WARNING: STRONG VIOLENCE AHEAD

It’s spooky season once again. You know what that means. It’s time to dive into another 31 deadly, bloody, horrifying deathmatches as we go into the 3rd annual deathmatch calendar. As always, this will be a day-by-day calendar of gore as we break into some of the greatest, nastiest, and most infamous of deathmatches across the years culminating with my pick of the year so far at the number 31 spot. With the preamble out of the way, let’s see what is awaiting us in this year’s tour of wrestling terror.

Some wrestling matches are known for their amazing stories, some for their amazing action, and some for the people in them. That’s all well and good but some matches are known because they’re completely batshit insane. That’s what we’re looking at today. Anyone who knows the history of CZW or BJW will know that the pair worked together in the past to make some downright infamous matches. Sometimes this went really well and pushed the boundaries of what could be done in a match. Other times, the wrestlers were lucky to leave alive. We’ve covered fire spots in the past and seen how horribly they can go (see FMW.) It would see two of the biggest names in CZW, John Zandig and Nick Gage battling two of the biggest standouts of BJW, Jun Kasai and Mitsuhiro Matsunaga in a two out of three falls fire deathmatch during the Summer Jumbo Series. Oh, and it had a wooden canvas, cars, and a whole lot of other monstrous features to kill people with.

Zandig had removed the ring canvas because he wanted the Japanese to get a taste of the American fire deathmatch experience. Gage caused an inferno but it went out quickly, prompting Kasai and Matsunaga to leave. Gage and Zandig lit the ring up and the BJW team returned in a car. Zandig tried to intimidate them by throwing stuff at it but they just straight-up hit him with it. They brawl all around the outside venue as Gage beat up a young Jun Kasai and Matsunaga dragged Zandig behind the car. Matsunaga was finally removed from the car and the ring broke from the beating he was giving him. The fire had gone overboard at this time and the fighters kept catching themselves on the flames, Kasai getting it the worst as he tried for a dive and fell right onto the flaming wire. The horrifying botches kept coming as Matsunaga dropped Zandig on his head on concrete missing a flaming table and Kasai jumped off the top of a big rig to crash into the ring boards. Things got back on track and Kasai took another horrible landing as Zandig press slammed him off the big rig through more tables. None of this got a pin as Gage took the first pinfall with a Frog Splash. Matsunaga quickly picked up the pace and tapped out Gage with a barbed-wire Bat Camel Clutch to level out the score. Team CZW got seriously pissed and beat down Matsunaga then Gage set the ring alight again as Zandig climbed the big rig. Zandig flies and gives team CZW the win as the ring is desperately put out. This was pure fucking chaos. It wasn’t a smooth match. it wasn’t exactly a good match but holy shit, it was an incredible spectacle to watch. This was four deathmatch legends in the ring at the same time. it’s an excellent time capsule of the period and captures some of the madness that came from this two-company war. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

All images courtesy of screenshots, video courtesy of Blake0561