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.

It’s time for another two-parter. This time I want to focus on the future of Japanese deathmatches. Over the past year, not one but two young women have come to the forefront of deathmatch wrestling. One from TJPW and one from Ice Ribbon. Today we’ll focus on Hikari Noa, the current International Princess Champion of TJPW who has shown she is a technical beast and has expressed a desire to dive headfirst into the world of deathmatch wrestling. Cyberfight has indulged her twice so far. Firstly, she got to main event the first episode of TJPW Inspiration with one of the first TJPW hardcore matches against the undisputed Queen of Japanese Deathmatch, Rina Yamashita. Noa was so hyped to do this, she even made a Jun Kasai-inspired gear set for it. They got proper hardcore too. There were chairs, a ladder, boards of dubious nature, and more as the pair took the main event spotlight and filled it with broken plunder and broken bodies. Noa even instigated the weapon usage by covering the ring in CDS and pencils and performing the Rolling Death Cradle through them. She continued to wrestle like her life depended on it but also fully embraced every chance to smash Yamashita with something. That being said, she also took some hellacious spots, eating table on an apron piledriver. It may have been a losing effort but she packed that main event with references to hardcore favourites, including the Pearl Harbour Splash and showed just how tough and willing she was to embrace that style. She’d earned Yamashita’s respect and announced how she wanted to go all-in on proper deathmatches.

Several months later, Wrestle Peter Pan rolled around and she was part of an eight-person exploding bat deathmatch. She was teamed with Kuro-Chan, Super Sasadango Machine, and Tetsuhiro Kuroda against Atsushi Onita, Maki Itoh, Akito, and DDT Big Boss, Sanshiro Takagi. This was her first taste of real deathmatches and once again, Noa dived in headfirst. It was only a nine-minute match but she and Maki Itoh were determined to steal the show by blowing each other up in a dual exploding bat spot that sent them both flying. Again, she showed a love for what she was doing as she took advantage of every moment she had whilst Kuro Chan tried to avoid being killed by Onita, even if he tried to use her as a less than willing human shield. She even got to blow up Takagi as he took her lightly. In a match that was easy to get lost in, Itoh and Noa managed to make themselves one of the most talked-about moments. That’s the extent of her deathmatch work so far but if TJPW allow her to explore this world more then who knows what she’s capable of? We’ve seen FMW-E building a women’s division and battle-testing them with explosive deathmatches. Given DDT’s relationship with Onita, who’s to say we won’t see Noa appear there at some point. Deathmatches are fair game for anyone and considering how much Noa loves them, I hope to see her do more of them. That kind of passion can’t be faked. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

All images courtesy of DDT, TJPW