Sunny Was Going to Be a Doctor. She Killed a 75-Year-Old Man at a Traffic Light. | HoM Ep. 4

Tammy Sytch was a pre-med student at the University of Tennessee. She was smart, driven, and by all early accounts headed toward a career that would help people. Then she started dating a professional wrestler named Chris Candido, and the trajectory of her entire life changed.She became Sunny: the most downloaded woman on the internet in 1996, the Pro Wrestling Illustrated Manager of the Year, and the woman Jim Cornette said was better on the microphone than any of the men he had. When the WWF came calling in 1995, Vince McMahon reportedly didn't want Chris Candido without her. She was the act. He came with her.Kevin argues she was the beta test for the Attitude Era - the experiment that proved to Vince McMahon he could push the envelope, because audiences didn't flinch when he hypersexualized her. She became AOL's most downloaded woman. She refused a Playboy offer. And for a brief window, she was the most recognizable woman in sports entertainment.Then it all came apart.The painkiller addiction. The nine-month affair with Shawn Michaels while committed to Candido, which nearly everyone knew about except Candido himself. The backstage war with Sable, who took the Playboy cover Sunny had turned down. The July 1998 release from WWE. ECW - what Kevin calls "the trailer park version of both WWF and WCW" - and an arrest for violating a restraining order filed by her own mother. WCW, where Eric Bischoff later said the drug use was so bad that people had to sweep the locker room for used needles before events.Chris Candido broke both bones in his leg at TNA Lockdown on April 24th, 2005. Four days later, he was gone. He was 33. The one stable relationship she had in her adult life, the man who stayed with her through every collapse, was suddenly not there.She was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011 and appeared to have finally turned a corner. Two years later, she publicly trashed the WWE wellness program that had funded her rehabilitation multiple times and became the first and only talent in company history to be formally cut off from it.On March 25th, 2022, Tammy Sytch drove through the Ormond Beach area of Florida with a blood alcohol content roughly four times the legal limit and ran into a car stopped at a traffic light. She killed 75-year-old Julian Lassiter. There was an open vodka bottle in the car.In November 2023, she was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and 8 years of probation. She will be in her sixties before she sees the outside.Jim Cornette, the man who discovered her, said he didn't want to pile on. He wanted to remember her when she wasn't a complete disaster. But then she killed a man sitting at a traffic light. He couldn't defend her anymore.Kevin and Jeff cover the full arc: Smoky Mountain Wrestling, the Body Donnas, WrestleMania, the Shawn Michaels affair, ECW, Chris Candido's death, the Hall of Fame, and five arrests in 32 days, and what the culture of professional wrestling did to people who had no business being in it.Follow Halls of Mediocrity: wherever you get your podcasts | X | Facebook GroupIntro Music:Music by Marching Music -Guide Right -By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - PixabayOutro Music:Music by Marching Music -The Thunderer By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay