12 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Saving Paul Orndorff
4. Mark Jindrak Takes A Ton of Flak
In 1993, Paul signed on as a trainer at WCW's in house Power Plant facility. He did continue to wrestle here or there, but was never a serious ongoing concern creatively. VICE aired footage of a particularly bizarre skit with TV psychic Gary Spivey that has to be seen to be believed. The overacting would've been hilarious if it wasn't meant to be taken at face value.
By 2000, Orndorff was knackered physically, but WCW's braintrust thought it'd be a fun idea to bring him out of retirement for a match at the Fall Brawl pay-per-view in September. There, Paul teamed with The Filthy Animals vs. The Natural Born Thrillers group. As the story went, he'd been responsible for training some of those guys down at the Power Planet before they made it to TV.
Cornette brutally buried Mark Jindrak by saying he "couldn't wrestle out of a wet paper bag", and that was all set up for footage of a piledriver spot that went wrong. ‘Dark Side’ blames Jindrak by saying he wasn’t properly set. Then, during a 2002 shoot, Paul said he was trying to protect Mark, but “hit the ring and my whole right side went numb”.
The broken neck and stinger rendered him immobile immediately, and he had to tell the ref to get Sean O’Haire to pin him so they could get out of there. Arn Anderson: “It was God telling him, you’re done”. Somehow, which isn't told here, that wouldn't be Orndorff's final wrestling match; he returned to the ring for an independent show in 2017, which is outrageous given some of the stories told next.