Sabu.
There are names and figures within the industry that elicit memories, and then there are ones that conjure a feeling of something larger than the individual.
If you were a product of the ‘90s, odds are that Terry “Sabu” Brunk holds a formative place in your fandom and requires little prodding to go into detail about what a force this man was when his industry was in dire need of one.
He was not a wrestler that you can simply categorize under one genre or encapsulate with a short description. Seeing was believing when it came to this shadowy figure, clinging to a bygone period where mystique was a selling point and “word of mouth” was greatest form of marketing, creating demand until he came to your town, jumping off the pages of a magazine and living up the expectations you had created and hopefully, wanting more.
It sounds like a simple formula, and if this were 1965, it probably would have worked to perfection. Enter a new territory, wow them with your innovative ideas and style, work up to the big blowoff, and then it’s on to the next region of the country while creating breathtaking images that the magazines devour and would spread of this larger-than-life figure.
But Sabu wasn’t competing for headlines in 1965. He was entering an industry that was contracting in the ‘80s, in a country with a bleak wrestling economy in the early ‘90s, where the sacred oath of “kayfabe” was eroding, and you either evolved or were left behind.
One cannot tell the story of Sabu without the understanding that he genuflected at the altar of his uncle, Ed “The Sheik” Farhat. Sabu probably wished he had been born several decades earlier because the business he would have entered was a much different one than Farhat navigated.
By the time Sabu was accepting his first bookings in 1985, his uncle’s Big Time Wrestling promotion was a memory rather than an enduring legacy. The days of more than 12,000 filling Cobo Hall had fallen to 2,000 by 1980, and after losing its television, the group limped to its demise before Brunk began wrestling.
While some attributed Sabu’s debut to his uncle’s group, it was not the case, as “Terry S.R.” would have his first match for Jim Lancaster’s Midwest Championship Wrestling, based out of Ontario.
Brunk bounced around various independents, including working in Memphis, which was a style of wrestling that mixed like oil and water for the future Sabu.
Widespread recognition for Sabu began in late 1991 when he was booked by FMW with his 65-year-old uncle. During his first tour, he would share the ring with a young Eiji Ezaki, who would become the promotion’s top star, Hayabusa, with many drawing parallels between them.
Sabu served as the “fall guy” in tag teams with Farhat while gaining experience in Japan and beginning to work a variety of hardcore style matches, incorporating barbed wire and fire among the accoutrements to set FMW apart. Farhat was still a legendary figure in Japan, but was severely limited, and his nephew could handle the workload before the audience could experience a few moments with The Sheik.
On May 6, 1992, there was a near-tragedy during a tag match with Sabu & The Sheik against Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto. In a “No Ropes Bare Wire Tornado Fire Death” bout, the ring was surrounded by fire and, due to heavy winds, began to blow into the ring, causing panic among the performers. Farhat did not have the mobility to exit as the wrestlers exited the ring, and chaos ensued as young boys at ringside feverishly attacked the flames with fire extinguishers. Farhat escaped but was hardly unscathed, suffering burns to his body in one of pro wrestling’s closest calls. Farhat, a senior citizen by now, returned to the ring in less than three weeks.
FMW would remain Sabu’s home in Japan through the end of 1994 when New Japan Pro Wrestling came calling, but he was developing his aura in the U.S. and a marketplace that seemed ripe for a disruption.
Ed Farhat had the understanding that you could paint a visual advertisement through blood and was assisted by a pencil. It was easy fodder for the wrestling magazines to place in front of impressionable fans, who had to see this villain in person.
Sabu conjured a similar reputation but in a modern media setting that was migrating from the newsstand magazines to the internet and newsletters.
Communication was speeding up, not quite to real time, but news was traveling quicker, and the name Sabu was receiving lots of ink because of his unique style. The audience in North America was clamoring for something different by 1993, with WWF and WCW in the doldrums.
In the remote Eastern Championship Wrestling, a powder keg of changes resulted in Tod Gordon’s company attempting to tap into that change. Eddie Gilbert was out as booker of the company, and by October, Gilbert’s former assistant and close friend, Paul Heyman, would assume the creative reins with Gordon at his side.
Hearing of an easy payday to pin down, Sabu contacted Gordon and was booked for the first weekend of October in a seismic booking for the group, as it would find its avatar that screamed “new” and “different”.
Heyman presented Sabu as a living version of Hannibal Lecter, complete with a mask and being wheeled to the ring and unleashed on his victim. It was underlined by the fact that Sabu never spoke and allowed the performer to feel dangerous and different.
