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What were the greatest Death matches?


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We might as well include barbed wire matches in this as the great ones are also great and the bad ones are giant messes.

Is there a Damian comp or thread around here somewhere? He’s underrated. That match above with him as Ultraman is cool because it reminds me of the stuff I watched as a youngun that made me think somebody was going to die. And of course at that point you were scared and rooted for it not to happen unlike when we became teenagers and...well lol! And the little things going on in that match like the dim lighting, invisible but loud crowd, and whatever that noise is? Still love that match either way.

Edited by BloodyChamp
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Apropos of nothing, I'm not sure which is crazier:

  • Big Japan will celebrate their 25th Anniversary this year
  • Great Kojika is STILL occasionally wrestling for them at 77
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  • 2 weeks later...

I'd say if you're going at it from a pretty much workrate perspective, the best ones are probably the Honma/Yamakawa series in Big Japan.  What sucks is you can't just like, stream that shit on youtube anymore.  You really have to look for that shit.

But if you're looking at it from a workrate perspective, fuck, STOP.  That's not what this is about.  It's about fucked up people doing fucked up shit.

This match is all about spectacle and 90000 things happening and fucking rules.  I've shown this in college classes before.

Death matches are all about the spectacle and the weird shit and pretty much not delivering when it comes down to it half of the time.  And that's what makes it rule.  Like I'd rather watch a really shitty Freddy vs Leatherface match or something than anything most people would call good, but it's more entertaining.  Like watch The Curse of the Barbed Wire Bat match.  It fucking sucks.  But it rules because it sucks.  This isn't in an ironic sense either.  Fuck that hipster bitch shit.  It actually rules because it actually sucks.  There's no irony, just legitimacy.  You guys know I'm genuine and don't fuck around with this shit though.

 

Like the pool death match rules, but it's dumb and makes no sense.  What purpose do the explosions have when everyone hits the water?  Is it supposed to be hurting them?  Nobody sells it like they are.  At least float face down for a while after the bombs go off, fuck.  You have plenty of time to breathe when the cameras go to something else.

All the explosion matches are pretty fun, but if you buy a comp tape you get tired of the gimmick super fast.  You gotta mix that shit up or its 2 hours of Onita crying and it gets kind of annoying.

Matsunaga vs Yuki Ishikawa in Battlarts in a spike nail death match rules, but NOBODY FALLS ON THE FUCKING NAILS FOR THE WHOLE MATCH.  But it not delivering like that adds to the package.  You have to feel like that sometimes you're a danger to yourself watching these matches.  It may be the coolest thing ever.  It might fucking suck.  But when it fucking sucks at least you get to laugh at Miguelito Perez's body hair or something.  Walking carpet.

I feel like American big promotion death matches are often pretty fun when they distill what makes a death match good but never overdo it, because they can do really basic shit and the audience gets super fucking disturbed because they're not real Gs that watch this shit on the regOmega vs Moxley is the most recent one I can think of, but if you look at the Abyss/Sabu Barbed Wire Massacre, I think that was the perfect way to kind of go just far enough to make the TNA regulars in the audience ACTUALLY START CRYING LIKE LITTLE BABY BITCHES WHEN ABYSS GETS STABBED.  REAL TEARS.  IT'S FUCKING AMAZING.

 

I want to throw this one in for being fun and one that I was the most emotionally invested in.  Yes I organized the sign thing and am also in this video constantly as a result.  I was worried Vampiro was going over and wanted to make it really apparent that we were not down with that shit.

 

Edited by Tromatagon
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It wasn't as good live, which makes me really think about how much better a lot of death matches would be if you could just edit out all the setting up of spots and botched stuff.  Like everyone would have hated Penta/Vamp if the spot where Matt fucking Striker helped Vampiro set up a flaming table made the final match (they couldn't get it on fire though so we were saved from this)

Or them taking legit like 10 minutes to get the fucking ambulance into position for the stretcher job.  That sucked.

Edited by Tromatagon
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On 1/25/2020 at 2:03 AM, bazzil said:

Megumi Kudo vs Combat Toyota  5/5/96

On 1/26/2020 at 8:34 AM, NintendoLogic said:

Let me put it this way: Kudo vs. Toyoda is the greatest match I never want to see again.

Megumi Kudo vs. Shark Tsuchiya (Barbed Wire Match) 12/22/95

The match that makes the argument that the Muta Scale really should be called the Kudo Scale.

I think this is the greatest deathmatch that I never want to see again.  It took all of my courage just to cut and paste the YouTube link.

Edited by J.T.
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Great, I didn't know that existed, and now I have to watch it. 

First time I ever saw their Electrified BW match was on Stranglemania 2 where the idiots (ICP) repeated Combat getting dropped on her head a thousand times in a row while laughing their asses off. 

