After blood-soaked show causes health scare, wrestling leader wants Indiana to clean up its act

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Ohio Valley Wrestling takes pride in its history.

Chad Miller, a business partner with OVW's parent company, Gladiator Sports Network, said they're proud of the tradition and heritage that's been built over the years.

"Eighty-six percent of the active roster for the WWE have actually came through [our] building: John Cena, the Big Show, Brock Lesnar, Bautista," Miller said.

It's not just the past and present Miller is excited about. The future looks bright too.

"We're actually in the process of trying to get accreditation for a trade school," he said.

But Miller said one bad apple is trying to spoil the whole bunch. In an interview with WDRB News on Friday, Miller pointed out his frustrations with a New Albany-based pro wrestling promotion called Pro Wrestling Trainwreck.

"To have a promoter like such that happened over across the river come in and really devalue what we're trying to accomplish makes us very angry," Miller said.

Miller's criticism is directed at the group after an "extreme" pro wrestling show Sunday that was billed for an adult audience.

WARNING: This video contains profane language.

Videos posted to Facebook show the wrestling show was unlike many others. Panes of glass, light bulb tubes and thumb tacks were all used as weapons. In that show, bloody performers traded blows all over the room, and it culminated with a botch maneuver known as a power bomb that cut open a wrestler so bad he was rushed to the emergency room. In that move, a wrestler was picked up and slammed into a stack that included a door, a pane of glass and several fluorescent bulbs.

There was so much blood spilled during the gory show that the Floyd County Health Department started investigating to see if anyone was exposed to a virus like hepatitis C or HIV.

"It could be serious, but right now, we have no reason to believe that there's any disease exposure," Charlotte Bass, the administrator of the health department, said Thursday. "That's why we want to test people that came in contact with the body fluids."

The bloody show and public health alert sent shock waves all the way to Miller's Louisville wrestling arena, since one of his wrestlers had participated in the New Albany event Sunday.

"It really set off a Pandora's box for us, because not only did we have to inform them that that health notice came out, but we also had to tell the person that they wrestled on another night — and they had wrestled in practice — that they both had the opportunity to have been exposed to a blood-borne pathogen," he said.

But Miller said the whole ordeal is illustrative of a bigger problem, one that makes the entire industry look bad until something changes. While Miller, the former chairman of the Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Commission, said the Bluegrass State has progressive rules regulating wrestling, Indiana has none.

"They're able to go out and just, at will, do whatever they feel like doing," Miller said.

Most importantly, Miller said Indiana currently has no rules requiring blood tests before wrestling shows. He hopes the New Albany show is a wake-up-call to leaders in the Hoosier State.

"They need to step up," he said. "They need to be aggressive with this."

Meanwhile, for anyone who was at the New Albany show, was exposed to blood or bodily fluids and wants to be tested, the Floyd County Health Department is located at 1917 Bono Rd. in New Albany. Its phone number is (812)-948-4726.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone between 13 and 64 be tested for HIV as part of routine health care. Statistics show one in seven people in the U.S. who have HIV don't know they have it.

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