On the season four finale of Vice‘s Dark Side of the Ring, we get perhaps the most bizarre episode of the season. This week’s show focused on Marty Jannetty, one half of The Rockers and someone who definitely has a story to tell – if only we knew which parts of the story actually happened.
Here’s what we learned.
They call him “Party Marty”
Pat Tanaka and @TheRealAlSnow describe the frenzy during a typical night with Marty during the late ‘80s.
Season finale “The World According to Marty Jannetty” premieres tomorrow at 10pm on @VICETV. pic.twitter.com/eieNGQeEFz
— Dark Side of the Ring (@DarkSideOfRing) August 7, 2023
No One Knows What’s Real & What’s Not
One thing that we’re almost immediately told by a friend of Jannetty is that almost everything he says should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Jannetty likes to get a reaction from people, and he likes to make himself look either more interesting or more tragic depending on the audience he’s talking to. So it’s very difficult to determine how much of anything he says is true. However, this episode does have a lot of other people chiming in with stories, so that helps keep things at least someone straight.
Wrestling was his Way Out
Marty Jannetty had a rough upbringing. He was allegedly beaten by his mother and that fact was hidden from his father. He loved his father, but his father also wasn’t around all the time. Since Marty didn’t want to stay with his mother, he looked for a way out and he found it in wrestling.
He was always an athletic person and wrestling suited him just fine.
Jannetty was Always a Bit Wild
Again, it’s possible that Marty is making things up at this point, but he tells a story about how he went against the science teacher’s directions in high school and mixed two chemicals he was told not to mix. The result was a big explosion and a story that spread through the school.
Whether or not that story was true, the episode features multiple people talking about Jannetty’s partying, drugs, partying, crazy stunts, partying, and much more, so it’s pretty obvious that he was always a bit wild, even if he didn’t actually blow up a science lab.
The Rockers were a Sensation
Speaking of chemistry, Marty Jannetty found it when he was asked to tag with a young wrestler who went by the name of Shawn Michaels. The two had an immediate connection in the ring and their matches were a huge hit with crowds. They had the proverbial “men wanted to be them and women wanted to be with them” attribute that many stars do.
They eventually caught the attention of Vince McMahon and were hired by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). However, their first stint there lasted only about a week before they were fired for getting a little too enthusiastic at a bar and basically wrecking the place. They ended up wrestling for smaller companies for about a year before they were hired back.
As Pat Tanaka puts it, “You get a lot of chances if you have talent.”
He Believes in GAT
Marty Jannetty believes that he is (or perhaps he is affected by) something called GAT, which he says means “God’s Amusement Toy”. As he puts it, when God gets bored, He decides to have some fun and mess with Marty’s life. Many of his friends and former co-workers, however, point out (probably correctly), that this is Marty’s way of avoiding personal responsibility for the things that he’s done and the situation’s he’s put himself in.
Chuck Austin Sued Him
In 1990, the Rockers wrestled against a jobber team that included Chuck Austin. During the match, Jannetty hit Austin with a “Rocker Dropper” and Austin ended up getting spiked into the mat. His neck was broken and he was paralyzed. Austin sued the WWF and Jannetty.
WWF is found 90% negligent, Austin 5% negligent, and Marty 5% negligent. The jury awarded Chuck Austin $24 million, which was brought down to $10 million after an appeal. Jannetty was responsible for paying 5% of it, which came out of his WWF royalty checks.
Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels were Very Close for a Long Time
Jannetty describes his relationship with Jannetty as one that was as close as two friends could get for around seven years. During their run as the Rockers, the two were together all the time and they did everything together.
The pair eventually got into a huge fight and Shawn Michaels threw Marty Jannetty through a window. Not the Barber Shop window on TV. An actual window. The fight didn’t end there as they weren’t very high up and Jannetty came back into the building and brutalized Michaels. It resulted in Michaels being off TV for quite some time.
It was around this time that Vince McMahon met with the team and said that he wanted to break them up. Michaels agreed right away while Jannetty was more skeptical about how he would be used after the breakup. Apparently, Vince McMahon didn’t help soothe Marty’s fears since he allegedly told the duo that he believed Michaels was a future superstar, but he didn’t have the same feeling about Jannetty. The team broke up and Shawn was pushed as a singles star, while Jannetty struggled, eventually ending up in the “New Rockers” with Al Snow, then known as “Leif Cassidy”.
Of Course, There Were Drugs
It’s the 1980s/90s in wrestling, so of course there’s a lot of drugs involved in this story. Various stories about Jannetty getting into trouble with drugs are discussed, including a time when he was found passed out on the floor surrounded by pills. Shawn Michaels and Jimmy Snuka picked him up and threw him into the shower rather than calling the police or an ambulance. When those two are helping a drug-related situation, you know you’re in good hands.
His drugs, partying, and generally reckless behavior resulted in him getting fired. Often. Not just from WWF, but from World Championship Wrestling (WCW) as well. After the New Rockers angle, Jannetty went to WCW and hoped to become a star there, and it looked like he was receiving a push, but his substance abuse problems cost him that job as well.
Shawn Michaels Reconnected with Him Years Later
Marty Jannetty talks about how he thought about ending his life until he received a call from Shawn Michaels, who he hadn’t heard from in years. Michaels had found God at this point and turned his life around and he invited Marty to attend Athlete’s International Ministries with him. There he was baptized by Michaels and that resulted in him getting a “Rockers Reunion” spot on an episode of WWE Raw.
The match went well and WWE was talking about signing him to a contract when he got into a fight with his then-girlfriend and the police were called. Since Jannetty was on parole, he was put on house arrest and that cost him the job.
He Has a Severe Ankle Injury – and More Painful Problems
In the Dark Side of the Ring episode, Jannetty is in a wheelchair due to a severe ankle injury that is very, very swollen. He has other serious injuries as well. A friend of his who he has known since high school and who is also an orthopaedic surgeon states that he believes Jannetty’s daily pain level is about 12 out of ten on a good day.
Brutus Beefcake‘s wife Missy says that Jannetty is basically housebound so he uses the internet as his social life. That gets him into a lot of trouble as he posts a lot of strange stuff on Facebook.
He Maybe Perhaps Hypothetically Killed Someone Unless It Was a Wrestling Storyline???
The Dark Side of the Ring episode ends talking about Jannetty’s odd Facebook posts and how a lot of them aren’t true and he just posts them for the reaction. Jannetty also claims to have been hacked at one point. However, the strangest is a story about how, when he was 13 years old, an older man allegedly tried to sexually assault him and, as Jannetty wrote on Facebook, he made the man “disappear.”
Area police looked into the situation after Jannetty made the post and determined that there were no missing persons reports filed at the time nor were any unidentified remains found. Jannetty now claims that the post was a “wrestling storyline” but then goes into additional detail about how the “hypothetical situation” unfolded, saying the guy jumped on top of him and Jannetty hit him with a rock in self-defense, killing him. In this hypothetical situation, Jannetty called his brother and the two disposed of the body in a nearby river.
Again, police say that no body was ever found and no one was reported missing at the time. Al Snow, however, mentions that Jannetty told him a variation of the story in the 90s and Jannetty says that sexual assault attempt was real, but the murder was not. It’s a strange situation and the truth is quite unclear.
And that’s how this season of Dark Side of the Ring ends.
More From LWOS Pro Wrestling
Header photo – Vice. Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. Catch Dark Side of the Ring on VICE, with new episodes airing each Thursday at 9 PM EST.
