In April 1999, 40-year-old Rick Rude was found dead in his home.
Generally speaking, super fit 40-year-olds don’t just die of natural causes. So what happened to the former WWF Intercontinental champion?
In this week’s DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show, I look at that week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter and how Dave Meltzer discussed the life, death, injuries, and career of a man who wrestled in Florida, WCCW, Memphis, Crockett, WCW, WWF, ECW, and WCW and was a star in every place.
This is the story of WWE Hall of Famer “Ravishing” Rick Rude.
The 2017 WWE Hall of Fame class is up to seven official members.
In an announcement made by Bleacher Report on Monday afternoon, WWE revealed that Rick Rude would be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year. He joins Kurt Angle, Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Teddy Long, Diamond Dallas Page, and Beth Phoenix as those set to be honored on March 31st over WrestleMania weekend in Orlando, Florida.
Rude is the first posthumous member of the 2017 class and will be inducted by Ricky Steamboat. Bleacher Report spoke to Steamboat about Rude’s career.
“If you looked at all the boxes you would check to make a main event guy that would go down in history as one of the best, Rude checked all the boxes,” Steamboat said. “He was an all-around package. He looked good, he could play the part, he knew what to do. He could take great bumps, feed the babyface when it was time to feed, and he would never run out of gas.”
Rude’s career began in the early 1980s and spanned multiple promotions. During his time in the WWF, he was a memorable heel who would brag about his physique and insult the audience for how they looked.
Later in WCW, Rude was a member of Paul Heyman’s Dangerous Alliance stable. A back injury he suffered in Japan during a match with Sting effectively ended his in-ring career in 1994, though Rude later went on to become a character on television for WWF, WCW, and ECW.
Rude passed away at only 40 years old in 1999 due to heart failure.
The death of Rick Rude on 4/20 becomes the latest addition to a strange and macabre body count that is very close to becoming synonymous with the pro wrestling industry.
Rude passed away that evening of a heart attack after being rushed to the North Fulton Medical Center near his home in Alpharetta, GA, an Atlanta suburb, at the age of 40. Rude, who was working with WCW as an announcer for the Backstage Blast PPV airings of Nitro on DirecTV once per month after being removed from his role as childhood friend Curt Hennig’s on-camera manager, had been training for an in-ring comeback after his career presumably had ended after suffering a broken back in a May 1, 1994 match against Sting at the Fukuoka Dome.
