12 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Saving Paul Orndorff

5. How His WWF Wealth Evaporated

Again, Paul was in bed with a business manager called Shelton Thorne who had helped him invest in the bowling biz. Later, it was revealed (surely to an aghast Orndorff family) that Shelton was running “a Ponzi scheme” that had gobbled up a ton of the fortune Paul had amassed from his WWF tenure.

In short, Thorne frittered away that wealth.

The investors affected sued Paul as well as Thorne, but according to Travis "they didn’t win because we didn’t have anything”. This whole drama basically bankrupted Orndorff, which led to him returning to wrestling as the 1990s dawned. Perhaps bizarrely, 'Dark Side' chose not to talk about his short-lived WCW run in '90. They can't have thought there were too many juicy stories from that stint, or something.

However, the UWF did get some airtime, and there's even footage of Orndorff shilling UWF t-shirts along with young fans. Cornette also talked about ringing Paul up and seeing if he'd come in "for an agreeable rate" to do some shots for his Smoky Mountain Wrestling territory in 1992. 'Mr. Wonderful' was up for that, and Jim said you couldn't really tell he wasn't the same guy who'd headlined against Hogan years earlier.

In-ring, Paul was still a strong worker, so he was able to cover for his smaller right arm. During promos, he'd make a point of standing with his bigger arm/shoulder facing the camera, and his double bicep pose became a single bicep pose so nobody would see the size difference.

It's pretty obvious that Orndorff needed the money by this point in his life. Getting mixed up with Thorne had been disastrous for him.