On Dead Wrestlers

May 25, 2020 6:05 AM

[Content Warning: death, suicide, self-harm] Last week was a tragic one in the world of professional wrestling, with former WWE wrestler Shad Gaspard giving his own life to save his son from drowning and second-generation joshi star Hana Kimura dying of suicide. Between Gaspard and Kimura's death, Vice on TV aired the last episode of the second season of Dark Side of the Ring, which told the story of the death of Owen Hart live on pay-per-view on May 23rd, 1999. Colette Arrand notes, "there are few forms of art and entertainment that breed tragedy at the same rate as professional wrestling."

I wish they were here, obviously, but almost more than that, selfishly, I wish it wasn’t so difficult to engage with their work, that doing so didn’t require choking down grief as much as it does. But that’s not possible. Professional wrestling is not built that way. It is now a constant cycle of connection and trauma, and getting off the ride won’t help. This is the price of knowledge. It’s incredible how many of us can live with it.

posted by Etrigan (10 comments total)

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posted by materialgirl at 6:06 AM on May 25, 2020

giving his own life to save his son from drowning a

How sad. Guitarist Randy California died that way, too.
posted by thelonius at 6:37 AM on May 25, 2020

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posted by dinty_moore at 6:40 AM on May 25, 2020

I'd never heard of Hana Kimura until wrestling twitter exploded this week. From seeing a clip of her chatting with other joshipuro wrestlers about their insecurities about dating ("I never tell them I'm a wrestler," she said. "I just tell them I'm in the family business" as the other two laughed and clapped in admiration) to hearing that Kairi Sane (who is now with WWE and was good friends with Kimura) who saw the middle-of-the-night-in-Japan tweets because it was middle of the day where she was in Florida immediately tried to contact anyone who could go and check on her friend...

Fucking hell. I just can't even fathom any of this, and I didn't even know of her. Just seeing people I follow expressing their grief and anger has been heartrending.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:43 AM on May 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

Holy shit, reading the obituary in the link... She was the little girl that won the DDT championship? Her?!

Oh, fucking hell. I guess I did know of her. Dammit, I used to love to show that clip to people.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:46 AM on May 25, 2020

I was amazed as I got older by the way the premature obituaries of the wrestlers I remembered from childhood piled up. Pro wrestling chews people up in a way that few real sports seem to (football hugely excepted).
posted by praemunire at 11:26 AM on May 25, 2020

It's not so much pro-wrestling, but toxic fan culture in Japan that drove Hana Kimura to suicide. Similar things have happened in other entertainment forms, where obsessive fans or anti fans start online harassment campaigns, often against vulnerable young women like her.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:11 AM on May 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

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posted by daybeforetheday at 3:17 AM on May 26, 2020

Fuji TV announces it will terminate the production of popular reality show Terrace House following the death of [Kimura]
posted by Etrigan at 4:48 AM on May 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

It looks like the announcement is only in regards to the rest of the current season, without comment about possible future seasons. Either way, good for Fuji TV.

At the same time, I don't doubt there are fans* of the show who will just be angry that their favorite show has been cancelled and blame Kimura for that, too.

*By fans, I mean inhuman monsters who value the entertainment they derive from voyeuristically following the lives of others more than the lives of those they follow, which, holy shit, now that I spell it out like that, overlaps pretty well with the people who think Marth Hart is the real villain for not letting WWE profit (again) off of Owen Hart by inducting him into their bullshit hall of fame.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:31 PM on May 27, 2020