‘Big’ Vito LoGrasso’s Wife Provides Shocking Detail On Rockin’ Rebel Tragedy, Responds To Claim Made By Dave Meltzer

On the June 7th, 2018 edition of Vince Russo’s Castrating the Marks (available here), Russo’s guest was Brand co-host Noel Harlow LoGrasso.  Noel spoke about Rockin’ Rebel and clarified a recent allegation regarding her husband Vito LoGrasso’s testimony in his CTE lawsuit.

 

Vince Russo: Noel, as calmly as you can…I have not heard the clip. I wanted to hear it for the first time from you. I wanted to hear it for the first time tonight, so I don’t know what I’m gonna say ahead of time. So, I’m going to let you walk us through the story and then I know Jeff has the clip. So, go ahead Noel.

Noel Harlow LoGrasso: Okay. There are two offensive things that Dave Meltzer has done. One of them, unfortunately, is tragic because Vince knows because he talked to me on Friday that there was a tragic event where a couple that my husband and I were very close to. I was best friends with the wife, we’d been friends since I was 19. He committed suicide and killed her.

Vince: Wait, wait. Hold on right there, Noel. We’re talking about Rockin’ Rebel from ECW, it was all over online. Bin, did you know him?

Bin Hamin: I did and I kinda have one degree of separation of a lot of guys I’ve worked with. Sean Carr and Rob Cook, some well-known New York independent wrestlers, so ya know, and Noel, I just wanna extend, ya know, my condolences before we get into any castrating, along those lines, or anybody that knew him for such a tragic loss that can’t ever really be justified, or ya know, that’s just gonna, ya know, be a tough one for a long time, so ya know, so from the whole Hamin Army and Brand and all the Conspiracy Horseman, ya know, we watched. We didn’t wanna reach out and say anything out of turn but our condolences.

Noel: Thank you. Thank you very much. Dave Meltzer thought it was his right to go…

Vince: Whoa, whoa, hold on, Noel, Noel, no. Don’t get ahead of yourself because you’ve got – listen, you and I spoke an hour after this happened. Who called you immediately?

Noel: You did.

Vince: Uncle Vince.

Noel: Uncle Vince did.

Vince: Noel, these weren’t just acquaintances. You had a history with this family. You guys have a very tight knit community of wrestlers. You gotta explain that, so people don’t make the assumption that you met the guy at a wrestling show.

Noel: Oh. Yeah, no.

Vince: Give them the background of the relationship, and I think you should get into some of the things you told me, so people can understand this has been a big part of your life for a number of years.

Noel: Yeah, and I’m not trying to be exploitative ’cause really what I want to do, is I want people to remember my friend Stephanie, because everybody is focused on Rockin’ Rebel because he’s a wrestler. People knew him from ECW, people knew him from this or that and it’s sensational. So, people are sharing his pictures and sharing his stories but nobody’s sharing anything about Stephanie. I met Chuck and Stephanie when I was 19 years old. I worked at a district court where one of the constables was a wrestler. I was married previously at the time, I was younger. So, we went, and we went to the wrestling show and I made friends with the both of them and I had gotten involved in wrestling. So, I have known them since I was 19 and I’m on the latter end of 30, so that’s how long I have known these two. Vito’s known them almost as long as I have. We spent holidays together, their kids call us aunt and uncle. He didn’t have a lot of family, his parents passed away. So, we would, Christmas Eve, we’d have Christmas Eve, we used to have what we’d call ‘Wrestlegiving’, where all the community of wrestlers would come together. We’d all bring food. That’s how tight we all were. And what did I tell you Vince, it was about a year ago things started getting a little strange with him. He started acting very strange. It had been going on where they had confrontations. I’d get a phone call at three o’clock in the morning and she would be upset and crying and yelling. And then Vito would have to call him and calm him down. So, for probably the better part of three years we kept them from fighting. And other people in this little group did the same, but it was mainly Vito and myself. So, Vito asked Rebel to go and get checked for CTE, and I know sometimes I…

Vince: You were also telling me, Noel, you know, I know Bin knows a lot about this ’cause he’s a worker, but I mean, the guy had like, hand shakes, and I mean stuff like this, right?

