdullah! -[Match bell ringing]
Think about what he's experiencing.
He's getting cooked!
You can't think of a heel that was bigger than Abdullah.
You can't.
[Crowd cheering]
He made money everywhere he went.
But the more money we made,
the more danger we had to face.
Even though Abdullah was playing a character,
inside, that was him.
He would have people with slingshots hitting him and
throwing things at him, because they think
he's hurt the damn guy.
Fans at ringside when he got too close,
I mean, they were running!
[Thunder]
Everybody's blood thirsty.
Everybody, everybody is blood thirsty.
They want it.
Notorious for blurring the line between
reality and fiction, Abdullah remained a mystery
even to those closest to him.
See, you all know the wrestler,
but you don't know the person.
He's a hero all the time.
He was a very good person.
In a gruesome but successful career spanning 7 decades,
Abdullah's thirst for blood made him infamous,
but also led to his downfall.
He cost me my WWE career, that was a fact.
The Hep C caused me
not to have my WWE contract.
-[Indistinct shouting] -Japan. Japan.
You're a piece of shit and I hope that when you die,
you die a really slow and painful death.
♪
Now he's biting again the wound that's
already open on the forehead.
Acting like he finds the
taste of the blood pleasurable.
Abdullah the Butcher would come into a regional
wrestling territory and just set business on fire.
Blood everywhere!
The difference between Abdullah and everyone else
is when anyone else came into the territory,
fans were rooting for their favourite to win.
When Abdullah came in,
they were rooting for their favourite to survive.
Oh, what a...
Looks like he's getting ready to carve up
a steak there and eat a little bit of it.
Hello, I'm Mick Foley, sometimes known as the
Hardcore Legend, and I have been involved with
professional wrestling since 1985.
I knew of the legend of Abdullah,
because in those days, you learned about people
outside of your geographic area largely by the magazines.
And the magazines painted this amazing portrait of
this unstoppable monster.
I was so intrigued by Abdullah the Butcher that the
first thing I did, uh, when I got to college as a freshman,
is I put a black and white photo of him on the wall,
and began to tell the entire dormitory that
he was my father.
When you have those, those, uh,
Taekwondo karate pants, and you see him
with a fork with all those gigantic cuts...
And he opens those big eyes and you see him on promos,
eating, uh, liver and the blood of the liver coming out...
That's Abdullah the Butcher, and he was unstoppable.
My name is Hugo Savinovich.
I'm from Guayaquil, Ecuador, and I've been in this
passionate industry for close to 50 years.
And I will do it again! Love lucha libre.
No one was safe.
Here he comes again, he hits Bronko Lubich.
Not the referee, not the owner of the company.
He would put fear into your body,
into your brain, your soul.
[Spanish commentary]
Yeah. Eating a raw, raw meat.
[Laughing] Chicken.
I don't know. And he could even
take a phonebook and tear it in half.
♪
Mhmm.
My name is Josephine Hearon Shreve.
Abdullah the Butcher is my brother.
Windsor, at that time when I was growing up,
I always say that's old school.
And it was like we was raised in a two bedroom house,
war time house, there was eight of us.
Two or three of us slept in a bed together.
I had my own room because I slept in the bathtub.
I had a cushion to put in there.
My father and them would have to go to the bathroom,
they'd piss in a can.
My mother had to come in the washroom,
she'd knock on the door, and I'd get out of the tub
and let her in. 'Cause I don't think my mother
wanted to piss in a can, okay?
That's the way it was.
My name is Ralph Shreve.
I am Larry Paul Shreve's brother,
as Abdullah the Butcher.
I call him Larry.
That's his name, to me.
Abdullah the Butcher is his money name,
his wrestling name.
If you ever interview him,
you just look at his damn head.
-You ever interview him? -Mhmm.
Oh, there you go then.
I guess, you, he tells the truth,
but I'll tell you one thing,
there I think you should be better off
talking to him a longer distance.
[Indiscernible shout]
He'll have your ass jump up in one minute,
and you scared to death.
He's a good actor.
♪
[Booing]
[Off-screen] Oh yeah we just gotta-
[Abdullah] I wanted to take it off with the thing.
I got my head off, let me take my head off.
[Off-screen] Looking good.
[Laughing]
Yeah, that's me.
