



This is one of the most insane and heartbreaking stories we’ve shared in a long time, so we recommend you read it with caution.

Depression and mental illness can take your brain and heart to some truly terrifying places. Wrestling legend Tommy Dreamer opened up on the House of Hardcore podcast about where it took him: to almost committing a real murder-suicide shooting in the middle of WrestleMania X-7 in Houston, Texas.

As the story goes, Dreamer was told he was supposed to debut with WWE during the tables, ladders, and chairs match at the show, but plans changed. That, plus the recent closing of ECW, plus living with his parents, plus having turned down big money offers to stay with a failing company where the booker was secretly collecting checks from one of the same companies he’d told Tommy to turn down, pushed him too far. His solution to his problems: utilizing Texas’ lax gun laws to jump the rail at WrestleMania, murder Paul Heyman, and then kill himself.

Tommy’s words:

“I remember I did a show there, and I saw a sign that said, ‘Guns Welcome,’ and I was in Houston. I did an indie show, and I said, ‘What is this?’ I’m from New York, what do you mean, ‘guns welcome?’ and they said, ‘Oh you are allowed to bring a firearm into the venue.’ I was across the street from the Astrodome. When I tell you it resonated in my head so, so much. “That I’ll tell you what I wanted to do. It’s sick that I think this. At Wrestlemania, I was gonna hop the rail and I was gonna whack Paul E. in the back of the head right at the announce table, then I was gonna whack myself. The ultimate martyr, I was gonna hit my pose crack, boom, pull the trigger. Because I was that insane. Don’t know if I would have went through with it, but that’s what I was thinking about everyday. I was like, ‘I will go down in history.’ Pop, boom. First they’d think it as an angle until I shot him. I was so severely depressed and so mental with rage, I needed help.”

Thankfully for everyone involved, help came in the form of announcing legend Jim Ross.