Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
Sabu should have died when he was 19.
He was shot in the teeth and face during a house party.
Imagine if he had died, just another victim of senseless violence in Michigan that day.
How different the entire world of professional wrestling would be.
This past weekend, John Cena and Randy Orton were putting each other through tables in their WWE Backlash main event.
Without knowing or perhaps not even caring, they were paying tribute to Sabu.
Everyone in the ring pays tribute to Sabu whether they realize it or not.
That’s what happens when the work ethic you radiate is so massive, it literally changes the DNA of the thing you love.
None of that means Sabu was perfect, because certainly he was far from that. For every death-defying moment inside, above and around the ring, there were controversies and health scares and moments where fans were let down, concerned and frightened for his life.
But, whether anyone agreed with how he lived his life or managed his career, there’s one ultimate truth beyond it all - Sabu lived his life the way he wanted to do, good and bad, regrets and results alike.
It is impossible today to convey the importance of Sabu to a fan who grew up in the 21st century with smart phones and streaming services and the ability to find just about anything within a few clicks of your curiosity, but in 1993, Sabu was a true underground king. In MMA, everyone talks about the late Kimbo Slice coming to prominence thanks to underground tapes being passed around or linked to online. THAT was Sabu, many years before the Internet.
If you saw him in his earliest days, it was likely the local Michigan independents or perhaps The Tri-State Wrestling Alliance, where he was booked in part because TWA wanted his Uncle, the Original Sheik Ed Farhat. He gained more and more experience, hidden somewhat in obscurity in a way that can never be replicated today where every independent match becomes a Twitter GIF. I think most are shocked to learn Sabu began wrestling the same year as the first Wrestlemania.
Toiling away from larger companies, Sabu evolved over and over on the independents while he worked outside pro wrestling laying drywall. Alongside the future Rob Van Dam, he learned under his Uncle. Those teachings, good and bad, would set into stone how Sabu looked at professional wrestling, performing, and the concept of respect he felt should be adhered to, even if those things would at times be broken by Sabu himself over the course of his career.
For everyone who wondered why Sabu fought against losing at times, or got himself purposely fired or was just difficult, it was because pro wrestling worked a certain way in his brain - and when others went against how be believed and was taught how it should work - for Sabu - there was going to be a problem.
In 1993, finding a tape of Sabu for the first time was akin to Indiana Jones finding the Ark of The Covenant. This was something vibrant, visceral, violent and it exploded all the neutrons in your brain at once, because what you were seeing didn’t compute as much as it blew your mind. I can attest to that, watching Sabu for the first time on a tape of the infamous Terry Funk vs. Atsushi Onita exploding ring match from 5/5/93.
In a bout against Dr. Hannibal and Dr. Luther (now Toni Storm’s butler in AEW), Sabu and his Uncle were featured in highlights that ran for a total of five minutes and 33 seconds. In the first seconds of the footage, Sabu did a backflip before charging Hannibal in the corner, getting walloped over the head with a chair. Sabu was worked over, including taking an evil bump to the floor. Then, suddenly magic appeared before our eyes as he dropkicked Hannibal from the top rope to the floor, then hit the ring, backflipped over Luther, Sabu landing on his feet, then charging past him to kick Hannibal on the floor from the ring apron. Sabu then turned around and hit the most perfect springboard clothesline imaginable on Luther, then turned around and hit a forward flip to the outside, wiping out Hannibal.
What the hell did I just see, my 1993 brain wondered, completely blown away.
But, Sabu wasn’t done.
Sabu then picked up and threw a table into Hannibal’s face. He placed Hannibal on the table and I witnessed, through the majesty of VHS, my first-ever Sabu moonsault from the top rope through a table, which did not break (!!) and again, I wondered what the hell I just saw.
Sabu then hit a split-legged moonsault, THEN another moonsault and scored the pin. WOW. That guy is great, I thought to myself…and then I realized, as this scene continued to unfold, this Sabu guy isn’t done.
