Original subtitles

You know you people right now are looking at the greatest talent in the

wrestling business today.

Christopher Colt.

Very shrewd individual.

I've often said that Chris Colt was the best wrestler that nobody ever saw.

I love pain. I'm a psychopath.

I'm a sadist. I'm a masochist. I do everything.

He was a maniac.

I'll rip your nuts out of you two.

A hell's angel.

A common charo.

A space odyssey. And the original rock and roll wrestler, Chris Colt, tore up

the territories in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, thrilling audiences with unhinged

performances and outlandish characters.

The seat of a strong space odyssey. And for all we know, Colt might well be from

outer space.

I'm surprised there were times that Chris didn't get stabbed or shot. That's

good he was as a heel.

A talented performer, Chris Colt's in -ring antics mirrored his volatility

outside of the squared circle.

When you looked in his eyes, you thought, my God, this is madman.

Chris was an outlaw.

He did just what you didn't want him to do, and he was happier doing it his way.

But beneath his psychedelic appearance, a darkness lurked.

And Chris's obsession with death was no act.

Chris had his own Vietnam War going on in his head.

I don't think that it was necessarily white picket fence, two kids and a dog

whatever. That's definitely not the life that he lived as a child.

They threw rocks at me, called me queer.

Small towns can be so weird and cruel.

Driven by demons and obsessed with death, he became a cult icon and a

But who was Chris Colt?

Chris's favorite saying is, hey man, I'm a homosexual,

I'm a drug addict, and I'm an alcoholic, and I'll match you scar for scar and

you'll look like a virgin.

I mean, Ozzy Osbourne was Mother Teresa next to Chris Colt.

Chris Colt stood out from the average wrestler because he wasn't just a rock

star. He was the most wild, over -the -top, strung -out rock star that he

possibly be.

I'm Jim Cornette. Before I started my 40 -plus year career in professional

wrestling, as a kid, I was a fan of Chris Colt.

Chris was overboard in every facet of life.

He wanted to have the most sex, take the most drugs, do the whatever.

One time, he gets booked in a cage match.

What's a cage match for? It's to keep the wrestlers in, right? They tell the

fans, no way in, no way out. We're going to settle this.

But they didn't count on Chris Colt taking LSD before he got in the cage.

So now the match is going on. There's people watching it.

Everything's normal. And suddenly, Chris Colt, he starts imagining that there

are giant spiders.

coming over the cage to get him. And you've got to think, what in the world

would that be like? You're almost naked in spandex in a ring surrounded by a

cage with thousands of people looking at you.

And suddenly, the giant spiders arrive.

And he's just freaking out.

And finally, he climbs over the cage.

And he starts punching people.

Fans. Every fan was like something that needed to be destroyed in his mind.

People, they can't see the spiders.

They don't know the spiders are there.

I'm watching the match from upstairs in the balcony.

Fans are just on top of him and they're just pummeling him. But he was

invincible. Chris didn't feel nothing. He was having bottles broke over his

head. He's like, ah!

It was like a monster.

I came downstairs.

I picked up a metal folding chair, and I started swinging it at the fans.

It just became a riot.

My name is Bill Anderson, 30 -year veteran of pro wrestling.

In the summer of 1975, my rookie year, I became a tag team partner

for Crazy Chris Colt as Bill Colt.

Cops started arriving, handcuffs going on people. All I smelled was mace. It

in my eyes. Everybody was burning.

The world is coming to an end in this arena.

And here I am, 18.

I drank maybe two beers in my entire life, wanting to be a pro wrestler.

all I cared about.

And there's my partner, a bloody mess, drugged out of his mind, beaten up out

his mind.

And that's my new partner to start my career.

And I'm like, wow, what the hell am I getting into?

Chris Colt was one of the early guys in the business who was wrapped up in the

rock and roll lifestyle. And part of rock and roll, especially in those days,

was drugs, chemicals, substances.

And when the other wrestlers were, back in the 60s, were, you know, still more

old -fashioned, Chris was on the edge of it, and he spent time around Janis

Joplin. He worked as a roadie for Joe Cocker.

So this is the notebook in which

Chris Colt started to write what he wanted to become a book.

There's about...

