8 Wrestlers With The Worst Luck Ever

#1 Akitoshi Saito literally kills Mitsuharu Misawa

This is the last known photo of Misawa alive, before landing hard on his head and snapping his neck. May he rest in peace...

By 2009, the body of AJPW and NOAH ace Mitsuharu Misawa was in terrible shape. Years of wrestling in the taxing and dangerous King’s Road style had taken their toll on him. To the point that many people begged him to retire from in-ring competition.

But Misawa was NOAH’s biggest draw and the company was basically built around him. Without him wrestling, there were fears that the promotion would fold. So he kept wrestling despite severe neck problems and allegedly needing a cane to walk.

All these problems came to a head on June 13th, 2009. Misawa took a backdrop suplex from Saito, but the execution went terribly wrong. Misawa landed on his head, and in doing so severed his C1 and C2 vertebrae. He lost consciousness soon after and was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Although the exact cause of death was never officially released, some diehard fans blamed Saito directly, alleging his suplex killed one of the greatest wrestlers in Japanese history. These angry fans allegedly found Saito’s home and harassed him for some time afterwards, and it wasn’t until Misawa's tribute show that Saito was basically ‘forgiven’.

There are repeated call outs in wrestling television programming that the stunts are performed by trained professionals and the same are not to be repeated at home. It is purely owing to the risk at stake here that has ended more careers than it has created.