Cherokee judge has hold on wrestler
By Mark Bixler -- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, March 18, 1999

A pro wrestler known as Big Poppa Pump dodged the big house Wednesday but will have to spend 10 days in the
Cherokee County Jail.

A judge also ordered Scott Carl Rechsteiner to pay $25,000 in fines, fees and restitution and to stay on probation
for seven years after Rechsteiner pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and making terroristic threats, felonies with
a maximum sentence of 30 years. The charges allege that Rechsteiner, 36, threatened a Department of
Transportation worker and hit him with his Ford F-250 pickup in April 1998.

Rechsteiner has biceps the size of watermelons and a blond Fu Manchu mustache. His lawyer, Alan C. Manheim,
told Judge C. Michael Roach that Rechsteiner is gentle and well-educated.

"I have seen a man very different than his public persona," he said.

Big Poppa Pump is one of the bad guys on the TV wrestling shows, wrestling with the World Championship
Wrestling federation as part of the New World Order team.

Last April 21, investigators said, Rechsteiner drove down a closed exit ramp off I-575 in south Cherokee and
threatened and twice hit DOT road worker Paul Kaspereen after Kaspereen told him the ramp was closed.
Kaspereen was not seriously hurt.

"I just apologize that this happened," said the wrestler, who also goes by the name Scott Steiner.

The judge sentenced Rechsteiner under the state's first-offender rules. That means a court will find him not guilty
if he avoids trouble while on probation.

Rechsteiner also must perform 200 hours of community service.