With crimson blood speckling his long white pants, Sabu tossed a defenseless table that was minding its business into the ring. He then moonsaulted the table, which cracked, but did not break. I want to point out that as you are reading this in 2025, you have a preconceived notion of tables that fall apart or are made to break away or whatever you think happens when a professional wrestling match uses a table as a prop - as happens on every show, thanks to Sabu - but this table was not made to break, it had a metal ring around the side and well, let’s just say it wasn’t working with Sabu. I remember to this day, recoiling in shock and horror, believing this man just destroyed his hip - a hip Sabu would later replace.
Then, Sabu decided that wasn’t good enough. ANOTHER TABLE. Sabu went to the top and dove off with a leg drop, crashing through that table and writhing in pain. Add in the blooded Sheik storming around screaming and shooting off a fire extinguisher for who knows what reason, and it was the most fever-dream scene an 18 year old kid who was starting to fade away from pro wrestling could ever imagine.
That was the beauty of Sabu in his greatest form. He could take black and white visions and turn them into technicolor dreams, rewriting your brain for what you thought could and should be possible in the pro wrestling space.
Add in that due to the teachings of his Uncle, Sabu always tried to carry an aura about him of danger, playing into the idea that he was this savage personality who had never seen electric lights before (hence Sabu pointing up at them) and with brilliant looking punches that in their best moments looked 100% legitimate and the insane bevy of offense maneuvers that he brought to the market all at the same time - Air Sabu off the chair, Arabian Facebuster, moonsaults to tables, Arabian Press, The ATOMIC Arabian Facebuster, etc. - There was a legitimacy to what Sabu did in that era - an insane, mauling, brutal legitimacy.
Sabu effectively became the modern day equivalent of the pro wrestling monster who was too out of control, too crazy, too violent - for anyone to question. Whether it was The Sheik, Bruiser Brody, Abdullah the Butcher or any of the great monster brawlers of the territory era, Sabu carried their spirit in what he did inside the ring, albeit in his own unique maverik style. He was the wrestler closing his cuts with crazy glue, something he read soldiers did in World War I. He was the one brawling through buildings and smashing up concession stands and bashing bottles over heads, careening through the air to take out the opposition, and many times, himself in the process. Add in the scars from barbed wire matches and his savage, frenzied attacks on all opponents and it was like watching a beast unlike any seen before take to the battle before your very eyes. It was the future of pro wrestling baked into the old school monsters of the past.
Sabu was absolutely unapologetic about anything. He was Sabu and he lived his life on his own terms. This was his greatest attribute and his greatest detriment. Sabu left everything he had to give in the ring, painfully and masterfully, as his work needed to be pinpoint accurate to prevent the matches from falling apart as time stood still trying to get everything back on track. Or worse, a mistake in timing or footing or just being a little off physically from where you thought you were mentally could lead to a bad injury.
Through it all, every title win and barbed wire massacre to no shows or trips to the hospital for, shall we say, over-medicating, Sabu was unapologetic. He was who he was and if you didn’t get it, well, he didn’t care. We can say what we want, and certainly anyone who loved him as a performer - I am certainly among that list - can be sad that he’s gone or mad that he didn’t take care of himself more - but if he was here, he’d probably shrug, laugh and tell you to stop being a mark and not care so much, because while Sabu was obsessed with doing the best he could do in the ring, that often ran amuck of his own personal well being, inside and beyond the ring, and that’s one of the great enigmas about him - why was someone who literally set the next big bang for pro wrestling into motion so self-destructive about himself?
I don’t know that anyone will ever have the answer for that, as he didn’t touch upon it in his memoir, which he once told me he co-wrote with Kenny Casanova so he didn’t have to talk about himself, admitting he was painfully shy. I think that was part of the allure of Sabu as well for some fans. Since he didn’t want to talk or be seen outside the ring or do interviews, he could hide within the persona he crafted in the ring and only let those he trusted into his circle know the true Terry Brunk - and he hated being called anything but Sabu. If you earned his respect, you were with him forever, getting an insight into his twisted sense of humor and deep loyalty - but the masses never got to see that, by choice.
