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.

We continue the deathmatch wrestling history lesson with Hot Night in Bayamon, the moniker for Aniversario 88 from Puerto Rican-based promotion WWC. The company wanted to make sure the show lived up to its name by putting on a stacked show and ended things with the hottest feud in the hottest match type, a fire match. They had extra ropes that were covered in oiled-up rags and set alight, giving us these nightmarish traps near the top and bottom ropes. Both fighters looked apprehensive to be taking part in such a match. I bring this one up as it is one of the first recorded instances of a fire match. We all know how unpredictable fire can be in any match so to base your whole main event around it was a bold move. Colon was the hero of our tale this time as Ayala had been on the warpath against him and his family. The stipulation may seem extreme but the story told could end in very few other ways. Colon was going to have revenge or die trying.

It tried to play out like a normal match but the flames limited what they could do. Colon wanted to set Ayala ablaze for attacking his wife and Ayala fought like an absolute monster. Even the fans wanted in on the action as they threw things at the ring but ultimately only hit the ref with a water bottle. Ayala drove Colon’s head into the fire, singing his hair and hands as Colon frantically tried to push himself away. Colon valiantly fought back and the pair kept punching it out in the ring and nailed Ayala in the balls. Now it was Ayala’s turn in the fire and Colon started bringing the fight back his way. Colon’s leg bucked after missing a leg drop so Ayala went right after it and mixed that with fire throws. Despite the blood trickling down his face, Ayala missed nothing and tried as he could to drag a fire rag into Colon’s face. Colon applied a Figure Four but Ayala went right to the ropes and broke the hold. Colon had found his gameplan and began weakening Ayala’s knees for another round of the hold. Ayala fought off the hold for as long as he could but with no access to the ropes and the pain mounting, he had to tap. Colon wouldn’t break the hold though. He wanted Ayala to suffer and wouldn’t stop mangling the legs. The ref had to drag him away and tried to stop him from doing any more damage but Colon went right back to the hold. This perfectly captured the mood of the story and delivered a compelling little match. it wasn’t the most exciting fire match I’ve seen but it also wasn’t an absolute car wreck and didn’t seriously injure the wrestlers so I’d say it was pretty successful. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

Images courtesy of WWC, Video Courtesy of TellemHawk