It was just announced today that Terry Brunk, the legendary pro wrestler known as Sabu, passed away today at age 60.
Sabu wrestled his final match at Game Changer Wrestling’s Joey Janela Spring Break 9 on April 18 this year. He made two appearances in All Elite Wrestling, first on AEW Dynamite on May 24, 2023 and then in the corner for Adam Cole in his match against Chris Jericho at Double or Nothing 2023.
Sabu wasn’t an AEW great but I think it’s important to write about him in the announcement of his passing because without Sabu? All Elite Wrestling doesn’t exist in any way you see it. There may be no performer more important to the evolution of pro wrestling from the 1990s to today, especially in independent wrestling, than Sabu.
Sabu is also very important to the area I’m from in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, as the Windsor/Detroit area is home for Sabu. My very first time meeting any pro wrestler was independent wrestlers in my hometown, who were practicing before a show they were doing in the 90s featuring Sabu. At the time my world in wrestling was just the World Wrestling Federation, so to hear these pro wrestlers talk up this Sabu guy and say he was better than anyone in the WWF opened my world to pro wrestling in ways I can only appreciate in hindsight.
I started volunteering for Border City Wrestling as ring crew in 2005, and I recall one of the first times I was asked to fold chairs at the end of the show, someone yelled at me for making a horrible pile. I apologized, looked at the pile they were nearby, and fixed mine to be normal. I went to the guy who told me to make the pile and he said, “You’re lucky Sabu didn’t kill you.”
That was my introduction to pro wrestling. I was lucky Sabu didn’t kill me.
Often my frustrations with pro wrestling since I became a teenager stems from the fact that the World Wrestling Federation, now WWE, rules the North American landscape. They essentially became the biggest representation for pro wrestling in the world, and everyone had to take a knee for them.
Sabu represented something outside of that world. From his time in Extreme Championship Wrestling to working All Japan and Big Japan Pro Wrestling to being the former NWA Heavyweight Champion surprise showing up in NWA:TNA, Sabu felt like something you couldn’t get in the WWF world because you literally could not. Even when he went to the WWE in the mid 2000s for One Night Stand their ECW reboot it felt unlike anything else the company could provide. Sabu was a flavour they could never replicate.
With WWE running the professional wrestling world for most of the 2000s and 2010s, someone like Sabu could never get the love, adoration, and respect he deserved as a legend in this business. He was unrefined, unpredictable, uncontrollable, a performative chaos doing everything it took to stay on the bleeding edge of professional wrestling. The matches were rarely clean or concise but they were exciting.
One of the most frustrating parts of modern wrestling today is hearing crowds chant for tables. Some may think they chant for tables due to the Dudley Boyz but it was absolutely due to Sabu. Without Sabu, Bret “The Hitman” Hart doesn’t take an announce table bump in his match with Diesel at Survivor Series 1995, which leads to table spots being common in the World Wrestling Federation. Without Sabu, we don’t see all of the ways a table could be used for spots, ways done over and over today. I can’t stand fans chanting for the table but I get why. It’s due to Sabu.
Sabu figured out new ways to use steel chairs, he helped bring barbwire matches to America the way they were worked in Japan, and I consider him the innovator of a style of high flying in North America that is less influenced by lucha and more influenced by him. A wreckless abandon style once carried in the 2000s by Jeff Hardy and today carried by Darby Allin in AEW. You can see a lot of Sabu in Darby Allin. I don’t think Tony Khan pushes a guy of Darby’s size if it wasn’t for him watching Sabu in the 1990s in ECW.
If you want to hear more on the career of Sabu in 1995 I would highly recommend Between The Sheet’s three episode series called “FUCK SABU!” which they made available pubicly from their Patreon.
Sabu, much like Terry Funk, had a habit for declaring retirement only to return. With Sabu, it was often injuries he was being told should stop him from wrestling again. My friend Chad Siemon refereed during “A Night of Appreciation of Sabu” in Michigan, discussed today how Sabu was in a wheelchair at the event. A year later he was working WrestleMania 23 at Ford Field in Detroit.
I won’t lie. I’m honestly having trouble explaining just how important he is to the wrestling business today. I wasn’t a hardcore Sabu fan. I shied away from the hardcore stuff for a long time. I would laugh when I’d see Sabu mucking it up with the Insane Clown Posse, showing up in their commercials to advertise their records. I wasn’t a hardcore fan but I absolutely had respect for his contributions and what he meant to the business.
For an industry constantly obsessed with control and perfection, no different to most artforms when they collide between corporate and independent, pro wrestling has had a hard time explaining why something so chaotic and unrefined like Sabu’s slip ups on the ropes and tossed steel chairs to the faces of wrestlers could be as important as the greatest matches of today. I’m avoiding saying the word “punk” though it’s probably the easiest way to understand.
Sabu took the maniac energy of his uncle Ed Farhat, The Original Sheik, and brought it to the end of the 20th century in such a powerful force of energy it forced the business to change. The giants and muscles still existed in the 90s and ran through to the 2000s but Sabu’s influence was on the independents. It was in Japan. It was all over the wrestling business for those who truly loved pro wrestling.
That’s not to say he couldn’t appeal to a mainstream audience. He was absolutely one of the biggest stars in his short time in the WWE, and every time he appeared somewhere like TNA or WCW he was always a fan favourite. Sabu was extraordinary, he was unique, but he was also taking what The Original Sheik did in the Detroit territory and adapting it for a modern audience. The fire Sheik would throw in the face of opponents? Sabu would bring that fire in his unpredictable high flying style.
Sabu was the independent spirit of pro wrestling, and it’s no surprise to me that Sabu would decide to end his career at age 60 on an independent wrestling show. A 40 year career capped off reminding the world that what blows your mind today? Sabu was doing his entire career.
While I’m sure the stories will be shared of Sabu, from the no shows to drugs to the inappropriate tweets on Twitter, to everything in between? My hope is his passing leads to more watching matches of Sabu and seeing just how modern he felt decades ago.
Sabu was ahead of his time, and brought an energy you can never duplicate. Just like Sabu didn’t try to be Sheik Jr. (WWF actually once tried to make Sabu “The Sultan” with The Iron Sheik as his manager instead of his father Original Sheik and Sabu turned it down so it would instead go to Rikishi) wrestlers cannot try to be Sabu Jr. They can only bring their own energy influenced by Sabu.
I’m glad Sabu got to have his final match and I’m glad All Elite Wrestling got to bring in Sabu once to be the Homicidal, Suicidal, Genocidal, Death-Defying Maniac. He deserves his place as one of the most important wrestlers to come out of the 1990s and one of the most influential wrestlers up to this very day.
Sabu Forever.
