- Yeah!
- You want violence?
You want it? I don't hear you?
- Pencils?
Syringes.
- Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,
holy shit, holy shit.
Please don't die, please don't die, please don't die.
- Fuck you!
- C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub,
C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub.
- Within the universe of professional wrestling,
deathmatch is the often maligned stepchild,
criticized for being a vulgar and unnecessary preoccupation
for sick fans and untalented wrestlers.
It rarely breaks out of the underground.
Yet deathmatch has endured for decades.
I'm curious to learn why wrestlers continue
to evolve this style far from the spectacle and fame
of the main stage.
The origin of deathmatch wrestling lies in the hardcore
brawling style of Terry Funk.
His matches utilze chairs, baseball bats, and bloody faces
positioning it squarely at oddds with the cartoonish spandex
world coporate wrestling was promoting.
This new level of spectacle had a major impact on the young and
impressionable wrestler from Japan.
Atsushi Onita is a legendary deathmatch wrestler.
Credited for inventing and bringing deathmatch wrestling
to Japan, with the help of the genre's godfather,
Terry Funk.
The god himself.
The bat of Onita.
This is like wrestling history in my hands right now,
and I would like to buy it, sir.
How can you put a price on a piece
of deathmatch wrestling history?
That's exactly what I'm gonna say to my wife
when she says, how could spend that much money
on a used, blood-covered baseball bat?
I'm sorry, Lauren.
I was wondering if you could do me a favour,
and autograph this piece of wrestling history?
Onita took what Terry Funk had pioneered
in the United States and evolved hardcore wrestling
into the theatrical bloodbath
that is today's deathmatch wrestling.
- Prior to what you saw in Memphis, there was no blood
in Japanese wrestling at that time, right?
- Absolutely, punk rock for life.
Onita's creation brought about a new level of theatrics
and adrenaline to a sport that seemingly had no bounds,
and from this chaos rose a new and heightened dynamic
for wrestlers to contend with in a quest
to satiate their audiences.
- When I watched Onita as a teenager,
he was more than just a wrestler to me.
When I watched his matches,
I thought I was watching a movie.
To me, he's the greatest storyteller of all time,
him and Terry Funk.
- Do you think, as a genre, it's misunderstood
by people and they don't see the storytelling
that's being given to them?
- All the time.
They just look at it as garbage wrestling.
It's just blood and guts.
There is bad hardcore wrestling,
and there is good hardcore wrestling.
And there's bad hardcore workers,
and there's good hardcore workers.
Masada, Danny Havoc, Onita, Terry Funk,
those are the good ones.
And then there's the bad one that just go in there
and hit each other with no psychology and no story
and no build.
- People think that because you're a deathmatch wrestler,
you're not trained or you don't know how to wrestle.
Like a lot of these guys are legit wrestlers,
they just love deathmatch wrestling.
- So yea, do you consider yourself a deathmatch wrestler,
or are you just a wrestler?
- I'm just a wrestler that does deathmatches.
- Okay.
- We just go in there and tell very violent stories.
A little different from everybody else,
but red equals green at the end of the day.
- Cage of death, Cage of death,
Cage of death, Cage of death.
- What do you think sets apart a deathmatch fan
from just any other fan of wrestling?
- It's the ultimate fuck you.
Fuck you to the establishment.
Fuck you to conventional wrestling
or conventional society.
We've created our own genre.
- So you said we there.
What is the group that you're speaking for when you say we.
- The wrestlers.
It's that connection that I feel with them.
Now I know they're a different breed than I am,
but they kinda look like me.
I can say, hey, maybe I could do it.
- Non-deathmatch wrestlers
rarely decide to do deathmatches.
It's even rarer for a wrestler like Shane Strickland,
one of the biggest talents in indie wrestling,
to get in on the ultraviolence.
I gotta ask you why you're doing this to yourself, Shane.
- Because people don't expect me to.
I want to always show that I can
do a little bit of everything.
This new generation, we've been around the world,
we have experience in all aspects of styles of wrestling.
We are the hybrid, we can do everything.
There's nothing we can't do.
- God!
- Oh shit, oh man.
- Do it, baby, do it.
- Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,
holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
- Do you think this is gonna hurt Shane's career
by doing this?
Is other companies gonna look down on him?
- I don't think it does.
If anything, it makes him come off as the most-rounded
wrestler on the scene today.
- I'm afraid he's gonna hit.
- That wood?
- Yeah.
- Holy shit!
- C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub
C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub.
- Yeah, that was unexpected.
- C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub.
- There has to be good wrestling at that core.
- Like most things Japanese, the training
for deathmatch wrestlers in Japan requires a
certain refinement and dedication to the form
that you see nowhere else in the world.
- Here at Freedoms, promoter and trainer,
Takashi Sasaki builds these wrestlers
with all the working knowledge and foundation
of a conventional wrestler,
and treats the violent genre with all the seriousness
of a high art form.
Why is it so important to have this foundation
for all your wrestlers in Freedoms?
- That glass is flying dangerously close.
- Very close.
- When do you kinda think deathmatch first came to Japan?
- Wrestling in Japan was always very dependent on America.
Onita was very heavily influenced by what happened
more in the 70s.
Memphis being that innovative, violent territory.
That came into Japan, and they added their own twist on it.
What people think is that pro wrestling started here
and it was exported to America.
It's not the case.
- Violento Jack is a masked deathmatch luchador
from Tabasco, Mexico.
Lucha extrema as it's known in his home country
is a very niche genre within Mexican wrestling.
Jack has traveled all the way to Japan
to live out his ultraviolent dream.
What was it about Japanese deathmatch
that made you want to come here as opposed
to going to America or staying in Mexico?
- It's that fighting spirit, the burning spirit.
- Nobody has felt it more than 43 year old Jun Kasai,
aka Crazy Monkey.
He is a seemingly indestructible machine,
who's transcended the underground to become
a full-blown star in Japan.
- What do you think the fans get out of watching deathmatch?
- Oh my God!
- Oh no!
- Here?
- Okay.
- But this would be something that the audience
would be very familiar with?
- Does it hurt less when you get hurt by a weapon
that you know was made with love by your wife?
- The crowd just goes to, like, next gear
when Jun Kasai comes in the ring.
It's like a board of yakitori skewers.
- Oh my God!
- Do you wish that Jun had followed his passion
into another style of wrestling and maybe
steered away from deathmatch?
- Have you ever thought of what was gonna happen
when one day Jun decides he doesn't want
to wrestle anymore?
- So congratulations on your new little one.
What's her name?
- Do you hope that one day she goes into joshi?
- Mmm.
- Kasai, Kasai, Kasai,
Kasai, Kasai!
Kasai, Kasai, Kasai!
- What do you think every time a wrestler comes up to you
and tells you you inspired them
to get into deathmatch wrestling.
- Kasai, Kasai, Kasai!
- Danny Havoc burst onto the deathmatch scene
at the tender age of 18. Making a name for himself in a series
of increasingly bloody matches.
His dedication to the Japanese Japanese style of deathmatch
combining technical wrestling maneuvers
with ultraviolent weaponry, built him a loyal fanbase
that few wrestlers achieve.
- I remember the exact moment that I felt like
I knew this was what I was gonna do.
I was sitting on my couch in Iowa with my cousin.
We were watching a CZW show called Un-F'n-Believable.
And Jun Kasai was over from Japan and did some really
shocking and horrific things.
- Oh my goodness!
Oh, did you see what happened?
- I said, this is not in Japan,
this is not across the world.
This is happening in my country, 20-some hours away.
I could conceivably graduate and go do this,
that's what I want.
And from that point on,
I pursued that goal single-mindedly.
The first match I had, the ring was just littered
with little pieces of broken glass.
The level of blood loss and the amount of cuts,
it was a bit of a shock.
I remember my ex saying that she could smell the iron
of the blood before I unlocked the door
and came into her apartment.
I suppose an argument could be made that the people
who are fans of this are sadistic in some way.
I've never felt like the people who come up to the table
and wanna buy a t-shirt or wanna chat and take a picture
were there to see me get hurt.
- Thank you, thank you for everything you've done.
- Appreciate it.
Overcoming the odds and the risk,
I think that's where the appeal lies for most of the fans.