He was pushed from the jump, wrestling The Tazmaniac in his debut and unseating Shane Douglas for the ECW Championship on the second night with the group. The three would be pivotal names throughout the decade as the building blocks of Extreme Championship Wrestling began leading to the next summer’s rebranding.
In the same month as his ECW debut, he had several WWF tryouts with Owen Hart and Scott Taylor, but it would be another thirteen years before he signed a contract with the company. In his 2019 book, Sabu contemplated how things would have gone differently if he had signed. It is exceptionally hard to imagine Sabu negotiating his character for a WWF presentation in this period, and what his value would have been without those years in ECW.
The ’90s were an interesting era for Sabu to flourish. It was like watching someone from ten years in the future redefining what pro wrestling could be. Everything beckoned toward the future and leaving the past in its dust. But the DNA of Terry Brunk was very entrenched in the teachings of his uncle, and maintaining core principles that were slowly dying.
Sabu, like Farhat, would not speak and left that to the imagination of the audience and creating further mystery. He was ultra protective of his image from a defiance to be labelled as a “junior heavyweight” in Japan and showing the political astuteness to be careful with his frequency of jobs.
As performers, professional wrestling is a game of leverage, and that’s where the “real” begins. Wins and losses are determined for the betterment of business with a makeup of Kings, Queens, and pawns on the chessboard. The greater your ability to use leverage determines where your placement is on the board, with promoters and wrestlers often at odds over their role. Sabu was keenly aware of viewing his business as just that, creating enemies along the way while operating based on the education he received from a different time.
His legacy will forever be tied to ECW, but it’s not far-fetched to say that ECW’s legacy was as contingent on Sabu, especially in 1994 when the company was in desperate need of a representative who could perform the mission statement. Sabu was not a type of performer you could replicate, and while the likes of Terry Funk, Shane Douglas, and The Sandman represented ECW, Sabu became the marquee attraction while understanding his worth in real time.
He was part of the famous three-way dance involving Shane Douglas and Terry Funk on February 4, going to an hour draw on “The Night The Line Was Crossed” and a match woven into the fabric of ECW’s maturation.
Sabu and Mick Foley had similar reputations and were a match that the two were able to take to various parts of the country and into ECW at Hostile City Showdown in June of 1994.
The end of the year resulted in one of his many serious injuries, breaking his neck in a match with Chris Benoit at November to Remember during a miscommunication between a flapjack and back body drop, cracking two of his vertebrae, and returning two weeks later but left with long-lasting effects from the injury.
It goes without saying, but if there is a constant throughout Sabu’s career, it’s a level of hardened toughness that doesn’t get nearly enough focus. From broken necks, jaws, and backs, to famously wrapping up a massive wound in his biceps during a barbed wire match, and introducing super glue as a quick fix for shutting open wounds without the need for stitches. While one can argue the admirable trait of a wrestler who gutted through injuries, there was an enormous sum to pay at the end, and it was through debilitating and chronic pain in an industry without health care or pensions. Sabu was still going well into his fifties, and surprise, the pain doesn’t get easier as the numbers tick u,p and requires heavy pain medication to rely on. This was the dark cocktail for many performers who fought through pain to make bookings, avoid taking time off, and never make near the money necessary to make choices for the long term by foregoing that weekend’s booking.
In 1995, Sabu made the jump from FMW to New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he was making in the range of $3,000 per week on top of several hundred dollars for each ECW booking, which totaled a very good haul for someone not featured on national television in the U.S. But something had to give, and it did in April.
Sabu was serving multiple masters on two continents. He subscribed to the notion of “always making the town,” and never leaving a dollar on the table led to an errant double booking by the performer on April 8. In New Japan, he was scheduled to appear for one of its Heisei Ishingun shows at Korakuen Hall while also wrestling for ECW that weekend in Philadelphia in a heavily promoted three-way tag with Tazmaniac against Public Enemy and Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko. Sabu, borrowing from Hulk Hogan’s guide to time travel, thought he could wrestle in Japan and make it to Philadelphia because of the time change, although it was impossible.
Heyman was constructing this three-way feud for weeks and attempting to align all six performers’ schedules, so they were available as Benoit & Malenko had Japanese commitments. It got to a boiling point where Heyman was on the phone with Sabu and left the call with the belief that Sabu would make the ECW date. Sabu claimed he told Heyman what he wanted to hear, so he could get him off the phone. According to Heyman, he never heard from Sabu about missing the date until calling and reaching his answering machine, which stated he was off to Japan.
