Crash Holly

### Cause of death

Asphyxia due to pulmonary aspiration as a result of suicide overdose of alcohol and drug overdose

### Burial

West Lawn Memorial Park in China Grove, North Carolina

## Professional wrestling stats

### Known as

Crash
Crash Holly
Erin O'Grady
The Green Ghost
Johnny Pearson
Mad Mikey

### Weight

202 lb (92 kg)
"Allegedly well over 400 lb" (181kg)

### Trained by

Jerry Monti
Michael Modest
Ric Thompson

**Michael John "Mike" Lockwood** (August 25, 1971 - November 6, 2003 ) was an American professional wrestler.

Lockwood made his wrestling debut in 1989 and spent a decade on the independent circuit before joining the World Wrestling Federation in 1999 as **Crash Holly**. He formed a tag team with his cousin (kayfabe) Hardcore Holly, with whom he won the WWF World Tag Team Championship.

The "The Holly Cousins" tag team was then expanded into a stable with the addition of "cousin" Molly Hollyin 2000. During his WWF / WWE career, Lockwood won the WWF Hardcore Championship 22 times. After being released by WWE in June 2003, he signed a contract with NWA Total Nonstop Action as **Mad Mikey**, where he remained until his death.

## Professional wrestling career

Lockwood made his debut in 1989, with Johnny Pearson in Bay Area Wrestling, where he wrestled until 1994.

He dislocated his shoulder about five times and took 18 months off to recover. She then fought on the independent circuit as an "Irishman" named **Erin O'Grady**. In 1996 he joined All Pro Wrestling (APW), where he became known as "Leprechaun" Erin O'Grady and had several encounters with Vic Grimes.

After seeing a tape of a match between O'Grady and Michael Modest, Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) wrestler Tazz reported Lockwood to ECW owner Paul Heyman. In ECW Erin O'Grady lost four matches in November 1997, including a dark match in *November to Remember*.

O'Grady wrestled Grimes in a test match for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) on January 20, 1998 and both signed a contract. They were sent to Power Pro Wrestling, WWF talent development territory, to train. Here they won the PPW Tag Team Championship. WWF talent coordinator Bruce Prichard sent Lockwood to Mexico to prepare him for the lucha libre fighting style for the *WWF Super Astros* show . He fought in Monterrey for three months, wearing a mask, as The Green Ghost (pun for "gringo").

Lockwood debuted as **Crash Holly**, the storyline cousin of Bob "Hardcore" Holly, on the August 16, 1999 episode of *Raw is War* They became known as The Holly Cousins. Their relationship was a strained one, and Hardcore frequently threatened Crash. When they took the gimmick of claiming to be "super heavyweights", over 400 lb each, Crash would carry a scale to ringside to "weigh in" before matches.

Crash made his pay-per-view debut at SummerSlam in August, where The Holly Cousins wrestled in a Tag Team Turmoil match, won by the Acolytes Protection Agency. At Rebellion, Holly Cousins competed against APA and Edge and Christian in a triangle match, which Edge and Christian won.

On October 17, at No Mercy, The Holly Cousins defeated The New Age Outlaws by disqualification. The next night on *Raw is War*, they defeated The Rock 'n' Sock Connection for the Tag Team Championship. They held the title until the November 4 *SmackDown!*, when they lost it to Mankind and his new partner, Al Snow.

In early 2000, Crash Holly joined the hardcore division. On the February 24 episode of *SmackDown!*, he defeated Test to begin his first of 22 Hardcore Championship reigns.

He decreed that he must defend the championship twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, which later became known as the "24/7 Rule". This meant that the title was permanently contested, not just in sanctioned matches, and could change hands anywhere, anytime anyone pinned the champion, so long as a WWF referee counted the fall.

Holly was frequently attacked by other wrestlers in unlikely locations, including an airport, a funhouse, a circus, and his hotel room. Although he was often pinned, he usually immediately regained the title. His most common tactic was to sneak a pin, often after the champion had been beaten down by someone else, and quickly run backstage, away from possible challengers.

This turned him into a crowd favorite and earned him the nickname "The Houdini of Hardcore". He frequently defended the championship against non-wrestlers, including referees and road agents, like Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson. He had a long feud with The Mean Street Posse (Pete Gas, Rodney and Joey Abs) over the title. He even lost, and quickly regained, the title against one of the Godfather's hos.

