Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special
Ever wondered how Goichi Suda aka Suda51 of Let It Die, No More Heroes and Killer 7 first became famous? It was with the ending to Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special. The hero loses again and again, his coach and close friend separately die, his girlfriend leaves him and the defending World Champion (originally called “Ric Flair”) kills his tag partner. The hero defeats the champion, thus standing alone in the ring among cheering fans. Several days later, he shoots himself.
While this may all seem out of left field, it’s almost a commentary on the new age of “kayfabe” where the lines between real and scripted are endless blended. While the coach and close friend dying are definitely real, they become part of the wrestler’s story. The World Champion being the ultimate villain and killing your partner for some “heat”? All for storyline purposes. By the end, the hero was probably just fed up of not knowing what was real.
A modified take on this is that for all the “scripted” accolades garnered through wrestling, the consequences of reality (as represented by his friends dying and his girlfriend leaving) were far too strong for our hero to ignore. It’s the perfect mix of kayfabe and reality, not all that different from The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke, though Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s journey was more about accepting his fate rather than escaping from it.
