wrestling / Columns

The 8-Ball 05.04.12: Top 8 Images from Deathmatches

May 4, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Byers

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the 8-Ball. I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and it is my pleasure to usher in the month of May with what I think will be a unique topic that we’ve not seen in 411 Wrestling’s many “countdown” style columns before.

However, I feel the need to warn you before the logo pops up that you should not continue with this column if you are squeamish, and this is not safe for viewing in most workplaces.

So, if you are ready to continue after that disclaimer, keep scrolling down . . .

Top 8 Images from Deathmatches

Deathmatch wrestling is a bit of a touchy subject amongst internet wrestling fans. There are some who can’t get enough of the stuff and worship the wrestlers who participate in it as though they are gods. There is another contingent that decries it as “garbage wrestling” and a haven for untalented oafs who can’t be bothered to learn how to actually wrestle.

Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle. I agree that there is a lot (and I mean a lot) of really bad deathmatch wrestling and deathmatch wrestlers, mostly on the U.S. independents, who are no better than backyarders. However, I believe that, even though it is more rare, there is some deathmatch wrestling out there which produces solid, entertaining matches with just as much as if not more psychology than what you’re going to see on Monday Night Raw in a given week. The bad definitely outweighs the good, but the bad shouldn’t be permitted to discredit the entire genre while the good still exists.

Having learned what wrestlers and promotions to follow and what wrestlers and promotions to avoid in order to see the quality deathmatches, I have watched my fair share of bouts that involve excessive amounts of blood, mayhem, and carnage. One of the things that impresses me about them is the fact that there is almost always a moment that is visually stunning, something that you will virtually never eliminate from your memory as long as you live. As a result, I’ve decided to present the Top 8 Images from Deathmatches for your viewing pleasure.

8. Piranha Deathmatch

It’s not necessarily the most impressive picture from an artistic standpoint, but the image above sneaks onto this list just because it portrays something that the mainstream would consider to be so incredibly insane. The shot comes from an August 19, 1996 match in Big Japan Pro Wrestling between Kendo Nagasaki and Mitsuhiro Matsunaga. As you can see, the two men are struggling over what appears to be a glass tank. What you’re can’t necessarily see is that the tank is full of LIVE PIRANHA. Yes, this was, to my knowledge, professional wrestling’s first and only Piranha Deathmatch, where the only way to win was to put your opponent into several inches of water filled with meat-eating fish. About two years ago, I reviewed the match here on 411mania, and it was an interesting spectacle, one which will rarely if ever be replicated in the industry.

Really, the image displayed above perfectly portrays the entire allure of the match. There is one and only one spot that anybody watching this bout wants to see, and that is exactly what happens when a human being gets dumped into a tank with the legendarily voracious fish. You know that something is going to happen as soon as Matsunaga is shoved over the edge of the tank by his opponent, you just don’t know exactly what . . . and you’re on the edge of your seat as these two slowly builds toward giving you the payoff.

Ultimately, though, the payoff is fairly tame compared to what you might initially think it to be. This isn’t entirely surprising because, upon further reading, it turns out that many peer reviewed articles have debunked the myth of the piranha as a voracious eater that will strip all meat off of a body within seconds. (It turns out that historical accounts of this occurring were essentially staged by locals to captivate visiting white men.) Matsunaga, though he may have gotten bitten a couple of times by the agitated fish, comes out of the match looking significantly better than many modern deathmatch competitors who take multiple bumps on to light tubes.

Still, regardless of the outcome of the match, that image still evokes memories of the anticipation felt when watching the match for the first time, and, in large part, anticipation is what professional wrestling is all about.

7. Crazy Boy Flips Out

Lucha libre tends to get the short shrift on this website. It’s significantly more popular in Mexico than US independents are in the US, it’s more popular than puroresu is in Japan, and, quite frankly, it’s probably more popular in Mexico than TNA is in the US. Yet, for whatever reason, it just can’t seem to get any coverage around these parts . . . and I’m not saying that I’m any better than any of the rest of the staff in that regard, as my lucha viewing is pretty minimal.

