13 Wrestlers Who Died In The Ring 4

4. Mitsuharu Misawa

WARNING: The video below shows the immediate aftermath of Misawa’s death in the ring, which some readers may find distressing.
Mitsuharu Misawa was a bona fide legend of Japanese wrestling. It is no exaggeration to say that his death would be the equivalent of Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan passing away inside the ring. A very good amateur wrestler, he turned pro with All Japan Pro Wrestling, the promotion he was a huge fan of as a youngster, in 1981. In 1984, Misawa’s name disappeared from AJPW bills and a new wrestler, Tiger Mask II, was born, with Misawa under the mask. He had huge boots to fill, as the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, had been he first wrestler to popularise junior heavyweight wrestling in Japan. Under the mask, Misawa feuded with the likes of Dynamite Kid and Chavo Guerrero Sr, and in April 1990, he fought Bret Hart to a 20 minute time limit draw at the WWF/AJPW Summit 1990 show at the Tokyo Dome. Later that year, during a tag match, he dramatically got his partner, Toshiaki Kawada, to rip his mask off and continued wrestling, where he was immediately identified by the commentators as Mitsuharu Misawa.

Misawa climbed the ladder of AJPW and won a total of five Triple Crown championships. He established himself as the top star of AJPW throughout the 1990s, competing in many hard-hitting five star classics, particularly against his old tag partner Kawada. After AJPW President Giant Baba died in 1999, Misawa took over, but fell out with Baba’s widow and was removed from his position the following year. This led to Misawa forming his own promotion, Pro Wrestling NOAH (representing the journey away from AJPW as per Noah with his ark), where he took the vast majority of the AJPW roster with him. With a green ring canvas, the colour of Misawa’s tights, this was undoubtedly his baby.
Pro Wrestling NOAH soon became the number one promotion in Japan, mainly thanks to the consistently high quality of the matches. However, these matches took their toll on each wrestler’s body and the cracks began to show. Headliner Kenta Kobashi’s body started to fall apart and then he contracted cancer. New headliners like Takeshi Morishima and Naomichi Marufuji, were not really taken to heart by the NOAH fans. The main title in NOAH, the GHC (Global Honoured Crown) World Heavyweight Championship, was initially won in a tournament by Misawa, and throughout NOAH’s history, much like John Cena in the WWE, the title would always return to him when an attempt to create a new headliner failed. By 2009, Misawa wanted desperately to retire. Years of cumulative injuries from the hard hitting Japanese style were taking their toll on his body, but the Japanese culture was to never complain and just get on wth things. Plus, NOAH was not in a position financially for Misawa to retire. Without him, audiences would drop and with no guaranteed headliner to replace him, he had to carry on.
On June 13th 2009, Misawa teamed with his protege Go Shiozaki to challenge GHC World Tag Team Champions Bison Smith and Akitoshi Saito in Hiroshima. Misawa took a belly to back suplex from Saito, a move that he would have taken thousands of times before. However, on this occasion, Misawa stayed down on the canvas. A team of medics worked on him as the roster all emerged from the dressing room to surround him. Women in the audience were in tears as the crowd chanted, “Misawa! Misawa!” in an attempt to rally their hero. But it was all to no avail. Misawa’s death not only shocked the wrestling world, but Japan as a whole and his death in the ring was mainstream headline news.
Although the official cause of death was never released publicly (a Japanese law enables the cause to be kept private if requested), it was widely believed that Misawa suffered a major injury to the cervical vertebrae, which connects the brain to the spine, which led to cardiac arrest and his death in the ring at the age of 46. His death led to calls for more regulation in Japanese wrestling, but this never came about. Although still operating today, Pro Wrestling NOAH has never really recovered from the shocking death of their founder and figurehead.