WARNING STRONG VIOLENCE AND 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.

Matt Tremont is a goddamn legend in this business. Alongside Danny Havoc and the other talented deathmatch guys of the past 15 plus years, he helped pioneer new waves of the deathmatch style and helped prove that deathmatch guys could wrestle any style. Tremont didn’t need the ultraviolence to be a star but he owned it and made it bigger than ever. Now, he’s on his Separate Ways tour and I owe it to him to put him on the calendar. Rather than highlight something from his past though, I’d like to shed some light on his own homegrown promotion, H2O, the Hardcore Hustle Organisation. This is Matt Tremont’s school where he gets in the ring to show off to his students what their futures could be.

I chose something of a recent one from January this year. This is his barbed-wire cage match against Casanova Valentine. This wasn’t just your gimmick for gimmick sake match; this was Valentine trying to pry the torch from Tremont’s hands. Valentine wanted to retire him before he could ever have made the choice himself. In a cage full of barbed-wire and glass what would these two monsters do to each other? Well, within minutes we’d seen a sickle, wirework, and blood. It was every bit as personal as you could imagine as Tremont proved to Valentine that he was not ready to hang up the boots and if he wanted that torch, he was going to have to kill him.

What followed was a 15+ minute match of personal animosity, broken glass, and desperation. Valentine went to extreme lengths to try and put down the Bulldozer. He’d tied him to the ropes to beat him tubes, mauled him with scissors and wire. Tremont was bathed in his own blood as Valentine promised to make him a martyr for deathmatch wrestling. There were so many brutal moments and horrifying sights as Tremont took more punishment than we’d seen him take in forever and still came out the other side to claim the win. He was beaten, even more, scarred, and cut up beyond belief but he’d silenced the critics once again. For those who complain deathmatches have no stories, I dare you to say that after watching this. it wasn’t just violence for the sake of violence. It was a fight for survival against someone who is more than eager to take your spot.

As a bonus match for IWTV users, I’d also recommend watching his fights against Atsushi Onita, more specifically the CZW Once in a Lifetime match that saw Team FMW, consisting of Onita, Raijin Yaguchi, and Hideki Hosaka against Team CZW, Rickey Shane Page, Matt Tremont, and Danny Havoc. Once again, the name-value alone should sell you on it but it also featured the no-rope barbed-wire and exploding bat stipulations. It was one of those absolute clusterfuck matches that can only happen every now and then. Plus, it has more Tremont vs Onita action, what’s not to love? Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

All images courtesy of H2O Twitter, Earl Gardner Photography