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Chris Can­dito died Thurs­day at the age of 33.

Had I writ­ten this two years ago, this news wouldn’t have been that sur­pris­ing. Can­dito had his demons, and strug­gled with them as many other pro­fes­sional wrestlers do. The prob­lems he went through with his girlfriend/wife/whatever Tammy Sytch were known my many “smart” wrestling fans. Can­dito could have eas­ily down that route and had his life end as so many other pro­fes­sional wrestlers have. Can­dito didn’t though. He straight­ened him­self out.

Can­dito, unfor­tu­nately for him, straight­ened him­self out at a time when the indus­try didn’t nec­es­sar­ily need him. He had a gig with Titan (the hor­ri­ble Body­don­nas thing) and made his money that way, but he wasn’t in it for the money — I can hon­estly believe that. The money was nice, but Can­dito seemed to really enjoy wrestling. He went back to ECW and he wres­tled his ass off on numer­ous occa­sions, then even­tu­ally made his way over to the slowly dying WCW, where he could have been a real asset, had WCW not been run by com­plete morons.

He ended up com­ing back to TNA most recently, clean and will­ing to work. He broke his leg on Sun­day at TNA’s PPV, work­ing a tag match. The injury was a fluke — Sonny Sakai threw a drop­kick and appar­ently landed wrong on Can­dito, break­ing his leg. Can­dito ended up hav­ing pins placed in on Tues­day. He was dead Thurs­day, the result (appar­ently) of a blot clot due to his surgery. A com­pletely healthy ath­lete, finally free of drugs, fallen by a com­plete fluke of an injury. Some­times life really isn’t fair.

You could tell Can­dito loved wrestling. Small guys always get into wrestling for the love of it (unless they’re part of a wrestling fam­ily). Big guys are often for­mer foot­ball play­ers or just genetic freaks who get into wrestling because it’s an easy way for them to make money. Small guys don’t get any breaks unless they have a look, can cut a promo, and can work their ass off. Can­dito could do that.

Can­dito was involved in one of my all time “mark out” moments as a wrestling fan. I made it a habit to go to the ECW Arena for at least a few shows a year, and always the Cyber­slam shows. 1999 promised to be a good show, but then again, any ECW Arena show promised to be a good show.

Mid­way through the card, Taz (then ECW Champ) came out talk­ing about how great he was, how he could take out any of the boys in the back, how he’d beaten every­one in the com­pany, etc. The beauty of Hey­man as a booker was that when he got some­one to make an appear­ance or work for the com­pany, it gen­er­ally didn’t get out, so there was actual sur­prise. In con­trast, some­one like Jeri­cho com­ing to WWF was known months in advance.

Any­way, Taz cut his promo and fin­ished it, stand­ing in the ring. A cou­ple of sec­onds later, AC/DC’s “Back In Black” pumped through the PA and I heard one of the best pops I heard at the Arena. Every­one pretty much knew about Can­dito and Tammy’s prob­lems, and they kind of dis­ap­peared for a lit­tle while, but when the two came out, they looked great. Tammy looked incred­i­ble (and half-naked), which look­ing back is pretty sad, as it’s the last time I saw her as “attrac­tive”. Can­dito was pumped up (in more ways than one) and the two had a great match, going into the crowd (some­thing that ECW tried to play down more recently due to var­i­ous lawsuits).

The crowd thing led to the mark­out. When we’d hit ECW Arena events, we’d leave from Queens as a group, and we’d get pretty good seats, gen­er­ally in the bleach­ers on the “TV side”, so that there was a slim pos­si­bil­ity that we’d get on TV. I was in the upper left-hand cor­ner (TV-wise) so that you could barely see me — you might see my knees.

Any­way, Taz and Can­dito started brawl­ing into the crowd, and when you’re in an ECW crowd, you gen­er­ally move a lit­tle bit and let the two midgets fight (nei­ther Can­dito or Taz was a legit 5’7″). They kept going fur­ther into the crowd and going up the bleach­ers, until they couldn’t go any fur­ther — because Can­dito had pinned me against the wall. Taz and Can­dito were brawl­ing and going back­ward until they stopped and were brawl­ing inches away from me — cam­era right there. For sev­eral sec­onds on ECW TV, I’m stand­ing there like a mark kind of look­ing at the two of them brawl­ing, try­ing to get a picture.

It was just a cool expe­ri­ence, and I always fig­ured if I met Can­dito, I’d tell him about that day. I’ll never get that opportunity.

Dave Meltzer (he of the Wrestling Observer) had some good words. I’ll leave today’s post with him.

There are times when famous wrestlers pass away and every­one starts talk­ing about what won­der­ful peo­ple they were, and some­times, you almost have to bite your tongue. This is not one of those times.

Through thick and thin, through the bad times, and they were many, I don’t think you’ll find any­one argu­ing whether Chris Can­dido was a really nice guy. He made a come­back at a time when every­one in the indus­try had given up on him. He was recently brought into TNA just as a test to put peo­ple over, and wound up win­ning a ros­ter spot and was liked by every­one. If the cir­cum­stances of his death that are stated are accu­rate, it is one of the great­est tragedies of all. Prac­ti­cally every­one in wrestling who was at death’s door at one point in their lives will say or have their friends say that are reformed. As his­tory has shown, the vast major­ity of the times, it isn’t true. What a lot of peo­ple don’t under­stand, is for the minor­ity who it turns out to be true about, it is a daily bat­tle, as some, like William Regal and Eddie Guer­rero will openly talk about.

Chris loved pro wrestling, even though it came close to killing him at one point in his life. It was more liv­ing out his child­hood dream than mak­ing money. I think he enjoyed it every bit as much when he was barely mak­ing ends meet than when he was under a six-figure con­tract. He was on the road right out of high school. He had a bright future. He squan­dered that future. But he was deter­mined the end the story of his wrestling career on a high note and with respect of the peo­ple in the pro­fes­sion that he had at times let down. He was on the road to doing all that.

What hap­pened is one of those things that hap­pen in life. There is no rhyme nor rea­son. Life isn’t fair. You can ques­tion all you want about a guy who fought back from some­thing that most never come back from, but then suf­fered a fluke bro­ken leg, and sud­denly, with no warn­ing, this hap­pened. Chris was very excited about his future in wrestling, par­tic­u­larly because he was start­ing to escape from the shadow of his past. The 6/10 and poten­tially 6/12 (if he was to be allowed to par­tic­i­pate) were huge deals for him, and whether he would be able to wres­tle or not, he was excited to be part of them.

Candido’s last pro wrestling appear­ance will air today on the TNA Impact show. I’m told they will do a trib­ute graphic for him on the show, I believe at both the begin­ning and the end of the show. Before the show started, Can­dido came up with his own angle, because in a cruel twist of irony, he had been in a wheel­chair at a ruse for the last few weeks on tele­vi­sion. Can­dido came up with the sto­ry­line that his real bro­ken leg on Sun­day was his karma for the ruse, which led to the tag team title change and what was told to me was the best Impact match in a long time. There was debate whether the match should air at all. Shane Dou­glas who was his best friend in the com­pany, felt 100% cer­tain Can­dido would have wanted it to air. So that was the decision.

No death of a peo­ple you know at a young age isn’t sad in some form, whether you know them per­son­ally, or fol­lowed their lives sim­ply watch­ing them work from a young age. Many peo­ple fol­lowed Chris from when he was a very young man, and some since he was just a teenager But for many rea­sons, this one is harder than most. It’s not just because it doesn’t appear to have been self-inflicted, but because this was the phone call for years that many peo­ple feared we could get at any time. And just when we thought we knew it would never come, it came.