10 Wrestlers Who Were Driven Out Of The Business
1. Virtually Everybody Who Tried Out For The New Japan Dojo
To accurately convey the extent to which the New Japan Dojo was barbaric, Chris Benoit was one of very few men to actively enjoy the actual torture that was training in the Stu Hart Dungeon. He wanted to be stretched to the point of unbearable agony to prove himself capable of entering an industry he held in sacred reverence. He wanted more than anything to be perceived as worthy of the highest honour.
Chris Benoit developed what was, tragically, an impossibly intense pro wrestling style. He bumped to an outrageously frequent and painful extent. The snap of his powerbombs remain unparalleled, and he, willingly, took worse. He didn't need a veteran to threaten him with sadistic punishment for some minor transgression; he did this to himself. Taking only a glancing blow from a Chris Jericho kick, that nobody noticed, he infamously performed 500 Hindu squats as penance. Chris Benoit took the wrestling business more seriously than anybody and dedicated himself to it to a harrowing extent.
And he could not fathom or stand his training in the New Japan Dojo, 99% of whom entered it never returned after the first day.
Up at the crack of dawn, before Hiroshi Tanahashi changed the culture, the Young Lions were brutalised for much of the day. Physically beaten, worked to the point of exhaustion, tormented with sadistic glee, deemed weak and useless for passing out: it is alleged that one student, Hiromatsu Gompei, died when a trainer, whose name you can look up yourself, subjected him to a barrage of head-first suplexes to impress a veteran who had arrived late to a drill and wasn't aware of how much Gompei had already been tested.