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.

Australia is a weird place when it comes to entertainment. From video games to wrestling, it has an iffy relationship with what it wants to show vs what it will allow. This was also once the case with wrestling too. Australia now has a thriving deathmatch scene with plenty of wrestlers young and veteran ready to wreck shop and their bodies for the art of it. Though for a long time, this wasn’t the case. There was a very notorious match that shocked the censors and caused a riot of moral outrage when it was put on. I am talking of PCW Wrestling’s Barbed-wire, Taipei, Thumbtack rain fuck-fest between Mad Dog and Lobo. The footage was nearly completely lost to time but the match itself was pretty damn incredible. When I spoke to Joel Bateman of Deathmatch Downunder, I learned of this match and its impact on Australian Wrestling. Now I’d like to share some of the details of it with you.

As I said, this match had multiple stipulations. The fighters had glassed-up knuckles, there were barbed-wire ropes and there would be a rain of thumbtacks after a certain time limit. It was a very bloody affair with both wrestlers smartly wearing white for the occasion. It opened with traditional technical wrestling and Suplexes but a ladder quickly entered the mix and Lobo was dropped off of it into the wire ropes. The technical wrestling resumed and Mad Dog made them both suffer with a Russian Leg Sweep into the wire. As the match continued, the pair took more trips into the wire, taken more horrific ladder spots, and brawled around the ringside, giving the crowd a full show of the horror on display. Nothing was safe as both guys went face-first into those wired ropes on multiple occasions. It was a continuous balancing act of risk and reward as both fighters attempted shit that would backfire in an attempt to end the match before the thumbtack rain. They failed to do so and the new hazard rained down on them as they tried to breathe. This didn’t mean the action stopped, it just meant they’d now get tacks in them as well as the wire and glass cuts. Mad Dog added even more tacks to the pile and kept finding more ways to torture Lobo since he wouldn’t give in. He eventually wrapped them both in barbed wire and won with a backpack drop as Lobo fought until the end. it was bloody, violent as fuck, and more than a little bit scary but I understand why it gets the love it does. It utilised the basics of deathmatches in new ways and gave us all something to enjoy. Mad Dog still wrestles now as a DMDU veteran deathmatch star. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch guest spot.

All images courtesy of Archives

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