10 Terrifying Wrestling Curses That Will Chill Your Blood
5. The Unbelievably Awful Time Reality Imitated Art
Hayabusa was a phenomenal professional wrestler.
Boasting one of the best looks in the history of the business, he fused that look - if you're not familiar, it is essentially the coolest Mortal Kombat character that hasn't been invented or ripped off yet - with an exhilarating and futuristic ring style informed by an early excursion to Mexico. Tremendous without the gruesome weaponry popularised by his home promotion of Frontier Martial Arts, he nonetheless may have worked the very best death match ever. His Explosive Barbed Wire Steel Cage Death match opposite Atsushi Onita, to which 58,250 fans were drawn on May 5, 1995 at Kawasaki Stadium, was apocalyptic thriller cinema enhanced by the rapid Hayabusa's heart-stopping last-second saves from electrocution.
As seems to always happen, despite working stipulations like No Ropes Exploding Barbed Wire Double Hell Exploding Ring Death and FMW's interpretation of War Games, Hayabusa suffered a career-ending injury on October 22, 2001 when a high spot that he had long since perfected went awry. After slipping when performing his springboard moonsault, he was paralysed. Astonishingly, in storylines, seconds before making his entrance for what would turn out to be his last match, he was confronted by a sinister demon in a stairwell who told him that his career would be brought to an imminent end.
It's no real curse; rather, it's an unfathomably cruel coincidence.
This incredible, disturbing wrinkle of fate was chronicled by the brilliant FMW historian BAHU, whom you should all follow on Twitter (if you still can).