- Appreciate it man. Thank you.
- What was it about this violence that you think
you found so appealing?
- Well, it's kinda personal.
Like I was in my mid-20s and I was going through,
just a different time in my life.
Actually, I had to stop cold turkey drugs and alcohol,
and like, that wasn't the easiest thing,
and that early sobriety, I was a pretty angry person,
and this just gave me an outlet.
I think violence, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.
You know, random violence is not welcome,
but when it's between consenting adults,
it's okay, because you look at mixed martial arts,
you look at any kind of sports, it's watered-down war,
so we have outlets to fulfill that thing that's inside us,
and I was at a point where I wasn't afraid to suppress it.
I cultivated it.
- 95 to 98% of the people avidly following it
are working-class, blue collar, hardworking people
who need to let off a little steam
at the end of a hard week.
- What do you think the audience is getting
out of the violence when they come to a show like this?
- I can only speak from my own experience,
like, do you ever watch Jackass?
- Mm-hm.
- The balls that people have got to do this shit,
the mentality behind why we do it,
and I think just the absolute spectacle of everything,
and the shock value, it's a live-action stunt show,
and I think that is,
and I don't think, I hope no wants to see anyone
actually get physically and properly hurt.
You wanna see people do this and get up and walk again
and go okay, cool.
The stunt has gone well.
- What the fuck are they doing?
Oh my God!
- Wow!
- Holy Shit!
Oh my God!
- When you're watching a deathmatch, what's the most
exciting weapon for you to see them bring out?
- Is there ever a point where you've thought,
this is going too far or this has gone too far
in terms of the violence?
- You were thinking about dying in the ring?
- After 13 years of constant physical abuse,
Danny has decided to exit the ring at the age of 31.
He's invited us to witness his Viking funeral,
one final match at CZW headquarters
against long time rival, Alex Colon.
- So, do we wanna do the Spanish Fly before that?
- No.
That's the end.
Do they have the big ladder, or are they over here
finagling with little kiddie ladders?
- I think they have a big ladder,
but I think the match before us is a ladder match, so.
- I don't care.
- Well I'm saying, if that gets damaged,
there goes our plan.
- This has been christened
the Viking funeral match.
- Whatever that is.
- Whatever that is, but- Well, tell me what that is,
what is this match to you?
- Honestly, I think it's the most important match
of my wrestling career.
Like, this is not just for me,
this is for someone who I find to be like a real good friend
of mine, who's really stuck his neck out for me
and stuck up for me in good times and bad times,
and he's probably the real reason why I'm still
honestly part of this company, so this means as much to me
as it does to him.
- Alex is unbelievably talented
and we are by and large very close and that allows us
to trust each other enough to do fairly horrible things.
- What we do, at least from a deathmatch perspective
is very taboo.
Like a lot of professional wrestlers look down
upon people who do this stuff 'cause they feel like
it's unnecessary, it's way past being violent,
it's not for normal society.
- To the uninitiated, deathmatch can come across
as pure chaos, but there's a deep psychological element
to the choice of weapons and the violence
that plays out in the ring.
- It's not that we're just stringing some barbed wire
together on some things and throwing guys in things
and breaking tables.
There's an art form behind it.
There's a direct mentality of how he's trying
to accomplish his vision.
When challenges arise, it really hurts his vision.
Like, we had the challenge with the glass today.
They're still short a pane of glass
of what they originally planned,
and that has to adjust his vision.
If you look at the drawings
and how he draws things up, it's specified.
- Glass, glass, glass, glass.
45 to 50% of the weapons that I constructed in some way
involve panes of glass.
The powers that be is how we shall refer to DJ,
he waited until like a few days ago to order the glass,
so I'm already stressed, already trying to mentally
prepare myself for this big match that has a lot riding
on it for me personally, and I get a call like,
four hours ago, all the glass is gone now.
Our main man, the guy who puts together all these
tremendous contraptions, he is currently
at his own house disassembling a storm door
that separates his kitchen from the foyer.
- Got it?
- Yep.
- Ooh, now, is it, do we feel it's the right kind of glass?
- God bless America.
- Hopefully I get a raise out of this.
- Yeah.
