The promoters were Joey Janela (who was also his opponent) and Brett Lauderdale of GCW.
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Predictably, the night of the April 18 show was chaotic. Nothing was going to be easy with Sabu. “I was fairly confident that he was fine," Sabu’s opponent, Joey Janela, told Uncrowned several days after the event. “I was kept in contact with him and he has a team of people around him, guys this time. They were all saying he was ready to go, that he was going to the gym, that he was on a training program. I believed them until the day of the show. Then two hours before, I get a call: ‘Sabu can't walk.’
I said, ‘Listen Sabu, everybody knows your hurting, you’re 20-something years older than the last time you did this — people’s expectations are realistic. No one is expecting this to be Born to Be Wired.’ And he said to me, ‘Good, because it is going to be better than that.’
Brent Lauderdale
"What do you mean Sabu can't walk? They said, ‘Yeah, Sabu, something with his knee — they're locked up. He can't walk. And his feet are bleeding. He's not coming. Sabu's not coming.’ I said, ‘Sabu's f***ed.’ So we talked to [indie wrestler] Matt Tremont, and Tremont is about to be the replacement for the match. And I feel like this is going to be the most embarrassing moment of my wrestling career. There's 2,000 people here. This is one of the biggest Spring Breaks ever. The biggest crowd ‘Mania weekend, indie-wise. And I'm going to have to go out there and announce that Sabu, once again, no-showed. And no-showed his own retirement match.”
Lauderdale was less concerned. “In the back of my mind, I knew Sabu was coming," he said. "I never once worried. If we didn’t hear from Sabu then I would be worried, but the fact that he was communicating, I knew he was coming.”
“We are an hour into the show and I said, ‘Just get Sabu here,’" Janela continued. "So they gave him something called kratom. You can buy it at a smoke shop or something; it’s like a legal opiate or something. They said, ‘He's hopping on the bed, he's hopping off the bed, and we're going to get him to the show.’ So he shows up two hours into the show. Sabu was on a different f***ing planet. Everyone in the backstage was like, ‘What the f***? Is this match going to happen?’ And my God, did it happen.””
