Tag: wrestling obituaries

Ryan Sakoda, who was best known for this brief run in the WWE in the early 2000s, has passed away.

PWInsider reported that Sakoda passed away on September 2. There is no word on the cause of death. He had recently been working for Disney at their Grand Californian Hotel.

Training under Rick Bassman, Sakoda first started his career wrestling for UPW. He also made appearances for ZERO-ONE, where he and Samoa Joe held the NWA Intercontinental Tag Team titles. In 2003, Sakoda signed to WWE and had a brief run as the tag team partner for Akio (Jimmy Yang), associating themselves with Tajiri for a time. After the storyline was dropped, Sakoda was released from WWE in August of 2004.

After his WWE run, Sakoda competed in Wrestling Society X, and continued to wrestle until around 2007. In 2015, Sakoda filed a lawsuit with other former WWE talent claiming that they were seriously injured during their time for the company. Sakoda said that he was suffering from headaches, severe migraines, memory loss, and severe depression as a result of his time in the company. All cases were dismissed by the United States Supreme Court earlier this year.

Jose Luis Alvarado, who started out as a well respected worker as teenager sensation Brazo de Plata, who became iconic as perhaps the greatest long-term iconic comedic wrestler as Super Porky, passed away on 7/26 at the age of 58 due to a heart attack.

He had been in poor health of late and based on what he had said both publicly and privately, seemed to know that he was not going to live much longer.

The heart attack was in its own weird way apropos. He had two prior heart attacks, both while wrestling, and worked that into his regular comedy routine where he would fake heart attacks in his matches. Given he was so overweight and his brothers were so convincing at panicking, fans bought them and on more than occasion I would get reports from people seeing him live thinking he had suffered a heart attack.

Alvarado was the best known member of the biggest wrestling family in the world, a statement that carries a lot of weight since his son, Psycho Clown, is arguably the biggest star in Mexico right now and certainly top three.

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