RIP Sabu.

[The Natural]

Sabu deserves his own thread. I'll be watching Sabu vs. Terry Funk No Rope Barbed Wire match at ECW Born To Be Wired 1997 tonight. RIP Sabu. Condolences to his family, friends and fans.

Edited May 11 by The Natural

[Cobra Commander]

In lieu of flowers, please toss a chair at your opponent

[hobo joe]

Didn’t he just have his retirement match like a month ago?

[twiztor]

holy shit. RIP. Sabu a true innovator and legend. 

[Cobra Commander]

Sabu putting Cena through the table on Raw is one of the more memorable moments of that era of Raw

[jaedmc]

I've got a lot to see on the subject, and I'll be back later to do so after I  celebrate Mother's Day.

But I want to say the history of wrestling cannot be told without Sabu. In the same way you can't tell it without Hulk Hogan or Nick Bockwinkle.

He changed wrestling. He became viral before viral was an internet concept. You couldn't watch him on youtube, you had to buy a second VCR and dub a tape. Sabu was the goddamn ghost from The Ring. He did his own thing and gave everything he had to an audience in a way few performers in any form of entertainment have or can.

I'm happy I got to meet him. I'm happy I got to thank him for every bit of his own comfort that he sacrificed for us. I know he was very shy and very humble about his influence on wrestling, but I hope he knew that he was appreciated when he passed.

 

[clintthecrippler]

Sabu was my favorite wrestler for a solid two years before I even got to witness a match of his thanks to magazines like Pro Wrestling Illustrated running pictures of him putting his opponents through tables and other chaotic scenarios every month in the mid-90s before I was on the Internet, before the WWF flipped to "The Attitude Era", before WCW got "invaded" by the nWo, and before tables became commonplace on TV wrestling.

So far today I have seen him noted as wrestling's analog to how mythical The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was for horror movies and how Slayer was for heavy metal, and both are absolutely accurate. This one hurts.

[Graham Crackers]

Oh man, this really activates a sentimental impulse. Actually Sabu often does that for me.

Sabu was not my favorite wrestler as a kid because I hadn't seen him. But I knew about him. I heard about him in magazines and I'm positive I saw him in an ad during an episode of Monday Night Raw (I know I missed the ECW invasion episode, I didn't watch Raw that winter/spring). I had no idea how to watch ECW until it was on TNN. Kids with cooler parents than mine had seen him wrestle at the Elks Lodge. I love when people talk about his mystique/reputation because that actually how I remember it from my childhood.

When I first became aware of the idea you could watch older wrestling on tape, ECW shows were the first thing I wanted to find, before I ended up buying a copy of Kawasaki Dream. I was a Foley fan but I finally got to see Sabu. I was a teenager at this point and we had a friend that used to get drunk and "act like Sabu" which basically meant jumping from high places. This was 2004 or so. One Night Stand got me back into watching WWE, meanwhile my friends and I got into puroresu, ROH, and watching lucha libre on Galavision.

When the Benoit murder/suicide occurred my friends and I stopped watching wrestling for a few months. I briefly thought that I might be finished until a friend just said "let's watch some Sabu matches." It was a reminder that we still loved this stuff, in spite of the shadows that obscure it.

I've been a pretty casual viewer in the last few years. I've followed AEW off and on and not much else. But to me, the Sabu retirement match was something I had to see. And it was a mess! I wouldn't have asked for anything else.

Sabu was my number 100 for the PWO 2016 GWE poll and I'm sure I'll put him there again in 2026.

[Curt McGirt]

His uncle's profile is next up on Dark Side of the Ring. Because, of course it would be. 

I found out about this right before going into a record store out here (and didn't find either of the things I wanted) and thought about him on the way back. About Born To Be Wired. About Stairway to Hell. Trying, in my own mental fantasy, explaining these things to my folks, and knowing there's no way I could without disgusting them. That's a funny thing for someone to be proud of, but he should of -- had to have -- been. The bravery. The strength.

The sheer force of willpower.

He stretched the human body to its limit of endurance for the sake of his art. 

There will be no other one like him.

Rest in peace.

[Death From Above]

19 minutes ago, jaedmc said:

I've got a lot to see on the subject, and I'll be back later to do so after I  celebrate Mother's Day.

But I want to say the history of wrestling cannot be told without Sabu. In the same way you can't tell it without Hulk Hogan or Nick Bockwinkle.

He changed wrestling. He became viral before viral was an internet concept. You couldn't watch him on youtube, you had to buy a second VCR and dub a tape. Sabu was the goddamn ghost from The Ring. He did his own thing and gave everything he had to an audience in a way few performers in any form of entertainment have or can.

I'm happy I got to meet him. I'm happy I got to thank him for every bit of his own comfort that he sacrificed for us. I know he was very shy and very humble about his influence on wrestling, but I hope he knew that he was appreciated when he passed.

