WWE filed a lawsuit on Monday in U.S. District Court in Connecticut against retired pro-wrestlers Robert Windham (Blackjack Mulligan), Thomas Billington (Dynamite Kid), James Ware (Koko B. Ware) and Oreal Perras (Ivan Koloff) and possibly others to attempt to keep them from filing lawsuits against the company. Below is a statement from WWE:
WWE Defends Against False Allegations
“WWE filed a lawsuit in Connecticut to protect the company from a series of fraudulent claims made by a Massachusetts attorney regarding alleged concussion-related injuries. A few examples of such false allegations from this lawyer include: Claims in two different federal courts that five individuals died prematurely due to head injuries when in fact all five individuals are alive today, falsely stating that an individual’s years of performance with WWE spanned 22 years from 1985 through 2007, when in fact the individual performed for only 2 years (1985-1986 and 1992-1993) and made one appearance in 2007.
Other allegations include: Alleging that head injury led to the death of a morbidly obese former performer who died of a heart attack years after last performing for WWE, a claim that an individual suffered from deafness allegedly due to head injury when said individual has publicly stated that he was deaf since birth, claiming that head injury led to the accidental drug overdose of a former performer over 20 years after he last performed.
It is unfortunate that some former performers have been improperly recruited under the guise of a big ‘pay day’, and we feel badly that these individuals are being misled and exploited.”