RIP Danny Havoc

Havoc, here at Cage of Death XVII handling Rickey Shane Page, passed away Sunday night
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein

Grant Berkland, better known as deathmatch legend Danny Havoc, passed away last night. Havoc was beloved by many a fan of the deathmatch style, a wrestler about whom few had a cross word to say, in or out of the ring. He was one of Combat Zone Wrestling's brightest stars for over a decade. Trained by both technical masters in Mike Quackenbush and Chris Hero and hardcore enthusiasts in DJ Hyde, Havoc showed the world that the lines between wrestling genres were often as much works as the stories they told in the ring.

Berkland came from a small town in Iowa where he partook in backyard wrestling with his friends, as many young fans inspired by the Monday Night Wars era of televised wrestling did at the turn of the millennium. He became enamored with CZW and drove east to participate in a tryout and train in the times before relations between Chikara and CZW became frosty. He debuted in CZW in 2005, adopted the name "Danny Havoc," and he began to blaze a trail that energized both CZW and deathmatch wrestling overall for over a decade. His feuds with Hyde, Sami Callihan, and the Cult Fiction faction were the stuff of legends. He also won the annual Tournament of Death, the company's open-air deathmatch slate, twice in his career. He became one of CZW's most enduring and entertaining wrestlers over his 12-year career with the company, which ended in 2017, where he preliminarily retired from wrestling.

As with any wrestling retirement, Havoc found the situation temporary as he returned to the ring in 2020 for Game Changer Wrestling, as most former wrestlers from CZW's heyday do nowadays. He worked GCW's tour of Japan, which occurred before the industry at-large shut down from COVID-19. However, Havoc's wife, Brianne, suddenly passed away from what was diagnosed as heart failure on April 4 of this year. Her death sent shockwaves through the community, one that almost immediately set up crowdfunding efforts to help Havoc get through the tough time. The cause of his death at present time is unknown. However, regardless of what caused his death, it has sparked an outpouring of grief and remembrance not just from his peers but from anyone who has ever watched him wrestle.

Havoc's passing is a blow for an entire community, an entire scene. Again, you couldn't find a soul who would say a cross word about him, true or false, because he what he meant to the fans he bled, sweat, and cried in front of, as titanic as it was, paled in comparison to what he meant to his peers and the people he influenced who came after him. Rest in peace, Grant Berkland. Rest in peace, Danny Havoc.