Rob Van Dam has opened up with heartfelt reflections and troubling revelations about the final days of his longtime friend and fellow ECW icon, Sabu. Speaking on a recent episode of his 1 of a Kind podcast, Van Dam offered listeners an emotional glimpse into Sabu’s condition shortly before his unexpected passing, revealing that Sabu had not been feeling well in the days leading up to his death and even expressed concern about his own health, something RVD found deeply uncharacteristic.

“The day he got back from Philly, he got back Friday or Saturday, the day before his death,” RVD explained. “He said he wasn’t feeling well and he couldn’t hear out of his ear. The kids were talking to him and he couldn’t hear. He said that he thinks he should go to the hospital. For Sabu to say he should go to the hospital, that wasn’t something that I thought he was even capable of saying. He knew something was going on.”

Van Dam went on to say that Sabu had seemed aware of something being wrong even prior to this moment, hinting at subtle signs captured in a documentary the two had been working on. “In the documentary, we have up to before he goes to Philly, but there’s some things in there he talks about where he seems like he knew something was going on,” he said.

Although Sabu had mentioned visiting a hospital, those plans were tragically never fulfilled. RVD recounted, “Anyway, they were going to go to the grocery store and then the hospital. After the grocery store, they changed their mind and they went home, and then Sabu passed.”

Van Dam also raised the possibility of lingering medical issues that may have played a role in his friend’s death. “He had some kind of infection under his tongue. There’s all kinds of things leading up to it that likely played a role in his health even though it could have been a pure accident of a bad combination of medicines or something that finally did him in, but that’s speculation, but either way, leading up to it, he wasn’t feeling good and that’s likely part of what went down.”