However, I have enough working knowledge of lucha libre to know that there is a pretty vibrant deathmatch scene on the Mexican independents, and it even periodically bubbles up into the major leagues. The photograph above comes from a promotion known as Desastre Total Ultraviolento, or DTU, which runs shows in Hidalgo in Central Mexico and is promoted and booked by Crazy Boy, the younger cousin of ECW’s Super Crazy. Crazy Boy, who simultaneously competes for the big leagues in AAA, is prominently featured in the promotion, as are fellow AAA wrestlers Extreme Tiger, Joe Lider, and, for a period of time, Shiima Xion (a.k.a. Zema Ion) of TNA.

The photograph above depicts the aforementioned Crazy Boy in the process of performing a moonsault onto a downed opponent while holding a bundle of light tubes. Crazy Boy’s opposition is clearly in the process of moving out of the way, meaning that things are about to go very wrong for the bookerman. As noted above, a large part of wrestling in general and deathmatch wrestling specifically is anticipation, and this picture too perfectly captures one of those moments where you as a wrestling fan hold your breath and wait for the inevitable “Holy shit!” chant.

6. Eddie Gilbert is on Fire

One of the most legitimately dangerous things that you can involve in a deathmatch is fire, because, no matter how much you think you have fire under control, there is always the possibility of an unaccounted for variable that will result in the fire going in an unexpected direction and injuring a competitor. As the old cliché goes, “if you play with fire, you’re going to get burned.” Just ask Mick Foley and Terry Funk, who, in October 1995 on an ECW show, had a scary incident in which a flaming towel attached to a steal chair flew into the audience, giving rise to a civil suit against the wrestlers and the company.

Fittingly enough, the one entry on this list which involves fire also involves somebody who is intertwined with the history of ECW, namely Mr. Eddie Gilbert, who booked ECDub during 1993. Gilbert had an in-ring career that spanned many territories, and one of the last places that he was a major star before his untimely death was World Wrestling Council in Puerto Rico. While there, Gilbert was a big-time heel, so much so that he was able to take one of the other major heels in the territory, Jesus “Hurricane” Castillo, and turn him babyface in an angle in which Eddie blew a gigantic fireball at the native star. (Castillo, for the record, was a big player in WWC because of his second generation status on the island; though mainland American fans will most likely remember him as one of Savio Vega’s running buddies in WWF’s Los Boricuas stable.) The animosity between Gilbert and Castillo built to, appropriately enough, a fire death match pitting the wrestlers against each other on August 6, 1994, a mere six months before Gilbert’s death.

This image from the fire death match highlights another aspect of deathmatch wrestling that makes it a step beyond a regular pro rasslin’ bout: Revenge. The picture perfectly captures the rage in Castillo’s face, as he has already busted Gilbert open and is now rearing back to send his face into the dangerous flame, just as Eddie had done to Jesus in order to kickstart their rivalry. He’s taking the personal animosity between the two wrestlers, and he’s going to blow a little bit of it off by involving one of the most dangerous elements that can be interjected into a professional wrestling match.

5. Foley is . . . GAH!

Most of the entries on this list so far have dealt with anticipation. They dealt with capturing the moment that gets you on the edge of your seat and causes you to salivate about something that is just about to occur. However, as important as anticipation is, it means nothing over the long term if you don’t pay it off more often than not with something spectacular, something that matches or exceeds the people’s expectations. That’s what these next several photographs are all about.

