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MELANIE PILLMAN PASSES AWAY

Brian Pillman Jr. announced today that his mother, Melanie Pillman-King passed away yesterday.

While she never worked officially in professional wrestling, Melanie appeared during the infamous episode of WWE's Monday Night Raw when Steve Austin invaded the Pillman house (which was their family's legitimate home at the time):

 After Brian's passing, Melanie was interviewed on Raw but the less said about that the better.  She also appeared in WWE's official DVD documentary on Brian Pillman's life.    The wrestling world, led by Les Thatcher's HWA promotion, rallied around the Pillman family after Brian's death in October 1997, holding Pillman Memorial Shows annually until 2001 in Cincinnati with Melanie and the Pillman family appearing before the live crowd. 

As time went on, Melanie's personal issues took root, as well documented in Liam O'Rourke's excellent book on Brian Pillman Crazy Like A Fox and as seen in the Dark Side of the Ring documentary on the life and death of Brian, which Melanie took part in and at times, took the blame for some of the things that had transpired involving her family.   Obviously, there was estrangement within the family and she had many years of personal and legal turmoil.  If there is one silver lining, it is that Melanie's appearance in the documentary at least led to a thawing of the relationships with her children, as Brian Jr. wrote in his announcement of her passing.

Melanie was sadly preceded in passing by her daughter Alexis, who had worked in professional wrestling as a manager, Lexi Pillman.  Lexi passed away following an auto accident in 2009 and obviously that weighed heavily on Melanie as well.

Brian Jr. made the following announcement on his social media:

Yesterday at approximately 1:00pm my mother, Melanie Pillman, was pronounced dead.

Those of you who know our family story understand that I didn’t have the best relationship with my mother, though my sister and I had recently been in touch with her, working to improve that relationship.

While I didn’t spend too much time with her, she would ALWAYS tune into my twitch streams and interact with my fans, often times sharing with them old stories about my father and the wrestling business. She had been helping out my sister with her son Asher by purchasing him baby clothes, and was on relatively good terms with everyone as of late.

Her death, while unexpected, was not surprising. Her lifestyle choices that dominated the better part of the last 25 years of her life had ultimately caught up with her.

She was as intelligent as she was beautiful and her dark sense of humor could make even the biggest prude burst out in laughter.

Although I had my built up resentment towards her, I was very proud of her for taking part in the DSOTR documentary and sharing the truth about our family story. That was the beginning of us mending our relationship.

I do have regrets. I regret not giving her the time of day when she was trying so hard to be in our lives again. I regret not texting her back even though I had the time to. I regret not trying harder to break her of her bad habits and help her get the help she needed. 

A couple weeks ago she had been tuning into my twitch stream when she told me in chat that she was coming over to Linda’s house to drop off some trading cards. I didn’t see it in chat so I was annoyed at her for showing up un-announced. I met her outside and accepted the gift and gave her a hug and she went on her way. I truly regret not sitting down with her for a little bit or going to grab lunch with her. I regret being upset with her simply because she wanted to see her son. She actually looked really healthy and sober. That was the last time I saw her.

Thank you mom for bringing me into this world and for trying your absolute best. You were my number 1 fan in wrestling and on Twitch.

 

Rest In Peace. I love you .

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On behalf of everyone here at PWInsider.com, I extend my deepest condolences to the Pillman family on their loss and wish everyone the best.

Thanks to Paul Jordan.

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