Noel: Yeah. It got pretty bad where his hands were shaking. He worked as a landscaper during the week, he owned a business. So, he would go to a job and she said he would forget where he was going. And he would call her and not know where he was in his hometown. Like, he started having major issues. And see, here’s people that we’re close to and unless you’re like sitting here watching it and somebody’s telling you, you don’t notice, or you don’t know that there’s something wrong with somebody. You kinda have to know what you’re looking for, and obviously Vito is an advocate for CTE awareness, so he noticed these problems with the temper and the getting lost and the shaking, and he said, Chuck, let me take you to my doctor. He’s like, ‘let me take you, they did this brain mapping with me, I found out how many concussions I had, like, I’m learning to treat things’, he’s like ‘come with me’. He says, ‘I’ll take ya, I’ll drive ya, I’ll take ya for a beer after, let’s go’. He wouldn’t do it, he was in denial. ‘Oh, I’m fine, I’m just tired’. Or, ‘I’ve been working a lot’ or I was up <unintelligible>’. Meanwhile, I was trying to tell her, ‘Hey listen, like together, why don’t you and I go and talk to Chuck’, and she was trying to get him to go. He went to therapy a few times just to talk but he would not go. He was terrified something was wrong with him. Terrified. So, he wouldn’t go and get checked out, and to anybody that’s a worker or in a contact sport, man, go to your neurologist please, please, please, go to your neurologist before something like this happens. It’s awful, it’s terrible. And ya know, my husband’s come on many times and talked about what he goes through with CTE and with post-concussion syndrome. It’s honestly terrible. Terrible. And Vince, you’ve actually heard an episode with Vito and I, where he was like that on the phone. Do you remember?

Vince: Of course, I do.

Noel: Several months ago.

Vince: Of course, I do.

Noel: I was on the phone with Vince when it happened. And he just loses it and then comes back together. But he treats it. Chuck wouldn’t treat it. He wouldn’t take medication, he wouldn’t go to the doctor. He just couldn’t consign himself but there was something wrong in his brain. About a year ago he started acting very, very strange. It got worse. He started pushing his group of friends away. I mean, there’s a good group of people who have known each other more than 15 years. Did holidays, vacations, everything together. We all did everything together. And we always knew Chuck was a little brash, or he’d have a bad attitude like sometimes, but he was the first one if you were in trouble to be there. When I had my stroke, he told them he was my brother, to get into the ICU, to see if I was okay, with his wife. They were the first ones there. So, it’s not like you can look at somebody and go, ‘You were a bad person’, ‘You did this bad thing’. Oh my God, it’s the worst thing I can think of. But, a year ago, she told me he was going to do this. A year ago. And I begged her to leave, begged her. I said, ‘Come to my house and stay with me. I have the room here, I’m an empty nester. My kids in college, like, my other kids away from school’. ‘Come take the kids and move in here’. She has twins. A boy and a girl, <names of minor children redacted>, 10. And, she says I can’t, he’ll find me. And if he finds me, he’ll kill me. And I said, ‘There’s got to be a way to get you out’, I offered to buy video cameras, the little ones to put in her house because she would call the police when he would get violent. And then he would do something like scratch himself or whatever so when the police came he would go ‘Well, she hit me too’. So, that way they would go, ‘Well, we have to take both of you in because he says you hit her’, and then she would go, ‘No, no, no’. She didn’t want her kids to go to foster care or be taken away because they both got put in jail for domestic assault. Which is a major, major problem and flaw in the way we do things quite honestly. So, they wouldn’t believe, they wouldn’t do anything honestly. They just kept coming to the house, over and over and over again. It kind of fell on Vito and I to like, get them to calm down. I can’t tell you how many times Vito drove over there, and he would be in a meeting and he would leave to go over there to calm him down, or you know, leave here or leave the hospital when I was in the hospital and go over there to calm him down. I mean, this went on for years. After I had the stroke, Vito says, ‘We can’t, we just can’t keep doing this, our lives are getting extraordinarily complicated and difficult’. I mean, I could hardly speak, and here I am still getting 3:00 AM phone calls.

