Latest news with #hardcorewrestling
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Inhumanly tough': The ballad of Gypsy Joe, the original king of hardcore wrestling
Gypsy Joe may have been best known for his infamous match with New Jack, but the hardcore legend was much more than that. (Photo: Reverend Dan Wilson. Design: Jonathan Castro, Yahoo Sports.) When all-time tough guys are discussed in professional wrestling, names like Terry Funk, Haku and Mick Foley often come up. The sport's historians might mention older names like Dick the Bruiser or Johnny Valentine. If you ask folks around the South, though, one of the names which comes up again and again is the legendary Gypsy Joe, the original king of hardcore wrestling who started his career in the 1950s and had his final match at the age of 76 in 2011. The beginnings of Joe's career are shrouded in legend, with some sources saying he was trained in Puerto Rico by Carlos Colon and Pedro Morales, and others saying he began wrestling when he moved to the U.S. after failing a baseball tryout for the New York Yankees. Either way, he started his U.S. career wrestling under the moniker Pepe Figueroa as an undercard wrestler in the WWWE before traveling the country and working under multiple names — Aztec Joe in Detroit, Chief Tuna in Alaska, and one half of the masked Blue Infernos in Kentucky and Tennessee, a team that held a version of the World Tag Titles which Jerry Lawler called his first favorite wrestlers. In the late '60s Joe worked as Gene Madrid, who along with his 'brother' Jan Madrid were the top stars of the West Virginia television territory. (Decades later, Joe would work some of his final matches as Gene Madrid in NWA Mountain State in 2009.) Advertisement While Joe had those top runs all over the country, he really came into his own in the Nick Gulas territory in Tennessee where he worked as part of top heel tag-team with Tojo Yamamoto. 'They came up with the No Pain Train gimmick,' recalls Reverend Dan Wilson, a wrestling manager and the great nephew of Joe. 'Tojo would perform these feats with Joe, to show how tough he was — like taking a wooden shoe and just bashing him over the head with it.' One of their big feuds as a team was with Nick Gulas and a young future legend, Bobby Eaton. 'There was a thing that him and Bobby Eaton would do," Wilson says. "It's like a personal bet where they would just have these matches in Chattanooga where they'd see how many backdrops they could do to each other, and they would bet each other to see if they could fly high enough to hit the lighting rig.' Advertisement Joe soon went over to Japan, where he became one of the first hardcore legends in the country, having wild, bloody brawls with wrestlers like Mad Dog Vachon and Mighty Inoue, and engaging in a legendary series of cage matches in the IWE promotion with Rusher Kimura, where Joe was credited as the first wrestler to dive off the top of a cage, years before Jimmy Snuka made the spot famous. After his time as a territorial headliner, Joe had an entire second career as older legend haunting the independent wrestling scene in Japan and the Southern U.S., engaging in frenzied brawls, blood and mayhem years after most wrestlers hung up their boots. Gypsy Joe stories became the equivalent of tall tales, wrestling folklore. 'He had this leathery skin and he just couldn't blade normally anymore' says WWE and AEW veteran Chris Hero. 'So before the match he would cut himself, wipe off the blood, and when he got punched in the wound, it would bleed. I wasn't there for this, but I heard stories of people walking into the locker room and seeing Joe stabbing himself in the head with a giant butcher knife just to get color.' 'I got Gypsy Joe'd once," remembers indie death match legend Tank. "I had been in the business a little over a year, and this guy hit me up to come to McMinnville, Tennessee to wrestle Gypsy Joe — and I was like, 'Gypsy Joe is still wrestling?! I remember him from when I was a kid.' People were going crazy for this frail old man — and he commences to beat the s*** out of me for 10 to 12 minutes, and I am like, 'S***, I didn't sign up for this!' In an already tough business, Gypsy Joe was renown for his otherworldly toughness well into his later years. (Photo via Reverend Dan Wilson. Design via Jonathan Castro, Yahoo Sports.) 