British Monsoon
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-889wIU2IQ
Tournament of Death XIV
That's right, friends. It's the most UltraViolent month of the year, as Combat Zone Wrestling engages in their annual Tournament of Death. This year, the fourteenth year the tournament has been run, CZW head to a field in Delaware on June 13th so nine men can compete in the most UltraViolent professional wrestling tournament known to humanity. Blood will be shed, bodies will be broken, but one man will emerge victorious and earn his place in the annals of UltraViolent history!
Let's run through the participants. Top left is Josh Crane, an IWA guy trained by Drake Younger (current NXT referee Drake Wurtz) who's making his CZDub debut. Directly below him is Connor 'The Wrench' Claxton. You can tell because he has a wrench in his mouth. He's some CZW young boy who had to win a bunch of death match trials to earn a place in the tournament. He thought it'd be a great idea to challenge the man top centre, Nick F'n Gage, a veritable CZW legend and the only convicted criminal taking part in this year's TOD, just a few short months out of his prison stint for armed robbery. The douche with the glasses is Danny Havoc, leader of the Nation of Intoxication. To the right of him is Jake Crist, part of OI4K. I have no idea what that's an acronym for. Far right is Ron Matthis and directly below him is Rickey Shane Page, but that picture's got to be at least three years old. The two in the bottom middle are 'Bulldozer' Matt Tremont and CZW Owner 'The Deej' DJ Hyde. What a line-up. Here's the card;
. Tournament of Death - 1st Round: DJ Hyde vs Connor Claxton vs Nick Gage
. Tournament of Death - 1st Round: Matt Tremont vs Josh Crane
. Tournament of Death - 1st Round: Ron Mathis vs Jake Crist
. Tournament of Death - 1st Round: Rickey Shane Page vs Danny Havoc
. Non-Tournament Scaffold Match: Devon More vs Dave Crist
. Non-Tournament LOL (Ladders, Orange Sacks & Legos) Deathmatch: Lucky 13 vs Eric Ryan
The show will be available as a delayed iPPV shortly after the event finishes.
History of UltraViolence
If you listen to that fuck Pat Patterson, he'll tell you that he and Sgt. Slaughter invented 'hardcore' with their Alley Fight match at Madison Square Garden in 1981. While a very bloody match indeed, the act of purposefully bleeding to heighten the emotion of a wrestling match had been going on for a long time. In Lou Thesz's book he talks about his disgust for early gimmick wrestlers in the 30's & 40's who relied on bloodshed to get a reaction, but couldn't wrestle worth a damn, while in later years the Texas Deathmatch and other stipulations that could heighten the chance for bloodshed became increasingly popular. The Sheik (uncle to the homicidal, suicidal, genocidal, death-defying maniac, Sabu) would make his name with prototypical deathmatch wrestling in the 1960's, via his Detroit territory that saw him as the strangely popular Syrian madman who the crowd loved to see bite and stab his opponents into bloody submission. It was arguably the world's first 'hardcore' territory. The next would appear half a world away in 1980's Japan. when a young man named Atsushi Onita formed Frontier Martial-Arts wrestling, bringing "garbage wrestling" to the forefront of the Japanese industry. Through FMW Onita would establish many of the mainstay concepts of Deathmatch wrestling and provide the blueprints for the art form of UltraViolence, innovating with stipulations like the world's first Exploding Barbed Wire match and with women's deathmatches involving the hugely popular Megumi Kudo.
FMW's influence would inspire other promotions to follow suit, such as IWA Japan who in 1995 hosted the legendary Kawasaki Dream King of the Deathmatch tournament that made Cactus Jack a star in Japan and the world over. The influence of FMW & IWA Japan spread to the US with Extreme Championship Wrestling, although it favoured a greater application of 'hardcore' concepts to regular wrestling matches, rather than all-out deathmatch stipulations - but that's not to say ECW didn't innovate there, holding no-rope barbedwire matches and Taipei deathmatches that became notorious and inspired further generations of deathmatch wrestlers. One such man, John Zandig, was an aspiring Ultimate Warrior rip-off going by the name The Icon who used to dress up in his wrestling gear and go to ECW shows as a fan, trying to get himself booked. But Zandig found that ECW wasn't as welcoming as he had hoped and, besides, they couldn't have grasped the concepts of UltraViolence that were just beginning to swirl through his brain. So, in 1999, John Zandig formed Combat Zone Wrestling and became The Icon of UltraViolence, quickly developing a reputation for CZW as the bloodiest promotion in the US of A with the notorious annual Cage of Death event and, later, the Tournament of Death.
I guess I should also mention IWA Mid-South, BronsonLee's favourite promotion. In 1996, after being fired from ECW, Ian Rotten and his 'brother' Axl Rotten founded IWA Mid-South and they became the first promotion to bring Japanese deathmatch concepts to America, but much of the pre-2000's IWA-MS footage is lost.
Reviews
Throughout the month of June WrassleGAFers will be subjecting themselves to a number of deathmatch shows for your pleasure and here are the first few reviews;
. CZW - Tournament of Death III, part 1 - review by Vince McMahon
. CZW - Tournament of Death IX, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 - review by Nocturnowl
. CZW - Tournament of Death XIII, part 1 - review by Dangerblade
. IWA Deep South - Carnage Cup VII - review by Strobogo
. FMW Explosion Pool Deathmatch - review by Strobogo
. IWA Japan Nail Hell Deathmatch - review by Strobogo
GIFs
What UltraViolent OT would be complete without GIFs? Some may be NSFW, NSFA or NSFL, so I'll link them in the name of decency;
I bet you're thinking it can't get any dumber than that, right? Well...
LOL
Mmmmmmm, arterial blood.
Also, fuck that.
http://i.imgur.com/MBuwq11.gif
This is that NSFL GIF I mentioned, enjoy; http://i.imgur.com/HG3zPEh.gif
The UltraViolent power of The Zandig in unquenchable;
Somebody Ran Over Zandig's Car
Non-UltraViolence
Yeah, there's also some non-UltraViolent stuff going on this month;
JEEEEZUS!!
