Bo Dallas Arrested in Drunken Stupor

Date: August 26, 2016
Location: DFW Airport in Dallas, TX
Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

Bo Dallas, the real-life brother of Bray Wyatt and son of Mike “IRS” Rotunda, is an entertaining mid-card heel in WWE. He came through the ranks of NXT, and while not as talented as his brother, he had a decent gimmick (“Bo-lieve”) that almost always got him heel heat underneath.

But he did his career no favors in a recent incident at DFW airport that embarrassed both himself and the company.

Dallas was on board a flight for Mexico, where he was booked for a pair of shows in Puebla and Leon, teaming with Curtis Axel against the Usos (all of whom are sons of famous WWE stars). Around 7pm, he became problematic on the plane by singing the theme from “The Lion King” rather loudly while talking to his wife on his cell phone. Flight attendants tried to quiet him down, and when that didn’t work, the pilot came over. Dallas proceeded to tell the pilot to go “F*ck” himself.

At that point Dallas was booted off the plane, as he was heavily intoxicated. Airport police were told that a man was removed from the flight headed to Puebla, and when they arrived to the terminal, they found Dallas hunched over about six gates away from the gate of the flight he was on. Wearing a Tapout shirt (WWE recently invested in the Tapout brand, which I’m sure the folks at Tapout were thrilled about when this story got out), Dallas reeked of booze and was slurring his words. He did admit he had been drinking, saying he hadn’t planned on driving today (one of the reasons people often give when getting drunk).

When airport police saw him in that condition, and realizing his relative large size compared to the average population, they believed him to be a danger to himself and others and decided to arrest him. Police noted he was wobbling back and forth and had trouble maintaining his balance. Fortunately he didn’t put up a fight when being arrested, as if he had copped an attitude like he did with the pilot, things would’ve been much worse for him.

The house shows in Mexico were not until the 27th (Saturday in Puebla) and 28th (Sunday in Leon). Dallas would’ve had almost a full day to recover and could’ve made it to the shows. But for whatever reason, possibly to avoid further bad publicity or to discipline him, WWE didn’t send him to the shows. He was also not written into Monday’s Raw show, though it’s doubtful he would’ve had much if a role, if any, anyway.

What likely saved Dallas from a suspension is that his father works for the company and is in good standing with them, as is his brother. It also may save his job, as clearly he’s constantly been on the bubble being that the company doesn’t Bo-lieve in him enough to give him a push.

While Dallas certainly deserves a bigger push than he’s gotten, he really has no one to blame but himself for this arrest. Hopefully he learned from it and this won’t happen again, as he’s got too much promise to blow a chance like this. Yes, he could probably do okay on indies, but that’s something you want to save for much later in your career after you’ve had more years of exposure and made more of a name for yourself. It would be too soon in his career to go that route, even if no push seems like it’s in the cards for him.