Everyone needs a hobby. When an Arizona man had to retire from professional wrestling due to injuries, he says that he began visiting his local Walmart a few times a day, sometimes toting sale flyers from other stores and invoking the store’s price match policy. He never expected to be hauled off in handcuffs for it. (Update: Yep, there was more to the story.)

Update, 12/12/13 – Now that other news outlets have the original police report, it turns out that the man wasn’t banned from Walmart for price-matching. He was banned for threatening the physical safety of Walmart employees. “Never once did I say anything to the gentleman,” he had told the TV reporters. According to the police report, the shopper did say a few things to the gentleman. Specifically, “I’m going to mess this mother f_ _ _ker up,” referring to the cashier, threatening to wait in the parking lot to “do [the cashier] in” and to “beat his ass.”

Here’s our original post based on the TV news report from earlier this week.

Yet that’s what he says happened during a recent trip to his local Walmart. An employee told him that ad-matching isn’t allowed, and the man complained to store management. The retired wrestler insists that he wasn’t threatening or aggressive in any way, but something about that encounter made a Walmart employee contact the local sheriff’s office about him.

“I was upset,” he told a local TV station, “but never once did I say anything to the gentleman.”

The next time he came to Walmart, three sheriff’s deputies met him. He wasn’t arrested, but they did handcuff him and present him with a letter banning him from all Walmart stores in the world for life. Just for price-matching, something that Walmart explicitly allows and is making a big deal of this holiday season?

Maybe the price-matching policy is like the return policy: something that some employees make up as they go along.

Something is obviously missing from this story, and we’ll update you when we find out what that is. Meanwhile, the price-matcher still has to go to court, where he’s facing charges of threatening, intimidation, and disorderly conduct.

UPDATE: Walmart issued a statement explaining what happened from their point of view.

We make every effort to make sure our customers have a good experience in our stores. As in previous situations, we attempted to work with this customer. However, in this situation, the associate felt unsafe and so we contacted local law enforcement. We are continuing to cooperate with law enforcement on their investigation.

Valley man banned from Walmart for life [ABC 15] (Thanks, Dave!)

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