June 15, 200916 yr comment_5440725 Anyone else wonder if before yesterday, that JR only knew of Misawa as "that guy in the green tights in those tapes John's always making me watch"? I mean, JR strikes me as a dude who's not aware of Japan as a country let alone their pro wrestling scene. I remember an old Observer Live episode when Jim Ross was asked about who he would like to bring in from Japan (Ross was VP of Talent Relations at the time), and if I remember correctly, he awkwardly stumbled to an answer with a little bit of help from Dave. Granted, that was about a decade ago but it was pretty apparent that he didn't watch much, if any, Japanese wrestling at the time.
June 15, 200916 yr comment_5440727 "In more terrible news this weekend, Ted Tanabe suddenly collapsed after yesterday’s show and fell into a state of unconsciousness. CPR was administed and an AED was used before he was rushed to the hospital." He died shortly after.
June 15, 200916 yr comment_5440732 Daniel/OJ is doing a good job of pulling stuff from the Japanese press reports and posting them to the DVDVR thread. It's a long thread, with Daniel starting items from the press here: http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.p...8903&st=270 Worth checking out on occassion for other updates he puts in there. John
June 16, 200916 yr comment_5440767 So the Japanese press is saying the cause of death was a broken neck from the suplex and not a heart attack? Is that legit or is that just kayfabe to cover a heart attack?
June 16, 200916 yr comment_5440768 Would make more sense to kayfabe a heart attack than a severed spinal cord.
June 16, 200916 yr comment_5440784 "In more terrible news this weekend, Ted Tanabe suddenly collapsed after yesterday’s show and fell into a state of unconsciousness. CPR was administed and an AED was used before he was rushed to the hospital." He died shortly after. Isn't he the little fat guy from my old Michinoku Pro tapes? Damn, I loved that guy.
June 17, 200916 yr comment_5440793 One questioned I've always wondered is simply...why don't wrestling companies just use rings with safer mats and more padding? Especially the larger companies that could afford to make safer rings and use extra mics, sound equipment, etc. to amplify the noise that may be muted by a thicker-padded mat. I say this as someone that has worked in various non-wrestling capacities for an American indy promotion but has experience taking bumps. Even simple flat-back bumps can feel really painful in a conventional ring. The typical wrestling mat is literally boards on top of a steel frame, with a thin layer of hard padding on top of the boards and the boards and padding covered by the canvas. Really - I strongly doubt any wrestling fans would react differently to the same moves being done on a safer mat.
June 17, 200916 yr comment_5440795 Except there's no such thing as "safer". You could make the padding thicker or more soft and the ring more springy and bouncy, sure. But then it provides much more shaky footing for walking, running, anything involving your feet impacting the mat. Ankle and knee injuries become much more common in a softer ring.
June 17, 200916 yr comment_5440797 Except there's no such thing as "safer". You could make the padding thicker or more soft and the ring more springy and bouncy, sure. But then it provides much more shaky footing for walking, running, anything involving your feet impacting the mat. Ankle and knee injuries become much more common in a softer ring. This is a great point, and one I hadn't considered. Granted, a possible increase of foot/leg injuries is still a safer long-term solution compared to the effects of head and neck trauma. But I'm glad you brought this up, as a "softer" mat also means feet will be "sinking" more into the mat, which would definitely lead to an increase of rolled ankles and much worse. I was hoping this would be the incident that would change the culture of Japanese wrestling to not include such dangerous head/neck drops, but I don't hold out much hope when the clips I've seen from the very next NOAH show, featuring a multitude of Misawa tributes, also had wrestlers performing dangerous moves.
