10 Wrestlers Who Died In Mysterious Circumstances
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Wrestling deaths are an all too familiar story. Most, however, are sadder than they are shocking. The combination of prolonged physical wear and tear and a reliance on intoxicants has habitually been the cause of many a wrestler's untimely demise.
Other lives have been claimed in a myriad of unfortunate and unpleasant circumstances. Injuries suffered during a match, intentional drug overdoses and even murder, to name but a few, have all claimed the lives of athletes with a mortality rate three times greater than that of the average American male.
Wrestling, throughout its torrid past, has never strayed too far from criminal activity. From revelling in fame and excess during the primes of their career, to being cut adrift from the spotlight and the prosperity when their bodies can give no more; there has historically been ample opportunity for a wrestler to fall into addiction - and foul of the law.
While most wrestler deaths are still, ruefully, chalked up to lifestyle choices made on the road, there remain cases which are very much still open to debate.
From suspected suicides to apparent gangland slayings, dubious overdoses to inconclusive autopsies, there's almost certainly more to these ten wrestler's premature deaths than meets the eye...
10. La Fiera
A former NWA World Welterweight and NWA World Middleweight champion in the EMLL promotion, Arturo 'La Fiera' Casco was regarded as one of the best workers in Mexico during the 1980s.
Remembered for a terrific feud with a young 'Kamikaze' Mitsuhara Misawa, a series which took him to Japan to feud with him as Tiger Mask II, Castro was in a period of semi-retirement when he was murdered in 2010.
Little is known of Casco's life outside of wrestling and even less about the circumstances that occasioned his death. However it is said that he had become heavily involved in drugs during the latter stages of his wrestling career.
Serving a prison sentence for drug dealing in the 1990s, there is ample room to speculate that by 2010, Arturo Casco was deeply implicated in organised crime.
All that is known of La Fiera's death is that he was stabbed five times by an unknown assailant and left for dead on 10 September 2010. Two days later Casco passed away as a result of his injuries in hospital. He was 49-years old. His killer is still unknown, as is the motive for his murder.