Vince: Right.

Noel: I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t do it anymore. But, she was telling me he was going to do it, Vince, and she knew, and she told me where her papers were, she told me to make sure her children were taken care of. This week her sister messaged me and said, ‘Stephanie said you will always have her back and you understand. I need to know did she want buried, did she want cremated’. I had to make those decisions this week. I don’t even wanna think about it, I’m sick. I’m sick thinking about, she just didn’t tell anybody, and we were the ones that knew, but the police had been there dozens and dozens of times. And they just drove away. And they didn’t do anything. Nothing.

Vince: Yeah.

Noel: And then…

Vince: Okay, so go ahead now, of course Meltzer the journalist gets ahold of the story and what, go ahead. I don’t know what he said.

Noel: He starts talking about what had happened. And at first, when the story broke, people didn’t really know what happened, the close friends knew. We knew what happened. And I knew from the family who had done what to who. I already knew, it was very obvious. And, he starts running his mouth about the story and ya know, only have met him so many times, but he starts going in depth and starts talking about the children and things about the children. He starts saying, ‘Oh, well they had twin sons’. He doesn’t even know the gender of their children. <Name of minor child redacted> is a girl. <Name of minor child redacted> is a boy. He got the ages wrong. They’re 10 years old. People like Meltzer, and I’m not just gonna nail this one on Meltzer, there’s people out there, your Rob Feinstein’s quoted in these different papers today as being Rebel’s promoter. I don’t ever remember him working for him, ever. Ever. And I’ve known him since I was 19. So, like, Rob, if you could tell me when that was, that would be great. You wanna come out here, and he capitalizes when people die. The second he hears Bruno Sammartino dies, he goes into his closet and pulls out a dozen 8 x 10’s and signed t-shirts to sell because people like to take advantage of tragedy and people’s death and make a buck. That’s disgusting, Rob Feinstein. That’s disgusting. And I know you. How could you do that? How can you go and ‘Well, I knew him for 30-something years and you know what, Rob? I was at his dinner table, I was at her dinner table. Didn’t see you there. Where were you? Probably at the ECW Arena, hocking shit out of the trunk of your car. He wasn’t there.

Vince: Noel, that’s the good thing, and Bin, at my funeral, Jeff Lane is not going to be selling my 8 x 10’s, he’s going to be selling his t-shirt, Jeff Lane. But go ahead with the story, Noel. So, now how did this parlay into Vito lying on the witness stand. How do we go from this to that?

Noel: Numero Uno, Vito was never on a witness stand. Because it never got to that point. That’s number one.

Vince: And he said Vito lied on a witness stand?

Jeff Lane: Under oath.

Noel: Hold on a second. Hold on a second. <Vito enters the room and embraces Noel>

Vince: Vito’s doing the run-in. Bin, do we have time for this emotional scene here?

Bin: I don’t know if I appreciate this open display of affection…<unintelligible>

Noel: Sorry guys, I haven’t seen my husband in a month, sorry I’m really excited.

<Friends of the family walk into Noel’s room and she introduces them>

Noel: I’m sorry, the house of LoGrasso is open 24 hours a day.

Vince: So, he said Vito lied on the witness stand and Vito was never on a witness stand.

Noel: Vito never even got on a witness stand. Let me tell you something, holly Hobbit Dave Meltzer.

Jeff: Let me play the clip.

Vince: Let’s hear the clip. Wait, have you heard this clip, Bin?

Bin: I haven’t. I heard about it, but I haven’t heard the clip.

Vince: I haven’t heard it either. Go ahead, Jeff.

<Jeff plays the audio clip of Dave Meltzer saying Vito “completely lied under oath.”

Noel: Really? Really Dave Meltzer? Really? Guess what, Dave? Dave looks like the troll from Labyrinth, by the way. Like, he looks like his twin, alright. Dave Meltzer…no, you’ve known me long enough.

