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.

A lot goes into deciding what makes my best in the US spot on the calendar. There has been a whole load of amazing deathmatches this year across multiple different companies. I could have picked either the Glass Ceiling or No Rope Barbed Wire matches between Jimmy Lloyd and G-Raver, the previously mentioned Nick Gage vs RSP, and countless others but there was one match that just kept getting stuck in my head, the finals of the Tournament of Survival 666, Alex Colon vs Atticus Cogar. The story of the young upset vs the threepeat veteran. It was a story unto itself with two pros behind the wheel. Both had had arduous paths to get to their place and now they’d have to go through each other to take the ToS crown. Colon has won ToS 4 and 5, now he was going to make history with the first-ever three-peat and he wanted to destroy the outspoken Silver Teeth Satan in the process. The crowd was torn because Cogar had become the hateable underdog, beating the heroes to take the crown and Colon is the best deathmatch wrestler in the US so if anyone was going to make a threepeat, it would have to be him, right?

The canvas was gone, the tubes were up and we’d had cameos from the Libertines in honour of Danny Havoc, Sick Nick Mondo for the presentation ceremony, and Markus Crane seconding him to the ring. The match played out like you’d hoped it would. Cogar went on the attack from the get-go, getting rid of Mondo and Crane so he could carve up Colon like he wanted to. Despite the injures and broken tubes, Colon came back and slammed Cogar through a barbed-wire door. Colon took the fight into the crowd but Cogar reversed a whip and sandwiched him between tube and wire boards for a double stomp. Cogar cockily went for a tube prison but Colon blocked him with a bundle and trapped him in it for multiple tube-breaking kicks. Cogar punched a bundle into Colon and suplexed him onto another wired board. A glass pit of hell was built and the pair kept breaking tubes on each other. The crowd went wild for the duel and Cogar took them both to hell with an Air Raid Crash through the glass pit. Colon refused to die and nailed Cogar with a tube Spanish Fly onto the boards. Cogar returned fire with a Brain Haemorrhage on the boards but neither guy was ready to quit. They fought to the top rope and Colon landed another killing blow with a Styles Clash through a glass pane. Somehow, Cogar kicked out and countered a pump-handle slam into a Half and Half. Cogar rained down tacks and slashed Colon with a weed whacker. Cogar went for one final Brain Haemorrhage but Colon counted into the Sleeper Suplex, The Uranage Knee, and tapped out Cogar with the Camel Clutch. This was Colon making even more bloody history. He’d gone back-to-back, now he’d made the threepeat. Cogar stamped his mark on the deathmatch world too and as such, I’m making this the US Deathmatch of the year so far. A perfect story in a near-perfect match. Come back tomorrow for the final guest spot deathmatch delight.

All images courtesy of Atticus Cogar, Earl Gardner