As you may have learned over the weekend there was a very serious incident at an indie wrestling show. During the show, indie wrestler Hannibal aka Bloodhunter (Devin Nicholson) bladed a referee (Lando Deltoro) with an ice spike several times. Rather than this being a safe and controlled incident, Deltoro sustained serious injuries that led to him requiring medical attention.
Following this one of the referees in the match would comment:
“What’s up guys. I was the ref in the match. NOT the ref that got f•cked up, but the actual match referee. Bloodhunter/Hannibal refused to listen to me, and I could tell something was off, and immediately told Carlito to gtfo and finish the match. Bloodhunter went totally off the hinges and refused to listen to me. He tore the other referee up, then hid the weapon he used to do it.
Cops were called, I gave a full statement about what I believed happened. Kevin f•cking Sullivan told me to kayfabe the cops.
Full disclosure, this is absolutely NOT on the company that had the event, this is 100% on Bloodhunter/Hannibal.
I told the cops what I thought. I believe it was absolutely assault. He went way above and beyond working. There was no safety on his part. And as a ref, the most critical thing I can offer the people I work with is that I will make sure they are safe, and I feel like I completely failed at that. I should have stopped the match immediately when I noticed something was off. I apologize for that.
And another thing. I started screaming at Hannibal backstage, before the cops showed up, that he had just murdered the other ref, and he seemed like he was going to come yell? at me, and friggin Jacob Fatu stepped up and was threatening to beat his ass, despite having no clue what had happened. Massive props to Fatu.
Let me give you guys a full breakdown, start to finish, 100% real. Couple of things, Andrew Anderson is also managed by Sullivan. One of their gimmicks is to bring out this spike and threaten to use it against opponents. Cool.
So, the owner of the company hired 2 refs to work the show. Myself and another gentleman. Hannibal decided he wanted his own ref because he wanted to make a ref bleed, but the owner didn’t want his working refs to bleed.
Prior to the match, I kept trying to figure out what was supposed to go down in the match. That’s pretty common for us refs to do. Go over anything the wrestlers need from us. All I was able to find out was that Bloodhunter and Kevin Sullivan had everything planned and that the other ref knew what he was supposed to do. So I went to talk to the 3rd ref about what he needed from me, and he was busy making and getting his blade ready. He was taking a blade job, It was 100% planned for him to bleed. I need everyone to understand that.
So we finally get to the match and no one can find Hannibal. It takes a good 7 or 8 minutes of stalling by the Ring Announcer before anyone ever finds him. I’m standing in gorilla trying to talk to Kevin Sullivan about what’s supposed to be happening. I see Bloodhunter finally around the corner and start to head out to tell the RA we are good to go. But I noticed Bloodhunter/Hannibal is stumbling. First clue.
I get to the ring and tell the RA we are good to go. It took Bloodhunter a solid few minutes to get to the ring during his entrance. And what I mean is that it looked like he was stumbling, and just really meandering to the ring, not paying a ton of attention. 2nd clue.
Finally, he gets into the ring and tries to climb the turnbuckles to taunt the crowd and it’s incredibly apparent he’s messed up. He was struggling just to keep his balance on the ropes. Definitely not normal, and not good.
Carlito gets to the ring and I tell him my thoughts, that I think BH is messed up, and to finish the match ASAP. I get it, Carlito was in the WWE and is a professional, but dude, he handled the situation incredibly well.
So, BH wins via the sh••tiest roll up I’ve ever seen. Andrew Anderson comes out to brawl with Carlito, all planned. I follow them to the back. This is 3rd refs que to come in to get Bloodhunter to the back. All planned. Bloodhunter is to hit 3rd ref with his spike, safely, 3rd ref is supposed to blade, and bleed, and we all meet up in the back, good match, yay.
Instead I look out and see BH wailing on 3rd ref. And I think, this is taking too long, so I go back out. 3rd ref hadn’t starting bleeding yet. So what I believe happened, is that BH got pissed off that 3rd ref wasn’t able to cut himself, so BH did it himself. First he choked the 3rd ref into unconsciousness. He was 100% in seconds. Then BH proceeds to hit him all over the head with his spike. Repeatedly. Without having watching the footage yet, I’m going to guess 20 or more times. Dude was bleeding profusely at this point. The entire time this is happening, I’ve decided this is too much and I was tryin to get BH off the dude. I refused to go into the ring, I absolutely did not trust him. So on the apron, I was pulling on BH’s leg and punching it while screaming at him to stop. Finally, Blaze, his other manager/real life GF gets in and pulls him off.
That’s when I managed to pull 3rd ref out of the ring. I checked on him again here and he was absolutely out and still profusely bleeding. So I immediately run to the back saying to call 911 and I need as many people out there to help me with a) Hannibal and b) 3rd ref as possible, and I requested we try to find any EMT’s.
3 wrestlers, 2 of them with some form of medical background follow me back out. By the time I got back to the back, cops were already there, and I spent the next 45 minutes or so giving my statement to them. I believe Bloodhunter hid his weapon, because as long as he told the cops that the 3rd ref was supposed to blade HIMSELF he was fine, but what ACTUALLY happened was the direct result of Bloodhunters actions.”
After this strong statement, Hannibal would respond on his YouTube account, refuting many of the claims. Hannibal’s comments are as follows:
“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.”
Finally, the referee who was seriously injured disagreed with his attacker on Twitter, remarking:
“I had heard that I could have said “stop” at anytime. I just wanted to say that’s it’s very hard to talk when there is a 300lbs man’s knee on your back and then being put in a choke hold while being stabbed repeatedly in the head with an iron spike , passed out shortly after”
I had heard that I could have said “stop” at anytime. I just wanted to say that’s it’s very hard to talk when there is a 300lbs man’s knee on your back and then being put in a choke hold while being stabbed repeatedly in the head with an iron spike , passed out shortly after
— Lando Deltoro God’s perfect idiot (@Elcucuyfeo) December 14, 2021
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