10 Toxic Real-Life Wrestling Relationships
Love and other drugs.
Professional wrestling has long been touted as an industry where few interpersonal relationships survive, let alone thrive. Marriages, family ties, friendships and even simple business connections have been irreversibly discontinued by the demanding and often unforgiving toil of Sports Entertainment.
The ongoing tales of drama that routinely emerge from the personal lives of Paige and Alberto El Patron have become the latest public fascia that serves as a reminder to fans of the challenging dynamics wrestlers face in an effort to maintain relationships.
Their most recent alleged split followed a host of rumours about their fragility whilst Paige remained benched with a neck injury following back-to-back Wellness Policy violations. Recent reports suggested they may have separated for good, which would commit yet another wrestling partnership to history, where many brutal severances lie.
Tragically, at the expense of a fulfilling social life, wrestlers are forced mainly to commit everything they have to a profession that potentially offers nothing in return. Though some combinations have at times prospered, even those have caused untold damage to some of the fellow professionals closely linked.
These particular kinships either caused devastation as they occurred or left a wake of destruction in their path. Typical of wrestling's extremes, the traumas were always emotional, sometimes physical, and very occasionally, fatal.
10. Shawn Michaels & Sunny
A worst-kept-secret in the industry at the time, Shawn Michaels and Tammy 'Sunny' Sytch's relationship not only irreversibly damaged Chris Candido's WWE career but also led to a chain of events that would further fracture 'HBK's relations with Bret Hart.
Candido and Sytch were a package deal in Smoky Mountain Wrestling and WWE, but Tammy's model looks and shrewd understanding of wrestling's nuances made her a different commodity altogether as the company tiptoed closer to the Attitude Era.
By late-1996, Sunny had almost completely moved away from managerial duties, as well as Candido, whom she claims she was partially separated from when her affair with Michaels began. Skip was written off television by the end of the year, but Michaels and Sunny's relationship intensified.
Both were heavily under the influence of various substances at the time, with Shawn considered almost impossible to deal with by the locker room following his tumultuous first WWE Title run coinciding with WCW's incredible surge ahead in the Monday Night ratings war.
Their troubled on-off union was made public in ugly fashion during the infamous 'Sunny Days' promo Michaels cut on Raw, in which he implied she was also sleeping with Bret Hart. Both vehemently denied the claim, but the comments led to a real-life fight just weeks later, and helped foster the ugly mistrust that permeated between the pair.