June 17, 200916 yr comment_5440821 Yeah, no amount of extra padding will make taking a head/neck bump a good idea.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440854 According to the new WON, the cause of death was a fracture to the C1 and C2 that in essence dislocated his head from his body. Had he survived, he would have ended up a quadriplegic. Dave points out that Misawa's neck was probably in the same shape Austin, DDP, and Ted DiBiase's necks were when they retired with the difference being that Misawa never had actual treatment for his. He did the stoic Japanese "never admit you're in pain" deal which led to him never getting it repaired like a US wrestler would have even if it meant ending his in ring career.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440860 People don't survive the type of injuries Misawa sustained. The mortality rate is essentially 100%. It was a miracle that Christopher Reeve survived his accident. It was no secret that Misawa was in bad shape. He wanted to retire and confided with various people that his health was bad. None of those wrestlers Dave mentioned had the pressures that Misawa did as shacho. I'm not trying to defend Misawa one way or the other, but there's nothing essentially "Japanese" about what Misawa did or didn't do.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440862 Austin is actually an interesting comparison and I think it's a bit simplistic to conclude that Misawa was just under more pressure to keep going than him. I mean Austin worked for several years on a badly damaged neck and felt compelled to start taking tons of suplexes to keep up with the Angles and Benoits who raised the workrate bar in the WWF in 2001. He rolled the dice on his health plenty of times in an attempt to desperately cling on to his spot as the top star in the business. Really, Austin got lucky that he was forced out of the promotion by the rise to power of Stephanie and Hunter, and even then he still flaked out, beat up his wife, attempted one last return, suffered a major health scare the night before Mania and rolled the dice on his health one last time by going through with what turned out to be his retirement match.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440863 I've never been fully clear on what happened to Austin the night before Wrestlemania.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440864 A panic attack or freakout or something equally vague and undefined. He talked about it in his book, and iirc blamed it on all the fat burners he was taking to get in shape for Mania. Which does sound, how we say, suspicious. Let's just say I've heard stories about Austin pounding down substances which were somewhat harder than a Steveweiser, and to claim a practical breakdown from Stacker 2 seems fishy.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440866 It was too much caffeine that he blamed it on. Loss: There's an excerpt of his book visible here. The events leading up to his pre-WM XIX hospitalisation are the first thing he talks about. Pages 2 and 3 are those that would be of interest to you.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440870 A panic attack or freakout or something equally vague and undefined. He talked about it in his book, and iirc blamed it on all the fat burners he was taking to get in shape for Mania. Which does sound, how we say, suspicious. Let's just say I've heard stories about Austin pounding down substances which were somewhat harder than a Steveweiser, and to claim a practical breakdown from Stacker 2 seems fishy.It does seem fishy but I wouldn't discount it completely. If someone can get heart palpitations from a standard dose of Sudafed then way overdoing the Stacker 2 and whatnot can probably shoot a heart into the ridiculous danger zone that Austin hit, right?
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440872 People don't survive the type of injuries Misawa sustained. The mortality rate is essentially 100%. It was a miracle that Christopher Reeve survived his accident. It was no secret that Misawa was in bad shape. He wanted to retire and confided with various people that his health was bad. None of those wrestlers Dave mentioned had the pressures that Misawa did as shacho. I'm not trying to defend Misawa one way or the other, but there's nothing essentially "Japanese" about what Misawa did or didn't do. There is in how that in Japanese culture (and even more so among wrestlers) there's such a strong sense of being stoic in the face of adversity. Misawa spent his whole life being taught not to let pain get to him plus the extra burden he added on himself as being the owner and top guy of the company. Not to draw comparisons between their two fates, but Benoit had the same mindset drilled into him and he wasn't born into it like Misawa was.
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440873 A panic attack or freakout or something equally vague and undefined. He talked about it in his book, and iirc blamed it on all the fat burners he was taking to get in shape for Mania. Which does sound, how we say, suspicious. Let's just say I've heard stories about Austin pounding down substances which were somewhat harder than a Steveweiser, and to claim a practical breakdown from Stacker 2 seems fishy. fishy maybe, but not unbelievable... I personally am very sensitive to caffeine...a cup of coffee gives me jitters for a full 4-6 hours, the caffeine in some OTC cold medications fucks me for an entire day... a slight overdose on a fat burner, or caffeine concentrate pill would put me into breakdown... I am not saying that I am the standard...or that this was the case with Austin (it would be assumed that he had experience with these types of pills)...I am just saying that that is what they would do to me. Panic attack w/o question
June 18, 200916 yr comment_5440874 I'm sure the caffeine and anything else Austin may have been taking didn't help, but I'd argue the stress of putting on a WrestleMania quality main event match on his bad neck was probably the most significant factor in causing his panic attack.
June 19, 200916 yr comment_5440903 Sure, it's possible that Austin really did suffer complications from legal supplements, there have been actual deaths linked to that sort of thing. I just thought it seemed odd, and it had a little bit of that "David Von Erich died from a drug overdose liver ailment" feel to it. The company covered it up for a while, I only heard vague rumors about it until months later, which did seem a little strange.
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