10 Wrestling Romances That Ended In Disaster
When shoot relationships don’t work out, the finish can be brutal.
All pro wrestlers are a little mad.
Professional wrestling is a bizarre stew of live stunt work, broad panto, improvisational theatre and public speaking. To stay at a high level, it requires constant maintenance of a specific look and a specific level of fitness and diet - all while constantly travelling. It’s painful and hard and for most it’s not even a decent living - to paraphrase CM Punk, you throw yourself at the ground for twenty minutes a night to make back the money you spent to get to the building.
It’s not a normal thing to do with your life in the first place, and it isn’t something people just dip into. For many, it’s a vocation, rather than an occupation: a fever, an obsession.
That’s why it’s completely understandable that people in the wrestling business would gravitate towards one another. After all, who else could possibly understand the odd lifestyle and unique stresses of life on the road; the hang-ups, the hassles and the headaches?
But all pro wrestlers are a little mad, and they don’t all make the best partners, lovers or significant others. Here’s ten little slices of there-but-for-the-grace-of-god: ten cautionary tales of romance gone off the rails like a runaway train...
10. Seth Rollins & Zahra Schreiber
If Seth Rollins wasn’t one of the WWE’s golden geese, this ugly and embarrassing car crash could have derailed his career.
Back in early 2015, Rollins was living the dream and loving it: engaged to a woman back home, hair stylist Leighla Schultz, and holding the Money In The Bank briefcase, making him a shoo-in for WWE Champion at some point in the next few months.
Unfortunately, he was also having an affair with NXT trainee Zahra Schreiber. Although details are sketchy, it seems likely that Schultz suspected something, rooted through his phone and found messages between the two that confirmed it… including nudes the two had exchanged.
Schultz posted the nude image of Schreiber to Rollins’ Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts shortly before Monday Night RAW went on the air on 9 February. Later that evening, she also used her own Twitter account to tweet the nude images of Rollins himself, captioning them with his lover’s name, and reportedly vented about the affair on her personal Facebook account.
Needless to say, Rollins and Schultz were done - but Rollins and Schreiber would end up moving in together and remained an item… until a few months later, when Schreiber was let go from NXT after it was revealed that sometime in 2012 she had Instagrammed a picture of Nazi memorabilia on her wall at home, along with a cartoon of a My Little Pony dressed as Hitler.
Nazi-fetishism was the last straw for the ambitious Rollins: he and Schreiber were over by Christmas.