Sean O'Haire: Pro Wrestling's Biggest 'What If?'

Sean O'Haire stood six foot and four inches tall. At his peak, he weighed around 270 lbs of solid muscle. He was a genuine tough guy, could fly with the grace of the most agile cruiserweight, and had a natural charisma and aura that is hard to manufacture or fake. 

Despite having every tool imaginable and untold potential, Sean O’Haire never made it above a certain level in the wrestling business. He worked for WCW, WWE, New Japan Pro-Wrestling and beyond, plying his trade on some of the biggest stages, but his career, curiously, remains largely forgotten or otherwise overlooked. 

To those who remember him and witnessed him in full flow, Sean O’Haire stands out as someone who, had things gone differently, could have reached the very top of the industry.

Why that never happened is a tale in and of itself. It is a story of bad timing, rotten luck, self-sabotage and a performer who, away from the ring, battled demons that, ultimately, cost him not only superstardom but his life. 

Natural Born Thriller

The oldest of three brothers, Sean Christopher Haire grew up in South Carolina where, as a youth, he had a keen interest in taking pictures, winning the National Kodak Medallion of Excellence for Photography during his senior year of high school. 

Haire was also into more athletic endeavours, playing on his high school football and track teams. He also attended a military academy, became a part-owner in a fitness centre, and competed in many local ‘Toughman’ contests, winning 17 such contests before deciding to transition to professional wrestling as he entered his late 20s. 

While living in Hilton Head, South Carolina, O’Haire developed a reputation as being a troublemaker and his name was known to local police. He took that reputation with him to WCW’s notoriously rough Power Plant training school, where he survived the gruelling workouts and punishing drills and earned himself a developmental contract. 

While training at the facility, O’Haire became a favourite of coach Paul Orndorff, who appreciated his size, look and fighting background. O’Haire would make his live television debut soon after on the June 26, 2000 episode of Nitro, teaming with Mark Jindrak to defeat Rey Mysterio and Juventud Guerrera. 

O’Haire, along with Jindrak, Johnny the Bull, Mike Sanders, Reno, Chuck Palumbo, and Shawn Stasiak soon formed the Natural Born Thrillers, a group of young, fresh talents that WCW planned on building around moving forward. It was a great opportunity for the band of rookies, and O’Haire and Jindrak won the WCW Tag Team Titles – the first of three times for O’Haire – just a few months into their main roster careers. 

By 2000, however, WCW was a creative, financial and organisational mess and as impressive as O’Haire looked doing backflips, ‘Sean-ton’ bombs and kung-fu kicks, it was for a company that was on borrowed time and circling the drain. 

In early 2001 it looked as though WCW – and O’Haire – had been given a lifeline, when former WCW Executive Vice President Eric Bischoff and Fusient Media Ventures agreed a deal (in principal) to purchase the company. Bischoff was, reportedly, a huge fan of Sean O’Haire and saw him as being a major singles star in the future. Once the company was rebooted, Easy E was allegedly planning to push O’Haire in the manner of Goldberg to try and build him up to the main event level. Whether that would have worked or not we’ll never know, because Bischoff’s bid fell through after Time Warner cancelled WCW’s television shows and sold WWE in March of 2001. 

The Invasion 

O’Haire’s contract was one of those purchased by Titan Sports and he debuted during the subsequent Invasion angle in 2001. With Chuck Palumbo, he went after the Hardy Boyz and the APA, before eventually dropping the WCW Tag Team Titles to the Brothers of Destruction. Shortly after, though, O’Haire found himself written out of WWE storylines and taken off the road.

Not really understanding the lay of the land in his new surroundings, there were reports that O’Haire didn’t help himself with his conduct backstage, including a time he supposedly (purposefully) disrespected the high-ranking Triple H. What made him lose his spot, however, was allegedly turning up to a house show drunk and nearly seriously hurting Crash Holly after he recklessly dropped the Houdini of Hardcore on a move gone wrong. 

O’Haire was sent to WWE developmental where he continued to get ‘seasoning’ and learn the WWE style, while also working house shows, dark matches, and wrestling the occasional bout for weekend shows Heat and Velocity. On the whole, 2002 was a bit of a non-event for the ‘next Goldberg’, but his fortunes soon changed as he re-emerged with a new and undeniably intriguing gimmick. 

The Devil’s Advocate

In early 2003, WWE began airing vignettes on television hyping the imminent arrival of a much different-looking Sean O’Haire. 

Dressed in a suit, sporting long hair, and standing in front of a plain white background while talking directly to the camera, O’Haire extolled the virtues of different vices to viewers, as he tried to convince whoever was watching to cheat on their spouse, indulge in illicit substances, defraud the government, and avoid church, among other vices. 