My name is Larry Shreve.
My name, my other wrestling name,
is Abdullah the Butcher.
I'm from "Cartoon", Sudan,
but now since I'm putting air out,
I'm from "Cartoon", Sudan, Windsor Ontario.
[Off-screen] [Laughing]
Oh they worked hard. My mother worked hard,
my dad worked hard.
[Teeth clicking]
[Sighing]
When I seen my mother on the floor, scrubbing floors,
you know, at the funeral home, I said to myself,
"Holy shit, my mother works hard."
But I never knew that she was
on her hands and knees until I went there.
I didn't want to learn how to read or write because
I was only worrying about my mother and father.
I wanted to make money.
I used to buy candy, three for a penny.
Go to school, and uh,
"You wanna buy some candy?" Right?
I'd sell it for maybe a penny a piece or whatever.
When the kids owed me money and I'd say,
"When you gonna pay me my money?"
So maybe he got scared
like I was gonna do something, right?
So he wouldn't go to school.
Maybe his mother came and says,
"My kid is scared to come to school."
And uh, that was it. Then I says,
"I gotta get out of here and try to make some,
you know, money where I don't have a problem."
And that's what I done.
He only finished the grade second.
I was a year smarter than him and I'm not really that smart
myself, but I'm saying we done a lot.
He done, Larry, he went to people's houses knocking on
the door and asking for old clothes all that,
and he had a second hand store with all kinds of
old clothes, and he had a store.
He shined shoes for years,
then he got a janitorial service, uh, business.
He had people cutting grass and all that.
He had a, he had a truck where he went around
moving stuff out of people's basements and all that.
He was a worker.
Let's just say he was always a hustler.
He'd be into, he'd been into karate and all that.
He had a karate place where like, senior citizens,
he trained them to learn how to defend their self.
That's right in Windsor he had about eight or nine
old ladies in their 60s or 70s,
and he had where they could defend their self.
Just old people and that.
I was down at the Windsor arena and I was doing karate
and stuff like that, and uh, the manager of the place,
he said, "Hey, you should be a wrestler."
I said, "Oh I don't want to do that crap."
He said, "You could make some money."
I said, "Oh, OK."
Abdullah crosses the river to Detroit
where he meets the original Sheikh,
one of the innovators of hardcore wrestling.
Wait a minute. The Sheikh has got the fire!
-Oh! -A despicable act of biting.
Abdullah playing an Arabic, uh, wrestler,
they only had one at that time.
And that was, they called him The Sheikh.
Not the Iron Sheikh, the Sheikh out of Detroit.
He used to do all that stuff, you know,
cut you in your forehead. Walk around crazy.
[Shouting] A ball of fire into the face...
Put out that fireball!
Hi, this is Mr. USA,
WWE Hall of Famer, Tony Atlas.
He grew up watching the Sheikh,
imitating the Sheikh.
[Indistinct commentary] ...Camel clutch.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, that's my scarf!
Oh this is a grudge match! This is war!
[Larry] I told my dad, I said, "Dad, I'm wrestling at
Cobo Hall." My dad says,
"Those are some dangerous people over there."
My dad used to see me with cuts on my head.
He told my mother, "Tell him that he'd better,
he'd better get out of that shit."
I said, "Dad, listen, smack me."
He said, "For what?" I said, "Just smack me."
♪
He went-
He seen me bleeding.
He said, "I didn't hit you that hard!"
Then I showed him the blade.
He said, "Now I know you're crazy."
[Laughing]
Having learned this bloody trick of the trade,
Abdullah travels the world
showcasing his hardcore style.
While working in Puerto Rico,
he meets promoter Carlos Colón and
his right hand man, Hugo Savinovich.
I started working with Carlos and they say,
"You're good, but you're not big enough."
He says, "I want to make you a manager."
And then he says, "By the way,
we're bringing into Puerto Rico, one month...
Abdullah the Butcher."
And I, I have heard of him, and I said,
"Wow, I mean, what a way to begin a managing career."
Managing him, it was, you know, just,
a, just a crazy, crazy way of earning a living.
Everybody just going crazy here.
By 1983, he was already drawing gigantic money in,
in the Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico.
People will fill up the stadiums,
until I will make the promoter Carlos Colón look good.
