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. Time for the grand finale!
Here we are, day 31, Halloween. The best day of the year deserves the best deathmatch of the year does it not? Usually, a lot of deliberation goes into picking this match as there are often a lot of contenders for it. This year, I knew the match as soon as I saw it because no other match has made me feel the way this one has. The pure wince-inducing horror or uncomfortableness this match brought me as I watched it. Takayuki Ueki is quite simple a madman. A former police officer turned deathmatch star who uses his head as his primary weapon. He will throw every bit of caution into the wind if it means victory and at The Gekokujo, he had his chance at the King of FREEDOMS championship and the crown jewel of the company, Toru Sugiura in a Shakedown! Blockade the Light-tube Bridge deathmatch. Things were going to get unbelievably ugly and more than a bit tough to watch as headbutts met cinderblocks and Sugiura was pushed to match the brutality and hard-headedness of Ueki.
Sugiura started cocky with another of his woolly head decorations and Ueki opened proceedings with a cinderblock duel. He won that and countered a Rana to try an early Kokeshi. Sugiura dodged and dropkicked Ueki in the face. He cut into Ueki with a chunk of block and faceplanted him onto a stack of them. Ueki didn’t take this well and slammed Sugiura across the platform of cinderblocks. Sugiura fell outside so Ueki followed and cut him open. The pair brawled around the outside and Ueki cut Sugiura off with a dropkick. They teased a bridge breaker and Ueki smashed more cinderblocks then painfully dragged Sugiura through the rubble. They slugged it out, danced around the tube bridge again and Sugiura started a headbutt war. Ueki won the war and tried to choke Sugiura out in the corner but Sugiura used his head and stretched out the leg before throwing Ueki down. He threw himself at Ueki and started breaking tubes into his midsection. He drove Ueki into the mat again with a Northern Lights and landed his first sliding lariat. They danced around the bridge again and Ueki countered Sugiura’s charge into a Spinaroonie headbutt. He drove Sugiura onto more cinderblocks with a DDT and charged him with tubes. He was launched onto the apron and tried to throw Sugiura at the bridge but Sugiura broke a block into his head and flew through the bridge to dive onto him. Both guys struggled to their feet, Sugiura getting up first and Ueki was brought crashing back in afterwards with a Superplex. Ueki attacked with a barbed-wire board and drove Sugiura head-first through that and a tube cross with Kamikaze attacks. He headbutted a board fragment in further and made another cinderblock pile to deliver a Pedigree onto. He built a prison of blocks around Sugiura’s head and smashed them in with another thrown block.
Sugiura refused to die so Ueki placed another cinderblock on him and climbed to the top for a cinderblock Kokeshi. Sugiura moved and Ueki ate nothing but blocks and pain. They both struggled to their feet and threw more headbutts, hitting both each other and more cinderblocks. The pair slugged it out, blasted each other with more sickening headbutts and Sugiura dragged out a box of tubes for a duel. Ueki hammered Sugiura with tubes and more headbutts but the champ refused to stay down, using his head to level more cinderblock attacks at Ueki. He headbutted more tubes through Ueki and got destroyed with a Death Valley Bomb. He went for the kill but Sugiura wiggled free, nailed him with headbutts, and drove him onto the cinderblocks with a Michinoku Driver. That rocked Ueki enough for the bundle-breaker forearm and gave Sugiura the win. He had been beaten to hell and back in this one by an opponent who had very little care for his safety, let alone his opponents. It was a spectacle of horror and potential CTE, the likes I have not seen in years. For that, it takes my top spot and headlines the calendar for the year. What a wild wide capped off by the wildest match I have seen this year.
All images courtesy of FREEDOMS