The vignettes were simple yet striking and all ended with O’Haire – branded by fans as the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ – signing off with the catchphrase, "I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know." 

Soon, O’Haire showed up in the flesh on SmackDown and used his powers of persuasion to get his fellow superstars to do what he wanted. First, he made Brian ‘Spanky’ Kendrick streak naked through an arena, and then he got Dawn Marie to flash the audience. 

The persona was quickly scrapped, though, and O’Haire was instead paired with a returning Roddy Piper. Why exactly WWE gave up on the Devil's Advocate so quickly is unknown, but O’Haire was known to be weak on promos, something which could be hidden in taped vignettes, but not in front of a live crowd. Putting him with one of the greatest talkers the business has ever seen made sense at the time, even if the combination of the young, ripped, tattooed wrestler in the long black trench coat and the ageing legend in the kilt was an odd visual. 

Under Piper’s tutelage, O’Haire scored big wins over the likes of Rikishi, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and even Hulk Hogan – albeit by count-out and while the Hulkster was wrestling under a mask as Mr. America. 

That was about as good as it would get for Sean O’Haire in WWE, however. Piper was fired just a couple of months into their partnership following his controversial interview on the HBO Real Sports programme and, without Hot Rod around, the company just didn’t know what to do with O’Haire. 

He soon got stuck in Velocity purgatory, suffered injuries in a motorcycle crash towards the end of 2003, reported back to OVW while preparing for his comeback and then, on April 3, 2004, O’Haire was released from his WWE contract. It was said that the decision for him to leave was a mutual one. 

Life After WWE

After leaving WWE, O’Haire performed at a few indie shows and had one major match for New Japan – losing to a young Hiroshi Tanahashi in the Tokyo Dome – but he was clearly no longer interested in the world of sports entertainment. 

The former Toughman competitor had the itch to fight again for real. With his name value from wrestling and MMA’s popularity on the rise, O’Haire found himself with plenty of suitors in both the US and in the Land of the Rising Sun. He fought for Pride and later K-1, competing in both MMA and kickboxing contests. 

His MMA record was 4 wins and 2 losses - including a crushing loss to Butterbean that O’Haire took on just a day’s notice, while in kickboxing he lost all four of his fights. Unofficially, he had many other amateur fights and unrecorded wins and losses in MMA between 2006 and 2008. 

His last official pro wrestling match - a dark match defeat to Scotty 2 Hotty at a SmackDown taping - took place on March 28, 2006. O’Haire also worked a dark match against Trevor Murdoch at the Raw taping the day before as WWE considering possibly bringing him back at the time, but it ultimately never happened. 

After his wrestling and fighting days were over, O’Haire seemingly did a little bit of everything from working as a personal trainer and bouncer, to a bodyguard and hair stylist.

Though many who knew O’Haire described a kind and considerate person who had the ability to do so much more, he was also a troubled individual with a dark past. Those lingering issues, as much as anything else, are perhaps what prevented him from going further and doing more in his chosen fields. 

The Troubled Life and Times of Sean O’Haire

Sean O’Haire was well known to local law enforcement in his hometown and, as he moved around the United States, police departments elsewhere became acquainted with him as well. He was involved in a countless number of bar fights and was arrested on at least four separate occasions for his participation in violent incidents. 

Just weeks after his WWE release, O’Haire was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery against two women at a nightclub, though the charges were later dropped. Two years later, he was arrested again and charged with assault following another boozy incident at an after-hours establishment. A year after that, he picked a fight with the wrong man in his Hilton Head hometown, coming out on the wrong side of a fight that left him with fractures to his face and skull. 

The end result was that O’Haire needed to have his jaw and orbital bone socket partially reconstructed with titanium, leaving him with permanently damaged vision in his left eye, something that no doubt seriously hampered his pro fighting aspirations. 

O'Haire was then arrested in Georgia in 2009 on charges of allegedly assaulting his girlfriend at the time, in an unprovoked attack that she claimed was far from an isolated incident. Two years later he was yet again arrested in Georgia on charges of battery. 

From 2008 onwards, O’Haire went to WWE-sponsored rehab six times in the span of of six years. He had been battling not only alcohol abuse issues but also depression in the weeks before he was found dead by his father in their family home on September 9, 2014. Sean O’Haire was only 43 years old. 

It was a tragic end for someone who was once being talked about as the future of the wrestling business. Had Sean O’Haire had better luck, better timing, used better judgement, or grown up in a different era, he could have been a world-beater. Ultimately, his career and legacy is a collection of what-ifs.