Insane Insights From Dark Side Of The Ring: Chris Colt
Dark Side of the Ring Season 5 Episode 6 focused on pro wrestler Chris Colt. I have said this many times, but this was the episode that I was looking forward to the most In Season 5. Coming in, I had no idea who this guy was coming into this episode, excluding a Google search.
These are the types of episodes that I like the most because I come in blind to these types of episodes—not knowing anything coming in and exciting as I came out of a cool college lesson where there was a special speaker.
As for talking heads in this episode, those involved were Jim Cornette, Bill Anderson, Ty Haggard (great-nephew of Chris Colt), Rhonda Rondeau (Chris’ niece), Princess Victoria, Tom Burke (Wrestling Collector and Historian), Edward Giovannetti, Jack Fritscher
This episode did not disappoint because it was insane with what I now know about Chris Colt.
10. The Insane LSD Spider Hallucinations
We start immediately with a crazy story. Yes, we got hints of this in the trailer for Season 5; however, it is still crazy to hear this story in full.
This event occurred on May 9th, 1976, in Phoenix, Arizona. Chris Colt was known to use LSD and even perform a match on drugs. Think about that, think about how scary that is that this guy is high on drugs doing something as dangerous as pro wrestling.
So, Colt is messed up on LSD, and he has to do a cage match. Colt gets in the cage, and he has strong hallucinations of the Spiders. These Giant Spiders are climbing the cage, coming to get him, and Colt freaks out. He climbs out of the cage to try and escape the spiders.
He is out of the cage, and Colt decides to punch the fans. This guy is so messed up on LSD that he physically assaults fans, and he even breaks glass bottles on his head. My goodness, why would anybody want to break a glass bottle over the head? Now Colt fled the arena, and when he sobered up, apparently, he did not feel anything. Don't do drugs, kids.
My question is how this man was not arrested for this or even blackballed from the industry.
9. His Association With Janis Joplin
Did not expect there to be a Janis Joplin mention in a Dark Side of the Ring episode. However, with Chris Colt, it turns out that he was super close with Janis.
If you don't know, Janis Joplin was a singer and songwriter. She was big in the 60's. She was known as being one of the top rock performers at a time when Elvis Presley was performing. Unfortunately, Joplin was a mess and was constantly doing drugs throughout her life. She ultimately passed away at 27 due to a heroin overdose.
Colt met her when he was a bodyguard for Joe Crocker. The first time they met, he did not know who she was, and Janis did not have an ego moment about it. When he asked her, she said she wanted to have a real friend to drink without letting the person know she was famous. They became very close friends until she died in 1970.
Colt patterned his wrestling characters after her, and after watching a few matches/promos with Colt, you can tell there was a hint of Janis in his work. The one thing that's crazy is that Chris straight up admitted he wanted to go out like her and die at 27 years old. That is depressing as hell.
8. Colt's Family Was Full Of Alcoholics, And His Father Pistol Whipped His Mom
Chris Colt's story as a young boy was super interesting. He was born in Idaho and was raised in the state of Oregon. He was in a loving family that grew up in a home, but one thing clear was that his family was full of alcoholics.
The worst came on weekends, as his family loved Whiskey. Colt's family would often get heavily intoxicated and brawl every weekend. The worst part is they would even fight with their kids, including the grandparents.
According to his niece Ronda, Colt's mother came home once bleeding in the face and with the gun on the floor. The reason why is that his dad pistol-whipped her with a gun and even broke the wooden handle. Colt, in his writing, thought that she was dead, and the family hid her in the car. WHAT IN THE WORLD?
Colt is pissed, and he yells at his father, blaming him. He even says that he wishes his dad was dead and tries to fight him. Probably not the greatest idea to fight with a man who pistol-whipped somebody to the point the handle was broken. His dad hit him so hard that he broke Colt's eardrum, and he even fired shots at his kids. This dude should be thrown in jail at this point.
Colt eventually escaped with his sister, and they never looked back.
7. Chris Colt Was A Prostitute
Colt is now on the road, and his dream is to be a professional wrestler. At the time he was breaking in, the pay was terrible. Along with just becoming a pro wrestler, you needed money for that to happen with training, etc.
He is desperate for money, and while on the road, he meets a kid who is prostituting himself. Colt then realized that this would be the best way to make money, and that was to become a prostitute. Yes, because that is an ethical and healthy way to make money.
Colt admitted in old writings that he had bi-sexual feelings but was more attracted to men compared to women. He wanted to live the dream of being a pro wrestler, but at the same time, he had to survive with no backup plan due to having awful parents. The only way he felt he could do this was by becoming a prostitute.
6. Wrestlers Tried To Get Princess Victoria To Turn Chris Straight
Oh gosh, you know. It's stories like this that get me pissed off with the wrestling business and how homosexuality was handled back in the day.
We are introduced to former WWF women wrestler Princess Victoria. If you remember her, she was in the Dark Side of the Ring Episode focused on the Fabulous Moolah. I plan to go back and rewatch/review this episode once Season 5 is over.
Victoria tells a lot about the culture of the locker room when it handled homosexuality. Some knew others were gay, and others hid it. Colt was one of the wrestlers almost everybody knew was gay.
The bookers, promoters, and other pro wrestlers thought he was missing something. He had the skills to be successful, but they felt one thing was missing. All they thought he needed to do was be with a woman to fully become the pro wrestler they envisioned. So, many went up to Victoria and asked her to woo Chris and spend time with him. She was even told, "If anyone can turn him straight, you can". What a business.