One of the aspects of Sabu that shouldn’t get lost with time is how giving he was to other talents, especially those breaking into the business. One ECW PPV weekend, he demanded the entire undercard come out with him and paid for their Easter dinner. There were countless wrestlers he was friends with - from names everyone will recognize like Louie Spicoli to dreamers who tried to find their way into the business like Judge Dredd but later moved on - that Sabu paid out of his own pocket from his ECW wages to get them in the door. Instead of flying to shows, Sabu would instead drive a smoke-filled Winnebago from Michigan to all points ECW, bringing others along with him, trying to give the type of chances he waited so long to be offered himself.
I truly believe one of the reasons so many were shocked by Sabu’s passing is that in many ways, he was the living, breathing embodiment of the best of ECW and like ECW, he always seemed to overcome the worst of circumstances so many times, it was taken for granted it would always be around. I think a lot of people assumed Sabu would be immortal for the same reasons. What could hurt him if nothing that came before did? As strange as that may sound now, I think that's the way he was seen by many.
Sabu WAS ECW. If you look at the first-ever Sabu vs. Tazmaniac match from the October 1993 ECW TV Taping at the 2300 Arena, it is literally a proof of concept of everything ECW strived to be in its best efforts - gritty, hard-hitting, over the top and brutal. It’s quite appropriate that a match that was designed to simply get Sabu over for his official debut ended up evolving into the main event of the promotion’s first pay-per-view. Sabu was very much the mascot and the pulse of the promotion. He was the gateway drug to the rest of the promotion and his rivalries with Terry Funk, Taz, Rob Van Dam, Cactus Jack and more will always be the stuff of legend, and for good reason. They were perfect rivalries for that moment in time.
There’s an argument to be made that without Sabu, ECW doesn’t gain the cultural foothold that it still has today where it’s pored over, dissected and celebrated. Who’s to say that without ECW and the countless amount of “Best of Sabu” tapes traded, bought and sold over the 1990s that pro wrestling would be where it is today? ECW beget the WWF Attitude. The death of ECW led to Ring of Honor rising from the ashes, and who knows if that could have happened or been financed had it not been for the money derived from the work of Sabu, and others, in ECW.
How different would the world have been if Tod Gordon hadn’t brought Sabu in - and if Paul Heyman hadn’t been the psycho booker looking to take over the world at that time? Sabu was the nuclear bomb from which to launch the attack on the culture of pro wrestling. ECW didn't survive, but certainly, its influence on pro wrestling will live forever.
Sabu in ECW was a perfect storm in its best moments, but all good things come to an end and that magical time in ECW ended several times. The first time, Sabu took a booking for New Japan and couldn’t get to Philly in time for the Three-Way Dance in 1995, which at the time was the biggest night in the history of the company. The crowd was rightfully upset, but when Sabu returned as a surprise nine months later, all was forgiven as the Philly fans just loved their Sabu. When he was on, in that ECW Arena, it was a beautiful, magical mayhem the likes of which can never be replicated today. When Sabu finally exited ECW for the last time in 2000, a vibrant piece of what made the company unique was gone.
Sabu had flirtations with WCW (choosing to just go back to ECW in 1995 and imagine if THAT didn't happen) and WWE (where he pretty much got himself fired as he was miserable with what he felt were limitations placed on him, plus that whole getting arrested thing in 2006 didn’t work out well in his favor) but never really made the massive paydays that he obviously deserved based on the level of his creativity and the vibrancy of what he gave to professional wrestling. If one is being fair, there are times it was his own fault, as his hard-headedness could be one of his worst traits and at times, it was just horrible timing.