From the Pro Wrestling Torch’s timeline of events in April 1995:
Heyman talked with New Japan. New Japan said they couldn’t do anything, that it was Sabu’s problem, not theirs. Sabu knew he would be fired if he no-showed Japan’s date. New Japan was already upset with him for a variety of reasons concerning his attitude and conduct – not the least of which was putting up a fuss over doing a job, not a cool thing anywhere in wrestling, but especially not in New Japan to Benoit, someone who is more established than he is and is generally regarded as a better all-around wrestler.
As the Apr. 8 date approached, Sabu continued his talks with Heyman. Apr. 2 and 3 Heyman had to put together the final TV show hyping the three way tag match. He asked Sabu on Apr. 1 to tell him now if he wasn’t going to make the show so the TV show would reflect the change. Sabu told Heyman he would make the card. According to Heyman, “he swore he’d be there.”
On Wednesday, Apr. 5, Sabu was scheduled to fly to Japan the next day. He had to make a decision one way or another. Heyman asked Sabu to at least call him Thursday morning before he got on a plane if he decided to go to Japan and let him know so he could find a replacement. No phone call came Thursday morning, but Sabu’s answering machine said, “I’m on my way to Japan. Leave a message.” Sabu says he told Heyman Tuesday he was going to Japan. Either way, that left Heyman with at most a few days to scramble to find a replacement and figure out how to break the news of the no-show to the fans in ECW Arena who paid, in part, to see Sabu in the main event.
Sabu didn’t wrestle at the ECW Arena that night, and Heyman walked out to the ring alongside Taz and delivered a speech outlining the circumstances of what happened involving an unnamed performer before revealing that the culprit was Sab, and the arena responded with, “F—k Sabu”.
Sabu admitted he messed up but felt his treatment of the live audience was unjust and leaving bitter feelings, and it appeared that ECW had cut ties with its biggest star.
It didn’t stop the momentum for Sabu, who won the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight title one month later from Koji Kanemoto at the Fukuoka Dome, but was vocal in rejecting the label of junior heavyweight. It’s ironic because over the past several weeks, Taz has vocalized this same resistance toward a delineation of weight classes on AEW broadcasts, and I’m sure some of that philosophy defaults to Sabu’s stance.
It didn’t bode well for Sabu as New Japan took the title off him as fast as they could the next month, and may have proven to be a play where Sabu didn’t have the leverage he thought to exercise.
The year of 1995 is the embodiment of Sabu’s career from ECW and New Japan, his involvement in the critically underrated Murder Inc. group led by Masahiro Chono, his cup of coffee with WCW, a dramatic return to the promotion that disowned him, and surrounding himself in controversy.
WCW was gearing up for its launch of Monday Nitro in September 1995, and Booker Kevin Sullivan was seeking out workhorses that would garner attention, with Chris Benoit and Sabu among them. It was a blow to ECW because Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Eddy Guerrero would all settle in WCW and leave a major talent gap in their exodus.
Sabu would arrive in WCW on the second episode of Nitro, working against Alex Wright in a four-minute match, ending in a disqualification. After Sabu pinned Wright, he placed Wright on a table and dove through it, causing Nick Patrick to reverse his decision. It was the beginning of a very short stay and was a classic “square peg in a round hole” relationship.
At Halloween Havoc in Detroit, WCW booked Farhat to accompany his nephew to the ring for his match with Mr. J.L. (Jerry Lynn) and opted to call an audible as The Sheik used a fireball on Lynn. Sabu wrestled the next night against Disco Inferno, and his WCW career was done.
While reported in the newsletters in advance, a reunion between Sabu and Paul Heyman seemed inevitable, as is precedent when there is money to be made. After multiple departures, Heyman needed a shot in the arm for his group, and November to Remember was the scene as the lights went out and Sabu reappeared with “F—k Sabu” replaced by a deafening roar in approval of the makeup. On the same night, Taz turned heel, and the former tag partners would be on a collision course, but not anytime soon. Heyman kept them apart throughout 1996, and when the two ships finally crossed in the middle of the night, it was in advance of ECW’s first pay-per-view in April 1997.
His Japanese allegiances switched again, leaving New Japan for the Tokyo Pro Wrestling revival in 1996, and teaming with Gary Albright in All Japan’s Real World Tag League that year. The duo finished with six points in the tournament, won by Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue, with Sabu continuing with All Japan through the first half of 1997.