Vince: Let me say this before you get started. And Bin I want to throw this out there too. And you too Jeff, okay? Guys, there are a lot of people I don’t like. But how would you possibly know if somebody lied under oath? Like bro, that is a serious claim to make. I mean, Bin, how would he know if Vito lied under oath? Now Jeff, you heard the clip. Did he say what he lied about?

Jeff: It was very hard for me to listen to for what I was sent. It wasn’t a good audio clip of it, but I’m not sure if he said exactly what he lied about.

Vince: Did he say what he lied about, or did he just make that blanket statement?

Noel: He just made that blanket statement, said he lied. He was talking about the CTE case because they were talking about the Chuck Williams and Stephanie, Rockin’ Rebel situation. They parlayed into talking about CTE and it’s not fair, like they were kinda starting to defend it, and then they were talking about the kid Evan Singleton that was on the case with Vito who literally colors in coloring books and plays with dinosaurs, by the way. Like, that’s how far gone this kids brain is and he’s a kid, he’s in his 20’s. He said, 100% Vito lied under oath, blah, blah, blah. Let me say that I have seen the deposition that Vito has taped, because I helped the lawyer because he’s not a wrestling person. So, I helped him understand wrestling terms, different things, I would send him for articles. Like basically, I played like pro wrestling paralegal for him. Because he didn’t have anybody who understands the business. So, I helped him. Okay, and by the way Dave Meltzer, my lawyer says he really appreciates your comment, you should hear from him soon. Anyway, what happened was, Vito came in, Vito did the deposition. A deposition is under oath, but he didn’t testify. He didn’t get on the stand and testify. It’s a deposition before a trial, that’s it. That’s all it was. It never went to trial because it just kept getting blocked by typos and things like that – Oh, Chris Benoit, Steve Benoit. The judge, Steven Benoit was Chris Benoit’s name in the paperwork, to the judge. Honestly, she never went through and looked, she just decided she didn’t want to deal with it anymore. She threw it off the docket. It was just too much paperwork for them, after three years. So, Vito came out and he had wrestled a match. Now, my husband has been hit in the head many times and if you guys recall, when Vito was wearing the dress, he did a program with William Regal. I don’t know if you guys remember that, but he did a full program with William Regal. Anybody in the business knows William Regal is one of the stiffest, tightest workers in the business. Remember he beat up Goldberg because he could? Like, Vito worked house shows with him, he worked Smackdown tapings live with him, the whole nine yards. He did the loop with him. There is an episode of Smackdown where William Regal is laying into Vito. Vito, I know this sounds stupid, but Vito’s dress gets hooked on the apron, Regal hits him and when Vito falls, he hits the steps. Okay, with his head. After that, he had headaches, he had all kinds of issues. He didn’t know to get a concussion, you could be awake. He thought a concussion meant you were knocked out because they didn’t educate anybody. Nobody knew. And this was before the Benoit incident. Vito was there for Eddie Guerrero stuff. All that. Vito was there for that when it happened. So, it was like, shake it off and go back and do your thing. So, the WWE said Vito didn’t hit his head on the steps. And they were basically like, how can you say that, here’s the tape. Well, we have different angles, but you could not really see if Vito hit his head on the steps or not. Vito knows he got hurt in that match. But Vito worked William Regal on the loop, he got hurt in every match. Like, he was stiff with him. So, the WWE’s defense was, ‘Well, we don’t think that Vito hit his head’. The lawyer goes, ‘It doesn’t really matter whether he hit his head in that one match or not, he’s had over a thousand concussions, according to his brain mapping from the doctor. Over a thousand concussions, guys. So, they were picking on this one hit to the steps that they didn’t think he did, but he knows.

Vince: If Vito had a thousand concussions, why would he lie about the one hit to the steps?

Noel: That’s why it doesn’t make any sense. But the WWE defense was, ‘Well, we think Vito didn’t hit his head’. Then the lawyers said that’s perjury because he didn’t hit his head. Well, number one, when you’re in a civil case, there’s no such thing as perjury, geniuses. It’s called something completely different. And you gotta be on the stand and lie on the stand. There is no perjury outside of a criminal case. You are not perjuring yourself.

