411’s Dark Side of The Ring Report: ‘Chris Colt: Welcome to My Nightmare’

-This will be a new one for me as I don’t recall ever hearing the name Chris Colt before this season was announced. Let’s get to it!

-As a reminder, Chris Jericho is our host for this season.

-Jim Cornette says in the opening that Chris Colt was the best wrestler that nobody saw. Many describe him as an outlaw and someone that was obsessed with death. Cornette: “Ozzy Osbourne was Mother Teresa next to Chris Colt.”

-Cornette is the first one here and says before he started a career in wrestling, he was a fan of Chris Colt. He calls Colt more than a rock star in wrestling. He was the most strung out rock star in wrestling. He tells a story of Colt being booked in a cage match in Phoenix and we get a reenactment with the date being May 9, 1976. The cage is to keep the wrestlers in, but Colt took LSD before he got in the cage. He has a trip and imagines there are giant spiders coming over the cage to get him. This is one of the better reenactments they have done on this series. LOOK AT THOSE SPIDERS! Colt climbs out of the cage and starts punching people. The fans fought back and started breaking bottles over his head, but he is so gone on LSD he can’t feel anything. Bill Anderson fills in more details about the story and we learn he is a pro-wrestler with 30 years of experience. He was there that night and started swinging a chair at fans to help Chris get out of there. We see some footage of Anderson working in the WWF in the 80s. Bill and Chris were put together as a Tag Team and Bill was given the Colt last name. That was his rookie year and he wondered what he was getting into.

-Back to Cornette who says Colt was one of the first guys in the business wrapped up in drugs. He was a roadie/body guard for Joe Cocker and hung around Janis Joplin. We meet Ty Haggard, the great-nephew of Chris Colt and he has a notebook that was the start of a handwritten book by Chris to tell his life story. He was reading the notebook when he was 13 and it was pretty wild. We have a voice over reading some of the book. It was the story of him meeting Janis Joplin for the first time and having a drink with her without knowing who she was. He found out later and asked why she didn’t mention who she was and all she wanted was a friend to have a drink. He told her that he would always be her friend. They have old interview footage of Chris talking about Janis and how he patterned his wrestling character after her at times.

-Bill says Chris told him that he planned on being dead by the time he was 27, like Joplin. He did everything he could to get there. He was born Charles Harris in Idaho in 1946 and was raised in a small town in Oregon. He grew up in a loving home Monday through Friday. It was the weekend when the drinking started that everything blew up. We meet Rhonda Rondeau, Chris’ niece, and she says her grandparents would drink a lot of whiskey on the weekend and brawls would take place that involved the kids. She says she called him Uncle Chuck and that’s what he will always be to her. He came home once to his mother bleeding from the face and a gun on the floor. His father pistol whipped her and broke the wooden handle. We get more voice over of Chris’ writings about the incident. He thought she was dead and they hid her in a car. He yelled he wished his father was dead, so his dad hit him and broke his eardrum. His father fired shots at them, but his sister was able to get the car moving and they escaped. Chris knew he needed to get away.

-Chris fell in love with wrestling at an early age and that’s all he wanted to do. Back to the writings as he tells a class he wants to be a pro-wrestler and everyone laughs at him. He made the school wrestling team and wanted to stand out, so he bleached his hair blonde. He was kicked off the team and kicked out of school. His niece says he had rocks thrown at him, so he jumped on a bus and went to Chicago. He needed to make money and met a kid on the street that was prostituting himself. He saw that as a solution to get money to become a pro-wrestler.

-His writings note he had heavy bi-sexual feelings and knew he was attracted to men more than women. He had nothing to lose as all he wanted was to be a pro-wrestler. He hit the streets and while scared, he knew he had to survive. He wanted to come back to his tiny town in Oregon as a star.

-Commercials!

-Colt trained by day and hustled at night. He went through various names and got the last name from Colt Magazine which was one of the first underground homosexual magazines. Tom Burke, Wrestling Collector and Historian, tells a story of how he mentioned to Chris they would be getting drafted to the army soon and Chris told him he was disqualified because he checked off that he liked boys. He was friends with Chris since they were teenagers. The talking heads discuss Chris coming out as gay.

-Princess Victoria, former WWF Women’s Tag Champion in the 80s, mentions there were a lot of gay people in the business that weren’t known as gay other than by the workers and the bookers. Victoria says she was told by one of the guys to spend time with Chris as “if anyone can turn him straight, you can.” They apparently thought he was missing something by not being with women, but that wasn’t the case with Chris.

