Brian Christopher, Nikolai Volkoff, and Brickhouse Brown All Passed Away

[cero2k]

Source: f4wonline.com

-- Brian Christopher (Brian Christopher Lawler) has passed away at 46 years old.

WWE announced his passing on their website: "WWE is saddened to learn that Brian Christopher Lawler, who is best known in WWE as Too Cool’s Grandmaster Sexay, has passed away. Lawler, who is the son of WWE Hall of Famer Jerry 'The King' Lawler, competed during the height of the Attitude Era. WWE extends its condolences to Lawler’s family, friends and fans."

Christopher had been pronounced brain dead earlier this morning after hanging himself in his jail cell at the Hardeman County Jail in Tennessee. A family friend reported to us that they were waiting for Jerry Lawler to come to the hospital to say goodbye before Christopher's life support was pulled.

Christopher was arrested for DUI on July 7 after failing to immediately stop when police tried to pull him over. He was being held on a $40,000 bond. His father and a family friend had been working on getting him to a rehab center, but Christopher didn't know when he was going to be released from prison.

After starting his career at 16 under a mask in Tennessee, Christopher joined the WWF in 1997. He went on to hold the WWF Tag Team titles once with Scotty 2 Hotty in 2000, with the two of them part of the popular "Too Cool" trio with Rikishi.

Paul "Triple H" Levesque also tweeted about Christopher's death: "Incredibly sad news about the passing of Brian Christopher. A tragic loss of life. Both @StephMcMahon and I are thinking of Jerry Lawler and the entire Lawler family this evening."

-- Former WWF tag team champion and memorable 1980s wrestling villain Nikolai Volkoff (real name Josip Nikolai Peruzović) passed away Sunday at the age of 70.

PW Insider's Mike Johnson first reported the news and Dave Meltzer later confirmed. Meltzer said he was told Volkoff recently had a heart attack, was told he needed surgery, and refused.

The Insider story said Volkoff had spent several days recently in a Maryland hospital where he was being treated for dehydration and other ailments and was recently released.

A former weightlifter in Yugoslavia, Volkoff was trained by Stu Hart and eventually found his way to Vince McMahon Sr.'s World Wide Wrestling Federation as Bepo Mongol and won the tag team titles while managed by Captain Lou Albano. He would leave the organization in 1971 and eventually return under the name Nikolai Volkoff, feuding with Bruno Sammartino over the WWWF title.

His most well-known run to mainstream wrestling fans was in the mid-1980s with the Iron Shiek, managed by Fred Blassie. The duo won the tag team titles once and Volkoff later became a singles wrestler, using his Russian heel gimmick in feuds with Hulk Hogan and others. He would remain in the company until 1995 when he went into "semi retirement". He appeared randomly on throwback editions of WWE Raw through the years.

He leaves behind a wife and two daughters.

-- Frederick Seawright aka Brickhouse Brown passed away at 9:45 a.m. this morning, nine days after it was believed and reported he had passed away.

Seawright had been in hospice care in Mississippi when he flatlined on July 20 and the hospice nurse pronounced him dead. His mother was with him at the time, and exhausted, and ended up falling asleep next to the body. His family and friends were contacted and Brian Blair, President of the Cauliflower Alley Club, which helped with his medical bills and had become very close with him, reported the death.

His mother, Victoria Timmins, while asleep, then heard him say, "Mom, I'm hungry." She at first thought it was a dream but Frederick kept talking to her, and she woke up and started screaming. The coroner was on his way to take the body at the time.

Wrestler Matt Riviera visited him on Friday and spoke with him at length about his out of body experience during the period he was believed to have been dead.

Seawright was 57, and his funeral will be in Florida, where he grew up,on August 11, which would have been his 58th birthday.

As Brickhouse Brown, he started wrestling in 1982 in Texas, bluffing his way onto a show in San Antonio by claiming he was a wrestler. Terry Funk liked him and trained him. His biggest success was in the Tennessee territory where he was a headliner that drew well against Jerry Lawler. But he never had that level of success anywhere else. He was small by that era's standards, but a strong heel and a great talker.

He wrestled on shows in that area for most of the last 20 years until being diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The heartbreak of his story is that the cancer was only stage 2 when diagnosed, but he had no insurance and was only treated with pain killers.

Rocky Johnson informed the Cauliflower Alley Club of his plight and asked if they could help him out, but by the time they found out, the cancer had spread all over his body. Both of his legs broke due to his bones being brittle due to the cancer, his eyesight worsened and the cancer spread to his brain.

He received the Cauliflower Alley courage award in April, when he came to Las Vegas and gave a speech that was said to be unbelievable with not a dry eye in the house. At the time he noted the cancer was terminal and he knew he had less than six months to live.

[Big Red Machine]

Also Trevor Lee's father, who was one of the people who helped OMEGA get started.