 

This sums it up for me as well although I never got to meet him. I was in high school during the years when ECW were genuinely ahead of the curve in terms of using the internet as essentially their entire advertising system. Being new to any wrestling that wasn't WWF or WCW, Sabu was like an alien from another planet. Fuckin' loved the guy because I knew every one of his matches Crazy Shit was about to go down. Back in those early tape trading days I would specifically seek out ECW shows where Sabu had an interesting opponent just to see what the hell would happen. It was such an exciting time to be a wrestling fan and Sabu was a huge, huge part of that journey.

[zendragon]

1 hour ago, The Natural said:

Sabu deserves his own thread. I'll be watching Sabu vs. Terry Funk No Rope Barbed Wire match at ECW Born To Be Wired 1997 tonight. RIP Sabu. Condolences to his family, friends and fans.

Missed out on seeing Terry as he pulled out of the one indy show he was scheduled to be at that I attended did get to see Sabu stab Joey Janella in his second to last wrestling appearance 

[WebConn89]

I’ll think of some words to write later but in the meantime

 

[Greggulator]

Sabu is possibly my all-time favorite. Like everyone says: You can’t tell the story of wrestling without Sabu. I was lucky enough to have found ECW on sketchy TV channels that only showed infomercials in 1994. Him coming out in the Hannibal Lecter mask — I actually thought he was really insane, and I was 17. Sabu felt dangerous in ways nobody else in wrestling felt dangerous. It felt like every move he did could be the last move of his career. He could be sloppy as hell but that was great — it didn’t looked choreographed, it looked like an unhinged maniac doing insane shit that he should not be doing. 

Every time the WWE uses a table spot as a big moment in a match or there is some crazy dive to the floor — none of that happens without Sabu. And maybe others do that stuff “better” but no one made it feel more real. Because it was reckless and chaos. RIP Sabu.

[Curt McGirt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOVZJ2HffL4&ab_channel=LouGregory

This match is so great and so grimy. You can feel the shit on the floor people walk through watching it. It's also two guys who came up with some really cool stuff (while probably sharing a blunt outside a Super 8 ) managing to knit that together into an actual wrestling match, selling every single thing they pulled off, and managing to ad lib when things didn't work out. Hats off.

Edited May 11 by Curt McGirt

[Greggulator]

To make this perfect ECW: Lou Gregory was Sign Guy Dudley for those who didn’t know.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=92IqOINTnfI&pp=ygUKaHVrYSBibHVlcw%3D%3D

:::points to the sky:::

RIP Sabu

[hammerva]

Very nice and very Joey Janela like tribute to Sabu in the beginning of the JCW May Flowers show today.  Hopefully there is version out there with just the speech

https://x.com/SeanRossSapp/status/1921671063424905506

Edited May 11 by hammerva

[Phantom Lord]

Sabu went out on his own terms at Spring Break. I'm glad he got his flowers at the end that he deserved.

[Curt McGirt]

Quote

Could've chosen a better picture honestly.

Maffew: 

Quote

I disagree, this photo encapsulates everything that made Sabu the wrestler and legend he was: the willing to do whatever it took regardless or risk to himself or his body, to entertain even a small number of fans.

The spot here isn't a fuck-up btw, Cactus Jack is ducking a Sabu dive to the outside and Sabu is careening into the table that is going to do very little to break his momentum as he smashes onto a hard ass floor. That's as Sabu as it gets.

  

[HumanChessgame]

Like others here I first heard about Sabu in the magazines for quite some time before ever seeing him actually wrestle. I can't remember if my first time seeing him in motion was a tape of ECW's weekly show on a random sports channel or his short lived WCW run. One of my wrestling Mandela Effects is thinking Sabu wrestled a young Devon Storm on Worldwide (Cagematch tells me it was Chris Kanyon) and getting disqualified doing one of his table spots. Through the years I got deeper into his back catalogue of insane matches and could always respect his willingness to completely disregard his own well-being in order to entertain. No matter your opinion of wrestling, he was one of those few who just had "it" that made you believe just for a little while. He had a remarkable career that went far longer than one would expect given what he put his body through. I have to wonder if he felt the end was near and managed to marshal the strength for one last go in his retirement match.

[Cobra Commander]

from Reddit/SC: "Photo I took of Sabu after his last match"

https://i.redd.it/aetnaw8d870f1.jpeg

[Octopus]

*runs, jumps off chair, lands on top rope, wobbles, flies into the crowd

Fuck yeah.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

This is a sad one. Sabu perfectly embodied what I like in wrestling. Never really knowing what might happen next. As a younger teen, I read a lot of Scott Keith and before I saw him, I thought Sabu might suck because the reviews made everything sound like a mess. You know what? They were! But the best kind of mess. Pure fucking chaos. 

The importance of Sabu is probably under appreciated by today's generation but good lord did he rule. Hell, I'm nearing my 40s and I'll still do his pose sometimes when the urge strikes me. That last match honestly hurt to watch and this news doesn't make me feel any better about it, if we're being honest. So instead, I just rolled a joint and I'm pulling up the casino brawl he had with Cactus Jack. 

Edited May 11 by RazorbladeKiss87

[Octopus]

Heaven got even more hardcore

[Cobra Commander]

it's been this way for a few years but Sabu getting news articles from mainstream media outlets is way different than how wrestling was covered like 20-25 years ago