'We go outside of the ring and he grabs a baseball bat, and I bend over and he hits me in the back of the head — it was an aluminum bat and he was like hitting a softball on my big gourd head. I ended up getting eight staples, and here I am punching this old man in the face as hard as I can, and he is just saying, 'Harder, motherf***er!' By the end I swelled his left eye halfway shut. He just about ran me out of the business [with that match]. A few years later I heard that I he loved me and thought I was tough as hell — could have told me different that night.' Advertisement Joe eventually returned to Japan in the '90s as the eminence gris of W*ING, one of the first death match promotions in Japan. By then, a match with Gypsy Joe would be often treated as a rite of passage for young wrestlers on their first Japanese tour. 'I met him the day before [our match] at the airport. I didn't know he was a wrestler, he looked really in bad shape — I thought he was a retired wrestler or a coach," recalls former ECW and WWE champion Taz. 'I get to Kouraken Hall and the board says my name against Gypsy Joe, so I go up to [veteran wrestler] Kevin Sullivan and I ask, 'Who is Gypsy Joe guy?' And he points to the old guy I met at the airport and he says, 'You've got be careful with him Taz, he is really old and really brittle. Just don't hurt him. 'We go out there and I am expecting this brittle, old, beat-up guy — and good lord, right from the jump of the match I realize I am in a real fight here. He hit like a ton of bricks, and when I hit him anywhere on his body, he felt like an old piece of granite. He is hitting me with chairs. I am hitting him with chairs as hard as can and it isn't even fazing him. I clearly got ribbed by the old guys, and they are all laughing behind the curtain. I came in the back expecting to get in a real fight and he just hugged me and thanked me for the match.' That toughness infamously extended to outside the ring as well. 'Joe was watching baseball when his neighbor came over and begged him to go fishing," remembers Wilson. "They pull off at a the local bar. His neighbor says, 'Hang on, we're going to go get some lunch to take fishing with us.' They go into the bar and this waitress comes over and immediately recognizes Joe, starts talking about how she's grew up on Gulas wrestling. She loved Jackie Fargo and Tojo Yamamoto and Gypsy Joe. All of this was a ploy by the neighbor — he had no plans of taking Joe fishing, he wanted to [date] the waitress. Advertisement "So he thought bringing Gypsy Joe over — because she was a huge fan — was going to enchant her and make her think this guy was so cool that she would sleep with him. Well, of course, she's a giant fan, so she's just talking to Joe and asking him questions and talking about his career. And so the guy tries make his move on the girl, saying, 'OK, divert the attention back to me,' and she just keeps chatting up Joe. And the guy gets furious and storms out of the bar. He comes back into the bar a few minutes later with his f***ing gun and shoots Joe in the stomach. And this is why this is my favorite Gypsy Joe story, because even [when I was] a child, this told me that this man was so inhumanly tough. After suffering a gunshot, he f***ing takes the gun away from the guy, beats the s*** out of the guy and holds him until the cops get there. Like he was like a damn action hero. "And then, of course, he was asked later, 'Well, what was the deal with the girl? Like, why did this happen?' And he was like, 'I didn't want to [date] the girl. ... I just wanted to go home and watch baseball.' Joe, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 82, is probably most widely known today for a viral match in 2003 with notorious hardcore legend New Jack, which broke down into a legitimate fight and saw New Jack swing a barbed wire baseball bat full force at his then 69-year-old opponent's head. But Joe's career was much more notable then being a bit part in New Jack's tale. He was the original king of hardcore wrestling, an untamed brawler who bumped and bled his way through the South, Puerto Rico and Japan for more than 60 years. Even into his late 70s, he continued to wrestle, serving as a whetstone to sharpen the blades of younger wrestlers. If you could survive this wild old man, you proved you belonged.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sabu, legend of pro wrestling's 'hardcore' style, dies at 60