Vince: He gave a deposition.

Noel: He gave a deposition. That was it. Now, in return, just so all the wrestling fans know and all the wrestlers wanna know how much Vince McMahon and Triple H and Stephanie care about all of you, and all of the wrestlers currently working there, and by the way, I speak for myself because, excuse my language, if my husband gave one fuck, he would be in here, other than like he came in, kissed me and left. Okay, so this is what he thinks of you. Triple H was more interested in playing with the coaster that was sitting on the table, and it’s in the depo ’cause I’ve seen it. He goes, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that was a coaster, that’s really interesting’. ‘This is a coaster’, while they’re asking him about being on the board of directors for the Chris Nowinski Legacy Foundation. Triple H was more concerned about that coaster on the table, than he was concerned about what they were saying, and he called the lawyer a ‘mark’ and didn’t wanna ask any questions. ‘You’re a mark’.

<After some additional discussion, Vito appears with Noel on camera and the topic turns to Dave Meltzer>

Vito: Guys, I gotta tell you something. I really don’t have nothing to say about guys like that because they don’t matter in my life, so they can talk all the crap. You guys can represent me, my wife can speak for me. I got nothing to say, you know, when it comes down to it guys, when you’re standing in front of me and your ass turns into a clam, that’s the most important thing I like more than anything because you tighten up. Then you gotta answer for what you said. One day I’ll be in the presence of some people and then we’ll see what’s what, but until then, I really don’t give a shit. I’m gonna go, guys.

Vince: Alright, listen Noel. Cut the promo because I want you to go and spend time with your husband because I know you haven’t seen him in weeks. And quite frankly, Bin Hamin’s had enough of you. So, cut the promo. Cut the promo now. He said, Vito, this is what he said. I heard it. Vito lied on the stand and he was screwed. That’s what he said.

Noel: Here we go. Dave Meltzer, you holly hobbit-looking, can I curse?

Vince: Yes

Noel: You holly hobbie-looking mother fucker. Listen here, I been with my husband for a decade. He doesn’t lie. I live with him every day. You ever live with anybody with CTE? You wanna know what that joy is like? I got a spare bedroom. I actually got two spare bedrooms. You wanna come over here and stay for a week, Dave? You wanna hear my husband scream when he has nightmares? You wanna hear me tell him I love him, and he can’t freaking hear me because he’s deaf because of Vince fucking McMahon? Alright Vince, that’s cool, whatever. Dave Meltzer you are wrong over 80% of the time, the good folks at NoDQ clocked you. You are a joke. You are a nobody. JBL makes fun of you and he’s not even doing anything anymore in wrestling and he’s at home laughing about you right now. You look like you’re on steroids, you look like an asshole, you have slumber parties at your house with little boys to watch Japan wrestling. Don’t you have a DVR you stupid mother fucker? My husband doesn’t lie. My husband has a problem, and because WWE likes money instead of helping people, just like the NFL, who doesn’t want to help anybody, ’cause trust me, Bryant Gumbel filled us all in on that on HBO Real Sports. Guess what, Dave? Why don’t you pull yourself back from the desk, put the pencil down and get a fucking life you little boy loving mother fucker. Stop playing with your goddamn pop Young Bucks action figures and get a fucking woman!

Vince: Wow.

Noel: I am the foul-mouthed mermaid.

Vince: Mr. Hamin, have you ever been in the presence of, I don’t even know how to describe what I just heard.

Bin: That was five stars, right there.

Vince: Hey listen, Dave Meltzer and everybody listening to this show, I’m gonna keep it simple again because I’m going to repeat what I always repeat. Bro, that’s a horrible statement to make about somebody. To say somebody actually lied under oath during a deposition, bro, that’s damaging. Again Dave, what did he lie about? I mean Bin, it just blows my mind. How would he know if someone’s lying under oath or not?

Bin: He wouldn’t. Like he doesn’t know a lot of things.

 

Editor’s note: This transcription is a summation of events and has been edited for length and clarity.  BodySlam.net does not endorse the opinions or words of any party named in this transcription.