Well at the very least, you can get DJ to buy you
a new storm door.
- Oh whoa.
- I don't like the glass on the metal.
- Anybody else breaks this glass but you,
I'm gonna fucking kill 'em.
- Why is this the last match?
Why is it important for you to end it tonight?
- I see the writing on the wall that the physical damage
I have done, it's catching up with me.
I have a degenerative spinal condition
brought on 100% by wrestling.
It's not yet at the point where I'm physically stooped over,
but it is worsening and it is exacerbated
with each of these crazy dangerous stunts
that I put myself through.
- What do you wanna see happen tonight?
What do you hope the fans watching walk away with?
What do you hope their take away is tonight?
- I want people to remember it.
Matches come and go.
With this, I just want this to be a memory.
I want this to be a memory at least for somebody
in the crowd.
I want somebody to see me one day and be like,
"Hey, I remember that match you had with Danny Havoc
and it stuck in my mind for a very long time."
I just want it to mean something to somebody.
- When I watch myself back, I watch my recent performances.
I see the things that I can't physically do
as well I used to.
I don't think that I can do it month in, month out
routinely up to the standards that I want
to hold myself to, so I would rather get out
before I start to regret sticking around.
- For guys that are new here and guys
that haven't been here long,
if you don't know who Danny Havoc is,
Danny Havoc is fucking CZW.
There would never be a CZW if it wasn't for Danny Havoc.
Danny Havoc is a guy that should be
one of the biggest stars in the world right now.
- So the boys chipped in.
We hear you like booze.
There's some pictures in here to celebrate your career
as well as some money for your marriage upcoming.
- Thank you.
- And over 50 cards from fans, the boys, promoters, man.
So we love you and don't forget.
- Thank you guys, thank you very much.
That's really sweet, thank you.
- Alright, let's get to work.
Let's get to work.
- Okay guys, standing room only.
I got two tickets left.
- What role do you think the work that you did,
the wrestling, the deathmatches, play in these people's lives?
- I've met most of these people.
I've chatted with them in the parking lot.
They've gotten to watch me essentially grow up.
I was 18 when I started this.
If these people are long time CZW fans
they've watched a coming of age tale
through barbed wire and light tubes.
Over the last 12 and a half years, you know.
Does two more set up enough?
- Yeah.
- Call it a couple more times before we go out.
At a certain age, most young men are invariably drawn
to things that they would term, badass.
I wanted to be badass desperately,
and I felt that deathmatch wrestling was very badass.
I've always termed myself durable.
Most people haven't been flung into barbed wired.
Most people probably haven't had a fluorescent ceiling light
smashed over their dome.
♪ Felt drunk, a loaded gun, swing it up high ♪
♪ I ripped it out of your hand ♪
♪ We can both climb high, or fry dead in the sand ♪
♪ We've all been waiting to find what we need ♪
♪ We've been waiting to find
♪ Our situations all align
♪ Yeah
- Oh shit!
- C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub
C-Z-Dub, C-Z-Dub.
♪ We've all been waiting
♪ To find
♪ We've all been waiting
♪ To find
- There it is.
The oh shit sandwich.
It looks strikingly like Danny's diagram of it.
Oh shit!
That was awesome!
Danny Havoc!
- Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex.
- And god damn it, I'm an unathletic kid
from the middle of Iowa,
and the fact that I got to be out here
and entertain all you people for almost 13 years
makes me as happy as I can possibly be.
Alex, thank you for the crazy ass series of matches
that we put on over the last few years.
I'm very proud of everything we've done
in the ring together.
Goodnight!
- Ladies and gentlemen, Danny Havoc.
- Was it what you hoped it would be?
Was it what you thought of when you were planning it out?
- Yes.
I enjoy violence and that's probably
not a normal thing to say, but I do.
Pro wrestling enables you to get that out.
You're exorcizing some demons and then you go back,
you give them a big hug, and you say, that was awesome,
we killed it.
It's a feel good way to do something violent
and otherwise potentially very negative.
Kasai! Kasai! Kasai!
Thank you Havoc!
Kasai! Kasai! Kasai!
Thank you Havoc!
Kasai! Kasai! Kasai!
Thank you Havoc!