Sabu looks on while in the ring during ECW at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, N.Y., on Nov. 28, 2006. (Rich Freeda / WWE via Getty Images) Sabu, a "hardcore" professional wresting legend whose real name was Terry Brunk, has died at 60 years old, World Wrestling Entertainment announced Sunday. "WWE is saddened to learn that Terry Brunk, known to wrestling fans as Sabu, has passed away," the company said in a statement. Advertisement All Elite Wrestling also announced the news in a post on social media. "From barbed wire battles to unforgettable high-risk moments, Sabu gave everything to professional wrestling," AEW wrote on X. "Our thoughts are with his family, his friends and his fans." Sabu's cause of death was not released Sunday, and it was not clear when he died. Sabu rose to fame while wrestling for Extreme Championship Wrestling in the 1990s, where he was "a pioneer of hardcore wrestling, leaping from chairs and driving his opponents through tables and even barbed wire," taking after his uncle, Hall of Famer Ed "The Sheik" Farhat, WWE wrote. Advertisement As a part of ECW, Sabu wrestled contemporaries like Rob Van Dam, Mick Foley and Taz. In a company known for pushing the envelope in terms of the risks wrestlers were willing to take, Sabu still managed to stand out. Whether he was leaping off the ring ropes to his opponents on the outside or delivering double leg-drops through tables and ladders, his style of wrestling — not always pretty but certainly impressive and eye-catching — made him a fan favorite. He signed with WWE as part of the company's revival of the ECW brand in 2006. The next year, at WrestleMania 23, he and fellow ECW originals Van Dam, Tommy Dreamer and The Sandman defeated the New Breed in front of 80,000 fans in Detroit. He departed the company that same year. Both before and after WWE, Sabu wrestled for top promotions across the globe, including New Japan Pro-Wrestling, AAA and CMLL, as well as dozens of other independent promotions. Advertisement He continued wrestling long after many of his contemporaries had already retired. His final match — and first since 2021, according to Cage Match — was April 18, when he defeated Joey Janela, getting driven through a table and landing on barbed wire in the process. Janela called Sabu "my idol, a trailblazer, a gamechanger and an icon," in a memorial post on X that featured photos and videos of he and Sabu. Wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer called Sabu the "king of the death matches" on Wrestling Observer Radio on Sunday, and credited him with popularizing hardcore wrestling in the U.S. "He was the godfather of it in every way," Meltzer said. Advertisement Big names from across the wrestling world took to social media to remember Sabu as a legend in the field and as a friend. In a video posted to X, Taz said Sabu's death "breaks my heart," and added that he had watched an old interview of Sabu's as recently as Saturday night. "I would not have had the career that I have had and I've been blessed to have if it wasn't for Sabu," Taz said, noting the pair debuted against each other for ECW in 1993. The X account for docu-series "Dark Side of the Ring" said Sabu's death "comes as a shock," as he is featured in the episode airing Tuesday that pays tribute to his uncle. Advertisement "Sabu was a trailblazing groundbreaker who played a major role in the expansion of what a pro wrestling match could be," wrestler Matt Hardy said on X. "The fact that tables are commonly utilized in pro wrestling is because of Terry Brunk & how he made an inanimate object like a table a must see component in his match." Hardy also called Sabu "heavily influential on today's current style, even though his contributions are still under appreciated by most." In an X post, AEW wrestler Mark Briscoe said, "Nobody made me want to be a wrestler more than Sabu. R.I.P. to a true hardcore legend." This article was originally published on
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sabu, ECW legend and former WWE star, dead at 60
Sabu, one of the most popular hardcore wrestlers during his run with ECW in the 1990s before a brief run with WWE in the mid-2000s, has died, according to He was 60. A cause of death was not disclosed. Advertisement Sabu, real name Terry Brunk, had his retirement match against Joey Janela last month. A high flyer who became famous for his work in hardcore matches featuring tables, ladders, chairs, barbed wire and more, Sabu became known as 'the suicidal, homicidal, genocidal, death–defying maniac.' Sabu, a longtime pro wrestler known for his time in ECW and WWE, has died at age 60. Getty Images Sabu, the nephew of former wrestling star The Sheik, was a two-time ECW world heavyweight champion, also winning their world