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.
Here comes the boy. #TakaTaichiMania pic.twitter.com/9COyRUTSKK
— Dominic (@DangerousKet) May 15, 2019
Since he made his return from injury at King of Pro Wrestling, I’d like to take today to talk about the match that injured one, El Desperado. The Suzuki Gun luchador broke his jaw in this match against the biggest deathmatch star in Japan in a show put on by his friends Taka Michinoku and Taichi. It was also a bloody great match. This deathmatch saw Desperado reach a new level of violence I had not seen from him during my time watching NJPW. He came out looking like a million bucks in shirt and trousers with a modified mask to let us see the bloodshed. This alone earns it a place in my advent calendar of carnage.
TakaTaichi Mania is an odd event but always a blast to watch and this match perfectly fit. Both wrestlers brought their A game-brawling and beating each other with the environment, weapons and the barbed wire mini-board that Desperado had brought to the ring. We also saw the pair battle with boards of different cutlery and having to be broken up by refs. The match structure was weird as it was stopped and started multiple times due to the pair just getting that out of control. Nobody likes seeing stoppages in deathmatches but due to the intensity between the pair, it felt necessary.
Despite the unfortunate injury, that should be said, never stopped Desperado at all he even cut a promo afterwards, this match was amazing. There are multiple spots that could have been the jawbreaker but I can’t tell you which due to the professionalism of Desperado. He carried on taking every brutal bump there was for the match. He has come back stronger now, despite missing this year’s Best of the Super Juniors and even named a new jaw targeted move after the man that broke his. So every cloud has a silver lining. We got a great match, a new and improved Desperado in NJPW and we got new Suzuki Gun cannon fodder in DOUKI. Which I’ve just realised some people won’t see as a positive…. Whoops.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da9-kHwAg60]
Come back tomorrow for your next deathmatch treat!
Images courtesy of DangerousKet (twitter) RossWBermanIV (twitter),El Desperado Instagram, Reddit Video courtesy of NJPW YouTube