WARNING – STRONG VIOLENCE MEANS STRONG LANGUAGE

Welcome back to 31 Days of Deathmatches Volume 2. The second edition of the annual deathmatch advent calendar put together by yours truly. Each day we will open another bloody door on the calendar and explore another deathmatch until we hit Halloween. We’re going to explore a ton of different companies, wrestlers, and stipulations as the days go on with a few surprises here and there. So, strap in as we prepare for another round of blood, broken glass, and barbed-wire on our road of deathmatches.

So today, I’m going to present to you one of the most convoluted deathmatch titles I have ever come across in my years of watching. Whenever you hear someone use the “everything but the kitchen sink” line, I now think of this match. Deathmatches have stipulations a lot of the time. Say, Doors of Death, Glass Panes of fury, barbed-wire cages, etc. Now, imagine if a company looked to create the single most extensive deathmatch stipulation on the planet. I present to you from BJW in 1998 The W*NG Crisis BJW Big Born Deathmatch – Barbed-Wire Boards, Electrified Fluorescent Light-Tube Boards, Dry Ice, Thumbtacks, Bed of Nails, Cactus, Scorpions, Coffin, Barbed-Wire Danger Net, Nail Baseball Bat, Barbed-Wire Baseball Bat & Electrified Space Heaters. See, I wasn’t kidding.

Our two teams in play would be Shadow VII, Shadow WX, Shadow Winger, and The Great Pogo (Mr. Pogo) taking on Jason The Terrible, Mitsuhiro Matsunaga, Shoji Nakamaki & Masked GK in full-on faction warfare. W*NG had invaded BJW and now they were set to take out it’s best in a series of main event deathmatches across the late 90s. I can’t even fully describe the match as it was a car crash on miniature fights breaking out everywhere and many bodies being introduced to the implements of violence around the ring. You’d see Masked GK wrecking Pogo with a space heater, fighting around the barbed-wire net, fan chairs being flattened, Shadow WX and Matsunaga fighting in the rafters of the building and plunging into the merch table below and Pogo getting a face full of dry ice to name a few of the opening spots.

As the fight continued we’d see light tubes break, bodies meet barbed-wire, Pogo use his signature sickle to cut people up, Jason the Terrible go on a rampage, Nakamaki get a face-full of tacks, Matsunaga get thrown into cacti and Shadow WX and Matsunaga took another plunge, this time into the barbed-wire net with Matsunaga sacrificing his body with a rolling senton into the wire. When he returned to the ring, Pogo knocked him into the bed of nails and took a drill to Nakamaki’s head. Pogo was an unstoppable monster in this, taking out pretty much everyone as the match went on. It would be the teamwork of Jason the Terrible and Matsunaga that would win the match with a super powerbomb to Shadow Winger onto the nail bed and cacti that would end the match. As you can see, I picked this bout of bloodiness just to show how whacky the premises can get. Whilst not the most technically sound match it was a great look into early BJW and the madness you could see from it. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

All images courtesy of Mr Pogo Wikipedia, Previous article, Pro Wrestling Fandom Video courtesy of I Don’t Belong Here YouTube