All the death match stuff on the indie circuit goes too far for me. I’m not a fan and don’t attend those, nor do I watch them online as I’m not really a fan of unnecessary bloodshed.
Some hardcore things have occurred in professional wrestling over the decades. And some of them are downright deadly.
Here are some of the most infamous examples of matches that went too far.
Mass Transit & D-Von Dudley vs The Gangstas (ECW 1996)
Back in 1996, then-17-year-old Erich Kulas and his father lied about his age and wrestling experience (even going so far as to say he wrestled Killer Kowalski) to get hired by Paul Heyman for an ECW show. New Jack (real name Jerome Young), who was apparently high, wanted to teach the rookie a lesson by hurting him.
The kid gets brutalized and his forehead is bladed, which ruptures an artery and causes a fountain of blood to come squirting out of the head of an underage kid. After he is finally carted away by medical personnel, New Jack grabs a mic and says, “I don’t care if the motherf*$ker dies!”
He didn’t die that day, but the incident (known as The Mass Transit Incident) led to the temporary cancellation of ECW’s first pay-per-view Barely Legal. Nothing else happened – New Jack was acquitted of criminal charges three years later and found not liable civilly since he believed the kid to be a consenting adult.
New Jack has a long history of violence that goes too far and could be his own list.
Here’s the time he was charged with attempted murder for literally stabbing William Jason Lane numerous times in the back during a match (he escaped the charges).
He also legitimately beat up 69-year-old wrestler Gypsy Joe just for funsies.
And he tried to kill Vic Grimes in a Scaffold Match. He launches him through 12 tables from 40 feet in the air. To be clear, Undertaker threw Mankind 16 feet in their infamous match to the ground, and maybe 13 feet down to the ring on the choke slam through the top.
Add both those falls together (29 feet), and Foley still took less of an impact that night than Grimes did in this spot.
Although Scaffolding matches never occurred in WWE/WWF, they long predate Hell in a Cell. In fact, Jim Cornette infamously got injured in a scaffold match between the Road Warriors and Midnight Express at Starrcade 1986.
However, the original scaffolds were only 20 feet tall. And you’ll notice the wrestlers tend to hang off it before falling, so Cornette took a similar fall to Mankind’s except he landed on his feet instead of his back. That’s why his leg got messed up.
Magnum TA vs Tully Blanchard (NWA 1985)
It’s not even the most violent match on that card, let alone in all of professional wrestling. But this steel cage “I Quit” match is infamous for the way it ended, which resembled an action movie of the time.
At the end of the match, Blanchard grabs the leg of a broken wooden chair, snaps it over his knee to get a sharp edge, and attempts to stab Magnum in the eye with it. It’s an extremely tense moment straight out of an action movie. Then Magnum gets up and stabs Blanchard in the head with the chair’s leg.
This was all planned, and is well regarded among matches of the era. But personally, I’m not looking to see people impaled or murdered in the name of entertainment.
Cactus Jack vs Terry Funk (IWA 1995)
Mick Foley is a legend of extreme wrestling, and he already had his ear ripped off by Vader by this point. One of his most infamous matches was a death match against Terry Funk in Japan’s IWA. More specifically, it was a No Rope, Barbed Wire, Explosive Barbed Wire Board, Time Bomb Death Match. It’s exactly what it says, as they fought among barbed wire and C4 explosives.
It was the finals of an 8-man death match elimination tournament, so each man already had two death matches earlier in the night and was already heavily bruised and bandaged. This isn’t the first nor last match to use explosions, but it feels a bit much to me, especially considering the injuries caused just by the entrance pyrotechnics.
Sabu vs Abyss (TNA 2005)
Blading is common in wrestling. As is barbed wire. It just is so excessive in this match. There’s a point where Abyss puts a steel chair wrapped in barbed wire on top of Sabu and goes to jump on him. Instead, Sabu turns the chair sideways, and Abyss lands with it between his legs. It hurts just to think about.
After taking a few chair shots to the head, Abyss gladly gets him back by essentially slamming Sabu crotch first into the barbed wire. By the end, both men are bleeding so much, I just can’t stop thinking about their lack of any healthcare as independent contractors in a now-defunct company.
And AEW is doing these matches now too. Although they’re just wrapping barbed wire on the ropes instead of replacing them. Here’s Jericho and Kingston last month in one.
Nick Gage vs David Arquette (GCW 2018)
If you’re not aware, David Arquette is an actor who loves wrestling. In 2000, he made a wrestling-based movie called Ready to Rumble and had a brief stint in WCW with an even brief reign as world heavyweight champion.
Fast forward to 2018, and he’s on the indie circuit trying to gain credibility. He ends up in his first death match against Gage, who is well known for ultra-violent matches.
What follows is another instance of a professional wrestler deciding to teach a perceived outsider a bloody lesson. He proceeds to break everything he can over Arquette’s head, slices him open with a pizza cutter (even cutting the inside of his mouth), then he smashes him over the head with a light tube and goes to stab him. At this point, Arquette starts to freak out and gets unexpectedly stabbed in the neck.
Both men in the interview above describe thinking Arquette would die. And as he gets legitimately angry and hits Gage with a chair, he gets judo flipped onto his back and pinned. Had he gotten up, he probably would’ve been murdered.
It’s just par for the course for Gage though, as he regularly cuts people open in death matches and literally died in one himself for a short time before being brought back to life.
Eddie Guerrero vs JBL (WWE 2004)
Most of these matches, while violent, were at least billed as extreme matches with various levels of hardcore rules. Fans expected to see bloody battles, but Judgment Day 2004 was not expected to be the bloodiest wrestling match in history.