-Tom says Chris was worried that the boys were trying to back stab and Cornette notes Chris burned through territories because of this. The place he lasted the longest was in with a small promotion in Arizona where he teamed with Ron Dupree. Chris became Paul Dupree and they became the Dupree brothers. Ronda notes they were best friends and they became very close. She only met Ron a few times, but says he was a kind guy. Tom says they were a couple and they were brought together by their love of the business. Bill mentions that Ron and Chris became lovers, but he never asked a lot of questions. Cornette says it was hard enough to be a gay wrestler in the 50s and 60s, let alone be a gay couple. It was not easily accepted and it wasn’t information that was offered freely. Some bookers didn’t know and they would change their gimmicks and looks to get a fresh start. They became The California Hell’s Angels and wore leather and studs. Cornette says they were so far ahead of their time that nobody knew what to make of it. Some yelled they were gay and others would shout that down and say they were bikers. Cornette: “Same tailor.”

-Chris was determined to be the ultimate villain and knew how to get heat. Cornette talks about going too far and causing the whole company to go under. Chris was not anti-American, but took a US Flag and burned it. That was too far and the small territory in Arizona was booted off local television.

-Ron has a heart attack and his career comes to an end. Chris and Ron were still together, but Chris needed a new tag team partner. He went to Bill Anderson and threw the idea of forming a trios team with Bill as Bill Colt. He was to be the valet for Chris and his new partner, Mike. Cornette notes that Mike looked like the wrestler on drugs more than Chris, so the team was going to be a disaster.

-Bill tells the story of a road trip where Chris was getting high in the back seat. Bill feels a punch to the side of his head and it’s Chris. He starts fighting Mike and Bill in the car. The car was stopped, and Bill says Mike was nobody to be messed with as he was a Vietnam Vet and a World Judo Champion. Chris gets out of the car and punches Bill again. He takes another shot at Mike, who tells him that’s his warning. Chris throws another punch, Mike blocks, and hooks Chris in a front facelock and choked him out. He tells Bill to get back in the car, and back up. He then hammers his foot on Bill’s foot to hit the gas and his plan was to kill Chris with the car.

-Commercials!

-Bill is able to get Mike’s arms away and turns the wheel in time. Mike tells Bill that Chris deserved to die, and says to just leave him on the side of the road. Bill notes he has thought about that night and he could have ended up in prison for the rest of his life or even faced the death penalty.

-The next day Bill gets home and Chris is sitting at their dining room table. He has a smile on his face and waves Bill to sit down. He tells him they are getting rid of Mike and are leaving Tennessee to head to Seattle. As soon as they got off the plane, Chris was already in a bar. That was the last visual Bill has of Chris as he knew he couldn’t do this anymore.

-Ron died as at small show in Washington from a heart attack while being a ring announcer. He died on the way to the hospital with Chris sitting next to him. Tom says Chris loved Ronnie most of his life and he doesn’t think Chris ever got over the death of Ron. Cornette notes they had been together for over ten years and Chris had lost an anchor that kept him tethered to some element of reality.

-He changed the gimmick again and went by The Chris Colt Experience. So, that’s where Cornette got it? We get some footage with Colt making an entrance with Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare.” Cornette notes Colt invented modern entrance music in pro-wrestling.

-Edward Giovannetti is next and he wrestled for 35 years as Moondog Moretti. He says back then you didn’t have people like Chris and says he was so bizarre he was banned in England from wrestling on TV. Chris started putting needles and pins in his face with chains attached to them. He would have dark makeup around his eyes with blood pouring down. Cornette notes he just got more out of control.

-Commercials!

-We are up to the mid 80s with Chris being out of control with his drug addiction. He would show up in a spot and look like he never had been out in the sun and then another place with a beard and overweight and then another place where he could barely stand. Promoters started to get tired of him and he started working a Nazi gimmick in Alabama as Chris Von Colt. Cornette notes Nazis were big as heels in the 50s, but this was the 80s and Chris just wanted to piss people off.

-Chris started doing cocaine and then to crystal meth. They felt that’s when things got really dark. His career was over and he alienated his friends and allies. He has no income so he gets the idea to start busting drug houses. His writings note he was clean from coke, but became addicted to more dangerous drugs. He walked into a dope house and flashes his fake badge and tells them they are surrounded by police. He takes the dope and runs as they are caught off guard.