In one interview he did with me in 2020, Sabu talked of being offered a big WCW deal, but his mother passed right after the contract was offered. After he dealt with her services, the deal was now off the table. What the reality of that story is will likely never be sourced, but especially now that he’s gone, it's a true shame that the man who inspired countless others to wrestle and countless tables to be broken on cards around the world never got to be financially solvent thanks to the insane work ethic that he brought to the squared circle.
Over time, that work ethic that brought Sabu fame to hardcore fandom also became one of his biggest detriments. Whether it was tearing a bicep in Born to Be Wire, broken knuckles on his fingers, a broken neck after being dropped on his head, destroying his body hitting the guard rails during a moonsault attempt or shattering his teeth on a turned over chair when crashing into the ring, Sabu just didn’t stop. There was rarely a case of Sabu taking an extended period of time off from the ring, because that’s not how he was raised in pro wrestling. There was no sick. There was no injured. There was just the next show.
What there meant, however, was that sooner or later, Father Time came knocking. All pro wrestlers slow down over time, but when you are someone like Sabu who made your name doing incredible things, the inability to continue to do it had to have been crushing from an ego standpoint. I saw countless Sabu matches later in his career where he was putting over talents who had no business (in MY opinion) beating him in matches where he couldn’t come close to showing off the ghosts of the Sabu that made him immortal. There were moments where he shouldn’t have been in the ring, but hey, that was Sabu.
Good or bad, he lived life his way and to the beliefs of no one but his own.
It could be frustrating at times to be a Sabu fan. Sometimes, there would be a great feud like his battles with Abyss in TNA. Other times, there were times he just wouldn’t show up, like the afternoon he decided not to get on an elevator to accept an Indie Hall of Fame Award, which was insane, since modern day independents wouldn’t exist without him. He was Indie Wrestling in the 1990s. There were shows where he ended up in the hospital for, shall we say, being over-medicated, with the ripple effects of that decision helping to ruin the Extreme Rising debut. There would be embarrassing moments such as a convention in Indiana, where he had to be wheeled out past fans and talents alike, obviously, as have said, over-medicated. For every great moment, there were certainly great disappointments and it’s not that he wanted it to be that way, but sometimes, in the moment, Sabu was all impulse and if the impulse went too far, well, then, so be it. That was the Sabu way, good or bad.
When I received the call Sunday morning about Sabu and then confirmed it, I sat there for ten minutes just staring at the story, not wanting to post it and make it live. The second I did, the world of pro wrestling as I had always known it and cared about it from when I was 18 on was over forever. At 18, I fell in love with Sabu’s work and he plunged me into a world that eventually became my career, a much different life than I ever envisioned or planned for myself. Now, at 50, I had to tell the world that he was gone forever. It was one of the saddest moments I’ve ever had writing about this business, and even writing this article, I feel a complete sense of sadness, because for a good part of my life, Sabu was on my Mount Rushmore of pro wrestling, and now he’s gone. I don’t know why as I write this, but the fact he’s gone leaves a void in everything I ever loved about pro wrestling - because nothing that man ever did can be replicated in this era or likely any other to come.
One aspect of Sabu that should be celebrated, at least in my mind, is how much he electrified and brought the best out of Terry Funk in the 1990s. Terry will always be the best of all time when it comes to bringing out emotion from fans and making them feel, and without Sabu, I don’t know that he’d have been as amazing as he was in that era, really, truly pushing the boundaries. In Sabu, he had a kindred spirit who pushed Terry out of the box, where usually, it was Terry doing the pushing. Everyone will remember Born to Be Wired, since they became entrapped in the wire so deeply that they had to throw out the planned finish, but every interaction they ever had, whether it be The Night the Line was Crossed vs. Shane Douglas, or their When Worlds Collide tag bout with Sabu & Bobby Eaton vs. Funk & Arn Anderson or countless singles matches they had all over the ECW territory, they were always great and they not only made Sabu look spectacular, but it made Terry look every bit of the hero and legend he should have been.
