WARNING STRONG VIOLENCE AND STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD

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.

There’s a lot to choose from when it comes to Shunma Katsumata. He’s gone from being super-hardcore on DDT to a fully-fledged BJW deathmatch guy. Trying to pick my favourite of his recent DDT run is tough. He had some excellent hardcore bouts against Chris Brookes over a Twitter feud, against Drew Parker on Brookes’ No-Fans show, and against Daisuke Sasaki and Isami Kodaka for the Universal title. In the end, I picked the most creative, the super-hardcore match against the demon doll, Yoshihiko. This was all part of the ALL OUT vs Yoshihiko feud where the demon doll picked off each member of the group over the course of the TV Show series. This would be the most violent chapter before the eventual Lynchian horror of the to-the deathmatch at Wrestling Peter Pan where Konosuke Takeshita blew up Yoshihiko.

It’s funny I’d have never seen this match had COVID not made me decide to start reviewing the company more often. As a sporadic viewer of the promotion, I’d seen the big names but never Shunma Katsumata. Now, he’s a proper deathmatch player. This match helped set that up as he took some horrific punishment against Yoshihiko. He started by battering them with a kendo stick but quickly lost the advantage and we got an even but violent match of doll-based death spots. There’s something funny about seeing someone as deadly as Yoshihiko being rammed into a trashcan and thrown around like nothing. With fighting going everywhere and a whole host of flying, brawling, and madness, it’s hard not to enjoy the pure spectacle on show. Katsumata was subject to piledrivers on bars, throws into ladders, stage dives and so much more. Katsumata is the connoisseur of Lego but here it really bit him in the arse as Yoshihiko used it against him. It was also insane to see the reckless bumps Yoshihiko was taking. They nearly had their neck broken and suffered some horrendous double-team moves from Takeshita and Katsumata. In the end, though, the diabolical doll overcame the odds and won with the around-the-world bomb.

Okay, yes this is going to be really silly to some. DDT is the ultimate hybrid brand. I once saw MAO take on Jun Kasai in a match full of broken plastic. Here, I wanted to cover something fun. This is exceptionally creative and I urge any of you who think it’s less brutal than other deathmatches to try stepping on Lego and get back to me. That stuff is horrendous. Plus, I can’t do this calendar without mentioning someone who is hopefully going to be a big player in the deathmatch game. Much like Toshiyuki Sakuda last year, Katsumata has become one of my favourite guys to see advertised on a show. He looks like an idol but goes just as hard as the veterans. Keep your eye on him in the future. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

All images courtesy of ddtpro.com