But at the same time, he will destroy you.
Perhaps the fear of being involved in this match-
[Tony] Abdullah was wrestling in Puerto Rico for a couple of
months, he'd wrestle in Japan for a couple of months,
and then he would come back to the States.
[Commentary] Whoa!
[Audience screaming]
And he was a big draw.
I mean, wherever he went he drew money.
Abdullah was worth every penny that he got paid and
trust me, he was making huge money.
He lived really like a rich guy.
Abdullah were very cautious of his money.
When he got paid, as soon as you'd give it to him
he'd count it.
I made sure my mother and father,
my brothers and sisters, got some of it.
My mother used to work for the funeral homes and
stuff like that, I went to her one day and I said,
"Come on, Ma." She said, "What?"
She said, "I want you to meet Mrs., ah..." I says,
"I don't want to meet them. You understand?
You're here scrubbing floors and stuff like that and
I supposed to be Abdullah the Butcher,
and you're on your hands and knees scrubbing floors?"
From that day, she never worked another day of her life.
And I made sure of that.
But I was dumb.
I didn't have the schooling.
Like I tell you, if I know what I know now,
everybody shafts me. You understand?
Despite his successful and profitable rise to fame,
Abdullah today finds himself in legal trouble and
financial ruin.
Hell.
You don't know who in the hell is working with you
or working against you. You understand?
I'm in bad shape. Real bad shape.
And anybody, anywhere, that does not fear the
name of the almighty Abdullah the Butcher,
is either an insane fool or they're lying to ya.
With Larry Shreve, yeah, it could be really difficult for
a fan to know where the character ends,
where the real person begins.
He has reigned terror in the-
[Growling]
For someone who rode with him for hundreds of hours, um,
yeah, you, you, you get to know the real guy.
Or what he wants to show you of the real guy.
Abdullah the Butcher moves swiftly for a big man.
See, he always talk about he's an entertainer.
He's entertaining you.
But the real true person, you all don't know.
My name is Jocelyn Malikah Marshall.
I met Abdullah while I was on the streets
feeding the homeless.
He told me his name was Joe and I was just so excited to
see somebody else out there like myself
feeding the homeless.
So, I didn't know he had a restaurant.
He gave me the address of the restaurant and
I brought my son over there.
My son said, "Do you know who that is?" He said,
"That's Abdullah the Butcher." And I said,
"Who is that?" Because I'm not into wrestling.
Abdullah was his, uh, hero.
He loved the bad guys, yes.
[Tony] Abdullah was the best heel
that the world ever saw.
Even picturing it in my head now, just the way he stands,
the way he, he moves around the ring,
and the things he did.
To see a whole crowd of people move back.
He could walk through an aisle and
people would run from him.
And when he come through that ring and
people go, "Uh oh, here come Abdullah."
It got so it wasn't a gimmick.
He was in character most of the time.
Especially when he went out in public.
Uh, I remember seeing a flight attendant
go over to him, and as soon as Abdullah saw
that flight attendant, his eyes bugged out,
his mouth started watering,
and she tried to like get his beverage order and
just walked away. And I was like,
"Abby, are you ok?" And he goes,
"Gotta protect the character, champ.
Gotta protect the character." And that's what he would do,
and so in his own way he would create this grass roots
campaign for the authenticity of his character.
Put it this way, when he went into the ring with
any wrestler, he made them a good wrestler.
If you had to fight Abdullah, you fought Abdullah.
You got over.
People knew you the next day.
They got like a crown on their head because
they're wrestling one of the best.
That's why I say, Abdullah made Carlos Colón.
Abdullah made Tony "Mr. USA" Atlas.
Everybody that fought Abdullah became a big star.
Here he comes, hard! There goes Kevin with a...
The dirty battle continues between Abdullah and Kevin.
And here he is with the big karate thrust to the head of
the Dirty Dutch Mantel.
[Cheering]
What really made Abdullah was the time in Japan.
[Japanese commentary]
In Japan during that time
wrestling was still about 70% real.
If you got a karate kick in Japan,
it was a real karate kick.
You got chopped in Japan, it was a real chop.
The only thing that was fake in Japan were
who won and who lost.
[Japanese commentary]
He was on the cover of all these magazines.
