Professional wrestler Jeff Jarrett exploded onto the country charts in 1996 with his hit single, With My Baby Tonight, but even most die-hard musicologists and wrestlologists don’t know the shocking true story behind the song. 

Jarrett reportedly wrote this song after watching another man watch a hapless drowning victim, later identified as R. Dogg, sink to his death in a river.

The song, according to a longstanding mythology, is a lament about how Jarrett could have helped the drowning man, but was too worried that he might get his guitar wet. 

One version of this tale even has Jarrett doing detective work to find the identity of the bystander (identified as Billy G.), inviting him to a wrestling show for free (without revealing why), and then humiliating him in front of a huge crowd of fans. 

Jarrett himself has dismissed all stories “urban legends and country legends,” insisting instead that the song is instead about slapping nuts.