That was the thing about Sabu. While he could be an absolute pain in the ass if he didn’t want to do something, his work did make others greater. Taz said it the other day in his tribute to Sabu. Sabu got him over when he didn’t have to. Sabu did that for Shane Douglas, Rob Van Dam, The Dudley Boyz, The Eliminators, 2 Cold Scorpio and others. Even if these talents had been established in ECW or elsewhere nationally, wrestling with Sabu helped ascend them to the next level, while showcasing the manic insanity of what Sabu was meant to be. If ECW was Goodfellas, Sabu was their Robert Dinero. It didn’t matter if it was Philly or Yonkers or Delaware or Glenolden, PA, Sabu was rarely off in those performances in my memories, but of course, memories can be flighty, so throw an asterisk in there.
As you can imagine, I’ve watched a lot of wrestling over the 21+ years of this website and a lot more before that, but there was nothing like the sheer insanity and testosterone exploding from a great Sabu moment. Even if it didn’t make sense logically, sometimes your brain would cancel it out and tell you not to care about logic, just because it was so cool to be there in the moment. Even his retirement match, where I don’t know whether Sabu was overly medicated or anxious or nervous or not, that match was the spectacle of all spectacles. I don’t know how it will hold up to the passage of time or through hindsight eyes now that he’s no longer with us, but as someone fell into this rabbit hole because of Sabu, I can assure you that match was unabashedly, completely, 100% Sabu, because even if you didn’t like it, it didn’t matter to him, because he was going to do things his way. It’s how he was, from beginning to end, for better or worse.
For many years, the lights going out in a pro wrestling venue sometimes meant that Sabu was going to appear. For all of us this past weekend, the lights went out and unfortunately, if and when they do come back on, there won’t be a genocidal, homicidal, suicidal whirlwind of destruction waiting for us pointing to the sky. Instead, we’ll have to look to the sky ourselves and wonder what sort of mayhem Sabu could get into in the next plane of existence.
I always tried to tell Sabu what his performances led me to do in my life and while he was always thankful, he used to blow me off. When I cornered him the one time he agreed to do an interview to promote his book, knowing I had him trapped, I told him the story of that VHS tape and that without him, I wouldn’t be doing this. At the end of the interview, I reiterated it and told him I would always remind everyone of what he brought to pro wrestling. He told me, on the record, that it made him proud and happy to hear that. It was one of the best responses I could hope for, because anyone who was ever around Sabu knew he would never, ever compliment anyone, unless he meant it. It meant the world to me.
When The Sandman arrived during Sabu’s retirement match, I stopped sitting at my laptop and just stood up to take it in as Las Vegas sang Sandman’s theme. I said to myself that at some point, it’s going to be the last time I get to take in the spectacle of his entrance so I made myself just watch and enjoy it. Little did I know that my advice to myself would be that it would be the last time I saw Sabu in the ring. I am truly glad I was there.
I’m also truly glad that a week ago, I saw Sabu and spent some time talking at the Tri-State Wrestling Alliance convention. I never would have guessed that the last place I’d see him was the very place he magnetically pulled me towards - the former ECW Arena, where my path to writing this article began many years ago. He was limping and he was obviously hurting, but that’s what Sabu was - someone who dealt with the hurt that came with his art - and understand this, what he did inside the ring was nothing short of beautiful, painful art.
There will always be those who want to criticize what others do and what they could have done better and should have done differently, but at the end of the day - and the end of his life - Sabu changed professional wrestling forever. I truly hope he knows how many he inspired and I wish he had made the millions he certainly deserved - and I wish he had made other choices in his life, so that I and others could selfishly have more Sabu in our world, but Sabu lived life his way - and no one could tell him to do otherwise.
If they could have, he wouldn’t have been Sabu.
Well, he was, and for the rest of our lives, everyone who steps into the ring will be paying tribute to him, whether they realize it or not.
Sabu died at the age of 61.
He changed the world.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Bang On Casino
