Did I write about “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka back when he was first convicted of manslaughter last year? [yes I did] I want to say I did, but I still have no means of cross-referencing my own prior posts to verify. It still kills me that I can’t, and adds to the cauldron of unhappiness that I’m dealing with on a daily basis. I want to say that I did, but I can’t with full certainty, but really it has everything to do with the corresponding photo and not necessarily the words I write, although there could very well be an overlap. Whatever
Anyway, I saw news about how Superfly now has terminal cancer in the stomach and has been given around six months left to live. This is pretty sad news for nostalgic old wrestling fans, and it doesn’t help that Big Van Vader just weeks ago was diagnosed with a failing heart and estimates that he has two years to live. Superstars of yesterday are meeting their maker today, in the most unfortunate of circumstances, due to in what will mostly likely be attributed to their younger years in an industry that had a tremendous amount of drug abuse and a sheer lack of concern over head, brain and other physical ailments.
However, given the circumstances that Superfly is under the legal gun and the primary suspect in the 1983 death of his then-girlfriend, I have to admit that my knee-jerk reaction to the news of his health as being one of skepticism and potential nonbelief. Whether it’s a strategic tactic to garner sympathy or pity so that a dying man is not sentenced to prison, or there’s an elaborate plan for Snuka to fake his death and then exile himself back to Fiji where he could presumably live out his life on the run, I have to say the timing of this “I’m dying” scenario is a little too convenient and atypical to the types of diseases or ailments that seem to emerge for anyone with a modicum of notoriety getting put on trial.