They had billboards of Abdullah, you know,
pictures of Abdullah.
He was what I call "crazy over".
Like, he was an iconic part of Japanese culture.
[Shattering glass]
You're through!
That's fine, it doesn't bother me at all.
♪
[Screaming] Agh!
As crazy as this might sound,
he recorded an album in Japan.
In the, in the dressing room.
♪ My name is Abdullah the Butcher! ♪
♪ I want to do all these crazy things to ya. ♪
♪ My own family hates me because I'm too vicious. ♪
[Laughing]
They never seen nothing like me.
I was different.
They only seen the wrestling, you know?
That was it. I was different.
[Video game music]
Having found success with the hardcore style
he adapted from the Sheikh, Abdullah becomes a mentor
to wrestler Devon Nicholson.
But this long term friendship will end in disaster.
I actually ended his career.
Retired him in the ring, retired him out of the ring.
♪
My name is Devon Nicholson
and my wrestling name was Hannibal.
There will be no more Abdullah after the 23rd!
No class, no idea how to dress.
Starting his career with Stampede Wrestling in 2001,
Devon begins working under the name "Mad Man Hannibal",
and soon launches his own indie promotion,
Great North Wrestling.
In 2006, he begins working with Abdullah.
Before all the, all the negative stuff happened,
I actually considered him
somewhat of a mentor and like...
I would say he was the first wrestler to like,
take me under his wing a bit, and teach me about
how to get heat and stuff.
We ended up tag teaming and wrestling each other, uh,
numerous times.
I knew- yeah, I used to work for him.
Yeah. I used to fly into, um, Toronto or whatever,
and we had shows.
He'd come out to Calgary, Alberta.
We'd have shows. You understand?
Abdullah, you think I'm not ready for you?
[Screams] I'm gonna get you, in your last match in Canada.
[Groaning]
There will be some people that will always, uh,
hate me for exposing him, but whatever.
I don't care. [Laughs]
I stopped him from wrestling.
♪
Already 68 years old and six decades into his career,
Abdullah returns to Canada to wrestle Hannibal in
what's being billed as his retirement match.
I remember my first experience of Abdullah.
My grandmother was actually somewhat of a wrestling fan,
and I remember she let me rent a wrestling movie
called, "I Like to Hurt People."
Against the butcher from the Sudan, Abdullah the Butcher.
And I just remember thinking, um,
how did they make this blood effect?
You didn't really know how they did blood in those days.
You'll probably have to edit this.
♪
And I know Bret Hart would put it in his mouth,
he said, but I was always too afraid to do that.
So, then you would take the blade and put it like there,
and tape over top and then when it comes time to bleed
you'd pull it out.
And then, I'm not gonna do it, I'm not Abdullah,
but you'd slice down like that.
Now, for me to hit myself, I would hit myself like this.
You see it?
I was around Abdullah a lot.
And you never actually see him do the deed.
The blood would arrive as if, you know, by magic.
Abdullah have razor blades on all his fingers.
First he'd cut you with the razor blade.
And what does he got? He's got a foot!
And then he would take the fork and scrape it across and
make it bigger so it could bleed more.
[Laughing]
And he after would stick that fork,
and he would stick you with that fork too.
He's about to stab you in the head with that fork,
hurt like hell.
That's Abdullah, Abdullah the Butcher!
I mean, he would cut you deep.
Not to Abdullah.
Because, see,
in the older days the guys would tell you this,
"Suck it up!
If you don't like it you're in the wrong business, kid.
Suck it up."
There was no bitching and complaining in wrestling.
I didn't carry a blade 'cause I didn't juice every night.
But this was part of these guys' gimmick.
Abdullah, Bruiser Brody,
Dusty Rhodes...
[Cheering]
Abdullah bled every night. Every night.
It was kind of like, Ric Flair gotta have the robe,
where Abdullah gotta have the blade.
Why you, why do they call him Abdullah the Butcher?
What does a butcher do?
They take the- make blood.
They try to hurt you, to torture you.
This guy here, he was rushed to the hospital.
He had four stitches in the back of head,
'cause this guy chopped him in the damn head and got cut.
Don't think that this is all phoney blood.
Abdullah's intense blood lust and unpredictable style
keeps him from signing with the world's
largest promotion, Vince McMahon's WWE.
