‘Sabu’ documentary follows a wrestling legend’s journey to his last match and an untimely death he may have seen coming
“There’s always been some spirituality to Sabu,” said executive producer and pro wrestler Rob Van Dam. The film about the former ECW star premieres Sept. 15.
In January 2024, almost a year and a half before Terry Brunk’s unexpected death, award-winning filmmaker Joe Clarke and legendary wrestler Rob Van Dam met with Brunk to discuss filming a documentary on his life in the ring — from bloody barbed wire battles to unforgettable matches at Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena.
Brunk, better known as Sabu, agreed. He even gave the two a new angle for the film: his journey to his retirement match.
Brunk’s last match as Sabu took place on April 18, in a brutal barbed wire rope match against Joey Janela for Game Changer Wrestling. Less than a month later, on May 11, Brunk passed away due to heart failure at age 60. The Sabu documentary, directed by Clarke and produced by Van Dam, will follow the hardcore wrestling legend’s journey leading up to his last match and sudden passing.
“I really wanted to do a hard-hitting, impactful documentary about wrestling because I was so passionate about it,” Clarke said. “So doing one on Sabu came naturally. He was such a great character to challenge people’s perception about wrestling being fake because he was probably the most real person that we knew. …
“I wanted this to be a badge of honor for wrestling fans, through Sabu’s story, to show that wrestling was in fact real.”
Sabu broke the mold for hardcore wrestling in the old ECW Arena at 2300 South Swanson Street. He was a two-time Extreme Championship Wrestling champion, an ECW tag team champion, and an ECW world television champion. He competed in Japan with New Japan Pro Wrestling before making his way to ECW, where he put on iconic matches in Philadelphia, including his barbed wire match with Terry Funk at “Born to be Wired” in 1997.
Some of Sabu’s old matches — like his meeting with 2 Cold Scorpio at CyberSlam in 1996 — were so iconic and elusive that Clarke searched everywhere looking for tapes of them. At that time, tape trading was a subculture of pro wrestling, becoming a distribution mechanism for televised wrestling.
“We didn’t have the internet the way it is today. So, it was like one of those things of whispers about him and it was kind of like this dangerous thing to find his tapes,” Clarke said of those nearly 30-year-old matches. “And I think that’s why he blew up through the tape-trading industry as this kind of cult type figure.”
Sabu was known to put his body on the line to satisfy fans, performing death-defying stunts in the ring and becoming an underground king on the independent scene. According to Van Dam, Brunk lived his life the way he wanted to, and he credits Sabu for a lot of his own success in wrestling.
“Sabu came up an original,” Van Dam said. “And it’s very much like his uncle, the original Sheik did. But he didn’t take Sheik’s spot, he made his own spot. And that’s what is so great about his career, because that’s what he wanted to do and that’s what he told me to do. He touched a lot of people, and he made my career possible by training me and showing me the right way to go.”
Van Dam worked with Clarke in the past for his own documentary, Headstrong. But when it came to the Sabu project, Clarke knew he needed to get Van Dam — who shared the ring with Sabu a number of times, both as an opponent and as a tag-team partner — involved again.
“I miss him very much,” Van Dam said. “He’s my brother. And also, there’s always been some spirituality to Sabu. But there’s some things in the movie — moments that we have recorded of him talking in a way that makes me wonder did he know that his death was coming? There’s so many hints.
“Looking back at it from a different perspective, it seems as if he had a feeling that this was coming and tried to tell us in a few different ways.”
The Sabu documentary is set to premiere on Sept. 15, exclusively on Kinema.
“This isn’t going to be like a fluff piece,” Clarke said. “I wanted to explore how we got to the chaos in the ring. And I think that’s what we find out. His sacrifice in the ring was a reflection of the sacrifice outside of the ring.
“A lot of the theme of the film is that Sabu was this legend who never got his due. He never got his true flowers. But now he’s kind of becoming this mythic legend — almost like Bruce Lee type vibes, where after they’re gone, that’s when they start to get their flowers. So, I think what we’re seeing unfolding now is the appreciation and respect that Sabu probably should have gotten when he was alive.”