ECW had reached a high point critically among its audience in 1995-96, but commercially, they were still itching for the next rung. It came in the form of pay-per-view as a belief that it was the holy grail of platforms and a revenue stream to take them to the next level.
Their hopes of gaining clearance across platforms were stalled after the Erich Kulas “Mass Transit” incident in November 1996, coupled with the general concern about the content and link to Extreme Fighting.
Barely Legal was staged on April 13, 1997, for $19.95 but without clearance on Viewer’s Choice, representing 12-14 million homes without access to purchase the show. The first card, featuring Terry Funk’s championship win and the long-awaited match between Sabu and Taz, generated 60,000 buys and allowed ECW to get its foot in the door for pay-per-view. Later, they were picked up by Cablevision, which would expand its annual pay-per-view events and followed with price increases. But ECW was still spending money for television exposure and maintaining their talent in an increasing arms race between WWF and WCW, leaving the company with a $1.2 million loss on the books for 1997.
In the summer of 1997, Sabu regained the ECW Championship, beating Funk in one of the most violent matches in the promotion’s history. The two engaged in a No Rope Barbed Wire showdown where the ring was surrounded by wire, and both were sliced from head to toe. Memorably, Sabu would suffer a massive wound on his bicep, and rather than seek medical attention, Sabu was handed athletic tape by Bill Alfonso and wrapped the wound as tightly as possible seconds before being put through a table and completing the match. It was such a spectacle that Heyman didn’t even want to see anyone attempt to top it, opting not to book another match of its kind.
It was a one-week title reign as Sabu would drop the title to Shane Douglas at its sophomore effort on pay-per-view, Hardcore Heaven on August 17. The three-way match included Funk, a reprisal of the famous match from “The Night the Line Was Crossed”.
Twelve years into his career, Sabu had carved out his unique identity, and while he was forever linked to Ed Farhat, he had developed a kinship and alliance with another burgeoning star, Rob Szatkowski a.k.a. Rob Van Dam.
The two met in 1989 when the future RVD was seeking wrestling schools and had a chance recommendation provided to him to seek out Farhat and allowing Van Dam to stay in his home state for training. With a kickboxing background, he brought a different athleticism to the school and immediately bonded with Brunk, who was several years into his career. The pair would practice religiously and often use the other as a crash test dummy for every wild maneuver they could dream up.
Fast forward and Van Dam has emerged as one of ECW’s brightest stars with his athleticism and cocky demeanor. After feuding in 1996, Van Dam and Sabu were linked as a team in 1998, winning the tag belts in June from Chris Candido & Lance Storm and feuding with The Dudley Boyz.
ECW was fighting a near-impossible battle against the giants of the industry. Despite a close relationship with the WWF, it didn’t mean their talents were off limits, and while wrestling was experiencing its largest popularity since the peak of Hulkamania, ECW was still a money-losing venture despite the “vibes” of the cool and hot product for the real wrestling fans.
They secured television on TNN in 1999, but would require ECW to upgrade its production and would need an estimated 30 percent increase in its revenue to break even with the changes. The bills were mounting with expensive television slots in major markets for its Hardcore TV, a lag between the pay-per-view distributors paying ECW and expenses needed for the next show, loans were taken in, equity was being dispersed, and talent was being offered guaranteed money from WWF & WCW.
In February 2000, Sabu was eyeing greener pastures and wrestled his final match for the promotion. He intended to leave for WCW, which had just installed Kevin Sullivan as its head booker, replacing Vince Russo, and was an “in” for Sabu. The players involved have stated that the performer was offered a multi-year contract worth about $400,000 per year and would represent the biggest deal of his fifteen-year career and a chance to make real money after a decade and a half of abuse. Sabu needed time to look over the contract, and in the interim, Heyman got wind of the news and threatened to sue WCW, stating that Sabu was under contract to them. The deal was pulled, and Sabu would never get his WCW contract.
One year later, there was no WCW and there was no ECW as the U.S. wrestling scene was critically altered with one player left standing and fewer job opportunities across the board. There was talent from the two dying group welcomed with open arms, but Sabu was not among them and would hit the indies and go back to Japan and anywhere else where there were three letters, a wrestling ring, and a willingness to meet his rate.
If you scan his Cagematch profile of matches during this era, it’s filled with dozens of microscopic logos of companies you have never heard of, located in desolate areas of the country, and with a random assortment of opponents.
In the summer of 2000, he returned to All Japan Pro Wrestling and worked with them through June 2001, losing his final match to Abdullah the Butcher at Budokan Hall, reprising a famous feud involving The Sheik.
