On May 23, 1999, Owen Hart was being lowered from the roof of Kemper Arena in Kansas City for a pay-per-view entrance when the harness release opened and he fell about 78 feet into the ring. He was 34. The show went on. His death is the most notorious in a sport with an unusually long list of early deaths, and boxing’s list is nearly as long.
1. Salvador Sánchez (1982, aged 23)
The Mexican featherweight was the WBC world champion, had beaten Wilfredo Gómez and Azumah Nelson and was being talked about as one of the best fighters in the world. In August 1982, weeks after the Nelson fight, he crashed his Porsche on a highway near Querétaro and was killed.
2. Johnny Owen (1980, aged 24)
The Welsh bantamweight from Merthyr Tydfil fought Lupe Pintor for the world title in Los Angeles in September 1980 and was knocked out in the twelfth round. He never regained consciousness and died seven weeks later. Pintor later visited Merthyr and was welcomed by Owen’s family.
3. Kerry Von Erich (1993, aged 33)
Kerry Von Erich was one of six brothers in a Texas wrestling family, five of whom died young, a story told in the 2023 film The Iron Claw. He had lost part of his foot in a motorcycle crash and kept wrestling on a prosthetic. He took his own life in 1993.
4. Owen Hart (1999, aged 34)
The youngest of the Hart family and the brother of Bret Hart was one of the most technically gifted wrestlers of the 1990s. His widow, Martha, sued the WWF and later set up a foundation in his name.
5. Davey Boy Smith (2002, aged 39)
The British Bulldog won the Intercontinental Championship in front of 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in 1992 against his brother-in-law, Bret Hart. He died of a heart attack on holiday in Canada.
6. Eddie Guerrero (2005, aged 38)
Eddie Guerrero, from a famous Mexican-American wrestling family, had come back from addiction to win the WWE Championship in 2004. His nephew, Chavo, found him unconscious in a Minneapolis hotel room in November 2005. The cause was heart failure, and the coroner noted damage consistent with years of steroid use.
7. Diego Corrales (2007, aged 29)
Diego Corrales won one of the greatest fights in boxing history against José Luis Castillo in 2005, getting up from two knockdowns in the tenth round to win. He was killed in a motorcycle crash in Las Vegas two years later, on the second anniversary of that fight.
8. Arturo Gatti (2009, aged 37)
The Canadian was famous for his three wars with Micky Ward between 2002 and 2003. He was found dead in a resort in Brazil in July 2009, two years after his last fight. Brazilian police ruled it a suicide, though his family disputed the finding.
Guerrero’s death led WWE to introduce its Wellness Policy, with drug testing, in 2006. Boxing has never had a single response of that kind, and each death in the ring still brings the same arguments about medical checks and how long fights should last.