If you didn’t catch episode one, welcome to 31 Days of Deathmatches. This is an advent calendar-style countdown to Halloween offering you a door of deliciously gory wrestling per day. Our trip to the spookiest day of the year will take us around the world and through time. This will chronicle some of the most significant deathmatches throughout the years but will mostly consist of my absolute favourite barbed wire bouts and glass shattering matches. Without further ado, let’s open the next door.
We return to Impact Wrestling today and their most recent PPV, Slammiversary XVII. It was an awesome show that featured a First Blood bout between Killer Kross and Eddie Edwards and our main attraction here, the Knockouts Monster’s Ball match. It was Jessicka Havok vs Rosemary vs Su Yung vs Taya Valkyrie for the Knockouts title. These 4 women all hated each other and very fragile alliances had been created to turn the tide in the favour of the dark universe members of the match.
Su Yung and Havok were meant to work together but that alliance went out of the window, leading to a whole host of vicious spots between the pair as they both went into kayfabe business for themselves. Rosemary went out of her way to stop Havok and Yung from working together whilst Taya remembered her Lucha Underground fights and tried to kill everyone. It was violent in every way you could want. Every type of weapon was involved and no one shied away from putting their body in harms way. Taya even Curb-Stomped Rosemary face-first into thumbtacks.
It was a beautiful symphony of carnage as ladders, chairs, barbed wire and more were all used as tools of destruction. Taya had a lot of fun stapling things to Su Yung and even proved how opportunistic she could be by stealing the pinfall from Havok following a Super Tombstone. It should never be understated how effective a chair shot to the head can be. It really takes some tough women to have the most brutal match on the card.
This match belongs here as A) The PPV was amazing and Impact deserves all the praise they can get for putting on such a strong show and letting the Knockouts go all out and B) This match was insane. It is just as hardcore as any other match featured here without needing all the blood and glass. This isn’t the last time we’ll see women on this calendar but it’s definitely a worthy first appearance. This was my favourite match from Slammiversary 2019 and without a doubt one of my favourite Impact matches of all time.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmrGsr4y_vA]
Come back tomorrow for your next deathmatch treat!
All images/screencaps courtesy of Impact Wrestling, Basil Mahmud (special thanks!) Video courtesy of Impact YouTube