Farhat would pass away in January 2003 due to heart failure at 86. His death occurred while Sabu was in Japan for the Wrestle-1 card at the Tokyo Dome to wrestle Kendo Kashin.
His first of many stints in TNA began in May 2003 and would he pop in and out for various lengths over the next seventeen years.
Sabu was burning the candle on both ends, which is a polite way of saying he was destroying his body and not taking great care of himself. Most people coming out of the ECW environment would state there was no larger drug scene than that one, and sadly, many of those locker room members are no longer around because of the habits formed during that era.
The toll came due for Sabu in 2004 when he suffered an injury that he couldn’t grit his teeth through or wrap up with athletic tape and battle through. He was hospitalized for nearly two months due to a virus, which led to temporary paralysis. Sabu was forced into his longest break from the business, where he didn’t wrestle for ten months. Therefore, there was no money coming in, and funds were raised to assist the performer.
At forty years old, it was thought that Sabu was done, but he had other plans, coupled with a revival of ECW, four years after its demise, and ripe for a nostalgia run after WWE’s successful DVD release after acquiring the remnants of the brand in bankruptcy.
WWE would host an ECW-themed One Night Stand pay-per-view in June 2005, and not to be outdone, Shane Douglas got together with partners to host their own reunion event two nights earlier in Philadelphia called Hardcore Homecoming. It meant paydays for the ECW veterans, many of whom had not acclimated well to life after ECW and were going to place a spotlight on them to hopefully enhance their demand on the indies. Some, such as Terry Funk, had offers to work both shows, and Funk’s limitations forced him to choose, and he opted to go with Douglas’s show. It allowed Douglas to book another rendition of the Three-Way Dance with the returning Sabu and setting the bar high when all three were that much older, and Sabu coming back from a near-career-ending injury.
Sabu was also booked for One Night Stand and worked both events, beating Rhyno on WWE’s show at the Hammerstein Ballroom, but not doing enough to get an offer from WWE beyond that weekend. The shows succeeded with Hardcore Homecoming drawing a gate of $135,000, and One Night Stand drawing 340,000 buys on pay-per-view and revered as one of the best shows in WWE’s history.
Undeterred, he returned to TNA for arguably the best in-ring run of his career, where a refreshed Terry Brunk acclimated well to the style being marketed and working with fliers in the X Division and big man brawling matches with Abyss and Samoa Joe. His Barbed Wire Massacre match with Abyss at Turning Point was named TNA’s Match of the Year by the promotion and took place one day before his 41st birthday.
In 2006, WWE wanted to go further with its flirtation with ECW. Beyond a follow-up show to One Night Stand, they resurrected the brand for a new television series on Sci-Fi (later Syfy) with a long-term vision of building young talent, but wanting the ECW alumni on board for the transition. Sabu finished up with TNA in April and returned for the revival, and signed his first WWE contract twenty-one years after his debut.
A dream match involving Sabu and World Heavyweight Champion Rey Mysterio was promoted for One Night Stand. The match is remembered for an unsatisfying finish with a no contest when it was ruled neither could continue, a far cry from the “everything goes” mentality of the old ECW, but the alternative was Mysterio beating Sabu, which the audience didn’t want to see that night either. That same night, his best friend Rob Van Dam, beat John Cena to win the WWE Championship with one of the best atmospheres for a WWE main event ever.
Sabu had his working boots on, and the WWE seemed serious enough to give him a program with top star John Cena. The first-time match occurred on a Sci-Fi special before One Night Stand, which ended in a disqualification. Sabu won a battle royal to earn a rematch with Cena at the Vengeance pay-per-view, where Cena prevailed in a lumberjack match, capping off a whirlwind first month in WWE.
Van Dam and Sabu seemed on top of the world, but it came crashing down on July 2 when the pair were pulled over for speeding and found to have drugs and pills on them. Van Dam had 18 grams of marijuana (when it was on the WWE’s banned list) and several Vicodin without a prescription. Brunk had a pipe and had nine anti-estrogen pills, which were not on the banned list, and Brunk escaped a suspension and was only fined. Van Dam would not and took it on the chin, losing his championships, being suspended, and getting busted right at the peak of his WWE career.
Despite the incident, Sabu would wrestle Big Show at SummerSlam for the ECW title and was part of Team Big Show at the Survivor Series against a team led by John Cena. His run climaxed in April 2007 when he wrestled at his first, and only, WrestleMania, which happened to be in Detroit at Ford Field. He was part of the ECW Originals, who beat The New Breed, and it was a fitting swansong as he would exit the company two months later.
