Taz Recalls Sabu Leaving ECW For NJPW, Crowd Reaction To His Return

Taz looked back at Sabu’s infamous exit from ECW to go work for NJPW and more in tribute to the hardcore wrestling icon. Sabu was publicly fired by Paul Heyman in 1995 after the wrestler no-showed ECW Three-Way Dance to work for NJPW, but came back about seven months later. Taz, who was variously Sabu’s rival and tag team partner in ECW, looked back on his experiences with Sabu on Busted Open Radio. You can see highlights below (courtesy of Wrestling Inc):

On Sabu leaving ECW to go to Japan: “He made the decision to go [to Japan] and yeah, that definitely ticked me off and created some heat. If anyone was jealous of anyone, I was jealous of him, he wasn’t jealous of me. He was getting a better push than me, he was making a lot more money than me. But, I started getting a little more envious of him. We kinda had some arguments here and there, but nothing crazy, no fistfights.”

On Sabu’s return to the company after that: “The first thing I thought when the lights came on and I heard that pop was, thank God this worked. You can write the angle, the workers can perform that angle, it doesn’t mean the audience is gonna take the angle, especially in that building at that time. I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, I think the building is shaking.’ And the third thing I thought was, I knew homeboy [Sabu] was over, but man, now he’s over over, more than ever now.”

On his last time seeing Sabu at AEW Double or Nothing 2023 weekend: “We took a photo, it was myself, Brian Cage, Hook, Sabu. Ricky Starks was in the building, but he couldn’t come take a photo. The photo was all the FTW Champions. I wanted that photo. But at the time, Jack Perry wasn’t the FTW Champion, so it was just us. Starks was doing some interview, so he couldn’t do it. And Sabu was, like, so gracious to take the picture.  And he thought it was all awesome to do that. At the time, I thought he hated being the FTW Champion in the 90s, when Paul put it on him. But he actually thought it was cool. And that made me feel good, in my own little crazy mind, about the FTW belt. But yes, that’s the last time I, unfortunately, saw him.”