Hannibal Comments On Stabbing Incident, Says He Had No Indication Referee Was Legitimately Hurt

Hannibal has responded to the allegations that he injured a referee by stabbing him with a spike at an independent show over the weekend, saying he had no indication the referee was legitimately hurt. As previously reported, Hannibal, aka Devin Nicholson, was working World Class Revolution’s “Christmas Star Wars” on Saturday when he stabbed referee Lando Deltoro multiple times in the head with a spike. The spot was said to have been a blading spot, but Hannibal took it “MUCH further” than planned. World Class Pro Wrestling owner Jerry Bostic issued a statement which read:

“World Class moving forward will not be associated with Devon Nicholson. I cannot and will not condone what happened last night.”

In a new video posted to his YouTube account, Hannibal alleges that he actually quit WCPW before the company announced they were cutting ties with him because it was “not profitable for me financially.” He alleges that the spike used was given to him during the match and came from WCPW officials, and that due to the fact that it was a blade spot and he couldn’t see as well as he otherwise might due to the Blood Hunter mask that he didn’t realize what was happening. He claims that Deltoro never told him to stop or gave another indication that he was legitimately hurt.

He also alleges that TMZ, who covered the story, didn’t try to contact him although the outlet disputes that, saying they reached out to the email address listed on his YouTube account’s page at 8:21 AM PT, and never received a response.

TMZ reached out. Saying otherwise is a lie. 🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/vhOpo5g65Q

— michael j. babcock (@mikejbabcock) December 14, 2021

A full transcript of Hannibal’s comments is below. A GoFundMe has been set up for Deltoro here.

“This is Hannibal here from The Hannibal TV.com. And over the past several days, I’ve received some a lot of death threats actually, and so much hate mail I can’t even keep track of it. TMZ put out a story today with false information in it, so I just wanted to address some of those claims.

“First of all, TMZ never tried to contact me. My phone number is not hard to get, my email is not hard to get, my social media is not hard to get. Never got any messages from TMZ, but they put in their report they tried to contact me and I refused to comment.

“Secondly, World Class Pro Wrestling was not the one that ended our partnership. I actually sent the owner of World Class Pro Wrestling this email at 5:56 PM Eastern Time on Sunday, December 12th ending my partnership with World Class Pro Wrestling. They put out a video two or three hours later claiming they were the ones ending it. It was actually me.

“As far as the quote-unquote ‘attack angle,’ that referee was hired because he was a bleeder. He did not referee any other matches on the card; his sole purpose of why he was hired was to bleed. I was wearing this mask. As you can see, there’s mesh over the eyes. Not the easiest to see out of. I was given a prop to create the weapon effect in the match. The prop was given to me by the World Class Pro Wrestling office, and it was given to me in the ring, brought out by somebody and given to me in the ring. The first time I ever had the prop was when I was in the ring. Didn’t have it before, and apparently it was the actual spike that was used with with Dusty Rhodes and Kevin Sullivan in the 80s, in another angle that was done then when Dusty Rhodes was spiked with a spike, which was the whole idea of this gimmick for the Blood Hunter character where his matches usually involve blood.”

“What happened, this referee was supposed to bleed from razor blade cuts, which I assume he actually cut himself with the razor blades. And some of the footage I’ve seen, it certainly appears that he’s covering his head and slicing himself with a razor blade. With the spike, when I was using it if you watch the video, the top part of the spike — and I do have a picture of it — is sticking out at the top of my hand. And I’m spiking them in the forehead. The bottom part of my hand is what I thought was covering the spike part of the spike. So I thought my fatty part of my hand was hitting it. He gave no indication to me — and you people can watch the footage — zero indication to me in the ring that he wasn’t just selling and wasn’t legitimately hurt. He never said, ‘Stop,’ he never said ‘No.’

“There was supposed to be other refs coming into the ring pulling me off and making this a lot shorter than it was, but for some reason, the referees stayed on the outside and didn’t come in uh to pull me off sooner. My manager/girlfriend was the one that ultimately pulled me off.

“So that’s what happened. I talked to the guy the next day, he said that we were cool. He knows that I didn’t mean to hurt him. I did apologize for him. If he had told me he was getting hurt, I would have stopped. As I said he was supposed to be bleeding, I’m wearing a mask with mesh over the eyes. I’m feeling the blood, I can’t see the cuts. I’m thinking I’m protecting him. And if he’s not saying, ‘Hey you’re stiffing me,’ how am I supposed to know?

“So that’s my side of it. And I think the World Class Pro Wrestling people are scumbags for trying to say they fired me when I clearly quit. And they should have insurance, and they should provide safe props for their wrestlers to use if they’re going to do stabbing angles in the ring that are pre-planned. That’s my opinion of it, and it’s an unfortunate situation and I’m glad he’s gonna be okay.”