television championship and capturing tag team gold three times. He was one of the faces of hardcore wrestling as its popularity increased in the '90s. After a run with TNA, joined WWE in 2006 when the company, which had previously purchased ECW, launched a new weekly show for the brand. From left: Sandman, Sabu, RVD and Tommy Dreamer celebrate their win at WrestleMania 23. WWE Sabu was part of the ECW Originals team that defeated The New Breed in an eight-man tag team match at WrestleMania 23 on April 1, 2007. He was released by WWE a month later. Advertisement WWE said in a statement it was 'saddened' by Sabu's death and described him as 'a pioneer of hardcore wrestling.' Sabu, who has also made appearances for WCW, New Japan Pro-Wrestling and AAA, wrestled in various independent promotions before making two appearances for AEW in 2023, which culminated with him being the special enforcer for a match between Adam Cole and Chris Jericho. 'AEW and the wrestling world mourns the passing of Sabu,' the official AEW X account posted Sunday. 'From barbed wire battles to unforgettable high-risk moments, Sabu gave everything to professional wrestling. Our thoughts are with his family, his friends and his fans.'' Advertisement Rob Van Dam, a longtime wrestling star who was a tag team champion with Sabu in ECW, simply posted an emoji of an index finger pointing up on his X account, a nod to Sabu's signature pose. Taz, another ECW standout who worked for WWE and is currently an announcer for AEW, said the news of Sabu's death 'breaks my heart.' 'I would not have had the career that I have had, and I've been blessed to have, if it wasn't for Sabu. That man got me over, and he didn't have to get me over, and he did,' Taz said in a video posted on X. 'A great heart and soul. I'm gonna miss him immensely.'
News.com.au
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Wrestling legend dead at age 60 with WWE world left devastated
Sabu, one of the most popular hardcore wrestlers during his run with ECW in the 1990s before a brief run with WWE in the mid-2000s, has died. He was 60. A cause of death has not been disclosed, according to Sabu, real name Terry Brunk, had his retirement match against Joey Janela last month, The New York Post reports. A high flyer who became famous for his work in hardcore matches featuring tables, ladders, chairs, barbed wire and more, Sabu became known as 'the suicidal, homicidal, genocidal, death–defying maniac.' Sabu, the nephew of former wrestling star The Sheik, was a two-time ECW world heavyweight champion, also winning their world television championship and capturing tag team gold three times. AEW: Double or Nothing | MON 26 MAY 10AM AEST | Don't miss one of AEW's biggest events of the year, Double or Nothing, LIVE from the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona | Order Now with Main Event on Kayo Sports. He was one of the faces of hardcore wrestling as its popularity increased in the '90s. After a run with TNA, joined WWE in 2006 when the company, which had previously purchased ECW, launched a new weekly show for the brand. Sabu was part of the ECW Originals team that defeated The New Breed in an eight-man tag team match at WrestleMania 23 on April 1, 2007. He was released by WWE a month later. WWE said in a statement it was 'saddened' by Sabu's death and described him as 'a pioneer of hardcore wrestling.' Sabu, who has also made appearances for WCW, New Japan Pro-Wrestling and AAA, wrestled in various independent promotions before making two appearances for AEW in 2023, which culminated with him being the special enforcer for a match between Adam Cole and Chris Jericho. 'AEW and the wrestling world mourns the passing of Sabu,' the official AEW X account posted on Monday morning (AEST). 'From barbed wire battles to unforgettable high-risk moments, Sabu gave everything to professional wrestling. Our thoughts are with his family, his friends and his fans.' Rob Van Dam, a longtime wrestling star who was a tag team champion with Sabu in ECW, simply posted an emoji of an index finger pointing up on his X account, a nod to Sabu's signature pose. Taz, another ECW standout who worked for WWE and is currently an announcer for AEW, said the news of Sabu's death 'breaks my heart.' 'I would not have had the career that I have had, and I've been blessed to have, if it wasn't for Sabu. That man got me over, and he didn't have to get me over, and he did,' Taz said in a video posted on X. 'A great heart and soul. I'm gonna miss him immensely.'