I think 100 pages or so here of handwritten notes.

Chris Colt telling his own story.

My name is Ty Haggard, and Chris Colt was my great -uncle.

As I read through this stuff, especially as a teenager, it was like, holy cow.

Some of this stuff is wild. I don't know if it's appropriate for a 13 -year -old

to be reading.

But as I read that stuff, I realized that it was his intentions for his story

get out.

I was bored in Phoenix one weekend and decided I wanted to go to San Francisco

for the first time, as it was always a dream of mine.

All the freedom of the 60s, people getting high, having open sex on bars,

streets, it was all open.

One night I was walking to Market Street. I noticed a girl sitting on some

looking lonely, chugging a gallon of wine.

I gave her a quick look, said hi, and kept walking.

She responded with, hey, want to have a drink?

I turned and I said, sure.

She just smiled.

Beyond her smile, I saw sincere deep eyes, but I also saw tragedy and hurt

pain.

Then as he's on his way to leave there, he stops at a head shop and sees a

poster on the wall and realizes that that's the person that he was talking

and it was Janis Joplin.

And so he went back and asked her, why didn't you tell me who you were? And she

just wanted a friend that wasn't there as a beggar or hanger -on or somebody

only liked her because she was talented or something. And he told her, gave her

a hug and told her, Janice, I will always be your friend.

I styled myself as a male Janis Joplin in the ring.

Jewelry, chains, clothes, attitude.

She left everything on the stage like he left everything in the ring.

She was living in the moment. She didn't care about the future. Living fast and

dying young.

That's the path that he figured he'd take.

Chris told me, if not once, he told me 500 times.

I plan on being dead by 27, just like Janis Joplin. And he did everything

he could to be there.

Born Charles Faye Harris in Idaho in 1946 and raised in the small town of

Oregon, Chris's chaotic upbringing set the tone for the rest of his life.

Monday through Friday, it was a very loving.

They had everything they wanted and needed. They had clothes. They had

They had food.

It's when they started drinking on the weekends that everything blew up.

My grandparents drank a lot, and I've heard stories that on weekends they

stop and get a case of half gallons of whiskey. They would get drunk and have

brawls, and the kids were all involved, and it got really brutal.

My name's Rhonda Rondo, and I am Chris Colt's niece.

My mother was his sister.

Wrestling fans know your uncle as Chris Colt. What do you call him?

Uncle Chuck.

He'll always be Uncle Chuck.

When he was, like, 10, he came home from a friend's house. It was a Saturday.

Everything was destroyed in the house. All the dishes were broke, and...

His mom was sitting over on the couch with a bloody face, and there was a gun

sitting next to her that Grandpa had hit her in the face with and split the

handle of the gun.

It was a wooden handle.

I thought she was dead.

She was flowing with blood, blood out of her nose, mouth, ears.

We put her in the back seat of the car, a 56 Chevy trying to hide her.

He hadn't had enough of her yet.

He was a raving maniac.

I screamed, I wish you were dead, you bastard.

He hit me, broke my eardrum.

He grabbed another gun and started firing it at us.

Sis was now behind the wheel, successfully driving down an old dirt

our escape to the highway.

I think by that time, my Uncle Chuck was like, oh my God, I got to get out of

here.

Some weekends, there was professional wrestling in the area. My mother and my

Uncle Chuck, they would drive to Roseburg, which was the closest big town

him to watch wrestling matches.

He just fell in love with it, and that's all he ever wanted to do.

One day in high school, Drain High.

We were having an orientation class, and the question came up, what are we going

to do with our lives?

My turn came, and I said, professional wrestler.

The class laughed.

It hurt me.

So my uncle went out for the wrestling team in high school, and he made the

team. He was really excited about it, and then decided that he needed to stand

out a little bit and bleached his hair blonde.

I kicked him off the wrestling team, kicked him out of school.

He got rocks thrown at him.

And so I think that in his mind, he was like, I'm going to show them.

I'm going to make it.

So he jumped on a bus, went out to Chicago.

Walked into wrestling school and said, hey, I want to do this. Well, that

exactly how it worked. It wasn't just an open invitation.

He found himself in a situation where he had to make some money.

He met a kid on the street that was prostituting himself.