Vince kind of knew that Abdullah was going to be
very hard to be controlled, and
I think that if you would even ask Abdullah,
I don't think he even trusted himself.
Because I don't think a lot of times he planned things.
We were going to have a tag team match in Ottawa and
before the match we were appearing on a local
television show called, "Roger's Daytime."
I just happen to have a fork right here.
-Oh. -Eh?
With the old, you know. [Mock screaming]
And without, uh, this being planned or anything.
-It's always a pleasure. -Thank you.
-Why do you have to go? -[Yells]
He put the male host in a headlock.
-Abdullah! Abdullah! -[Screaming]
Abdullah, settle down!
He walked the male host over to where there was
going to be a cooking segment after.
[Growling]
[Shattering]
And then the guy started bleeding.
Settle, back off, are you gonna manage this Friday?
-Ah, you know what? -You should come with me.
And come to the show on Friday night.
It was the weirdest moment ever.
The guy was like,
I just remember him shaking like that.
He was like going into shock almost.
It was like a guy that obviously isn't used to
bleeding or getting in fights or anything.
Uh, we'll be right back after this.
I think that was 2009.
You couldn't even really get away with it then,
it was a miracle he did.
But you could see like how in the old days
he could get away with stuff like that.
But I think in 2022 it would be hard to assault
a TV show host and get away with it.
I think he was in his late 60s by then too.
So, it, so it certainly... helped.
After years on the independent circuit and
mentorship from Abdullah, Hannibal finally achieves
his own opportunity to wrestle for the WWE.
When I was signed by WWE
he actually screamed with joy,
because I guess since he never actually wrestled
for them, and it was kind of like,
someone that kind of represented him in a way,
was going to get in there.
But after a series of routine blood tests,
Hannibal receives career shattering news.
In my blood test they found that the Hepatitis C virus
was present, and I was, like...
well, first of all, I was confused on like
how I would have such a thing.
A lot of guys would use dirty razor blades, you know.
'Cause everybody didn't carry blades.
Everybody didn't carry blades.
Sometimes you'd say something like,
"Hey Abby, you got a blade I could use?"
Then he'd go and use the blade and, you know,
when you borrow something you gotta do what?
Give it back.
And they would give it back to Abdullah.
So, it was very easy for somebody to catch a disease
because who knows where that blade came from?
Or who they cut before they cut Hannibal.
Yes.
'Cause there was no other way that I would have
thought that I would have caught it, but I wasn't...
like, at this point, I didn't think that
I would have the evidence or anything.
Yeah, we were good friends, I used to work for him.
He was a promoter.
So, I don't know what happened but, uh,
I don't want to talk about this.
I don't want to talk about it.
His career cut short by his Hepatitis C diagnosis,
Hannibal is desperate for answers.
I had a guy that was doing a documentary on me,
it's called, "This is Hannibal."
We were hoping that it was going to be my journey to
WWE movie, but it ended up just being like a sad movie.
Obviously, it didn't work out.
That the contract got rescinded because
I have Hepatitis C.
So, he was the one that actually saw the
cutting incident, and he showed me the clip
from the 2007 match.
And he was like, "What is Abdullah doing here?"
I haven't even seen footage of the match,
to be honest with you.
I would love to see it.
And, you see him doing that to my forehead.
So, I'm like, he's blading me.
Oh my God.
Eight years managing him in different countries,
I never saw him
doing that to another, another guy.
And if that's the case, wow.
Many local news stations saw my movie and
did their own stories on it,
because Ottawa, I don't think,
ever had somebody that had made WWE.
Ronald Caza, one of the top lawyers in this area,
saw the case and
with his skill as a lawyer he was able to
basically force Abdullah to provide his blood test.
According to his blood work there's a history of Hep C,
so, you would think that he knew.
But whether he knew or not, he should have known
it's dangerous to cut someone with a razor blade
with blood on it.
The footage of Abdullah cutting Hannibal
with a used razor blade,
and the results of Abdullah's blood tests
formed the basis of a lawsuit filed by Hannibal.
A lawsuit that Abdullah claims he couldn't read,
or understand.
I was getting a lot of letters, right?
What am I gonna do, open it up?
I don't know what the hell it says.
