Sabu has died. RIP.

[SaitoRyo]

2 hours ago, Chili said:

WWE Vault uploaded Sabu's 1993 tryout against Scott Taylor. Now let's imagine Sabu in the New Generation Era. My word, him and the Kid, Owen, Bret could have been something fun.

He actually worked a dark match with Owen the night before this! I hope that sees the light of day someday, but I'm not sure how it goes with WWE posting Owen stuff due to the lawsuits with Martha etc. 

I would love the Vault to do one of their mixtapes on Sabu, actually. The ones on Savage and Terry Funk were excellent. 

 

[TheScarlettChad]

He worked the first Nitro I believe. I know he worked in WCW in 1995, which is just bizarre.

[Snitsky's back acne]

26 minutes ago, TheScarlettChad said:

He worked the first Nitro I believe. I know he worked in WCW in 1995, which is just bizarre.

Second, but yes him v Alex Wright and Disco Inferno (his only two Nitro matches) was very surreal. 

 

[Browser Brady]

Why exactly did he leave wcw?

 

It seemed like they were letting him do his style somewhat.

[SaitoRyo]

8 minutes ago, Browser Brady said:

Why exactly did he leave wcw?

 

It seemed like they were letting him do his style somewhat.

From what Sabu has said about it, they called and asked what it would take to bring him in and he said $500. WCW assumed that was his nightly fee and paid him that for his other appearances (including the Halloween Havoc PPV), but that was just what he wanted for the first match. WCW told him that was the limit ('take it or leave it'), which Sabu wasn't going to take since he made that much in a night at that point. 

He tried to take an indie booking, Bischoff caught wind and thought he wanted to quit so he fired him. Sabu only found out he was fired when he called up the WCW Hotline at the time, as they were teasing the firing of an international star (classic WCW).

Must be said he was also annoyed about being brought in as a midcard cruiserweight guy, as he wanted to wrestle top guys like Sting, Hogan etc. WCW were also annoyed that The Sheik through a fireball in an unplanned spot at Halloween Havoc. 

Basically, it was a mutual thing and was never going to work out long-term.

[Ironic Indie Lad]

1 hour ago, SaitoRyo said:

From what Sabu has said about it, they called and asked what it would take to bring him in and he said $500. WCW assumed that was his nightly fee and paid him that for his other appearances (including the Halloween Havoc PPV), but that was just what he wanted for the first match. WCW told him that was the limit ('take it or leave it'), which Sabu wasn't going to take since he made that much in a night at that point. 

He tried to take an indie booking, Bischoff caught wind and thought he wanted to quit so he fired him. Sabu only found out he was fired when he called up the WCW Hotline at the time, as they were teasing the firing of an international star (classic WCW).

Must be said he was also annoyed about being brought in as a midcard cruiserweight guy, as he wanted to wrestle top guys like Sting, Hogan etc. WCW were also annoyed that The Sheik through a fireball in an unplanned spot at Halloween Havoc. 

Basically, it was a mutual thing and was never going to work out long-term.

Could be wrong here but I heard WCW only wanted Sabu for 1 TV and 1 PPV a month. They didn't want to over expose him and wanted him to keep the mystique he had built up. He was free to take other non televised bookings but I think it was an ECW appearance where things turned sour.

Both WCW and NJPW seemed determined to lump Sabu in with the cruiserweights / junior heavyweights at the time which seemed a real issue for him. 

In an alternate universe, there is a pre-NWO Hogan v Sabu match on a PPV and it is glorious.

The excellent Between the Sheets has made their Sabu Patreon episodes available for free

https://www.patreon.com/betweenthesheets

[tiger_rick]

Sabu in the New Gen era would have been fascinating from a match POV but I think the gimmick would have been something to see. They only did 1D gimmicks back then so you'd imagine Sabu would have become an early version of The Sultan. His flashy work might still have got him over but when you consider how amazing and smooth Hakushi was, and the one note gimmick held him back from being anything, it's hard to see Sabu being anything more either.

[The Dart]

I think the first time I saw Sabu was the barbed wire match vs Terry Funk.  A friend of mine who lived near school, who wasn't even a wrestling fan had it for some reason and we watched it at his house during lunchtime one day.   My main memory of Sabu will be me watching Sabu & RVD vs. Furnas & LaFon from ECW one day (on Bravo, I think) and my Dad just finding Sabu hilarious.

I met him in 2012 - nice guy I thought.

[Merzbow]

Still one of the coolest matches ever, did anything go right? Maybe not but it's a trainwreck you can't turn away from and Hayabusa on American soil is a big deal back then.

Shame there wasn't anything planned for a longer stay, an ECW feud with Sabu would have been great to see.

 

[organizedkaos]

17 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

The problem is, when article like that is written, especially with wrestlers, they always embellish elements. So what do you believe, what he said then, or now?