Found that to be intriguing and saw that as a solution for how he could become a

professional wrestler.

Now remember, I never had a sex relationship with anyone.

But I had heavy bisexual feelings.

I was more attracted to men than women.

I wanted one thing, to be a professional wrestler.

So with nothing to lose, I hit the streets for the first time in my life.

I was scared, but it was survival.

He had a chip on his shoulder, and I think that that contributed to the by

-means -necessary type attitude that he took towards it. He was not going to

fail. He wanted to come back to his tiny little town of Drain, Oregon.

As a star.

Finding his way in Chicago.

Training by day. And hustling by night.

Charles Harris begins his wrestling career. With a variety of ring names.

Maurice Chevier.

The Magnificent Chevier.

And finally.

Chris Colt.

Colt Magazine was, at the time, one of the early underground gay publications,

and that's where he got the name Chris Colt from.

I was to go into the Army in 1966, and I said, Chris, gee, you're going to be

drafted pretty soon, too.

And he said, no, I'm disqualified.

And I said, disqualified?

Yeah, I checked out. I like boys.

So, c 'est la vie.

My name is Tom Burke.

I'm a wrestling collector and historian.

I've been friends with Chris Coe since we were teenagers.

It was a different world.

It was a different world. And that was my first contact with a person coming

in that sense.

I don't know that it was a big coming out party.

The challenge is that that must have presented him in the wrestling world at

time that he was doing it.

There were a lot of gay wrestlers that people didn't know were gay, but the

promoters did, or the boys did, but the fans didn't know.

I'm Princess Victoria.

I was half of the Women's World Tag Champions for the WWF.

Princess Victoria on the warpath.

Another double tomahawk chop.

There was one night, and one of the guys came over to me and said, we want you

to go over and spend some time with Chris Colt.

I said, why?

And not punching my own ticket, but he said, if anybody can turn him straight,

you can.

I guess they thought he was missing something by not being with women,

but that wasn't the case for Chris.

Once I noticed when we were traveling together, and he would talk about the

other boys in the circuit, and always had this image in his mind that,

They were backstabbing him and out to get him. Any territory, he was in and

He'd either have a personal issue or just something would happen, and he'd be

gone. The only place that he stayed for any significant portion of his career

was the small territory in Arizona.

In Arizona, Chris teams with wrestler Ron Dupree and takes the ring name Paul

Dupree. Tag teaming is the Dupree brothers.

It's a formative relationship in Chris's life, professionally and personally.

Ron Dupree was my Uncle Chuck's very best friend.

They were, like, very close.

I only got to be with him a couple times in life, but he was a very, very

nice, kind guy.

They were a couple. You know, Ron was older, probably by about maybe...

Eight years, maybe ten, their love for the business kind of gelled them

together.

Chris and Ronnie became lovers.

You know, I just never asked a lot of questions along the way, but it was

something I understood to be the way it was.

I can't imagine it would have been easy to be gay, period, in wrestling in the

50s or 60s, much less to be a gay couple.

It was not something that was easily accepted, and it wasn't information that

was offered freely.

So in a lot of cases, a promoter or a booker or the wrestlers in a particular

territory might not even know.

And through a number of different gimmicks, they kind of changed their

changed their presentation.

But they were always together.

Weighing in at a combined weight of 450 pounds, the world tag team champions,

the California Hells Angels. The California Hells Angels were a chance

to have a gimmick as a team.

Sort of bring real life into the thing.

The metal, the studs, the iron cross, the leather.

Well, they sell all that stuff in the village in New York City.

They were so far ahead of their time, nobody even knew what it was.

Okay, they're bikers. No, they're gay.

Same tailor.

Pushing the limits of what's acceptable to audiences of the era.

Chris is determined to become the ultimate villain.

Chris was so excited on TV once, and he knew, Chris knew how to generate heat.

In those days in wrestling, trying to push the envelope either meant you could

draw money because people would be shocked and surprised, or you could go

far and get heat, and the whole company could go under in the twinkling of an

eye because you thought it would fly, but it wouldn't.

Chris was not an anti -American by any means, but he took an American flag with

a lighter and lit it on fire and burned it up.

They went too far and they got kicked off the television for it.

