The Jekyll and Hyde life of Adrian Adonis explored on ‘Dark Side of the Ring’
“The Tragic Fall of Adrian Adonis” makes no bones about the struggles Adonis endured and created for himself and others, but it is nonetheless a truly tragic story that saw him and fellow wrestlers Pat Kelly and Dave McKigney die in a car crash while on tour in Newfoundland. After opening with a news report voice-over detailing the fatal crash on July 4th, 1988, Bret Hart and Dave Meltzer are among the early guests to chime in on Adonis’ skills in the ring, which they both praise, with Meltzer acknowledging that “straight people hating gays” was the motivation for the gimmick that saw Adonis adopt a flamboyant, stereotypical gay character in the world of the 1980s WWF.
A friend of Adonis, Anthony Gugino, tells stories of Adrian (born Keith Franke) growing up in a tough Buffalo, NY neighbourhood, full of fights that Adonis would invariably win. Gugino describes Adonis as his Luca Brasi, a tough guy from the film The Godfather, as they moved together from a fraternity to a biker a gang before Franke decided to make money by wrestling. He ran open-invitation fight nights, taking on anyone who thought they could last ten minutes in the ring with him, and Adonis used his street fighting expertise to beat them handily. He got the attention of Verne Gage, and he was brought into the AWA and paired up with Jesse Ventura. Jim Brunzell remembers Adonis’ bumps, sells, and his storytelling instincts.
Adonis finds his way to the WWF, and Hart recalls going into Adonis’ room, filled with Mr. Fuji, Roddy Piper, and others — all doing lines of cocaine until the early morning. Adonis’ hard partying and drug use defined his life on the road, but Hart recalls how Adonis was a completely different person with his wife, Bea Franke Hall, backed up by first Hall and then their daughters Gena Banta and Angela Perides.
All three remember good times when they were together, as all the while Adonis was becoming rougher and rougher in the ring, garnering complaints from some of the wrestlers. At this time, McMahon changed Adonis’ character into the Adorable One.
In 1986, Adonis works with Dan Spivey, relatively new to the business at the time and looking forward to the match. Adonis, who Spivey thinks may have taken his quiet nature as weakness, goes through the match hitting Spivey hard and badmouthing him. Soon afterwards, Spivey is up against Adonis in a tag match and getting the same treatment until he snaps and breaks out of Adonis’ sleeper, fighting him for real until he’s pulled from the ring to break it up.
Adonis confronts Spivey in the locker room, but takes an uppercut that broke his cheekbone, and Hart, Meltzer, and Brunzell all comment that this was a big hit to Adonis’ tough-guy reputation. Adrian goes further down into the drug rabbit hole, disappearing from the WWF not long after WrestleMania III and appearing back in the AWA to wrestle Greg Gagne, who urges Adonis to shed the weight he’d gained and go back to wrestling like himself again.
As Adonis wrestled in Japan, Spivey tells of meeting him again, with the two of them shaking hands and burying the hatchet. Hall tells of the last time they saw one another in a hotel room in California before Adonis leaves for a Canadian tour. Mike Kelly, who had wrestled alongside his twin brother Pat, liked Adonis for the short time he knew him.
The Kelly twins are called for the same tour in Newfoundland, with Dave “Bearman” McKigney. The episode goes on a related, but strange detour, discussing one of Bearman’s trained wrestling bears killing McKigney’s girlfriend while she showered, complete with a bloody, stylish Psycho-styled recreation. Bringing it back the tour, Ricky Johnson remembers everyone being happy and paid well, with the mayor of Lewisporte inviting the wrestlers to a party on their night off.
Johnson continues, talking about seeing traffic develop in front of them which he figures must have been an accident, and when they got closer saw that it was the van that Adonis, the Kelly twins, and McKigney had been in. Mike relates the firsthand account of the crash with his brother Pat being blinded by the sun and swerving to where he thought it was safe to go, waking up and realizing his brother and Bearman were dead right away, and Adonis was in bad shape.
Word spread to Adonis’ family that he had died soon afterwards, with Hall in shock and denial for days, and Johnson relating that a couple of McKigney’s road workers had jumped into the water where they van lay and robbed Adonis. Later, the wrestlers tearing up a motel pool room in their grief and rage to the tune of a $12,000 bill.
There’s a question of whether there was alcohol involved, and the conjecture persists despite Mike flatly saying there was nothing of the kind that contributed to the crash. With nothing but praise for Adonis as a friend and family man, everybody speaks to how he had more to give and should be more resoundingly recognized for the skills he had.
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- Apr. 19, 2024: Adrian Adonis biography both tough and flowery
