10 Affairs That Rocked Pro Wrestling

As an industry based around adults being in such close proximity, often working together half-naked, it has led to sports entertainers secretly getting together, even when they’re dating somebody else in the locker room. 

Needless to say, these transgressions have had major consequences for the lives and careers of all involved. These are 10 Affairs That Rocked Professional Wrestling. 

10. Sable & Brock Lesnar

In 1999, Marc and Rena Mero (who performed as Sable) jointly walked out of WWE, with Rena subsequently filing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the company alleging, among other things, sexual harassment. 

It was thought that the former WWE Women’s Champion would be blackballed, but Sable shockingly returned to WWE four years later. Mero wasn’t by her side, however, and their marriage didn’t survive Sable being back on the road. 

Marc Mero began to suspect that all was not right with his wife and had his suspicions confirmed when he heard a damning voicemail Brock Lesnar had sent Rena. The affair led to the end of their marriage and the divorce devastated Marc, who was also battling substance abuse issues and had just lost both parents, and he considered ending it all during a rock-bottom moment in 2004. 

Fortunately, Marc Mero found God and he is now thriving as a motivational speaker around the world. Brock and Rena, meanwhile, married in 2006 and have two sons together. 

9. Kurt Angle & Dawn Marie

Kurt Angle may have at one point had the reputation of being the squeaky-clean all-American boy who won Olympic gold for his country, but that perception changed after Kurt had been in the professional wrestling business for a couple of years. 

There were rumours of various backstage affairs during his first WWE run, including with fellow SmackDown star Dawn Marie. Though Angle never publicly admitted to the affair, Marie did confirm it was true during her 2008 RF Video shoot interview. 

Not only did the affair result in Marie breaking off her engagement to former ECW wrestler Simon Diamond, it caused trouble in the Angle household, as Kurt’s ex-wife Karen referenced it in a stinging tweet from January 2023 that has since been deleted. Karen’s tweet also suggested that her then-husband fooled around with Kelly Kelly, though she flat-out denied it, noting she and Angle were never more than co-workers.  

8. Lizzy Borden & The Messiah

Rob Black’s two business ventures in XPW and adult movies often overlapped, with his own wife, the adult movie star Lizzy Borden, getting involved in the wrestling league. 

One of her roles in XPW was to act as the valet of top star The Messiah, who became XPW Champion with Borden by his side. As they were working together, the two grew close and ended up having an affair. This led to Messiah being exiled from XPW, with Black telling him that he had just days to live and better leave California, or else. Messiah didn’t go anywhere and he was subsequently attacked by two goons in his house, who cut his thumb off with gardening shears, before hitting him with a chair and a fish tank while they tried and failed to cut off his nether regions.  

The assault was featured on America’s Most Wanted, where it was heavily insinuated that Rob Black was behind the attack. Black denied any involvement, though, and he was never charged. 

Black addressed the allegations in an interview with Vice in 2014, saying:

“Wrestling is never what you believe. We had people who bought into the story and got publicity out of it. You have to understand that my goal was to be the most hated man in the world. I was the ultimate heel. I needed to be more hated than [WWE boss] Vince McMahon.”

Messiah continued to wrestle with one thumb, primarily for CZW. He is now married with two children. 

7. Mickie James & John Cena

John Cena was famously once engaged to Nikki Bella, but she was not the first female member of the WWE locker room that Cena had been linked with. 

Cena and Mickie James became involved when both were on the Raw brand in late 2007, around the time they shared a few scenes (and a kiss) on-screen. James was engaged to Kenny Dykstra at the time, however, while Cena was married to Elizabeth Huberdeau. 

According to Dykstra in a series of tweets in 2012, he found out about the affair when he caught his fiancée Googling ‘Mickie James and John Cena dating’ and she subsequently broke down and admitted the tryst when confronted. 

Dykstra further alleged that he was moved from Raw to SmackDown after his discovery, before being jobbed out and then fired, while he claimed James was later transferred to the blue brand, had the Piggy James storyline, and then fired after she ‘flipped out’ when Cena decided to end the relationship.

Mickie is currently married to Nick Aldis, while Cena is married to Shay Shariatzadeh, who has no ties to the wrestling business. Dykstra, meanwhile, works backstage in WWE as a producer on the main roster. 

6. Batista & Melina

There was an awkward situation between Melina, Batista, and John Morrison when the World Heavyweight Champion and Melina became an item in 2006. Batista, it should be noted, was officially divorced from his second wife Angie at the time, while The Animal has also claimed that the relationship began while Melina and her long-term boyfriend John Morrison were separated. 

Despite Batista’s claims, some in the SmackDown locker room didn’t approve of the situation, nor did they appreciate Morrison’s perceived pacifism about the whole thing. That didn’t get better when Batista and Melina broke up and she and Morrison got back together.

Both Batista and Melina had heat at the time for different reasons and them being together only magnified things, as did Melina being taken to wrestler’s court, where she was convicted on charges of ‘Diva-ism’, something Batista wasn’t happy about when he found out about it later. This caused resentment between him and prosecutor Booker T, which ultimately resulted in their infamous fight in 2006.