That is exactly what is happening above, as Mick “Cactus Jack” Foley falls through a makeshift glass-topped table which has been placed atop of a barbed wire board. The photographer captured the moment of impact perfectly and, in what can only be described as a bit of dumb luck, picked up an awesome facial reaction from Foley in the process. The shot comes from a May 5, 1996 show held at the 30,000+ seat Kawasaki Stadium to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the founding of FMW, one of Japan’s premier deathmatch promotions. The bout, billed as a “Barbed Wire Caribbean Glass Double Hell Match,” actually almost didn’t happen. Originally the matchup was set to be Abdullah the Butcher versus Mitsuhiro Matsunaga (you know, the guy swimming with the piranha earlier on the list), but an unexpected opportunity to book Cactus Jack arose, even though at this point he had just recently signed on with the World Wrestling Federation. Even though the WWF contract didn’t keep Foley out of the match, it did keep Matsunaga out, as a persistent rumor that Matsunaga had Hepatitis B lead to the fed demanding that Foley be booked against a different opponent. Gee, I can’t imagine why . . . not like these guys are rolling around in each other’s blood or anything. So, instead of Matsunaga, Foley faced W*ING Kanemura, who, for the sake of Mick and female wrestling fan club presidents everywhere, is hopefully clean. In retrospect, the Mickster probably wishes that he had gotten a Hep B-free Matsunaga instead, because Matsunaga, a smaller wrestler than Kanemura, probably wouldn’t have been able to throw Foley through that plate glass with quite as much force.

For what it’s worth, Foley actually wound up WINNING this match, even though in the image above he looks nothing like a winner. He also won in a much grander sense as well, as he got to run off to the WWF and avoid competing in many more matches like this one, all the while cashing bigger paychecks to do it.

4. Kudo is Blowing Up

And here’s another great payoff shot. Believe it or not, the picture comes from the very same show as the Foley image above, which gave fans three absolutely loaded deathmatch main events as a tactic to allow FMW to draw even though company founder and far-and-away top star Atsushi “Wild Thing” Onita was not on such a major show for the first time in the promotion’s history.

Part of the appeal of the triple main event was the novelty of seeing, for the first time, two women going it at it in an exploding barbed wire match. There had been woman-on-woman deathmatches before this, but the exploding barbed wire was always treated as a particularly dangerous battle in FMW’s booking. Thus, when Combat Toyoda, the top female in FMW at the time, announced that she was going to be having her retirement match, she also announced that she wanted it to be amidst the C4-laden barbs. Onita tried to talk her out of heading down such a dangerous path, but Toyoda insisted, and she also insisted that her opponent be Megumi Kudo, a long-time rival, though the two had developed a mutual respect for one another. The image above depicts Kudo going into the wires and eating an explosion and not Toyoda, even though the match was supposed to be the big sendoff for the latter woman. Why isn’t Toyoda depicted? Because there wasn’t as good of a picture taken of her explosions. In a way, that shows the power of photography, as capturing a moment on film can make it much better remembered over time, even though something occurring simultaneously may have seemed more significant at the time.

Interestingly, that is what happened with Kudo and Toyoda’s respective careers, as, even though Combat was the bigger deal headed into her retirement match, the more photogenic Kudo is the one who has gone down in the annals of history as FMW’s “queen of the deathmatch” and is relatively well known even among those individuals who only hang out around the borders of the puroresu universe.

3. German Tubes-Plex

And, from 1990s FMW, we flash forward to modern day Big Japan Pro Wrestling. You don’t see many piranha deathmatches in BJW in the twenty-first century, but you do see many things that are just as insane in their own way, particularly when a young man named Abdullah Kobayashi sets his curly-toed boots into the ring.

Abdullah, you may be able to guess form the ring name that he chose, is a protégé of the legendary Abdullah the Butcher, though, unlike the original Abdullah, Kobayashi is a native of Nagano, Japan. Though the Butcher was known for being involved in some insane brawls during his heyday, he never got quite as crazy as the updated version of Abdullah has. The heights of insanity to which Kobayashi has risen have made him one of the most successful and popular deathmatch wrestlers of the modern era. The picture above is a perfect example of the things that Kobayashi will endure, as he is dumped head and shoulders first onto a “log cabin” of light tubes, not just by any professional wrestling maneuver, but by a particularly nasty German suplex. Looking at still images like this leaves no question as to why Kobayashi has come out of many of his major matches looking more like a pile of raw hamburger meet than a human being.

