On Friday night, tragedy struck in Mexico during a professional wrestling match that led to the death of Perro Aguayo Jr.
The cause of death is being reported as a stroke caused by cervical spinal damage.
Aguayo was in a tag team match which featured former WWE star Rey Mysterio as one of his opponents. Mysterio was the last man to touch Aguayo when he performed a spinning head scissors on Aguayo that sent him to the concrete floor where a loud smack could be heard. Once Aguayo was back in the ring, Mysterio dropkicked him in what appeared to be in the side of the neck. This caused Aguayo to drop to his knees and aggressively land his neck on the middle rope.
The sequence looked routine when in a match against Mysterio. As hundreds of Mysterio's opponents have done, Aguayo dropped to a knee and draped over the middle rope to set up for Mysterio's signature move known as the 619. At this point when looking at the video, you can see Aguayo is completely unconscious.
I hate hearing people claim or ask the question of whether Mysterio was responsible for Aguayo's death. The most irresponsible headline I've seen was one of the earliest saying Mysterio's 619 move killed Aguayo. When you watch any of the various camera angles, you see Mysterio completely missed Aguayo with the 619 and hit his partner who also was rested on the ropes set up for the move.
It would seem the physicality and collection of spots in the match led to Aguayo's death, but to put specific blame on Mysterio is wrong. A wrestler's biggest fear is getting seriously injured or seriously injuring someone else. This is the ultimate fear.
I can't imagine how difficult this is for Mysterio.
The other ridiculous headline is the possibility of manslaughter charges being brought on after an investigation. If this was an extreme stunt with negligence, it would be a different situation. However, there was nothing excessive or out of routine in this match that would suggest any criminal charges are warranted.
Another angle to this terrible situation is the questioning of whether the match should have continued the way it did. If everyone in the match knew immediately that Aguayo was on his way to death, then obviously you stop the match. There was no way of knowing this at the time.
At first, it can appear Aguayo is either selling the moves really well or that he got knocked out for a moment. It happens in professional wrestling. If it was a singles match, it would have basically stopped because the opponent wouldn't have been able to do anything. Because there were three other wrestlers in the match, they kept going because they had no way of knowing how bad things really were.
It's also an unfortunate reminder to wrestlers, fans and critics about the risk being taken every time a guy or girl steps through those ropes.
Justin LaBar is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7949 or jlabar@tribweb.com.