Yeah this is always a problem discussing wrestling. Part of the fun of wrestling is the mystique that's built from this weird worked reality buisness. But some smart fans seem to fully believe that wrestlers only work between the first and last bell (or if they're deliberately doing an interview in OTT character mode) rather than the idea that the "work" these days is layers of layers of meta nonsense and just wrestlers tendency to try and make everything sound more dangerous and real than it might be.

But also it gives wrestlers/defensive fans something to hide behind. Someone espouses shitty political viewpoints in an interview, "work".  Wrestler is a dick to a child "work". Riccochet follows Andrew Tate, "work". Chris Be.. nah...

It's not outside of the realms of plausibility Janella is playing into the drug addicted madman stuff (I mean, Kratom is basically just sold as some sort of biohack pick me up but sounds scary to people who've not heard of it before) or it's genuinely a case of a man who lost so much of his body and himself pushing things too far one last time.

Now I think about it, this remains the most Sabu way the guy could go out (tragically). He always blurred the lines of reality more than many performers even way past the point people stopped believing in most anything else wrestling suggested.

 

Anyways, here's an incredible photo by https://www.instagram.com/nickkarpphotos/?hl=en (don't think this was posted in any other thread, apologies if it was)

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, tiger_rick said:

Sabu in the New Gen era would have been fascinating from a match POV but I think the gimmick would have been something to see. They only did 1D gimmicks back then so you'd imagine Sabu would have become an early version of The Sultan. 

The Sultan gimmick was actually a pitch for Sabu. You can see some of that in the eventual gimmick - the baggy trousers are very Sabu-esque, and the idea behind the mask was that he'd had his tongue cut out and couldn't speak, which plays into a more WWF New Generation spin on Sabu as a silent lunatic. Sabu turned it down when they told him he would be managed by The Iron Sheik, because he refused to work with him as he felt he'd ripped off his uncle, even though there aren't really any similarities between them beyond the name.

It's definitely an interesting "What If?" to picture Sabu in the 'fed - between the WWF's preferences and Sabu's personality, you can't imagine it working out, but 1997 is probably the most "throw shit at the wall" period in their history, so who knows? It's hard to picture him working with Bret Hart or Steve Austin, but I'd have loved to have seen it, and I can see him being joined at the hip with Mankind and the early shift to "hardcore" stuff. 

[SaitoRyo]

7 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

It's definitely an interesting "What If?" to picture Sabu in the 'fed - between the WWF's preferences and Sabu's personality, you can't imagine it working out, but 1997 is probably the most "throw shit at the wall" period in their history, so who knows? It's hard to picture him working with Bret Hart or Steve Austin, but I'd have loved to have seen it, and I can see him being joined at the hip with Mankind and the early shift to "hardcore" stuff. 

Man, I'd really like to see how matches with Bret and Austin played out. Even though he was on the smaller side, his style would have been good for a programme with The Undertaker, too, imo. 

Does anyone know why Sabu didn't come over for the Invasion in 2001? I'm presuming Heyman was still bitter about how Sabu had left ECW the year and blocked it, but it would have been interesting to see him in at that time, too. Could have had good matches with the likes of the Hardys, Jericho, Angle etc.

[TheScarlettChad]

5 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

Man, I'd really like to see how matches with Bret and Austin played out. Even though he was on the smaller side, his style would have been good for a programme with The Undertaker, too, imo. 

Does anyone know why Sabu didn't come over for the Invasion in 2001? I'm presuming Heyman was still bitter about how Sabu had left ECW the year and blocked it, but it would have been interesting to see him in at that time, too. Could have had good matches with the likes of the Hardys, Jericho, Angle etc.

Heyman references Sabu on commentary in 2001. He references how RVD was trained by someone who is "Homicidal, genocidal, suicidal and genocidal." 

[BomberPat]

16 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

Does anyone know why Sabu didn't come over for the Invasion in 2001? 

Cagematch tells me Sabu worked a couple of tours with AJPW that year, so he might have been contracted there for a while. But I think it's more likely that the WWF just didn't care. Sabu had been out of ECW since early 2000, and the only names they brought in from ECW especially for the Invasion were Dreamer and Van Dam, everyone else involved was already under WWF contract prior to ECW going under. I just can't imagine him being seen as a priority at the time, especially as the "ECW" aspect of the invasion was pretty quickly downplayed into just The Alliance.

[SaitoRyo]

15 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Cagematch tells me Sabu worked a couple of tours with AJPW that year, so he might have been contracted there for a while. But I think it's more likely that the WWF just didn't care. Sabu had been out of ECW since early 2000, and the only names they brought in from ECW especially for the Invasion were Dreamer and Van Dam, everyone else involved was already under WWF contract prior to ECW going under. I just can't imagine him being seen as a priority at the time, especially as the "ECW" aspect of the invasion was pretty quickly downplayed into just The Alliance.

It was probably a combination of factors, rather than Heyman trying to blackball him, but I just watched an interview where he said that WWE told Heyman to contact ECW guys and he didn't get a call. 

Also, a minor thing but perhaps could have played its part, is Sabu rubbing WWE the wrong way when he worked their briefly in '97 as he refused to do jobs when asked (same as RVD).