-Stories were all over the place about Chris as nothing was ever definitive about what he was doing. Cornette talks about all the outlandish stories and how he just disappeared off the Earth. You could easily believe he became an astronaut just as you could believe he became a spy. Cornette: “His whole life was insane.” Nobody knew where he had gone until someone saw an adult movie.

-Chris got into the homosexual porn business and Cornette notes he has never seen any of the productions, but understands that Chris was again over the top with everything. His niece didn’t hear about the videos until late in life. She googled his name and was shocked. “That was not my uncle.” We see a snippet of one the videos of Chris cutting a promo as wrestler and vowing to beat someone up and then screw them.

-Commercials!

-Chris is an adult film star and we meet Jack Fritscher, PH.D who is a director and social activist. He says Chris was great and as soon as he turned on the camera Charles Harris became Chris Colt the same way Norma Jeane Baker became Marilyn Monroe. Jack is a writer from Drummer magazine and Chris was a fan of his writings. Chris contacted Jack about shooting a video and stayed at his house for a week. There was no script as Jack knew to let Chris just go and do what he wanted. Apparently Jack was the guy in the bondage mask that Chris was wrestling. Jack notes that pro-wrestling has always been soft-core porn for gay men and Chris knew that as a wrestler he was a fetish object for gay men.

-Hey, let’s work Hulk Hogan into this episode like they often try to do anytime they can with this series. It’s always a toss-up between Hogan and Vince on who gets shoe-horned into an episode, and I think Hogan has taken the lead. Chris cuts a promo in one of his videos about chasing Hulk Hogan out of New York and trying to slap his ass with his belt. Jack notes Hulk Hogan was a god to the gay community and when Hogan wrestled in the Cow Palace, it would be filled with gay men cheering for Hogan. We get footage of Hogan working out and Vince talking about Hogan’s 24 inch pythons.

-This leads to discussion of AIDS as it was the wasting away disease and gay men with AIDS apparently looked up to Hogan because they used to be strong like him. The producer asks Jack if Chris was infected, but he doesn’t know. He presumes as all his models in the 80s were infected because you didn’t ask and they didn’t tell. He made sure everything on set was sanitized, but someone can look perfectly healthy and not be. He notes Chris wanted an extra act after his video career as a trainer and coach, but that never happened.

-Commercials!

-Next week it’s Chris Adams!

-Almost ten years after his wrestling career ended, the life of Chris Colt came to an end. His niece says he was found in a back alley in Seattle. That’s all she knows, but how he got there isn’t known. Someone else says he was found with a needle in his arm in a chair. Jack heard he died of AIDS in a flop house in Seattle. Another doesn’t think it was a peaceful death and thinks he died the same way he lived his life.

-The Death Certificate lists May 23, 1995 with HIV as a factor. No autopsy was performed and his occupation was listed as professional wrestler. Bill walks to Charles Harris grave and notes he lived the rock-star lifestyle and he would do it the same way. “He died too young, but that’s the way he wanted.” He is sorry he is gone, and wishes he was still here.

-Cornette says that Chris was decades ahead of his time and his talents would put him in the upper 20% of anyone in the business today. Others agree with Cornette and say he brought rock into wrestling before Cyndi Lauper and Hulk Hogan. Jack says reducing Chris to one word does not come near the inner truth to what he was about. He thinks the homophobia he experienced led to the drug and alcohol abuse. His niece notes he was a really good uncle that would always bring a gift even if it was just a roll of toilet paper from a hotel. Tom reads from the last letter he received from Chris in 1991 where he noted he had stopped drugs and alcohol and had buried Chris Colt. Tom: “Such is live.”

-Not my favorite episode, but I came into this one not knowing anything about Chris. This was definitely more of a Dark Side episode than other ones this season. I still am not sure why they like to shoe-horn Hogan into some of these episodes where it’s really not needed. Hogan being in The Beefcake episode makes sense, but it seemed tacked on here. The talking heads were all good and it’s always a benefit when they can find family and friends to take part. The production was pretty good here with the reenactments and I appreciated them doing the voice-over with someone reading from Chris writings. I am curious about any comments here as far as anyone knowing about Chris. As noted he was slightly before my time, so why I had never heard of him before this episode. Thanks for reading!