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.

Today we go for a more historically relevant deathmatch. It may be a bit generous to class it as a match though as it was more of a mugging than anything. A perfectly legal mugging that the 17-year-old victim idiotically put himself in against someone with a very infamous reputation. I am, as the title states, talking about the Mass Transit incident.

So, to the uninitiated, the Mass Transit incident is one of the most notorious moments in ECW history. On November 23rd, 1996, Paul Heyman was in a bit of a bind. He was putting on an ECW house show but one of the talents has no showed so D-Von Dudley has no partner against the Gangstas; AKA New Jack and Mustafa Saed. Enter Eric Kulas or Mass Transit as his character name. He has come to the show as an aspiring wrestler, has his gear and is lying about his age and qualifications to try and get in the match. With no better option available, Heyman accepted and put Kulas in the match. Here is the match for those with a strong stomach.

Now again, I state that this really wasn’t much of a match, Kulas was basically brutalised by multiple household objects and other weaponry before going for the big bloodshed moment by cutting Kulas with a scalpel. New Jack performed the cut but ended up cutting way too deep making Kulas bleed like a blood volcano.  New Jack definitely took it way too far when it came to the match and his conduct after the fact. Kulas didn’t deserve everything that happened to him and he may have agreed to take part in an extreme match but this went beyond what he was expecting plus the cut was botched.  Kulas freaked and the company looked bad for allowing the clearly unprepared wrestler into the ring.

Only they hadn’t. Mass Transit approached them to join the match, told them he was more than qualified, even lying about graduating from Killer Kowalski’s wrestling school. He even had his family vouching for him. He had allegedly been acting unprofessional backstage and had asked New Jack to give him colour, or more commonly known blade him. This rarely happened but since the match was in a bind, Jack had agreed. In my opinion this was a case of reaping what you sow. Heyman could have been more diligent sure but Kulas willingly entered New Jack’s lion den and got bit for it. They ended up trying to sue but it never really went anywhere since the family had vouched for him. To all those who are wanting to be a wrestler, even a deathmatch wrestler, DON’T DO THIS.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x6dvoRX1qY]

Come back tomorrow for your next deathmatch treat!

Images courtesy of prowrestlingstories.com, fightbooth.com, pro wrestling logos fandom videos courtesty of Daily motion and NewJack City Baby YouTube

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