6 WWE Stars Who Got In SERIOUS Trouble With The Law

Everybody was over in 2000 WWE.

Until Stone Cold Steve Austin came back in the late summer and ruined the vibe a bit, it was a glorious haven of ideas, opportunities and - weirdly - logic. The commercial and creative height of the Attitude Era was also a time of consistency and coherence thanks to the storyboarding of the late Chris Kreski. Kreski was in many respects an anti-Russo, and though he didn't helm creative for very long (or at all, per Bruce Prichard's odd recollections of the time on his podcast), his understanding of the medium outside of wrestling helped things exponentially within it. Endings were clearly mapped out, allowing the ebb and flow and weekly television to still serve logical outcomes and provide clues of where things might be going. In this uncharacteristically unique setting, wrestlers flourished. The buildings were white hot, performers grasped opportunities with both hands, a lot of people got rich, and to reiterate, everybody was over.

The aforementioned return of the 'Texas Rattlesnake' and his character's intent to find out who ran him over the prior November resulted in much of this coming to a - pardon the pun - screeching halt. Austin was mad (fair), wanted redemption (fairer still), and was booked to attack just about everybody verbally and physically in order to get answers (not fair, and quite harmful if you're a midcarder on the rise). 

William Regal was a rule-proving exception. Regal had introduced a rebadged version of his old 'Lord' persona upon making a surprising return to WWE in 2000, and Steve Austin wordlessly dropping him with a Stunner on the September 25th Raw was so out-of-pocket that it did more for the Brit's standing in the aftermath. It was the latest step on a road to recovering what many felt had been lost forever. 

This Regal was a far cry from the one that signed with the market leader in 1998 or even the one that briefly found his way back to a flailing World Championship Wrestling the following year. He was by then badly consumed by a substance abuse problem that threatened to destroy the career he'd built up to that point. One 1997 incident put him behind bars, and it speaks to his issues that he had no memory of how he found himself in the cell he woke up in.

Per latter recollections, it emerged that Regal had left an airplane toilet door ajar while urinating, and was simply too out-of-it to stop the flow when asked to close it by one of the stewards. He was subsequently fined a hefty $2500 and held in an Alaskan jail after the fight had to be landed prematurely. It became clear during some difficult-to-watch displays for WWE in 1998 that he was still some way from his rock bottom, but this particularly ugly incident had highlighted just how far he had fallen. Urine would feature again in his future, but it was thankfully more to make a moment that could be celebrated as opposed to one left in a dark corner of his past.