Ricky Lawless

**Medardo James Leon Jr.** (December 3, 1959 – November 30, 1988), best known as **Ricky Lawless**, was an American professional wrestler, trainer and promoter. He competed in Eastern, Mid-Atlantic and Southern regional territories during the early to mid-1980s until his murder in 1988.

## Professional wrestling career

Jim Leon worked as a mechanic prior to becoming a professional wrestler and later lived in Charlotte, North Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland. He initially wrestled and trained only twice a week, while still a full-time mechanic, and quit three times due to his financial situation before fully commiting to a career in wrestling.

Throughout the 1980s, he wrestled up and down the Eastern United States and eventually became a regular in International Championship Wrestling and the National Wrestling Federation. In 1984, under the ring name Jim Nunna, he became the first heavyweight champion for the American Wrestling Federation in Georgia; while champion he began competing under his real name.

Leon also started a wrestling school in a disused boxing gym located at the corner of North Avenue and Harford road. It was a Baltimore City run gym, where he and Dave Coleman, who had been trained by Killer Kowalski trained a number of future independent stars like Steve "The Brawler" Lawler, "Playboy" Bobby Starr, and Axl Rotten. He later formed a team with one of his students, Joey Maggs, and twice won the tag team belts in Buck Robley's Deep South Championship Wrestling (later Southern Championship Wrestling).

Lawless and Maggs, as **The Heavy Metal Connection**, became a popular tag team in the Mid-Atlantic region as well as for promotions in Mississippi and Louisiana. In 1987, Leon was featured in an article for *The Charlotte Observer* in which he discussed his career and his experiences on the independent circuit. He also felt hopeful that he and Maggs might be hired by the National Wrestling Alliance.

During the summer of 1988, while wrestling for Frank Cain's Star Cavalcade Wrestling, he and his student Axl Rotten briefly held the SCW Tag Team Championship after defeating The Smurfs (Corey Stevens & Dynamite Kid) for the titles in Montgomery, Alabama. They later dropped the belts to Rick Anderson & Snake Watson. In September, he defeated Moondog in Bainbridge, Georgia to win the promotion's heavyweight championship; the title had been held up the previous month when their last match ended in a double-disqualification.

At the time of Leon's murder, he was still the reigning heavyweight champion for Star Cavalcade Wrestling. The title was declared vacant immediately afterwards and won by his former student Axl Rotten after defeating The Psycho in Thomasville, Georgia.

He has been credited not only for having trained some of the top Mid-Atlantic independent wrestlers of the 1980s and 90s, but for being one of the standout stars during the final years of the territory-era. Dr. Thom Parks, a former referee and well-known "dirt sheet" writer, said in a 2003 interview that Leon "was a party animal, but he was also a very talented grappler. I really think he would have went far had he lived longer. Jimmy was funny and he could have a four star match versus a broom. He really had a lot of talent. It's just too bad that more people didn't get to see it. Of course, when you party as much as he did and do some of the unwise things he did, you can't expect a long lifespan. Even though we didn't see eye to eye on everything, Jimmy was probably my best friend in the wrestling business."

## Death

On November 30, 1988, at approximately 11 PM, Leon was shot in the chest with a shotgun blast after answering a knock on his door at his home in the 1400 block of Reynolds St. in Locust Point.

Policeman Mark Tomlin told the *Evening Sun* that he apparently saw his killer and tried to slam the door shut, but the assailant rammed the door, knocking it off its hinges. Leon tried to hold the door as a shield, but the gunman shot at Leon; a second shot would hit his left hand. He was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead at the age of 28.

*The Toronto Star* claimed the murder had been committed by a "former tag team partner." Leon's murder, specifically focusing on the aspect of his death at the hands of an irate husband over an extramarital affair, would later appear as an exposé by *Hustler* ("Shotgun Justice: A Pro Wrestler's Final Fall") in May 1991.

Ronald Allen Swartz, known in professional wrestling as Vladamir Koloff, was later held without bail on charges of shooting Leon; he was charged with first-degree murder and a firearms violation in connection to the shotgun slaying of Medardo "Jim" Leon.