Chris Kanyon found dead

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Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby Lord Akiyama » Sat Apr 03, 2010 10:26 am

Courtesy of Wrestling Observer/Figure Four Online

Chris Klucsaritis, who wrestled as Chris Kanyon, passed away last night from an overdose of pills at his apartment in the Sunnyside section of Queens, NY, last night. He was 40.

Klucsaritis' death is believed to be a suicide. He had been open about suffering from a bipolar disorder and had talked and threatened suicide many times in the past according to those who are close with him.

He had been talking about going through another bout with depression and taking his life earlier in the week.

Klucsaritis was trained locally in New York by Bobby Bold Eagle, and later in Columbua, SC by Lillian "Fabulous Moolah" Ellison at her home gym in Columbia, SC, and developed into an innovative and underrated wrestler. He debuted in 1992, and wrestled the bulk of his career for WCW.

He started with Mark Starr as part of a tag team "Men at Work," and later developed the Mortis gimmick. His highest profile role, including holding the WCW tag team titles, came with Diamond Dallas Page and Bam Bam Bigelow as the Jersey Triad.

During that period, he also worked in Hollywood on movie sets during a boom period for pro wrestling when the movie industry was interested in films, including on "Ready to Rumble" and a made-for-TV movie on Jesse Ventura.

He was a victim of the demise of WCW, as WWE wasn't really a good fit for him stylistically. Even though he was 6-3, he did not possess the kind of look they wanted. He was also plagued by injuries during that period and was finally released in 2004.

He attempted to get back into the major leagues doing a gimmick as the first openly gay pro wrestler, later admitting to be gay in real life. He tried to garner publicity claiming WWE fired him for being gay, but the publicity went nowhere. TNA was also not interested in the gimmick. He had wrestled sparingly in recent years (he was the first to challenge Joey Ryan for the PWG Championship at Astonishing X-Mas back in December 2005), had announced a retirement, but still on occasion wrestled.

He was part of a lawsuit with Scott Levy and Mike Sanders against WWE for misclassifying wrestlers as independent contracts, but the suit was thrown out of court because the statute of limitations had expired on filing such a suit.
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Re: Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby El Asian » Sat Apr 03, 2010 1:32 pm

as said before, it does suck to hear any wrestler that passed away and I really hope PWG does a tribute for Kanyon at next week's show
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Re: Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby Mr. Vegas » Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:54 pm

El Asian wrote:as said before, it does suck to hear any wrestler that passed away and I really hope PWG does a tribute for Kanyon at next week's show



A 10 bell slaute in honor of Kanyon at the start of next weekend's show would be great.
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Re: Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby El Hijo del Generico » Sat Apr 03, 2010 4:40 pm

RIP. What a shame.
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Re: Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby CheMateo » Sat Apr 03, 2010 6:22 pm

Disappointing news. Kanyon was quite young. I always enjoyed his work and was a bit disappointed to see some fans bash him when he came out. Too bad that lawsuit got thrown out.
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Re: Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby david_baUtista » Sun Apr 04, 2010 2:32 am

Honestly, everytime I check a wrestling news website and the page is loading, I hold my breath anticipating that another wrestler's death will be announced. Today, unfortunately, was another one of those days. It really sucks that this has become part of my routine as a wrestling fan.
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Re: Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby Evilguest » Sun Apr 04, 2010 8:00 am

That's sad to hear, he was really nice to me when I met him at a PWG show. RIP
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Re: Chris Kanyon found dead

Postby Meltman » Sun Apr 04, 2010 12:11 pm

Depression is a motherfucker.

I liked Kanyon. His PWG match wasn't memorable but I loved Mortis as a kid. Shitty news.
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