At Rebellion, Crash defeated William Regal to win the European Championship. He lost the title to Regal two days later. In late 2000, another of Crash's storyline cousins, Molly Holly, was introduced. In 2001, The Holly Cousins feuded with The Dudley Boyz.

In the course of this feud, Molly began a romantic relationship with Spike Dudley, leading to internal disputes within each family, as well as a Romeo and Juliet-style angle between the six of them.

On the March 18, 2001 episode of *Heat*, Crash defeated Dean Malenko to win the Light Heavyweight Championship. He defended it on two episodes of *Heat*, against Funaki and Grandmaster Sexay, before dropping it to the debuting Jerry Lynn on the April 29 episode. In May 2001, Holly and Hardcore briefly reunited as a lower card team.

When the WWF was renamed World Wrestling Entertainment and divided into two Raw and SmackDown brands, Holly was assigned to the Raw roster, where he had little success. He jumped ship to SmackDown! on the September 2, 2002 episode of *Raw* during a match with Jeff Hardy.

Earlier, Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff was informed that a Raw wrestler would leave to reunite with a relative on SmackDown!, and ordered a beatdown by 3-Minute Warning on Hardy, who he wrongly suspected of planning to join his brother, Matt Hardy, until Crash revealed that he was the one who was leaving, planning to join his cousin Hardcore Holly on SmackDown!.

In his first *SmackDown!* match, on September 5, he defeated The Hurricane. He then feuded with Cruiserweight Champion Jamie Noble. On the October 3 *SmackDown!*, Noble defeated Holly to retain the title.

On the December 19 *SmackDown!*, Holly teamed with Bill DeMott to defeat Noble and Nunzio. After the match, DeMott turned on Holly and attacked him. This led to a match on the next *SmackDown!*, which DeMott won.

After being sidelined for four months, Holly returned on the April 24, 2003 episode of *SmackDown!*. He soon joined Matt Hardy and Shannon Moore in the Mattitude Followers (abbreviated "MF'er") stable. As Crash was Moore's alleged apprentice, Hardy also referred to him as a "Moore-on".

His last several matches with the company were tag matches with Moore, as well as house show matches against newcomer Orlando Jordan. On June 30, 2003, Lockwood was released from WWE.

Lockwood signed a contract with NWA Total Non-Stop Action (later known as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling) in July 2003 and debuted as **Mad Mikey** on July 23, accepting an open challenge from Elix Skipper and losing the match. Mad Mikey was angry at many things, on which he elaborated in promos. He wrestled on nine NWA-TNA weekly PPVs, lastly on October 1.

He briefly wrestled for Pro Wrestling Iron in Hayward, California. In late 2003, Mad Mikey and Rory Fox defeated Quiten Lee and The Human Time Bomb with Ricky Steamboat as the Special Guest Referee for the Heartland Wrestling Association in what turned out to be Lockwood's final match.

## Death

On the evening of November 5, 2003, his friend Steven Richards invited him to a party that proved fatal, as Lockwood, drunk when he went to sleep, died of suffocating from a regurgitation of his own vomit, according to the autopsy. Lockwood was found partially clothed with a puddle of vomit around his face, several empty bottles of Carisoprodol (musculoskeletal pain medication) and a partially empty alcohol bottle were found nearby.

At first it was thought that this was the cause of death, but subsequent examinations classified the death as suicide, without however ruling out a possible accidental death from suffocation. The autopsy revealed that Lockwood ingested 90 pills of Carisoprodol. Lockwood had recently received the divorce papers, according to his wife, the two would have separated in July, but still managed to remain on excellent terms.

His wife discovered his death on the way to her cousin's house in Charlotte. In August 2005, Nora Greenwald, who performed alongside Lockwood as Molly Holly, released an autobiographical DVD titled *Nora Greenwald: Shootin 'the ~~Shi~~ Crap* , and a portion of the profits from the sale of the DVD went to Lockwood's Daughter School Fund. In March 2005, the New Breed Wrestling Association organized the "Mike Lockwood Memorial Tournament", which was won by Michael Modest.