EDIT: Whoops, just noticed that it's Shark vs. Kudo! Nevermind, don't have to bother watching after all! 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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AEW's Women's division is like FMW's was, except less violent, and nobody has yet accepted Riho as their Megumi Kudo (or Nyla as the Combat Toyoda). Although once you take off the top two, I'd argue Statlander, Shida, Swole and Shanna are way better than Shark Tsuchiya and Rie Nakamura were.

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On 1/25/2020 at 9:03 AM, Ultimo Necro said:

The CZW / ROH cage of death is still my favourite to this day.  The atmosphere was incredible and the match has some amazing moments / spots.

That's my pick. My 2006 Match of the Year. Fucking amazing match.

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One of the most disturbing wrestling matches I've ever seen was Terry Funk vs. Sabu's no rope barbed wire match at ECW Born to be Wired 1997. Surprised I'm the firs to bring it up. Sabu tore his bicep open, taped it up mid-match and the ending with both wrestlers too tangled to get out of the barbed wire. I remember seeing a video on YouTube showing the post match and how long it took to free Sabu and Funk from entanglement.

Edited by The Natural
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That was a good match that’s up there. It’s underrated because it was many people’s first match that they watched just to see violence. Then them being bloodthirsty 90s teenies they were let down. 
 

Does the Muta scale match belong here? I think I saw that clipped to heck on VHS back in the day.

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It's just a big gig job. It's not a particularly violent match in terms of death match stuff. *imagines Hiroshi Hase lighting a chair on fire and going after Muta*

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Muta vs Hase is in full on the YouTube, if anyone hasn't seen it:

Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20PLexmMUu4

Part Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJW88Cx_8qs

Part Three: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKBgIQXGbks

 

Edited by AxB
Just saying 'it' instead of specifying what I was talking about
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What people never mention is that the Muta Scale match was a follow-up to a match two years earlier where Hase bladed just as enormously for Muta, so it was a trade-off storywise. If more people had seen that match or knew the history better there might not be a so-called "Muta Scale" at all, or maybe it'd be the "Hase Scale". 

Here are both of them: 

 

...and AxB got in right before me, but I'm not changing it haha.

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This reminded me that there was an Onita/Muta death match I'd never seen so I watched it... and boy, did it STINK. You know when you think of two intensely charismatic wrestlers who can do very little and get a huge reaction, you think of both those guys? Well they decided to go out there and do nothing. Mutoh comes out in his intensely lazy (outside of WCW) Muta persona with Onita as "Great Nita", which consists of him wearing facepaint and doing dumb shit like bouncing around the ring and spinning with his arms extended like a helicopter. Mutoh bumps into the exploding wire wearing his intro costume. Neither guy blades, despite them using a sickle as a weapon. THE RING EXPLOSION EVEN FIZZLES OUT! It wasn't as bad as the one in the IWA Japan Funk/Jack match but you can feel the crowd going "huh?" I mean it's the dirt worst and proves that you can shove every gimmick in the world into a match and if the performers don't sell and don't work then it'll just be a shitshow.

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All of Onita's NJPW death matches fucking sucked but the atmosphere for them all was fucking unreal.  You have to watch the entrances on YouTube since they're cut on NJPW world but Onita's entrances against Choshu and Chono in his little bitch vest are UNREAL.

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That brings up a point, I think the Muta match was part of that whole Onita-invades-NJ deal yet the match was held in WAR. Good luck getting heat from a fanbase who was technically neutral. 

Those entrances are great, those fans HATED him. It was some Hogan in WCW shit with fans throwing whatever they had at him. 

 

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This one...

It was like the best of the All Japan King’s Road style matches, and all the crazy light tube death matches from BJW at the time. This wasn’t the first match like it, but this one felt like a real athletic contest between two top athletes in their twisted field, where others felt like a freak show act in a hardcore fed.

I can’t believe it’s been almost 15 years. This match still feels revolutionary to me.

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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4 hours ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

This one...

It was like the best of the All Japan King’s Road style matches, and all the crazy light tube death matches from BJW at the time. This wasn’t the first match like it, but this one felt like a real athletic contest between two top athletes in their twisted field, where others felt like a freak show act in a hardcore fed.

I can’t believe it’s been almost 15 years. This match still feels revolutionary to me.

You skip the first page or do you have poor Pete on ignore?

I just lazily named dropped the match on the first page, but this was one of the best matches from the 2000s in general to me. I had only been watching BJW for a year or two at the time, but I dug the general work they did in death matches. The better ones worked similar to this, but none of them ever reached the same heights.

3 hours ago, For Great Justice said:

Not greatest death match but I’d argue Stop The Matsunaga is the best death match-related angle. Sadly the YouTube video providing an overview of the whole thing appears to have been taken down. 

The matches were nothing impressive, but I loved that story so much and wish someone would steal it again already. 

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I wish we could at least have Matsunaga vs. Yoshihito Sasaki on one of the streaming sites. That was everything the Stop the Matsunaga angle had been building up to and it was freaky and evil. Matsunaga even took a Burning Hammer into barbed wire FFS. 

EDIT: Here is Matsunaga vs. Onita because it rules

 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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