The Sixer: Sabu, 1964-2025
There have been, I guess, a lot of wrestlers “like” Sabu — hardcore wrestlers, death match wrestlers, high-risk wrestlers. Hayabusa was “like” Sabu, Jeff Hardy is “like” Sabu, someone like JC Bailey had some Sabu-ish qualities.
But Sabu was Sabu.
Sabu was maybe the last of the Wrestling Magazine Legends, guys you could get to know through the “Apter mags” and the like even if they didn’t wrestle in your area and you had no easy access to actually seeing them on TV or anything. For me, there was a mythical sort of quality to Sabu before I ever actually got to see him in action. I saw photos, I read about him, I heard about him. I built him up to be something that was realistically pretty hard for the eventual real evidence to live up to, but then he did. Because for me at the time, no, I’d never quite seen anyone like Sabu. Even a Cactus Jack or somebody.
Picking six matches to “sum up” anyone’s entire career can be pretty daunting, and it would be impossible with Sabu. He had so many phases, left a mark on so many places. His time in Japan was hugely eventful, and later his work in TNA still had a lot of spark to it. Even his very brief WCW run in 1995 was memorable just because of how bizarre it was to see him in that setting, how blatantly he didn’t fit in at all. Even in his most corporate days with WCW or later WWE, Sabu carried the air of a genuine outlaw of professional wrestling, someone who did things the way he did them and was not going to fit into anyone’s mold.
In this set:
vs 2 Cold Scorpio (ECW Cyberslam, 1996)
vs Rob Van Dam (ECW Hostile City Showdown, 1996)
vs Terry Funk (ECW Born to Be Wired, 1997)
vs Jerry Lynn (IWA Mid-South Shot of Southern Comfort, 2004)
vs Samoa Joe (TNA Lockdown, 2006)
vs John Cena (WWE vs ECW Head-to-Head, 2006)
2 Cold Scorpio vs Sabu
ECW Cyberslam
February 17, 1996 - Philadelphia, PA
These two went on a run of matches at big (well) shows for ECW in early ‘96, and had also wrestled for ECW a couple times in ‘94-95. Scorpio is defending the ECW TV title here, a belt he’s held four times.
You immediately see how unique Sabu’s approach could be just in terms of pacing and what seemed like purely “going for it” out there, rarely thinking let alone over-thinking. He immediately runs himself into a kick to the jaw, but comes back with a spinning heel kick and some chair work, landing Air Sabu into the corner within a minute or so. There’s no feeling out process, and there seems to be genuinely little consideration for what comes next with Sabu. Nothing feels planned. He hits a big, physical dive into the crowd within a couple minutes, too.
All things with Sabu felt like he was just winging it. Scorpio had a lot of that spirit in him, too, and when they were both on, as they are in this one, they meshed incredibly well.