In a recent appearance on The Doug Stanhope Podcast, William Regal revealed how he was smuggling drugs internationally in 1992.
Regal disclosed his first drug-smuggling deal in India, and how he almost got caught the second time in Egypt.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
William Regal on how he first smuggled drugs from India: This is before I moved to America. In 1992, for a few short months, I was an international drug smuggler… I’d been to India in 1992 and just happened, next door to the — I wouldn’t say it was a ‘nice hotel’ but I was in India for a month and I can use an old gag here but it was five stars. You could see four of ‘em through the hole in the roof. It wasn’t exactly the nicest of places. Next door, there was a pharmacy and I went in there one day just looking for some cream because I had been wrestling on — this is 1992 India and the mats… I went looking for some stuff.
There’s a little fella next to me and he said, ‘Oh, can I have some’ such and such and I did know a bit about steroids at the time and I went to the pharmacist, I said, ‘Do you have many of those?’ And he went, ‘Oh, as much as you want.’ So I knew the 200 Pound thing so I ended up getting — I had to buy two suitcases full. I bought two suitcases to fill because 200 Pounds in India, 200 English Pounds went a long way… This is in New Delhi.
The airport there, it was so corrupt that you had to pay to get a job there because they fleece everybody that comes through the airport. Basically, they stop you at customs and if you’ve got any money, they say, ‘Right. You got to give us your money’ and you have to pay to get a job there. This was then and I don’t know about now, this is ‘92. So, the promoter that I was working for was a very famous Indian wrestler and also a Bollywood star. Well he put somebody in charge of looking after me and so I got treated very well there. I got two suitcases full of steroids and I never even went through customs. I just got took straight and put on the plane…
So I go and get on the plane, I come home, I walk in my house in Blackpool, I call the fella who owned the gym. He’s dead now so it don’t matter. I won’t say his name anyway but he’s brown bread now so, I come in with two suitcases full. I call him up, it’s cost me 200 Pound. I know the price of them in England. I said, ‘Come around my house. I’ve got something for you,’ and I told him what it was. He said, ‘I’ll give you five grand for it.’ 200 English Pound turned into five grand within 20 minutes of me walking in my front door.
William Regal on how he was almost caught smuggling drugs in Egypt: Well a month later, I’m going to Egypt for a week… I spent the majority of the time going around all these pharmacies because now, this fella that I’ve just sold these steroids to for five grand, gave me a list. He’d done research of what he could get at the pharmacies in Egypt. So he’s told me to get this certain type. It was different from the ones I brought back from India. But it wasn’t as easy because I went into just one pharmacy in India and they supplied me with everything. So, I got into many, many pharmacies in Egypt in the five days and I got one suitcase full and it was still four grand worth because it was a higher quality steroid.
So as we’re leaving, we wrestle three shows there in five days and I’m leaving… You just turned up at the airport and… they always had someone to look after you. The promoter put somebody with you that spoke the language and look after you. We’re in a line going through security at the airport [Cairo]… you can see the bags going through and there’s a couple other lads with me.
Two of them have got cases full, one of them, my close friend Dave, I tried to get him to bring a case through and he was having none of it because he’s not that way inclined… He’s just not a crook in any way, and that’s just the way he was and I said, ‘Bring one bag and I’ll give you the money for it. I’ll make you a chunk of money’ and he was like, ‘No. I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it, not doing it,’ and so he’s behind me and a couple of other fellas who’ve got cases full of stuff, three fellas in front of me.
He’s just put his bag on the conveyor belt. It’s going through the machine. Now I can see the actual screen because in those days, it wasn’t like it is now. There was just a fella, an Egyptian fella, sat looking at the screen and I’m not paying any attention because as far as I know, it’s all legal as long as I’ve got 200 Pound receipts of what I’ve spent and the fella in England who owned the gym that I used to go to, he offered me five grand for this case before I even left. ‘So if you can get me a full case of this particular drug, you can have five grand’ so it’s a fair amount of profit to 200 Pound. So, this fella’s gone through. The next thing, the alarms are going off. I don’t know this fella. Three people in front of me. The alarms are going off, security is running out from everywhere with wooden batons, battering this fella to death and I mean just smashing the life out of him, and so I turn to the fella with us and I went, trying to be cool like Ray Winstone in a film, like in a gangster film…
I said to the fellow that’s looking after us, I said, ‘What’s going on here?’ And when I say battering this fella to death, they were battering this fella to death with sticks. I mean smashing the life out of him in front of us. There’s blood flying everywhere, they’re just smashing him and dragging him away… In front of everybody. So I tried to say as cool as a cucumber, ‘What’s going on here?’ And he went, ‘Well, what happens is people come over here and buy stuff from Pharmacies and it’s a lot cheaper here’ and he’s understanding what they’re saying. He said, ‘He’s got a lot of Insulin in his bag’ and he said, ‘The problem with that, the reason it’s so cheap in this country is because, the Egyptian government sponsors the pharmacies. So, if you take something out of this country, you’re basically stealing from the Egyptian government.’
As he’s finished that sentence, you can see my bag going through the thing and you can see 500 vials of this stuff called Primobolan all lined up in this bag of mine. They’ve already finished with him (man getting beat up), they dragged him away but this is just in minutes. My bag’s going through, well, the people with the sticks have gone so the next thing is the people come running out with machine guns. So I’m surrounded now with 20 fellas with machine guns all pointed at my head and I’m not making this up. All pointed at my head and (it’s) just a lot of (alarm noises) going off and this fella’s going, ‘Oh, this is not good.’ This fella is with us is going, ‘This ain’t good at all’ and I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a receipt for it.’ He said, ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re stealing from the Egyptian government.’ Next thing, I assumed he was the Head of Security, Police, I don’t know.
He comes walking over and this fella who’s with us, luckily, because they all know each other and they’re all cousins and they’ve got their airports sewn up, he walks over to him, starts talking to him and he comes over to me and he went, ‘He wants a present’ and I said, ‘Well, how much money do you got on you?’ And they paid us by check — or they’d actually had it drafted into our bank accounts that the actual wrestling money always get in.
So I go, ‘I’ve got whatever, 40 pounds of stuff left with me.’ My friend who didn’t want anything to do with it, I said, ‘Dave, can you lend me some money?’ He was going, ‘You prick. I don’t want nothing to do with this and you’re dragging me into this.’ So he’s given me some money. Now there’s two fellas behind me who’ve got a case full as well. They haven’t even got there yet, they haven’t got to the security so they’re panicking a bit. But I’m, at the time, and to a degree still do, I put a stone face on… I’ve bungled this money which turned out to be 90 English Pounds. The fella who was looking after us took this money and went over to the Chief of Police or Security and just started talking to him and he went, ‘Okay, go through’ and he just let us through and I got onto the plane and I just melted into the seat and I thought, that’s the end of my international drug smuggling days. So that was the end of that. Not long after that, everything worked out and I ended up coming to America so I’ve never had to do any of that stuff since.
Well, that was quite a story!
You can keep up with all your wrestling news right here on eWrestlingNews.com. Or, you can follow us over on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
