8 Wrestling Careers That Ended In One Match

2. Mitsuharu Misawa

For those unaware of Japanese wrestling, in a nutshell it can be brutal, exhausting and damaging. Mitsuharu Misawa was a legend in Japanese wrestling, having dominated AJPW for over two decades, before going to form and found his own wrestling promotion, Pro Wrestling Noah. Having wrestled in the taxing puroreso Japanese style for multiple decades, Mitsuharu was tired of wrestling by the late 2000's, but found himself unable to retire in fear that his promotion might collapse without his own presence in the ring. In a match for GHC Tag-Team Championship, June, 2009, Mitsuharu lost consciousness after receiving a back-to-belly suplex from Akitoshi Saito. Misawa was then rushed to a hospital, but died at 10pm, that night. It's speculated that he died from a spinal cord injury that led to cardiac arrest, but his family invoked a Japanese law in which the cause of death wasn't to be publicly announced. Those with a thorough understanding of Japanese wrestling have commentated that Misawa's death could be attributed to sheer exhaustion because of the toll on his body, that professional wrestling had taken. Mitsuharu Misawa was a legend in Japanese wrestling, but fans had no time to say goodbye as both his life and career ended unexpectedly before a shocked crowd.