If it wasn't for Malikah, no.
I wouldn't, I'd be, I'd really be in bad shape.
And he sat me down, he said, "Sit down, Malikah."
But he told me he didn't know how to read and write,
and he cried like a baby.
A big, huge man, like this, crying.
I've never seen a man cry like that.
♪
That's when I understood what was going on in his life,
and he would ask me to open his mail and read it to him.
And after I looked through it, it included the,
the court case with Devon Nicholson.
I don't know anything about that.
My sister called me and said,
"You lost the case, in uh, Toronto."
I said, "What?"
And it was default.
That's what, because I didn't show up, and that was it.
When you aspire to be a professional wrestler,
this is how you celebrate a legal victory.
He ended up losing in court in both Ontario and Georgia,
and he was found guilty of negligence,
assault, and battery.
He either knew, or should have known
that he had Hep C, which Abdullah still denies
even though he provided the blood tests.
Court documents show that Abdullah carries the
same rare strain of Hepatitis C as Hannibal.
In the years that follow, Abdullah makes a
range of claims including the allegation that it was
Hannibal who gave the disease to him.
After the Canadian judge sees the video evidence,
coupled with the confirmation that both men share the same
rare strain of Hep C, the courts side with Hannibal.
It's very good to have that on the record after all this,
all these years, of being called a liar.
Devon Nicholson was awarded $2.3 million in damages.
Nah, I, I don't think he should pay it, no.
No, not that much, nah.
Nothing.
I wouldn't have sued him.
When you get into a certain profession,
you know, you're taking a risk.
Hannibal could have done it himself.
That's what the guys told me,
"Tony, he don't change his blade.
Do it yourself." He let Abdullah cut him.
He could have cut himself,
but he was scared to cut himself
so got somebody else to do it.
And it cost him.
♪
In dire financial straits, Abdullah continues to make
wrestling related appearances and autograph signings.
Hannibal claims that Abdullah has moved around his assets
in order to avoid paying him, and to this day
the matter is still in front of the courts.
He's never paid anything.
He hasn't paid a penny.
Nah. I don't think he have it.
I want you all to look at this.
These, this is dangerous.
This is stuff that you have never seen.
-Look at this. -Oh boy.
He has no money to repair none of this.
Now this is a light fixture
where the water is coming down.
This is electrical. I- listen.
Right now, currently.
That's why I didn't allow you all to come back there.
♪
I am stressed. I'm stressed.
I've never had blood pressure until
I got moved into this house.
But it's worth it when you see someone being
taken advantage as him. He built a career.
I should have went to school. I should have went to school
to learn how to read and write.
I studied... money.
But I needed more than that.
[Off-screen] Right.
I got shafted.
All the tapes, what I made for many, many years...
got nothing.
Whatever he's going through,
whatever he's going through that was all his anyways.
So I don't want to say too much,
I'll tell it, that's the truth.
My brother, don't worry, my brother is a,
he's a very nice person, but people play games with him.
No, and I've seen him
order at restaurants, reading menus.
I've seen letters from him. I've seen him sign autographs.
He's owned several businesses over the years and
been involved with large wrestling contracts with
companies like WCW,
and Japanese companies.
No. Nope, he never could.
But he'd find ways like, if they told him, like,
to go, uh, to a chicken farm or something like that,
he'd draw a picture of a chicken.
He...
I don't mean this to be humorous, but like,
he knew how to read a menu? You know?
Like, uh, we would eat out three times a day,
he never had an issue.
I don't know if that's the case.
If it is I think it's just, uh,
it's an accolade for him to be that successful
around the world without that ability, but I don't know.
I've only recently heard that.
That's like a shock to me,
because he made great business transactions.
Even in a cheque, in a cheque you have to write it.
I did not know that, and I,
eight years, we travelled a lot.
Spent a lot of time together and that is a shock to me.
If that is a guy of a second grade education, wow.
That, whoever was the teacher,
we gotta find him or her and honour that person,
because that teacher did a lot.
Abdullah the Butcher himself
getting stitched up right here.
The punishing style of hardcore wrestling has
a long legacy, but it often comes at
great personal cost for those involved.
Abdullah and Carlos Colón invented a match with
a chain going right across the ring,
and there were hook to it,
and even with the rain, a storm,
you could still see just all the blood coming down.
