OTTAWA – Abdullah the Butcher is facing a large legal battle. The long standing legal situation alleging negligence, assault and battery between former amateur wrestling Champion Devon Nicholson and ‘hard-core wrestling’ icon Larry ‘Abdullah the Butcher’ Shreve will be continuing to move forward.
NetNewsLedger can report it has been confirmed that Shreve’s lawyer Denis Grigoras of the Grigoras Law Offices has served him with an order to be removed as the solicitor of record.
Abdullah the Butcher fights legal battle
Nicholson is represented in the matter by Ronald Caza of the Caza Saikley law firm in Ottawa.
Nicholson claims that Shreve cut him without consent with an unsanitary razor blade in a professional wrestling match. Shortly after this match Nicholson tested positive for Hepatitis C, a potentially fatal blood to blood disease. One of the main ways Hepatitis C is passed is through the sharing of razor blades.
The practice of sharing razor blades is not accepted in the professional wrestling business. World Wrestling Entertainment, the world’s top wrestling company that Nicholson lost a multi-year contract with due to Hepatitis C has has maintained a policy forbidding acts of intentionally cutting with razor blades since 2008.
This policy helps protect wrestlers from the spread of diseases like Hepatitis C, which now kills more people than AIDS.
Despite providing blood tests to Nicholson’s lawyers in 2011 indicating that Shreve had a history of being Hepatitis C positive and evidence of fatty infiltration on his liver (a symptom of the disease.)
Shreve has continued to claim otherwise, on the record in media interviews.
In an interview with The Atlantic Magazine in the US last year he denied that he was positive for the disease saying: “‘My blood is clean,’ [Shreve].’” See “Wrestlemaniac,” June 13 2012: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/wrestlemaniac/309010/
Nicholson is currently in his 31st of 36 weeks on a new experimental chemotherapy like Hepatitis C treatment called Incivek “Triple Therapy.” Hepatitis C is a potentially fatal “blood to blood” disease known to affect more than 170 million people worldwide. It is the number one reason for liver transplants in the US.
Shreve attended mediation in Ottawa on December 21st 2012. There is a motion set to be heard on the matter in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in this summer.
Shreve commented on the lawsuit in this interview with Global TV (Canada’s 3rd National Network):
Abdullah the Butcher battled Hannibal (Devon Nicholson) in a match in Thunder Bay.
