Professional wrestling icon Kevin Nash has revealed that his son Tristen’s death was caused by a seizure-induced heart attack, which he believes was the result of trying to stop drinking cold turkey.
Tristen, 26, died last week, acknowledged the family in a statement and gave no further information.
But on Sunday’s episode of his new podcast “Kliq This,” Nash addressed the speculation about his son’s death and talked about the final moments of his life.
“The attack caused the cardiac arrest,” Nash said, as reported by Wrestlingnews.co.
“He was actually dead in his room on the floor while the ambulance service was working on him. They got him back and took him in the ambulance and they tried to save his life.
“We both decided we were going to stop drinking, so it was a situation where you know we were both going cold turkey. I don’t think we both felt great because you go without coffee for a day and get a headache. I think we were both on it.
“If that happens to you, one of the things about going cold turkey is that you have an increased risk of having a seizure.”
Nash rose to fame in the mid-90s wrestling as the WWF character ‘Diesel’ before moving to rival promotion WCW and becoming a pioneer as one of the founding members of the ‘New World Order (nWo)’ group alongside Hulk Hogan and Scott Hall.
He was also a member of ‘The Kliq’ – a group of influential wrestlers and friends who teamed up backstage to enhance each other’s careers.
Nash had worked on the podcast “Kliq This” with his son Tristen, who worked as a producer for the show before his death.
Professional wrestling icon Kevin Nash (L) has revealed that his son Tristen (R)’s death was caused by a seizure-induced heart attack, likely the result of an attempt to stop drinking cold turkey
The pair collaborated on Nash’s podcast prior to Tristen’s death last week
Kevin Nash in his 90s heyday with son Tristen
Nash, 63, continued to reflect on his son’s passing, outlined his drinking problems and talked about the harrowing conversations he had with his son’s doctors while he was in a hospital bed.
‘[Tristen] had a few incidents. We sat here last Wednesday and over the course of the show he drank four or five beers without my knowledge. I got mad at him because at the beginning of the year he had a situation where he was in the hospital for almost 60 days… After the show, and a week later, he dies,” he said.
‘[The doctor] said, “Your son ain’t going to make it.” I said, “I’m not going to pull his breathing tube out. I won’t. That’s not an option. You say when he went into cardiac arrest, he damaged his heart, so that’s why we can’t get his bottom number up.” said Nash.
“The lower ventricle was damaged to some degree because it was unable to push blood. His highest number was much higher and although they medically brought the highest number down, he was 111 over 55. He stopped passing urine. So many things piled up.’
Many of Nash’s friends and former wrestling industry colleagues quickly took to social media to gather around the WWE hall-of-famer following Tristen’s death, including close friend Sean “X-Pac” Waltman, who said: ” My heart is in a million pieces thinking about what one of my best friends is going through in life. IE 4-Life Kev.’
Other benefactors included fellow hall-of-famer the Iron Sheik, Matt Hardy, Frankie Kazarian and current WWE star Karl Anderson.
Former Kliq member Sean Waltman led his condolences to Nash after the tragic loss of his son last week, and many other professional wrestlers followed suit.
Nash won five world championships during his illustrious professional wrestling career.
He previously cited the birth of Tristen as the motivating factor behind his decision to leave the WWF for rival promotion WCW in 1996, as it gave him a more manageable schedule to devote time to his family life.
After a long stint with WCW, he returned to WWF – later renamed WWE – several times in the 2000s and his last competitive appearance came as a backup role for Sting during his WrestleMania 31 clash with Triple H in 2015.
The 63-year-old was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2015 and then in 2021 when nWo was placed in the hall as a collective.
Tristen’s passing came on October 20 – the birthday of former nWo member and WWE hall-of-famer Scott Hall – a close personal friend of Nash’s who died earlier this year after multiple heart attacks amid complications from hip surgery.
Considered the ‘Bad Guy’ of professional wrestling, Hall revolutionized the industry but passed away in March at the age of 63.
Like Tristen, Hall also struggled with alcohol abuse, documenting his decades of drug problems in a 2011 ESPN documentary in which he said, “I should have been dead 100 times.”