It was horrendous, but for the fans,
it was just devastating the punishment that
they inflicted on each other.
We felt invincible.
[Thunder
And they trained you to feel invincible.
At those times we will put the blood of their opponent
as part of being a heel, and suck the blood
out of your opponent's head.
When I talk about it right now I see the expressions
on a young, the new generation, like,
"What the heck were you guys thinking?" But you know,
back then it was a whole different, different world.
[Japanese commentary]
Any time you watch something, even if you watch
a movie picture or something like that,
they always have violence in it. Right?
You have like the cops and the robbers,
you have this and stuff like that.
It's always violence.
And if you don't give the people violence,
they don't come and see ya.
In a twist of fate in 2021,
seven years after his own court battle,
Hannibal finds himself at the centre of
his own controversy by brutalizing a referee.
They were looking for someone to bleed from the spike, so,
the promoter found this referee that was a
known bleeder to, to take the spike.
It hit him several times for...
and it did some damage.
The promoter that, for that show, um,
did not have any medics on site.
It went on longer than it should have,
like it was bad communication all around.
Oh my God. That even makes no sense.
I mean, you just were in a situation and... wow.
Strange things do happen because
what are the chances that you win a court case and
now you're gonna do that to a referee?
[Exhaling sharply] Crazy.
To this day, Abdullah's legal problems haunt him,
and the Hepatitis C controversy has
tainted the legacy of his legendary career.
I know it was horrendous to hear,
because you never want to hear that somebody
did this to another guy, uh,
but then you also wonder because
in my case I was around him
in bloody matches, you know?
And Carlos Colón, and other guys...
but, none of us tested, you know, positive to that.
Hannibal eventually finds an experimental treatment that
cures him of his Hepatitis C, but his bitterness remains.
Yes. [Laughing]
I mean, start, start paying what you can and
take some responsibility for what you did.
You've been, you've been found guilty
in both Canada and the US,
but you never apologized for anything.
Yeah, it's just been a nightmare situation,
but I would never expect that from him.
So, all I can do is move on, which I have been doing.
I'll be honest, talking about this situation, I mean,
this, this is, uh, hopefully the last time
I'll have to talk about it.
It was a terrible period of my life, and I'm over it.
♪
Because the lawsuit is argued in a civil trial,
the judge found Abdullah the Butcher liable,
but not guilty, of causing Hannibal's Hepatitis C.
This is the Hall of Fame, and all of these,
these wrestlers here, these are the old ones.
They're probably all dead now.
They're all in the Hall of Fame with Abdullah the Butcher.
Well, I put it this way, all my family is his biggest fan.
He done good.
And I hate to say this, there's a lot of
good wrestlers, I put it this way, he's one of the best.
Being around our next inductee
always made me a little nervous.
This is a man who took hardcore to another level.
Take a look.
In 2011, Abdullah the Butcher is inducted into
the WWE's Hall of Fame.
But if I'm looking to be in the Hall of Fame, I says,
"I don't believe it until they book me there." You know?
And Terry Funk was the one who would put me over strong,
you know, said nice things about me.
You know, he said, "Whatever people say
about Abdullah the Butcher,
he made these promoters a lot of money." See.
I cried. Because I know the story that, uh,
to be what he became
he paid the price, and,
yes, he made the money, but...
it wasn't easy being Abdullah the Butcher.
What's missing in wrestling today is the idea that
someone, an opponent, is fighting for
something bigger than a title or a victory.
They're fighting for their lives.
That's what he brought to the table,
and I don't know if anyone ever did it better than
Abdullah the Butcher.
I never seen anybody that found
what they're actually afraid of.
[Screaming]
They was afraid of him.
And I never seen that, I never saw that with anybody.
I think he should be remembered for his greatness.
His greatness, because
he is the God of wrestling.
Not the negative, you know,
just one little situation and it's not, um...
proven.
He didn't get a chance to
prove his innocence.
I don't care if they take everything he owns,
I would never turn my back on, on being a greatness.
Such greatness.
He's gonna be okay with the help of God.
Just to give me the respect for what I done,
and a lot of things people say I done I did not do.
You know what I mean? And that's all I can say.
Whatever you want to think, I'll leave it up to you.