page_title: Sabu (wrestler)
section_title: Return to ECW (1995–2000)
hierarchical_section_title: Sabu (wrestler) / Professional wrestling career / Return to ECW (1995–2000)
caption_attribution_description: ECW @ Westchester County Center in White Plains, NY TNN TV Taping - 12.23.99
context_page_description: Terry Michael Brunk is an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Sabu. He is currently signed to Impact Wrestling and also wrestles on the independent circuit. He is known for his trademark style of hardcore wrestling, which he pioneered in his time with Extreme Championship Wrestling from 1995 to 2000. He is a three-time World Heavyweight Champion having held the ECW World Heavyweight Championship twice and the NWA World Heavyweight Championship once.
  Under the tutelage of his uncle The Sheik, Brunk began his career wrestling in the North American independent scene in 1985 under the name of Sabu, before traveling to Japan, competing in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling and New Japan Pro-Wrestling, winning several championships, including the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. He returned to the United States in 1995, briefly working for World Championship Wrestling, before beginning his most well-known stint in ECW, where he quickly became a fixture of the promotion. During his time in ECW, he became a two-time ECW World Heavyweight Champion and a one-time ECW World Television Champion.
context_section_description: Sabu returned to ECW on November 18, 1995 at November to Remember, and eventually engaged in matches and feuds with the likes of Rob Van Dam, with whom he later teamed up with and won the ECW World Tag Team Championship twice. In the meantime, former tag team partner Tazmaniac (who had shortened his name to "Taz") began to publicly challenge Sabu at every given opportunity, but got no response. After a year of call-outs and insults from Taz, Heyman revealed that he had asked Sabu, as a friend, to ignore Taz's challenge. This standoff culminated in a grudge match at ECW's first pay-per-view, Barely Legal, which Taz won. Following the match, Taz's manager Bill Alfonso turned on him and sided with Sabu and Rob Van Dam, who then formed a tag team. Sabu and Taz continued to feud on and off for the remainder of Taz's ECW career.
  Sabu was later included in the WWF invasion angle, in which ECW wrestlers invaded WWF's Monday Night Raw program and held ECW-style matches and angles on the show. One memorable moment occurred at this show when Sabu appeared during a match and prepared for an aerial move off the "R" in the "RAW" lettered entryway onto Team Taz members, but accidentally fell off the "R". This was not planned which led to Sabu landing on top of Team Taz members and becoming an inside joke between him and Taz backstage. This invasion angle also led to a heel turn for Sabu in ECW, along with Van Dam and Alfonso, who began promoting the virtues of the WWF product over ECW's. Sabu feuded with ECW loyalists Tommy Dreamer and The Sandman during this period.
  One of Sabu's most infamous matches was the No-Rope Barbed-Wire match with Terry Funk at Born to be Wired, a match which was promoted as being "too extreme even for ECW". In one of the most memorable moments in ECW history, Sabu attempted the "Air Sabu" corner splash on Funk, Terry moved and Sabu ended up colliding violently into the wire which tore open his biceps. He then asked his manager Bill Alfonso for some tape and after Alfonso went to get some Sabu began to tape the approximately 10 inch gash up. Funk has stated that, to this day, he has never seen anything like what Sabu did that night. The match ended with both men so badly tangled up together in the barbed wire that it took several ring technicians armed with wire cutters to free them from the predicament (on the DVD Bloodsport – ECW's Most Violent Matches released by World Wrestling Entertainment, Paul Heyman said that the match was "so gruesome, I never ever dared to schedule another one like it", and that they never had another Barbed-Wire match in ECW because "no one could top that one – and in good conscience, I never wanted anyone to try").
  Brunk racked up an astounding catalog of injuries during his ECW tenure, including broken ribs, a broken jaw, and breaking his neck twice. The first time he broke his neck was during his match with Chris Benoit at the 1994 November to Remember. Benoit threw Sabu with the intention that he would take a flapjack bump but Brunk attempted to turn mid-air and take a back body drop bump instead, which he was not able to do and landed on his head causing the injury. The other was during a match against Taz in December 1998, when Brunk took a Taz–Plex through a table and landed incorrectly. Brunk was able to recover from the neck injuries and return to wrestling, and he even wore a neck brace in his return match in the United States a month following the injury at Taz's hands; by Brunk's account, however, he started actively wrestling in Japan with his partner on a short tour a little over two weeks after that injury. Brunk departed from ECW for the final time in early 2000.
caption: Sabu delivering the Arabian Skullcrusher to Rhino
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1188", "Image ImageLength": "793", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:06:24 16:13:59", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "394", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7661", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1188", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "793"}