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Former ROH & TNA Star, Indie Veteran, Jimmy Rave Passes Away at 39

Jimmy Rave

In terribly tragic news, James Guffey – known to pro wrestling fans for over 20 years as Jimmy Rave – passed away on Sunday. Jimmy Rave had suffered a series of health issues over the past year, including amputation of both of his legs and left arm due to infections. He was only a few days past from celebrating his 39th birthday on December 8.

Trained by Murder One, Jimmy Rave made his pro wrestling debut in 1999, but it wasn’t until he began working for NWA Wildside in the early 2000s that he began to really make a name for himself. A 2x NWA Wildside Junior Heavyweight Champion, he would also become a 2x NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion, all by 2002. In 2002, he began working for upstart promotions Ring of Honor and TNA/IMPACT Wrestling, although they were mostly dark match opportunities. His first match for ROH was a dark match against a young AJ Styles at ROH Night of the Butcher. The following year saw more appearances with ROH and TNA, but he found more of his footing with Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) at first, including facing Styles once again, this time for the NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship, CZW Deju Vu II that July. In December, he defeated Trent Acid to win the CZW Iron Man Championship.

In 2004, he became a regular with Ring of Honor, and by the end of the year and throughout the summer of 2005, he was a regular contender for the ROH Pure Championship. Despite big matches against champions like John Walters and Samoa Joe, Jimmy failed to win the title. But thanks to his consistency in ROH and CZW, Jimmy Rave found his stock rising in the new indie wrestling revolution happening. He became one of the top members of Prince Nana‘s stable, The Embassy, nicknamed “The Crown Jewel of the Embassy”, competing in singles action as well as tagging with fellow Embassy stablemates like “Fast” Eddie Vegas, Alex Shelley, Puma (TJP), and others, especially during The Embassy’s feud against Generation Next.

In 2006, while still competing for ROH, he began touring Japan with Dragon Gate, where he joined the Japanese stable Muscle Outlawz that featured Gamma, Masato Yoshina, and other imports like Kevin Steen and Jack Evans, and in 2007, he competed in his first (and only) Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG) Battle of Los Angeles tournament. That year he made his full-time debut with TNA/IMPACT, where he was paired with Lance Hoyt (AEW’s Lance Archer) in The Rock N’ Rave Infection. The duo feuded with the likes of Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin), LAX (Homicide & Hernandez), and Beer Money Inc. (“Cowboy” James Storm & Bobby Roode) but they failed to capture tag team gold in their TNA stint.

In 2008, Jimmy Rave made his debut for New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW), competing in Best of the Super Juniors XV. He scored a bit win of a young Tetsuya Naito in his Block battles but losses to Tiger Mask IV and Koji Kanemoto prevented him from escaping his Block. Jimmy Rave made multiple appearances for NJPW that year outside of the tournament as well. He returned to ROH in 2009, returning to The Embassy, where he would frequently tag with Claudio Castagnoli (WWE’s Cesaro). His return was brief, but he would make periodic returns over the next few years, including in 2013 when he returned to join Kevin Steen and Jimmy Jacobs’ SCUM stable.

Following his last run with ROH at the end of 2013, Jimmy Rave returned to the indies predominantly, and became a veteran presence in many locker rooms, particularly in the Southern indie scene. He was a frequent regular with such promotions as Atlanta Wrestling Entertainment (AWE), Peachstate Wrestling Alliance (PWA), NWA Anarchy, Southern Fried Championship Wrestling (SFCW), and Pro South Wrestling (PSW), and continued to wrestle nationally as well – he made appearances for the likes of CHIKARA, Game Changer Wrestling (GCW), Absolute Intense Wrestling (AIW), Hardcore Hustle Organization (H2O), Freelance Wrestling, and many more, up until health issues shut him down in 2019.

Last Word on Pro Wrestling sends out our heartfelt condolences to the entire Guffey family during this time, as well as the many fans, friends, and peers of Jimmy Rave throughout his entire 22-year career in pro wrestling. More than just a veteran in the squared circle, over the years Jimmy Rave became a mentor and cheerleader for many of today’s top wrestlers on both the indie circuit and on national television.

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Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.

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