I’m going to out myself as a 1980s wrestling fan. Adolescent me was fascinated with the good guys and bad guys in the brief period in the 80s when wrestling was growing in popularity, but not yet the Disney-fied nonsense it is now.
And the Superfly was the best of the best. There’s some evidence that he may not have been a very good person - he may have even been a murderer. But goddam was he a good entertainer.
Snuka was the most exciting wrestler in the WWF in the 80s, both as a “heel” and even more so as a “face”. He was beautiful to watch athletically, and his character was quietly exotic. I saw him in person once at MSG and his charisma projected all the way to the cheap seats.
I’ll never forget his feuds with Ray Stevens, Lou Albano and Don Muraco. I lost interest in wrestling after that, but will always remember Snuka fondly. I saw a lot of him in Mickey Rourke’s character “Randy the Ram” in “The Wrestler”.
Well, while I admired his athleticism, I was always more of a fan of Randy “Macho Man” Savage. But Snuka had charisma, I won’t deny that.
I have a friend who trained to wrestle in WWE under “Dangerous” Danny Davis, and was affiliated with OVW through that. We got to meet Snuka once, years ago. He was very quiet and intense. But very nice to us.
I had him in the 2017 Celebrity Death Pool, so my reaction to his passing in kind of bittersweet.
Great athlete, great performer. Unfortunately he was frequently drunk and taking other drugs as well. I’ve never heard anything bad about his sober personality but he was prone to trouble while under the influence. If he did kill the woman he was accused of it’s likely he had no memory of it or of much of the rest of his life. He was an incredible wrestling superstar, electrifying in the ring, it’s sad that it didn’t all work out better. Good night Jimmy.
Fun fact: Back in 1991, he was one of my neighbors in a townhouse community in Cross River, NY. I’d never heard of him before but my husband recognized him.
I had trouble feeling much sorrow, knowing he’d gotten away with murder and all, but during the tribute package on Raw, I did get some feeling back, particularly for his kids, around the time they showed his daughter’s tweet (which is kind of an odd thing in itself, a death tweet? not an announcement or anything informational but a “bye daddy, love you” sort of thing. but hey, whatever gets you through it, Tamina). It does still bother me that he gets to stay in the hall of fame when he only murdered one less person than Benoit (two if you consider killing himself murder) who doesn’t even get to EVER be mentioned or shown in historic context. And I’m guessing Snuka didn’t have the excuse of brain damage back then the way Benoit was proven to have during his horrific acts.
Oh, man me too. I grew up on that. Remember that cartoon they had with Jimmy and Hulk and Rowdy Roddy Piper and Junkyard dog and all the classics. I loved that cartoon.