Every few years, ECW nostalgia would pop up, and it usually worked. Sabu benefited from these revivals, whether it be TNA’s rendition in 2010 with EV 2.0 or the fledgling Extreme Rising group two years later. But Sabu was much more than an ECW hanger-on; he benefited from the attachment, but he held onto an aura and mystique unique to Sabu.
Sabu’s life had many twists, and his story is not always glorious. He cost himself many opportunities through his issues and mistakes, he said a lot of unsavory things over the years. He wasn’t shy or apologetic about dropping the n-word in tweets, doubling down when asked about it, and telling Pro Wrestling Sheet, “Grow up every one is a little bit racist. Even ur mother. I am not a racist, but I don’t care if a n***er that called me a drug addict thinks so.”
He infuriated promoters by not showing up for his own Independent Wrestling Hall of Fame ceremony one year ago in Philadelphia over WrestleMania weekend.
In pro wrestling fashion, GCW took the incident of the Hall of Fame and turned it into an angle as the centerpiece of this year’s Spring Break 9 as Sabu’s farewell. Despite a torn biceps, opponent Joey Janela carried the promotion of the match, cutting some of the best promos of the year in the lead-up. It was Sabu’s retirement coupled with his most famous match type, No Rope Barbed Wire, and the result was the most successful non-WWE event of the weekend.
The match was a miracle in many ways, from the state of Sabu and an inability to walk the day of the show, to a brutal fall mid-match to the floor, where the 60-year-old slammed onto the floor.
Conventional wisdom suggests Sabu probably should not have been wrestling, but those two words have rarely applied to this performer. The legacy of this match will not be the injuries or the fall, but the minutes afterward when Janela placed his character to the side and professed his admiration for the retiring legend.
At the moment, it was a rare feel-good retirement in pro wrestling, even with the knowledge that wrestling retirements are taken with a grain of salt. Three weeks later, it was the closest we’ll get to an in-ring eulogy during Sabu’s final moments in front of a wrestling audience.
There is a reason this story is so long, and that’s because the story of Sabu is a long and detailed one that cannot be simplified.
He introduced aspects to professional wrestling that were both revolutionary and harmful; he was a walking poster for the dangers of the industry, and all the influence he is credited with, he gave far more physically than was compensated monetarily.
Sabu’s most impactful years occurred when the North American scene was struggling, and his death-defying aerial skills were limited to a few hundred people with the hope that someone had a camcorder to circulate and create buzz for this wild character.
He underwent horrific pain and caused plenty for others. Beyond the physical pain, his girlfriend of many years, Melissa Coates, died in 2021. One can only assume how devastating it was for the man who shielded that side of his life from the public.
Without getting too poetic, Sabu’s style was indicative of the life he led. When he balanced on the rope, it was never steady, and he was a second away from complete adulation or crashing and burning with no room for anything in between. He was never smooth, never polished, but always conveyed a struggle, a fight, a realness that resembled someone fighting for his life and giving the middle finger to the idea he was delivering a “performance”.
In an interview with David Bixenspan for Fighting Spirit Magazine, the performer let his audience in on the fact that he was far more aware of what he was doing,
I do chain wrestling in the beginning of the match, on purpose, to bore the people. So when I do my ‘Sabu’ style,’ they pop louder. If I did my Sabu style right in the beginning of the match, it’s hard to follow that by the end of the match. I got criticized for not having psychology. It’s only because the guys who were criticizing me were full of shit. The fans figured out the psychology before anybody else did, and they’re the ones that count; them and the booker.
Terry Brunk was taking you on an experience that no one on the card could replicate. Put him on first or put him on last, he was going to own every second and make sure that at the end, you were in awe of this enigma called Sabu.
When a special performer dies, we often say, “there will never be another…” and Sabu was one of the few to create his lane during an era of patterns and homogeneity.
There are lessons – positive and negative – to take from Terry Brunk. He was far from a perfect individual, and it’s easy to absolve the negative in light of someone’s passing, but the full story is the only way to tell the tale of Terry Brunk.
He soared to great heights, to the adulation of fans, and crashed spectacularly, forcing that same contingent to shake their head.
That was the story of Sabu, and now it’s complete.
Several notes are courtesy:
– SABU: Scars, Silence, & Superglue by Terry Brunk & Kenny Casanova
– Blood and Fire by Brian Solomon
– Between the Sheets: F**K SABU
– Turning the Tables by John Lister
– Pro Wrestling Torch
– Wrestling Observer Newsletter