Not the wrestlers, the actual wrestling program got taken off the air. Even in a

small territory in Arizona, even 50 years ago, even back in those days on a

local television show, even if you were heel wrestlers, it was going a little

too far to burn the American flag on television.

Didn't fly.

Chris's time in Arizona comes to an abrupt end when his lover, Ron Dupree,

suffers a heart attack.

Though Ron can no longer wrestle, The two continue their relationship outside

the ring. As Chris searches for a new tag team partner, he ends up in a trio

with Bill Anderson and Mike Boyette.

Chris had approached me and he says, I got a proposition for you. And not that

proposition, a different proposition.

He says, I'd like to have you be Bill Colt, my younger brother.

When they came to Tennessee, the team was supposed to be.

Chris Colt and Mike Boyette with valet Bill Colt. William Colt, the valet,

preceding his brother, and he almost got run over.

Colt changed outfits. He changed gimmicks because he was so wrapped up in

rock and roll lifestyle, the makeup, the hair he already had, the personal

habits he already had. He wanted to create his gimmick being that he is a

star. Bill, at the time, he has no body weight whatsoever.

He's just started.

So he's a lost ball in high weeds.

And if you were going to say, okay, who is the professional wrestler that is

using the most mind -altering substances?

If you weren't pointing at Chris Colt, you'd be pointing at Mike Boyette.

So this team was destined for disaster to begin with.

One night we left Johnson City. I'm driving. Mike Boyette's in the passenger

seat. Chris is in the backseat. He's getting high just like he wants to live

the Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker life.

And all of a sudden, I feel a punch to the side of my head.

And I was like looking in the mirror. I'm like, what are you doing?

He says, you.

And then he reached up with his right hand and grabbed Mike's hair and yanked

and pulled him back.

Then Chris reached up with his other hand and grabbed my hair and he's

me. And Mike just said, stop the car.

Stop the car.

What I learned, Mike is nobody to F with. He was a Vietnam veteran.

He was a world judo champion.

He was a very tough, legitimate guy.

So we pull over.

Chris gets out of the car, walks around to my side, boom, as hard as he could,

punches me in the face. Then he walked back over to Boyette.

did the same thing.

Mike says, this is your warning. One more time and I'll kill you.

Chris went to swing.

Mike blocked him, hooked him in a front face lock and just cinched on it.

And Chris just went limp.

Mike just dropped him.

Chris was laying right beside the car.

Mike gets in the passenger seat.

He says, back up.

I said, what do you mean back up? He says, just back up.

So I start slowly backing.

I get about an eighth of a mile down the road, and Mike grabs the wheel, puts

his foot on top of my foot on the accelerator on the gas, and he says,

this mother right now.

Chris Colt's erratic and violent behavior comes to a head.

as he's tossed onto a highway and stares down a car speeding in his direction.

Mike says, we're putting an end to this shit.

It's never going to happen again, ever.

It's the headlights getting brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter on

Chris's body.

And at the last second, I hit Mike's arm just to the side, and I turned the

wheel.

I says, Mike, we can't kill this guy.

Can't kill him. We can't do this.

And Mike says, that mother deserved to die.

Leave him. Leave him.

I honestly did not really overanalyze the story in my mind until many years

later that I could have been in prison the rest of my life for murder.

The cops could have easily arrested me and said, you purposely ran this guy

over. First degree murder.

Could have been death.

Easily.

Bill Anderson and Mike Boyette leave Chris for dead on the side of the

Road. But the next day when Bill makes his way home to his Nashville apartment,

a surprise is waiting for him.

Open the department door.

Look in.

And Chris is sitting at our dining room table.

And he's just big smile comes on his face.

Come on in. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down.

And I'm like.

Looking at Chris, never saying a word, like, oh, I'm back to being a brother,

maybe a friend again.

I don't know what's going on.

He says, we're getting rid of Boyette.

And that was the end of Boyette.

We were leaving Tennessee as a tag team, going to wrestle in Seattle.

Before I could even get off the plane, Chris was already off the plane and

sitting in a bar.

Remember it just like yesterday.

Remember him sitting there with a drink in front of him?

And that's my last visual of Chris.