In his autobiography, Batista said he didn’t care about the controversy and loved Melina very much.

5. Shawn Michaels & Sunny

WWE fans couldn’t get enough of Sunny, arguably the first ‘WWE Diva’, who was AOL’s most downloaded celebrity of 1996. 

What the vast majority of WWE fans didn’t realise was that Tammy Sytch’s heart belonged to Shawn Michaels – despite the fact she was already in a relationship with high school sweetheart Chris Candido, who wrestled for WWE as Bodydonna Skip. 

There is some debate as to whether Michaels and Sunny began their affair while she and Candido were together or, as Sytch contends, separated. Regardless, many backstage took exception to The Heartbreak Kid’s dalliance, both because Chris was well-liked and they felt sorry for him given how blatant the lovers were being, and because Shawn had nuclear heat in some circles to begin with.

According to Sytch, the affair eventually ended because Michaels asked her to move in with him in his new house in Texas, and she was worried what Candido would do if she broke up with him for good.

Michaels would later imply that Sunny was sleeping with Bret Hart during his infamous ‘Sunny Days’ promo, which both denied.

Sytch and Candido later got back together and were a couple until his death in 2005, while Michaels is happily married to former Nitro Girl Whisper. 

4. Seth Rollins & Zahra Schreiber

In February of 2015, it was revealed in the most explicit of ways that Seth Rollins was dating NXT prospect Zahra Schreiber. This, however, was without the knowledge of his then-fiancée Leighla Schultz, who went on a social media tear, which included posting nude photos of Rollins on Twitter. 

Meanwhile, a nude selfie of Zahra appeared on Seth’s socials, which was briefly displayed on WWE’s main website as they automatically reposted from the ex-Shield member’s feed. 

Rollins apologised for the posts, broke up with Schultz and continued his relationship with Schreiber. Far from punishing Seth for this becoming public, WWE in fact made him WWE World Heavyweight Champion at WrestleMania 31. 

Things got messier that August, though, when WWE fired Schreiber after it was discovered she had posted pro-Nazi photos years earlier. Seth stood by her initially, but they called it quits in February of 2016. Schreiber would later date Sonya Deville, but no longer has any ties to the wrestling business.

3. Triple H & Stephanie McMahon

Triple H, along with Shawn Michaels, was responsible for getting fellow Killer Kowalski trainee Joanie Laurer a job with WWE in 1996 as D-Generation X’s bodyguard Chyna. 

Soon after, the two began dating, though they initially hid their relationship from others. In time, however, they became open about it and eventually got engaged. While they were together in real life, in the fantasy world of WWE television, Triple H began a relationship with Stephanie McMahon. Fantasy ultimately became reality, and The Game and The Billion Dollar Princess started having a secret affair.  

Laurer suspected that something was amiss and had her worst fears realised after discovering a love letter that Stephanie had written her fiancée stashed in his briefcase. 

Chyna confronted Paul Levesque about it, and the two broke up. Potential issues between her, Triple H and the boss’s daughter played a part in WWE’s decision not to renew Chyna's contract, though her demand for a million-dollar downside guarantee was also a factor.

Triple H and Stephanie would later marry and they have three daughters together, while Chyna’s life continued to unravel until she sadly passed away in 2016.

2. Chris Benoit & Nancy Sullivan

In order to spice up his feud with Chris Benoit, Kevin Sullivan devised an angle that would see his wife and manager Nancy, AKA Woman, have a kayfabe affair with The Crippler. 

Sullivan, who was helping to book WCW at the time, determined that in order for the storyline to work properly, Chris and Nancy had to keep the act up twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That meant travelling together, eating together in public, sharing hotel rooms and so on. 

The two fell in love and, during one fateful trip to Japan, their relationship became physical. Now, not only was Nancy married to Kevin at this time, but Chris was married to Martina Benoit, who he had two children with. 

Chris and Nancy divorced their respective spouses and began living together soon after, causing considerable tension between Chris Benoit and Kevin Sullivan and, while they remained professional, the physicality on display during their matches was telling. 

Chris Benoit and Nancy’s marriage would end in tragedy in 2007. 

1. Edge & Lita

When Matt Hardy was out of action with a torn ACL and needed to sit at home for several months following knee surgery, he trusted that his close friend Adam ‘Edge’ Copeland would look after his girlfriend Amy ‘Lita’ Dumas on the road. 

While travelling on the road together and being each other’s shoulders to cry on while they were away from their partners, Adam and Amy grew closer. Matt sensed that something was up when Amy wasn’t acting herself at home and the explicit texts and voicemails he found on her phone told him exactly what had been going on. 

Their resulting breakup was very messy and very public, resulting in WWE letting Matt go, while Lita turned heel and ended up together with Edge on WWE TV. The three subsequently worked a programme based on the real-life issues after Matt had been re-hired and everything turned out okay once the heat had finally cooled down, with the hatchet having long been buried by the 2020s.