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| One dumb stunt should not condemn all of deathmatch wrestling |
There are two statements that are both true and that I think people would be best served to remember when talking about deathmatch wrestling:
- Deathmatch wrestling is not for everyone.
- Deathmatch wrestling is no less safe than any other kind of wrestling.
The worst damage the people who misunderstand the first statement do is maybe post a video on Twitter without an appropriate content warning for gore. Is watching someone get staked on the crown of their head with a bunch of wooden skewers gross for the uninitiated? Yes. Is it really hurting anyone long-term? My guess is no, but I also am not privy to what people talk about with their therapists. I also believe fullstop in content warnings and think everyone on Twitter should err on the side of caution when they think they should use one. Lesson learned.
People who misunderstand the second one tend to cause panics. Now, deathmatch wrestling in its current form has been around for 25 years, give or take a year or so. Frontier Martial Arts, the first ever deathmatch promotion, introduced the world to barbed wire, explosions, and all kinds of other goodies. No one really calls Extreme Championship Wrestling deathmatch wrestling, nor should they. They were on the bleeding edge of hardcore, yes, but the true inheritors of FMW in America were companies like Combat Zone Wrestling and IWA Mid-South, the ones who really took the ball from Atsushi Onita and ran with it to varying degrees of success. Safe to say, the ones clutching pearls have not won and they do not look like they're winning.
However, all it really takes is one dumbass to do an ill-advised spot, or for two wrestlers to engage in an otherwise safe spot that goes awry, and the ones who clutch pearls will maybe get the ear of the right shithead local assemblyperson, state senator, or national congressperson and get the ball rolling on regulation to limit or outright ban deathmatch wrestling. The latest spot of interest took place at a Pro Wrestling Trainwreck show, night one of the Southern Sickness Cup this past Friday. Eric Ryan, whom many might know from his days in the Cleveland-based Absolute Intense Wrestling territory, lit JJ Allin's crotch on fire.The fire was exacerbated after Ryan hit the engulfed area with a weed whacker, and Allin had to run out of the building in order to put it out. Allegedly, they were told not to do the stunt, promised they wouldn't, and they did it anyway.
I'm not going to defend that particular spot because the execution of it seemed reckless from the start. Ryan has been around the block several times. Allin seems to be a newcomer to the scene, but his concern on Twitter feels more concerned with the fact that videos of the spot have gone viral rather than any lasting damage to his body. Regardless, lighter fluid and uncontrolled fire feel like a bad combination at a wrestling show without a fire extinguisher immediately available to put it out. I wouldn't have done this spot even if I were a deathmatch wrestler who regularly had light tubes bashed over my head and thumbtacks jabbed into my back. The chance of the building going up in flames enough might have kept me from doing it, as if I were the kind of person who regularly had light tubes bashed over my head and thumbtacks jabbed into my back, the idea of my dick and balls being lit on fire might not have been the non-starter as it would have if me, as-situated right now, would have been posed with that stunt.
The thing is though, these wrestlers do not think about what can go wrong, because thinking about what can go wrong means you don't want the brass ring enough. I'm not saying it's a healthy mindset, but that mindset gets fostered from a place higher than their own sense of self-preservation. Even promoters at the lower levels of pro wrestling want their guys to go for it so they can get prestige among their peers and, more importantly, money from fans, be it in the form of ticket sales, post-event media sales, merchandise, or money garnered from views on streaming services like Independent Wrestling TV. Even if they don't have resources to ensure wrestler safety like WWE or All Elite Wresting do, they're going to try so much that wrestlers won't believe them when they're told something's too dangerous. Is it right? No. But there's also a lot of unraveling to do to change the mindsets across the board in all of wrestling, where views and money are paramount.
In this respect, the call to ban deathmatch wrestling because of one stupid spot that is tacitly encouraged is flimsy to say the least because deathmatch wrestling, again, is not inherently less safe than regular wrestling. If this one spot, which was dangerous and stupid, don't get me wrong, is worthy of putting the kibosh on an entire genre of wrestling, then perhaps the then-World Wrestling Federation should have been shuttered when Owen Hart plummeted to his death from an even stupider stunt that was advised against by professional riggers and then ignored by one Vince McMahon. Or perhaps WWE should have been shut down when Chris Benoit, suffering effects from countless headbutts he delivered from the top rope and unprotected chairshots he took to the head, killed himself and two other innocent people. Those two incidents were caused flagrantly by WWE's wanton disregard for wrestler safety.
If you want to make an arguments against those two assertions, congratulations, you are now in the same boat as every deathmatch wrestling fan who has to deal with this bullshit every time someone almost gets really hurt in an incident. It's always almost with deathmatches, perhaps because the competitors, who are unfairly maligned as the worst and scummiest of the business, know how dangerous their trappings can be and are careful with each other and themselves. Even with the worst incidents like with Nick Gage accidentally slicing David Arquette too deep with a lightbulb shot, it's always *almost* with deathmatches. I get the idea of needing to police near-misses to prevent worse incidents, but it would be unfair to single out deathmatches when so much death, destruction, and hurt have been purveyed in so-called "safer" wrestling.
The thing about wrestling is that it is not safe in the least. The only safe spot is a Shane McMahon punch. Everything else has the danger of injury trying to tread a delicate balance between looking real and actually being real. Strikes have to be pulled just right so as not to land flush and cause real impact, and this goes for everything from the most old-school of old-school punches from someone like Jerry Lawler to sophisticated MMA and martial arts-inspired strikes from neophyte wrestlers. Most wrestlers will tell you the worst thing you can do is take a flat-back bump, and wrestlers are taking them three, four, five, six, or more times a night, sometimes four nights a week when a company like WWE is not under COVID-19 restrictions and are able to tour. That adds up to put guys in wheelchairs before they hit 50. Coupled with the sharp neck bumps that are common not only in Japanese promotions but now in WWE and AEW, there is absolutely no way one can say that repeated neck and back trauma is in any way, shape, or form. Can you bleed out from being cut too deep? Yes, but that has happened in non-deathmatch scenarios.
Conversely, looking at the incidents that HAVE happened in non-deathmatch scenarios, the sheer amount of death that has happened in the ring, because one guy dying in the ring is too much, makes anyone saying something that doesn't involve blood and weapon-violence the pot calling the kettle black. Mitsuharu Misawa died taking a routine back suplex. Perro Aguayo, Jr. landed the wrong way from bumping on a dropkick landing on the ropes. Gary Albright died taking an Ace crusher where it's arguable that the impact from said move triggered the myocardial infarction that took his life. Furthermore, Peter Kaasa suffered a career-ending injury wrestling for EVOLVE in a ring that was unsafe to work in, something that promoter Gabe Sapolsky may or may not have known about sending him out to work inside of it. Then there are the wrestlers like Darren Drozdov who got paralyzed in the ring on freak accidents. A mere fraction of this blood and pain has visited deathmatch wrestling, but people would have you believe that one form of wrestling is more dangerous than the other, and it would be the wrong fucking answer.
I don't know how many times I have to say that you cannot paint with a broad brush in anything, let alone wrestling. One dumb stunt where the wrestler didn't even appear to get hurt, let alone anyone else in the building, does not condemn the entire genre any more than a single cracked foundation should condemn an entire city block of houses. I must repeat myself. Deathmatch wrestling is not for everyone. Deathmatch wrestling is no less safe than any other kind of wrestling. Just because you may happen to fall under the former sentence doesn't mean you have to believe the second one is a lie.
