Japanese Pro Wrestling Legend Mitsuharu Misawa Dies During Match

The world of professional wrestling has been through too many untimely deaths in recent years, but Saturday was a rare tragedy in the business.

In Japan, well-known wrestler Mitsuharu Misawa was taking part in a tag team match at an event in Hiroshima. Misawa took a suplex during the match, and he never got off the mat. Misawa was just a few days shy of his 47th birthday.

Details are still a bit sketchy, but the Pro Wrestling Torch offers up some details on what happened.

The pronouncement was less than two hours after he appeared to go unconscious in the ring during a tag team match, but he may have died in the ring and further attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.

Misawa was involved in a tag team title match with Go Shiozaki against GHC tag team champions Bison Smith & Akitoshi Saito.

Saito gave Misawa a back suplex that appeared to knock Misawa unconscious. He then stopped breathing and was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Misawa may not have been well-known to fans in the United States, but many of today's pro wrestlers knew of him, and some have already expressed their shock over Misawa's sudden death.

UPDATE: Zach Arnold has a bit more on what happened.

Misawa, tagging with Go Shiozaki (considered NOAH's big prodigy), faced Bison Smith & Akitoshi Saito (the GHC tag team champions). Saito gave Misawa a back-drop suplex and Misawa suffered a heart attack in the ring. Medical assistance was given in the form of using a defibrillator, but sadly Misawa was pronounced dead while being transported to the hospital at 10:10 PM JST Saturday night. He was 46 years old. When being transported to Hiroshima University hospital, he was unconscious the entire time. This Nippon TV video report contains more on the story. This report says that an employee told police that it was about 10 minutes after the incident that an ambulance was able to provide medical help. The fans at ringside after the back drop started chanting "Misawa! Misawa!" and continued to do so when the ambulance took him away from the building.

Sankei Sports has a report telling about the final moments of Misawa's life as he died in the ring and staff members were looking for any doctors in the crowd to help out after the trainer couldn't revive Misawa. A 35-year old man at ringside was quoted by the newspaper as saying that Misawa seemed 'lifeless' in the match before the back-drop spot. The referee (Nishinaga, who is also the PR director for the company) reportedly asked Misawa, "Can you move?" and Misawa said he couldn't... and died.

The match happened before an estimated 2,300 fans.