Abdullah, real name Larry Shreve, has spent more than 50 years in the industry, mostly with regional promotions but with notable stints in the NWA, and in Japan and Puerto Rico. He also has hepatitis C, and rumors have long dogged him that he's infected countless other wrestlers. (It led Superstar Billy Graham to
blast the WWE for his HOF induction.) But there'd never previously been any proof, until yesterday, when Canadian wrestler Devon (Hannibal) Nicholson
won a $2.1 million (USD) negligence suit against Shreve in Ontario court, successfully arguing that he contracted hepatitis C during a 2007 match.
During that match in Cochrane, Alberta, Shreve sliced them both open with the same blade. According to Nicholson, Shreve had not revealed he carried hepatitis C, which is usually treatable but can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver failure, and is highly contagious. Nicholson says that WWE offered him a contract in 2009, but rescinded it after he tested positive for the disease. It's those lost earnings that led him to sue Shreve, although it's certain that Shreve doesn't have that kind of money. If he did, he wouldn't be, as noted, still wrestling the indy circuit into his 70s.
Nicholson was able to produce court records showing that he and Shreve carried the same rare strain of the disease, making it highly unlikely he picked it up somewhere else. Shreve's defense was that it was Nicholson who gave it to
him, and when he bladed Nicholson, he was only following orders.
"Devon's the promoter,"
Shreve told Maclean's in 2011. "He's the one who told me what to do. I'm a professional. If somebody did not want to do nothing, then I did not do nothing to them."
But in a taped interview that same year (note the permanent blading grooves in his forehead), Shreve denied ever slicing Nicholson. "I have never cut you," he says, though the photo at the top of this article shows Shreve using a fork on Nicholson's forehead in a separate 2007 match.
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