But when Guerrero blades early in the match during a chair shot and accidentally cuts a main artery, it gets extreme fast. What follows is 15 minutes of the man losing so much blood that he went into shock, was hospitalized, and required a blood transfusion after the match.
Shane McMahon vs Big Show (WWE 2001)
Of all the falls people have taken, Shane McMahon has the longest to my knowledge. In a Last Man Standing match at Backlash 2001, he jumped off a 50-foot scaffolding to perform a leg drop on Big Show.
Shane performed easily some of the dumbest and most dangerous falls in wrestling history, but what makes this one stand out is both the height and the fact Big Show was laying on the ground beneath him. They could have both been easily killed, and it’s even more dangerous than John Zandig jumping off a 20-foot rooftop into tables and tube lights while holding Sick Nick Mondo.
Here’s a height chart from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing how many people died of falls in the construction industry.
Nearly 20% of falling deaths happened at heights of 10 feet or less.
For reference, Owen Hart fell 78 feet when he died. And that wasn’t the only major fall Shane-O took in his career; it’s just the most dangerous because of Big Show beneath him. He also took a 45-foot fall in Summerslam 2000 against Steve Blackman.
And even though his Wrestlemania 32 jump off the top of Hell in a Cell was “only” 20 feet, he was 45-years-old jumping at a 51-year-old Undertaker. One wrong move could’ve killed either or both men, and it’s still 4 feet higher than Mankind fell.
Terry Funk vs Chris Candido (WCW 2000)
Mixing live animals with fake wrestling for the sake of being hardcore is never a good idea. A hardcore match between Terry Funk and Chris Candido goes a long way in proving this. The two fight through a stable and eventually enter an enclosed space with a live horse.
After Funk pile drives Candido, the horse goes crazy and starts kicking both men. Humans have a choice in doing these matches, but that horse was just put in a stressful situation for no reason. Animals have a long history in wrestling.
Most fans are familiar with the time Jake “The Snake” Roberts had a live cobra bite “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Savage had every right to be nervous about whether or not it had venom left in it, and that snake did not want to let go.
Roberts was one of the last animal-related wrestlers in the US, but he was far from the first. Tuffy Truesdale regularly wrestled alligators and other animals in the 1960s.
Bruno Samartini infamously wrestled an orangutan in the 1950s as well, although there are no pictures or videos I could find.
Curious what professional wrestling is like without Vince McMahon?
There’s also the piranha death match, where you must dunk your opponent’s head in a fish tank filled with piranhas to win. Japan’s extreme wrestling goes far beyond the US.
Also here’s a Japanese death match involving a scorpion tank. And they hit each other with cacti too.
And let’s not forget the Alive and Dead Food Deathmatch in which Jun Kasai and Great Sasuke take on the Brahman brothers. This one involves using a variety of dead and living sea creatures as weapons. At one point, a live lobster is killed for basically no reason but to entertain.
Although Canada is just as crazy. There are the times Bret’s dad Stu Hart wrestled an actual Bengal tiger named Sasha for Stampede wrestling.
And the Hart family also had a wrestling bear in their promotion for a time named Terrible Ted. Now his grandson Teddy is working with cats and dogs.
Can you imagine keeping these huge animals calm with today’s pyrotechnics and massive crowds?
Jon Moxley vs Neil “Diamond” Cutter (IWA 2010)
In the movie Kickboxer, there’s a scene where two fighters wrap their hands in cloth and dip them in glue, glass, and nails before they fight. This became a match type called the Taipai Deathmatch, started by Ian and Axl Rotten in 1995 ECW. Oh and also there’s barbed wire ropes again.
And it goes one step further in this 2010 match on the indie circuit between Jon Moxely (Dean Ambrose) and Neil “Diamond” Cutter. They perform a Drunken Taipai Deathmatch, which involves all of that plus stopping to drink a shot of Jack Daniel’s every few minutes, because why the hell not at that point?
Mike Levy vs Mickie Knuckles (IWA 2008)
Untrained wrestler Mike Levy got the crap literally beat out of him in front of a live crowd after being blamed for a bump on Mickie Knuckles. He was invited to take part in the event because of his popularity on an online messaging board, and when he doesn’t perform as expected, he takes some insanely hard shots from three men who completely humiliate him.
I would not feel bad if any of these guys got murdered, and it’s sweet karma that Knuckles ended up breaking her leg and losing her TNA contract that same summer.
No-Ropes Exploding Barbed-Wire, Dynamite Pool Elimination Deathmatch (FMW 1994)
This 6-man tag match between Atsushi Onita, Katsutoshi Niyama, and Mr. Gannosuke versus the team of Hideki Hosaka, Mr. Pogo and The Gladiator Mike Awesome has everything deadly about a Deathmatch. The name says it all, as wrestlers attacked each other with barbed wire-covered weapons aiming to throw each other in the pool outside the ring, causing an explosion.
But it’s none of that stuff that really made this match stick out. About 6 minutes into the match, Pogo picks up a sickle (like what the grim reaper uses, but a smaller one-handed version) and drives it into Onita’s stomach. It isn’t even the end of the match, nor the last time someone will be cut with that sickle.
DJ Hyde vs Thumbtack Jack (CZW 2009)
Here’s another step too far that’s constantly used in CZW. In the first round of the 2009 Tournament of Death 8 (same event where Nick Gage died), DJ Hyde and Thumbtack Jack begin the use of hypodermic needles.
By the end of the match, Hyde sticks two syringes through Jack’s face. The video and images are constantly removed from sites like YouTube and Wikipedia for being too graphic.
That’s about it for now, but I’m sure it won’t be long before somebody else takes things too far to the extreme.