And I hadn't made up my mind exactly what to do until right then.

And I said, I can't do this anymore.

And I just walked away.

Not long after his partnership with Bill Anderson ends, Chris's attempt to get

his career restarted.

is stopped when he suffers an unimaginable tragedy.

It was in Washington State at a small show that Ron Dupree had ring -announced

at, and he had a heart attack at ringside in front of all the people.

They called an ambulance. Chris rode with Ron in the ambulance to the

and Ron died on the way, right in front of Chris. He witnessed the whole thing.

He had loved Ronnie all his life.

That was the only time that I ever heard him come out and say anything of

emotion of that way.

Chris was holding his hand.

Chris told me that he just weeped and weeped.

I don't think Chris ever overcame the death of Ron Dupree.

He was devastated.

because they were so close. He didn't know how to go on without him.

My uncle was like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Well, they'd been together at that point for over 10 years, not only

professionally but personally.

That was a big turning point for Chris because he kind of lost an anchor that

had had to somebody to keep him tethered to some element of reality.

After losing my lover of six years, I hit bottom.

I thought the bottom under the bottom came later.

More dope was yet to come.

More fixes were to be made. More hearts were to be broken.

Mainly mine. And he just metamorphosized himself to fit whatever mood he was in

at the time. This is where he decides he's not just going to be called Chris

Colt. Now he's the Chris Colt experience.

And he uses Alice Cooper's Welcome to My

Nightmare as his entrance music.

What he did in that period of time was invent modern entrance music in

wrestling. He saw the tie in that it could have with the fans to set a tone.

pitch black, dark, psychedelic edge to it because that's where he was in his

mind space.

I will not be responsible for hurting, crippling, or putting anybody in the

hospital that I wrestle up against right now, Matt.

He'd make you hate him.

My name's Edward Juvenetti. I wrestled for 35 years as Moondog Ed Moretti. From

Idaho, Moondog Moretti.

Back then, you didn't have people like that. He would shock people. He would

scare people.

He's bizarrity at its best.

He was so bizarre, he got banned in England from wrestling on TV.

They called him the vampire.

They couldn't take how he was.

He was just too bizarre. He scared people.

And he was just being Chris.

When you look at the picture of Chris in his younger years, He's a good looking

guy. As years progressed and he got into his demonic possession

image where he would put needles and stuff in his face.

Just totally strange.

It was like out of a horror movie. You know, the whole vibe of welcome to my

nightmare. He was living it.

Chris's life from that point didn't get better. Definitely got more out of

control.

Throughout the mid -1980s, Chris's erratic behavior and appetite for drugs

both wildly out of control.

Into the 80s, if he popped up here, my

God, he might look like he hasn't seen the sun in 10 years.

Or if he pops up over here, now he's got more hair and he's got a mustache and a

beard and he's gained some weight and he looks like he might have once been out

in the sun.

And over here, he's barely able to stand up straight.

And promoters kind of got tired of, you know, is Chris going to show up? And if

he does, what shape is he going to be in?

Several years later, he's in Alabama as Chris Von Colt, and he's a Nazi.

He just said, well, what is the most offensive thing that I can do to the

general public? Ah, I'll become Chris Von Colt, and I'll be a Nazi.

Nazis were big in wrestling in the 50s and 60s to get all the heat because they

were heels.

It was after World War II. When you get to 1987, he just wanted to be a Nazi

just to piss people off.

I think it was desperation, maybe, trying to find heat, you know.

His reputation was getting tarnished left and right, probably because, you

at that time, I think he was getting too absorbed into drugs.

Chris Colt started doing cocaine, and I think that that was the beginning of the

turning point.

Then from there, it switched to crystal meth.

I think that that's where it got really dark, and that's where the desperation

came in.

By the late 1980s, Chris Colt's wrestling career dries up, due in part

mounting substance abuse issues.

After alienating most of his friends and allies, he fades into obscurity.

He was done wrestling. He has no income.

And so he gets this idea that he'll start busting drug houses.

I would go on six and seven days up.

By the way, now I'm addicted to crystal meth.

Speed. Not like the cocaine a few years ago.

I'm clean from coke. I just switched drugs.

A more dangerous one. One where you require no sleep, no food.

