Devon Nicholson

Devon Nicholson is a Canadian professional wrestler who has wrestled under the names of Kid Nichols, Hannibal and Blood Hunter.

He is also a professional wrestling promoter, running the Great North Wrestling company, and has a YouTube channel, The Hannibal TV.

A graduate of the Hart Dungeon, Nicholson has wrestled internationally with several promotions.

Stampede Wrestling, IWA Puerto Rico, WWC Puerto Rico, Deep South Wrestling, WWE tryouts and the Ontario based Great North Wrestling.

Nicholson won the OFSAA wrestling high school championships in 2000 and 2001 without a single point scored against him.

Despite amateur wrestling success, Nicholson turned down scholarships to pursue his dream of being a professional wrestler.

He won a gold medal at the 2001 Junior National Championships in London, Ontario.

A month later, he gained a spot on the Canadian Junior National Team after winning the National Team trials in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Nicholson started his professional wrestling career in 2001 with Stampede Wrestling, after training in the Hart wrestling family dungeon from the age of 19.

In Stampede Wrestling, he played the Kid Nichols character, while in the promotion Matrats, he had the ring name Matt Lust.

He has also wrestled under the ring name Adam Lust.

Nicholson had wrestled Abdullah the Butcher (real name Lawrence Robert Shreve) nine times from 2006 to 2009; most of these matches involved bloodshed.

In 2007, Nicholson started a professional wrestling company, which by 2015 was called Great North Wrestling.

By 2007, Nicholson had established his professional wrestling character as the madman Hannibal, which Nicholson said was named by Bushwhacker Luke.

Nicholson commented: "I really can be a mean person ... And I don't like people very much."

In August 2007, Nicholson wrestled Shreve in a match that saw Shreve using a fork and coffee pot to bloody Nicholson, who later said that he was hospitalized due to the continued bleeding, requiring 25 stitches.

After Nicholson participated in 15 tryouts with WWE, the promotion in 2009 offered Nicholson a three-year contract to join them, but rescinded the offer within a month when Nicholson was diagnosed with hepatitis C.

According to Nicholson, from 2009 to 2012 he had taken interferon and ribavirin to treat the disease, but ended the treatment due to the side effects.

In March 2009, Slam!

Wrestling published an article where Nicholson and Shreve were complimentary of each other; Nicholson said he was "very impressed" by Shreve, who was "just so realistic", while Shreve said Nicholson was "really good" and "he has given me a run for my money".

In 2011, Nicholson sued WWE for discriminating against him due to hepatitis C; the lawsuit was settled in 2012.

In 2011, Nicholson sued Abdullah for $6.5 million in the Ontario Superior Court for negligence, assault, and battery, accusing Shreve of spreading hepatitis C to Nicholson in a May 2007 professional wrestling match.

Nicholson accused Shreve of taping a razor blade to Shreve's finger which cut both Shreve and Nicholson, passing the disease through their blood.

Nicholson also stated that he did not consent to being cut, and that Shreve had "prematurely ended" his professional wrestling career; he instead became a personal trainer in Ottawa at the Ray Friel Centre.

Nicholson announced in 2013 that he was cured of hepatitis C.

In December 2021, Nicholson repeatedly stabbed a World Class Pro Wrestling (WCPW) referee with a spike, resulting in a severed artery in the referee's head that needed emergency surgery.

According to the referee and Nicholson, the referee was scripted to bleed via blading.

Various WCPW personnel said that Nicholson had gone off-script with the attack, and Nicholson was banned from WCPW, although Nicholson said that he quit before he was banned, and also said that the referee never indicated that he was legitimately injured.

Devon Nicholson, from Orleans, attended Cairine Wilson Secondary School and achieved success in scholastic wrestling.

This is Hannibal, a 2013 documentary about Nicholson, detailed that he first retired from professional wrestling in September 2011 to focus on his health.

In August 2013, the City of Ottawa fired Nicholson from his gym attendant job at the Ray Friel Centre, due to an incident where Nicholson met his former wrestling videographer at the complex, whom he had fallen out with; Nicholson "slammed his fist down on the front desk" and later directed a remark at the videographer, while throwing a pool chair in another room between those actions.

In December 2013, Nicholson announced that he was cured of hepatitis C. According to Nicholson, he received a recommendation in 2012 from fellow wrestler and hepatitis C sufferer Billy Graham to speak to his doctor, Hector Rodriguez-Luna, who recommended that Nicholson undergo experimental treatment with telaprevir, a drug commonly used to treat hepatitis C genotype 1, although Nicholson had hepatitis C genotype 2.

Nicholson said that 36 weeks of treatment cured him.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that Nicholson contracted hepatitis C from Abdullah the Butcher in a May 2007 professional wrestling match during which both wrestlers were cut and bled, and further determined Abdullah was responsible for WWE rescinding a contract offer made to Nicholson in 2009 after he was diagnosed with the disease.

$2.3 million was awarded to Nicholson as a result of the court's ruling.

Later in 2014, Nicholson worked in a group home.

At a 2015 Great North Wrestling event, Nicholson wrestled as Hannibal “The Death Dealer", against Soa Amin, with suspended Canadian senator Patrick Brazeau as the special guest referee for the match. After Nicholson won the match, he slammed Brazeau through a table.

By 2017, Nicholson's YouTube channel, The Hannibal TV, had amassed over 44,000 subscribers.

In his career, Nicholson has wrestled in Canada, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States.

He has wrestled against AJ Styles, Jinder Mahal, James Storm, Abyss, Kevin Nash, Sycho Sid and Tommy Dreamer.