As professional wrestling fans, we've almost become desensitized to what is known throughout the business as "the list." WWE certainly does not want to acknowledge the startlingly long list of its then-current and former superstars who have died tragically young, and there is no real consensus from industry experts why so many wrestlers fail to reach their golden retirement years. The list of the dead and wounded comes in so fast sometimes that it's almost impossible to keep up with them all. There are even several websites devoted to nothing more than keeping a chronological list of the dead wrestlers, their ages, and their causes of death. The international news media goes crazy when a professional wrestler dies, and it is often hard to tell fact from fiction when the details begin to emerge. When a bogus report of the Undertaker's supposed passing blew up the internet early last week, many of us weren't even that surprised. In sum, there have been at least 13 major current or former WWE superstars to die before the age of 60 since January 2010 and more than 50 similar deaths since 1994. The most recent addition to the wrestling death list, as we all know by now, is The Ultimate Warrior. Without going too far into the details right now (more on him later in this article), Warrior's death was shocking only because of its extremely unfortunate timing. After headlining the WWE's 2014 Hall of Fame induction ceremony and reviving his old Warrior shtick the previous night on Monday Night RAW, James Hellwig "dropped dead" as Nancy Grace would later so tastelessly state, walking to his car with his wife Dana. Wrestling fans were once again forced to come to terms with one of their all-time greatest heroes meeting the same fate as so many before him. As we continue to process the events and circumstances surrounding Warrior's tragic death, let's take a look at the six most shocking deaths that have forever changed the WWE and the wrestling industry as a whole.