I'm in a dope house in Hollywood in the Silver Lake area.

one of the biggest dope houses around.

It took me four buys just to get in.

I walk in, confident, and place my order for an eight ball.

As soon as the dealer shows me, I flash my badge so fast they don't check it and

say, you're all under arrest.

I work for LAPD undercover.

I tell them the house is surrounded by police cars. I catch them off guard.

Take the dope and run.

You'd always hear a different story if you asked somebody, hey, have you heard

anything about Chris Colton? They're like, yeah, he's in Portland or he's in

Seattle, but they never knew anything definitive.

That's what kind of set about this mystique about Chris Colt today with the

modern generation because he has a 20 -year career with the most amazing ups

downs and all kinds of outlandish behavior and then disappears off the

the earth.

I mean, you could have said, oh, he's become an international double -naught

or an astronaut. It would have been equally as believable because his whole

was insane.

And nobody in wrestling knew where Chris Colt had gone until somebody

saw an adult movie.

With him as a gay man who, at least in his work, always kind of

had to keep that under wraps he was attempting to show the world that side

himself this is not something that i see as shameful this is who i am i

have not seen any of his productions but i understand that again he was over the

top with everything Whether it's wrestling, I got to take all the bumps

cause all the riots, or with sex, I got to have as much of it with as many

people as possible, and I don't care who and what and who's watching.

I did not hear about him doing those videos until very late in life. I

googled his name, and what I saw was like, oh my God, that

is not my uncle.

That was...

Very secretive. I had no idea that he had done any of that.

Now I'm back. I'm back and I'm in shape and I'm ready to fight.

And I'll run you right out of town.

And then I'll... After

disappearing

from the wrestling scene in the mid -80s, Chris Colt resurrects himself as

adult film star.

shocking many from his past.

Chris was a dream to work with. I sat him down in front of the camera, and as

soon as I turned the camera on and yelled action, Charles Harris turned

Chris Colt, the same way that Norma Jean Baker turned into Marilyn Monroe.

I'm Jack Fritcher. I've been a writer and a university professor teaching...

film and literature and pop culture, the editor of Drummer Magazine, and I've

written 20 books and shot 150 videos.

Well, Chris had been reading my writing in Drummer for years, and he liked my

Palm Drive Video movies because Palm Drive Video's tagline was masculine

for men who like men masculine.

In 1987, Drummer had a cover.

featuring the Barbarian Brothers.

They were actors and bodybuilders, but their gimmick was acting like pro

wrestlers. And shortly thereafter that, Chris contacted me about shooting a

video, and we set it all up that he came here and stayed for a week.

How old were you?

You were 17 when you started. What year was that?

1921. 1921.

During the San Francisco... I was four years old.

Palm Drive Video was like the USO, entertaining the American troops during

war. Palm Drive entertained gay men during the 1980s. We specialized in

solo videos. That is, one actor talking to the viewer through the camera lens.

Chris Colt's heat was in his person, in his space, and the way he related

directly to the camera. Yeah, I'm a street fighter. I'm the original rock

roll wrestler. The original Hell's Angel of wrestling.

Chris knew also that I was not going to give him a script. He could let it all

hang out and be as crude and honest and open and vulgar even as he wanted to be.

You want a wrestler dick? A real man, a professional wrestler dick? I am the

king of wrestling.

He said one of the greatest powers he ever felt in his life was walking into a

ring and making 10 ,000 fans scream.

The way he made 10 ,000 fans scream, he put that energy into the camera to make

the viewer come.

Most people don't bring this amount of energy to the screen right away. You

to build them up to it. But he hit the set running.

I mean, this is not fake. This is real.

That's you in the mask.

That's me in the mask, yes.

I shall have these moments to remember.

Chris was trying to create a statement about...

his triumph in wrestling, in his wrestling career as a homo -masculine

Another victory.

One more time, somebody goes down, and they're going to go down on me.

Pro wrestling has always been softcore porn for gay men, and Chris knew that

as a wrestler, he himself was a fetish object.

Hulk Hogan out of New York City. He was scared to sign a match with me because

I'd take his belt and slap his ass with it.

Hulk Hogan was a god to the gay community.

