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.

One of the most monumental strings of matches last year was the Separate Ways tour for Matt Tremont. He made one final tour of companies, doing farewell matches because as it stood, he was done with the company. He’d lost his closest friend, done all that he’d wanted to do and in light of better wording, lost his purpose. He wanted to hang up the boots whilst he was still healthy and dedicate himself to teaching his students and running his company. There was no point fighting if there’s nothing to fight for. He made it very clear that the biggest thing to him is story. Wrestling without purpose means nothing. In the end, he wanted to retire and he planned to go out in an explosion of blood and glass to one of the best opponents he’d ever had, Rickey Shane Page. The leader of 44OH! agreed and they set up to have the biggest deathmatch in H2O history to main event the first night of the Last Extravaganza. Once again, this is a match I covered at the time and was so powerful it spawned a documentary. However, it is also one of the most powerful matches I’ve ever seen and it is due to a spot on the calendar. It meant a hell of a lot at the time and in an ironic full-circle moment, means just as much now.

With the atmosphere at its breaking point during setup, the pair made their entrances and got the fight underway. After a night of deathmatches, they were ready to make the biggest mess they could whilst also telling one final story. Tremont didn’t want to retire, he had too and he wasn’t going to go quietly. RSP had to kill him to put him down for good and that’s damn near what happened. It took tube after tube and move after move with even a fall from the Widow’s Walk not being enough to end things. It started as a one-sided beatdown and evened out as the fire of the Bulldozer came out and he made RSP suffer as much as he had. The barbed wire ropes cut them both, the 200 tubes were broken and the bodies lost a whole lot of blood. Every near-fall had everyone on edge as every moment could be the last. RSP was revelling in it at first but even he grew desperate to end it as time went on. I wouldn’t say it was remorse but even he didn’t want to be doing this anymore. It was excessive, it was over the top but it was the perfect Viking Funeral to a career that had spanned the globe and inspired so many. The Bulldozer had been killed and Matt Tremont the teacher was all that was left. The book was closed… the story over… or so we thought. October 31st will see the Bulldozer return. Between Atsushi Onita calling him out and 44OH! tearing his company apart, the man without purpose has found something to bring him back. He found Destiny. Come back tomorrow for the next deathmatch delight.

All images courtesy of Chris Grasso, Earl Gardner Photography