10 Crazy Wrestling Scandals You've Never Heard Of
2. The Death Of Hiromitsu Gompei
The New Japan Dojo system - before Hiroshi Tanahashi took it upon himself to cleanse its value system - was so legendarily barbaric that Chris Benoit despised training there.
That is a man who was prone to sadism before he lost his mind, willingly ventured into the Stu Hart dungeon and actively enjoyed the searing pain to which he was subjected, and befriended his wrestling idol Tom 'Dynamite Kid' Billington: a sociopathic monster whom most everybody else was appalled by and terrified of.
And yet, Benoit loathed his time in the Dojo.
According to the book Ring Of Hell, from details imparted by graduate Osamu Nishimura, sessions began at 10AM, after a crack of dawn wake-up call followed by a daily deep clean of the facility, with 1000 hindu squats. Trainers battered the legs of students with bamboo swords as the agony coursed through their muscles. 500 push-ups followed.
At the merest hint of selling the pain, a student was ordered to increase the regimen on the spot; if an exercise was not carried out perfectly, a physical assault followed. Verbal abuse of a repugnant stripe was doled out frequently in order to weed out the uncommitted. Following a workout that would hobble all but the most determined after less than one hour, students in the early phase of their training were told to bump and bump and bump until their urine turned red with blood.
Elements of Ring Of Hell are sensationalised - it's as much a vicious heel promo on the wrestling industry as it is an informative glimpse into its disturbing underbelly - but the Dojo passage required none of Matthew Randazzo V's trademark acerbic flair.
It was under these abhorrent conditions that Hiromitsu Gompei died; after being subjected to the usual, sadistic daily routine, the Dojo - per an anonymous source of Randazzo's - was visited by then-NJPW booker Riki Choshu. Knowing that a poor inspection would reflect poorly on the trainers, who were intent on proving they were up to the task, the brutal training regimen was re-started. In full.
Gompei was too physically exhausted to reach the standard expected of the Dojo, and was punished by inadvertently being suplexed - allegedly, it was all covered up - to death by Kensuke Sasaki.