When Hulk would play with the WWF as a cow palace, the cow palace would be

filled with gay men there yelling the Hulkster on.

Because to them, he was a strong, powerful, well -built, healthy -looking

That is 24 inches. That is incredible.

That's awesome, I'll tell you.

And they were strong, powerful men themselves, but they were afraid that

were going to shrink away because AIDS is known as the wasting disease.

Did Chris himself, was he infected?

I don't know if he was infected. I presume that all my models in the 80s

infected because you didn't ask and they didn't tell.

And I made sure that everything on set was very sterile and sanitized.

And there was no discussion of that.

He looked perfectly healthy, but somebody with AIDS can look perfectly

And Chris was writing a book about wrestling.

The Inside Story.

And I'm going to help him with it on the final version.

That's going to be in there.

Chris came to me because he knew he needed a different kind of publicity and

coverage for this last part of his career. In a sense, movies are like a

gladiator entering the Coliseum for his last match.

Hail and farewell.

We who are about to die salute you.

He had hoped to have an extra act by being a trainer and a coach, but

that never happened.

Almost ten years after his wrestling career was over, Chris Colt's wild and

chaotic life quietly comes to an end.

Tell me the story of how he passed away. What is your understanding of how he

passed away?

He was found in a back alley in Seattle.

I'm sure of that.

Sure of that part. How and what the circumstances were in regards to how he

ended up there, I'm not sure.

I had heard through the grapevine that he was found in a chair.

with a needle in his arm when he died, when they found him dead. And he had

dead for like about two or three days.

Shortly after he died, I got a phone call from somebody asking me if I knew

anything about his death. And I said no. And they told me that they thought that

he had died of AIDS in some kind of flop house in Seattle.

He died the way he wanted to die. That was Chris. And it was probably on the

streets. He didn't want to live in this world any other way.

I don't think it was peaceful. I can tell you that.

He's not the type of guy who was ever not at full tilt.

And I would believe that he died in that same vein.

The official death certificate for Charles Fay Harris, dated May 23, 1995,

lists HIV as a factor in his death.

No autopsy is performed.

His listed occupation, professional wrestler.

It's been a lot of years to try to make it here.

That's why this means so much.

He lived his life the way he wanted to live it.

He lived a rock star lifestyle.

and that's the way he would have wanted it. I mean, if he would do it over

again, he would have done it the same way.

He died too young, although it's what he wanted, honestly.

If he had it his way, it would have been 27, but at 49, his body succumbed, and

I can only just say I'm really sorry that he's gone, and I wish he was here.

He was the first at so many things, and he was so good at what he did, the way

that he could work, the way that he could bump, the way that he could get

from the crowd, the way that he could talk on promos. He was decades ahead of

his time, and his talents would be in the upper 20 % of anybody in the

today.

Chris was just outstanding.

He was ahead of his time.

I think Chris was one of the true icons of wrestling, a person who

changed the focus of wrestling and brought rock and roll into wrestling

far earlier than Cyndi Lauper, Hulk Hogan, etc.

He was doing things like coming off of the top rope with an elbow before a lot

of other people were.

If Chris was not on drugs and alcohol, Chris would have been one of the

greatest. If you reduce people to one word, you miss the entire world of what

they are really about.

And so reducing Chris to a drug addict, an alcoholic, a faggot,

does not come anywhere near to the inner truth of what that man was about.

And I think a lot of his addictions

to alcohol and drugs, grew out of the homophobia that he experienced in the

world and in wrestling.

He's a complete human being. You can go to online forums that talk about pro

wrestling, and they'll talk about the character that was Chris Colt. This is a

real human being with his own demons and family and people that he loved.

He was a really, really good uncle.

You know, he would always bring us something.

when he would come to visit.

Sometimes it might have just been a roll of toilet paper from a motel, but we

were happy to get it from him because he was our uncle.

The last letter I got from him was 1991.

I stopped drinking and drugging.

I'm clean and sober the way I should have been.

And from now on, Chris Coe is buried.

Chuck Harris lives.

We want to talk to you soon.

And he signs off.

Write well. Keep well. Your buddy, the legendary Chris Coe, a .k

.a. Chuck Harris.

Such is life.