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.
Once again, it’s time for something completely different. Today we go to the violent, whacky and often twisted world of Lucha Underground. We are going to focus on one of the best matches of the third season and one of the most gruelling deathmatches I’ve ever watched. It was the culmination of a dark, personal feud between two former friends and bitter rivals. They had both cost each other opportunities as Killshot had been left for dead by someone he considered his ultimate ally. The only way to finish the feud was to go through Hell of War.
Now Hell of War is a 3 Stages of Hell concept match but turned up to 11. The first match is a First Blood, the second a No DQ fight, and the third is a Medical Evac match. This means you have to drag your opponent to a military evac vehicle and strap them down. These two needed all three stages and at Ultima Lucha Tres, we’d see it. The first stage saw the two men go through a feeling out process and instantly going for the weapons. They mixed their weapon shots with insane athleticism and clever uses of the ring. Each move felt personal and they made extreme use of their knowledge of one another. You saw chairs, ladders and glass plates all within the first stage. Killshot lost the first bout as he went back first into that glass plate. He would now have to fight on with glass sticking out of his back and scattered around the ring.
Next up was No DQ, Killshot got one back after enduring the bleeding, the glass and the brutality from Fox. He took a Spanish Fly onto a chair and a 450 Splash on a ladder but still kicked out. He came back and brought out the Aztec Torture Rack, glorious barbed wire. He took Fox out with a Powerbomb into barbed wire and a Shock Cradle Driver into the broken glass. It was an ugly sight with Fox borderline screaming a silent scream of agony. That meant someone needed to be bundled into an ambulance. Both men were battered and bleeding, torn up by weaponry and running on adrenaline. Killshot drove Fox into the gurney and it left his flesh behind. Things were getting grisly. This allowed Killshot to strap him in but Fox escaped only to get Kill Stomped into the gurney. Even the route to the ambulance was blocked with a stack of awful weaponry. The pair fought on the band stage and once again we saw violent means used as Fox choked out Killshot with a guitar wire. A discarded bottle would save Killshot, smashing Fox in the head with it and sending Fox on a deadly dive through the tower of death, crashing through the glass plate below.
Killshot won Hell of War but had to carry his fallen brother to the medical evac with glass in his back and blood pouring out of the many cuts and tears to his flesh. No one won this match, they only survived. The war was over at a heavy cost. I have no need to justify this matches placement in the calendar. It is a masterpiece of horrifying spots and shots in a promotion full of cinematic flare. Seek it out and watch it if you can. Both men sacrificed their whole careers to bring you this and it deserves every bit of praise it’ll ever get.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD9nptqCR3U?start=209&]
Come back tomorrow for your next deathmatch treat!
Special thanks to Steph Franchomme (aka Dr Nygma/ FrenchNygma) for the pictures and Lucha Underground YouTube for the video