Is that an appropriate thing to say to a woman in a working environment? I don't care if it was a different time, never say that to a woman while you are in a working environment.
5. Chris Colt Got An Arizona Wrestling Promotion Cancelled.
This was briefly mentioned, but I had never heard about this incident at all. So, Colt is now working in the Territories, and he gets a contract offer in Phoenix, Arizona. Now Colt had a plan to become the ultimate villain in Arizona.
So, Colt decided to become a Hells Angel. He went super far as a heel, and the most notable incident was when he took a US Flag and burned it in front of everyone.
it is pretty much similar to the original plan when Sgt Slaughter was an Iraq sympathizer and feuded with Hulk. The original plan was to burn an American flag, and luckily, Slaughter has brains and refused to do it. So, they settled with burning Hulk's shirt instead.
Colt burned the flag, and boy, were the fans angry. This pretty much caused the company to go under and was pretty much canceled in the wrestling industry. To do that in the 1960s was so hard, but Colt did it.
4. The Last Time Bill Anderson Saw Chris Colt
Now,, this is an insane wrestling fight story that occurred out of the ring, so Chris needed to reinvent his character. His next idea was to get a new tag team, but this time, it's a trio's tag team. The men involved are Chris Colt, Bill Anderson, and a guy named Mike.
The plan with Mike was for him to become a valet with Chris and Bill Anderson. It sounds like a good idea, but here is the problem. Mike was a way worse trainwreck than Chris Colt was. Had a way worse drug addiction, and it was a disaster.
It did not help that on the road Bill and Chris were not getting along either. Chris and Bill got into a big fight in the car and eventually fought Mike too. Chris started the fight, but he did not realize that Mike was a Vietnam veteran. So, Chris was getting his ass kicked, and Mike was choking him out.
Now Mike is high, and during this fight, he gets the idea he wants to kill Chris Colt. he hammers his foot to hit the gas to, I guess, ram the car. Luckily, Bill got the wheel to turn in time. This was so traumatic that Bill thought he could have gotten the death penalty or spent the rest of his life in prison. That is how nasty this fight was.
The next day hits, and Bill and Chris are talking. Chris decides to get rid of Mike and leave for Seattle. Both get onto a plane, and Colt immediately goes to the bar. That was the last time Bill saw Chris; he knew traveling on the road with him was too dangerous. I don't blame Bill one bit.
3. Chris Colt Was One Of The First Wrestlers To Walk Out To The Entrance To Music
I mentioned this previously in another article, but yes, Chris Colt was one of the first professional wrestlers to walk out of entrance music. What song did he walk out to? Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare.” Hey, welcome to My Nightmare is the title of this episode.
If there were ever a choice in those days to walk out to any music, Alice Cooper would be at the top of my list. It is still cool that Colt invented the modern entrance music in pro wrestling, and Jim Cornette praised him on the show.
2. Chris Colt Became An Adult Film Star
Chris Colt is officially out of the wrestling business and was in a rough spot. So, he decided to switch industries because he needed to make money. The industry he chose is the porn industry. Specifically homosexual pornography.
They got his director, Jack Fritscher, to speak about it. I mean, this guy comes off as super shady in this episode. Then again, pretty much everybody in the porn industry is super shady in general.
One thing about Porn stars and directors in this industry is that there all trainwrecks. I said that when Dark Side of the Ring did their episode on XPW & Rob Black.
Fritscher said that Colt was great and a natural in the porn industry. He also was once quoted saying that "pro-wrestling has always been soft-core porn for gay men and Colt was a fetish object."
The crazy thing is that Jack did not even give Colt a script when filming him in these movies. In one of these movies, Colt cut a nasty promo on Hulk Hogan, mainly because, according to Jack, Hogan was a god to the gay community and wanted to mention him in one of his movies.
The topic of HIV/AIDS came up, and Jack was asked if Chris was infected. Jack says he does not know, but he presumes everybody is infected with it. After all, he never asked, and they never told. What an ethical industry this is.
1. How Chris Colt Died
At the end of the episode, the focus is on how Chris Colt died. His cause of death was that he contracted AIDS and succumbed to the disease. That is what was listed on his Death Certificate. No autopsy was ever performed with Colt.
According to his niece, he was found in a back alley in Seattle, and nobody knows how he got there. He was dead for 2-3 days when they discovered him.
When the documentary showed, Colt's last letter he ever wrote was in 1991, where he noted he had stopped drugs and alcohol and had buried Chris Colt. Yeah, I don't know if I believe him quitting drugs and alcohol.
When Colt died, he had a needle in his arm when he was discovered. Now, we are never going to know the specific cause of death because there was no autopsy, but when there is a needle that was found in a dead person's arm, that can mean one thing: overdose. However, we are never going to know the firm answer.
Wow. Just Wow. This was, in my opinion, the best episode of the season. I learned so much about the man watching this, and I contemplated extending this list to 20 things I took away, but I kept it at 10.
The talking heads were really good. Even though Jack Fritscher comes off as a bit shady, he was still a needed talking head to discuss Chris Colt's career in the porn industry. The MVP of this episode is Jim Cornette, who taught me a lot about Colt, and it is clear that Cornette respects him.
Chris Colt was way ahead of his time, but he had way too many personal demons with his drug abuse and alcohol abuse. I mean, the dude was planning to die at a young age, which is just super depressing.
Next week's episode will focus on Gentleman Chris Adams. I am looking forward to this episode, as his life ended tragically.
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