12 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Saving Paul Orndorff
1. Travis Filming Him “Raised Holy Hell”
In 2021, Paul was hospitalised with pneumonia.
Travis visited him and was shocked by the sheer state his father was in. He saw he was close to death and wanted to take him home, but docs/nurses said he couldn’t because he wasn’t listed as next of kin and they couldn’t reach Ronda. Travis threatened to “raise holy hell”, and decided to film his dad to raise awareness and shock people into helping him out. On VICE, there's footage of Paul eating pepper sachets and barely even being in the room mentally at all. It's...harrowing.
Cornette, Arn Anderson, Gerald Brisco and others found the video clip distressing, and some didn’t agree with Travis putting it out there because they didn’t want Orndorff to feel embarrassed. Trav argues that he didn’t have any choice, but Brisco said he “was furious with [Paul's] son". Blair called Travis and asked what he was thinking: “This is nobody else’s business, Travis”. However, Trav wouldn’t take the clip down: “That was a plea. I was desperate, I was scared to death”.
He didn’t want his dad to die alone in hospital during the COVID pandemic. Rightly or wrongly from a moral standpoint, he took matters into his own hands. Some talking head critics softened retrospectively, and Travis says taking his dad home to live out the rest of his life with him was “the best decision of my life”.
Eventually, he also decided to forgive his mother for her own problems.
What else did you learn from VICE's 'Dark Side Of The Ring' episode on Paul Orndorff? For more like this, check out 10 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Big Boss Man and 12 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: The Fall Of Renegade!