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.

Not every match in these calendars gets in here because it’s good. Between deathmatch accidents and bad backyard wrestling (stay tuned for that) there are just some deathmatches or things branded as deathmatches that are just terrible. One of those was part of the massive Bridge of Dreams Tokyo Dome wrestling show from 1995. Thirteen promotions came together to create a super-show that would showcase the wealth of talented wrestling companies in Japan at that time. Notable deathmatch companies on there were IWA Japan and FMW which both put on some extremely violent showcases. Then there was something a bit different, a company called Go Gundan were putting on an Alien Deathmatch. Now that sounds cool, doesn’t it?

It wasn’t. Ryuma Go and Uchu Majin Silver X (who was just a big guy with a paper plate taped to his head) had a 15-minute-long match that mostly consisted of basic grapples and not a whole lot else for the Go Gudan Interplanetary Title. The only thing deadly about it was the boredom it caused. Now don’t get me wrong, if it had been shorter and sillier, I’d have been all for this but it wasn’t, it was long and dull breaking up the steady rhythm the show had been building. There was the occasional spot of interference from monster costumed goons but not a whole lot to break up the monotony. As you can tell, this was about as far removed from deathmatch as deathmatch gets.

That being said, I might have hated the match but with the right context, it does actually make sense. You see, Ryuma Go was somewhat of a cult figure in independent wrestling who enjoyed countless mid-card runs in the bigger companies where his basic image and fundamental skills carried him nicely. After struggling in the UWF and AJPW, he would go into reality TV where he became famous for being a Baka or idiot. He would use this fame to create a whole host of companies, including Go Gudan. This was supposed to be a comedy company with big audiences and goofy approaches to story-telling and wrestling. The sad thing is, he never brought any of that wackiness here as it was just boring as hell, not goofy or silly. Just dull. Like I want to give it the benefit of the doubt but I was promised an alien deathmatch and I never got it. It is one of the most blatant cases of false-advertising ever. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

Enjoy this example of a Go Gundan show. It has a bit of everything on there, including talk shows.

All images courtesy of pro-wrestling fandom, wrestling classics, Last Word on Pro Wrestling Video courtesy of Brett Williams YouTube