The picture also does a great job of demonstrating why light tubes are currently such a popular element of deathmatch wrestling and have been for roughly the last decade. The powder contained in the tubes, as well as the tiny shards of glass that form when they are shattered, go flying upon the impact from a wrestler’s body, creating a visually impressive cloud. Also, though obviously not depicted in photographs, the crunching sound of the tube being decimated is one that is impossible to forget, and the tiny shards of glass cut deep enough to get blood flowing from a wrestler’s body but (usually) not deeply enough to cause any significant degree of lasting injury. Long live Kobayashi, and long live (smart) use of the light tube.

2. Brotherly Love

From photos depicting the anticipation of deathmatch wrestling and photos depicting the impact of deathmatch wrestling, we now move on to a photo that depicts the aftermath of deathmatch wrestling, and, really, it’s a picture that reminds us that “hardcore” isn’t as new of a concept as some of you might believe.

The picture, as most of you will know, displays Terry Funk and Dory Funk, Jr., brothers from Amarillo, Texas, who have obviously gotten themselves into a sticky situation. However, what you might not realize is that the situation that the brothers find themselves in is not too far removed from a situation that their father, Dory Funk, Sr. may have found himself in several decades earlier. Funk, Sr., also a professional wrestler, was actually known as the innovator of the Texas Death Match in the 1940s and the 1950s, meaning that he had his own fair share of “hardcore” moments before most people knew what that word meant.

Though they were also both exceptional technical wrestlers (particularly Dory Jr.) and former NWA World Heavyweight Champions, the second generation Funks picked up right where their father left off in terms of hardcore, from the late 1960s all the way through to the early 2000s. This image in particular is telling of the situations that the Funk boys would get themselves into, as Terry has found himself wrapped head to toe in barbed wire, with no way out of the mess except to have his older brother Dory cut him out of the mesh with a pair of bolt cutters. Dory himself does not appear to be in that great of shape, and he would probably much rather be cracking open a cold beer and laying back in a hotel room bed than he would be unraveling yards of barbed wire from his brother’s body. All of this is the result of a horrific barbed wire match between the Funks and the Public Enemy which took place at ECW’s Heat Wave on July 16, 1994.

It’s a perfect photographic reminder of the fact that, as much as we enjoy these deathmatches, there are consequences for the wrestlers . . . and, to tell the truth, this is one of the least severe of them.

1. Kasai’s Balcony Dive

And now we cap off the list with a brilliant image from one of the most brilliant deathmatches that the genre has ever produced.

On November 20, 2009, Big Japan Pro Wrestling promoted a match between former rivals Jun Kasai and Ryuji Ito, who had not locked up with one another for several years. The match emanated from Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall, and it was billed as an α+ Deathmatch. It featured a better build to an insane series of spots than just about any bout in history. One of those spots was a big, beautiful balcony dive, which is depicted in the shot above. The balcony was so high up that, in order to complete the dive believably, Kasai actually had to wrap several feet of duct tape around his opponent, who was positioned perilously upon a table. The crowd watched on in awe, and Kasai, who for my money is one of the most underrated professional wrestlers in the entire industry today, came crashing down with a picture perfect splash (ironically almost slipping off the lip of the balcony on his first attempt) which was essentially the modern day version of Jimmy Snuka’s cage dives on to Bob Backlund or Don Muraco. Surprisingly, Kasai and Ito were both able to continue the match for some time after this, getting back into the ring for spots involving razor blades, light tubes, and, believe it or not, a CACTUS WRAPPED IN BARBED WIRE.

The match gained a fair deal of critical acclaim, with the Japanese publication Tokyo Sports naming it “Match of the Year,” a rarity for a set of awards that have been dominated for decades by the big leagues of New Japan Pro Wrestling, All Japan Pro Wrestling, and Pro Wrestling NOAH. Also, some putz writing for 411mania gave the match a rare ****3/4 star rating, virtually unheard of for a deathmatch. It’s not just this still from the match that is breathtaking . . . the whole bout leaves you feeling that way, and it’s one that you should go out of your way to check out.

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