Photo source: @EarlWGardner

My Experience at GCW's Tournament of Survival 7

I found out about deathmatch wrestling around the beginning of the year. I was never a fan of WWE or professional wrestling as a kid, I never understood it. I would see clips and think it was weird to have two shirtless guys jump around in a ring. I would also hear stuff about it all being fake? My introduction to wrestling was on YouTube to old videos with thumbnails of bloodied faces, fiery explosions, and wild weapons. I remember scrolling through my recommendations on YouTube and seeing, this. I remember thinking this obviously was staged, but they are definitely taking real hits and falls. Why would they do this? When was this? Who let this happen? Why is it in a parking lot?

After discovering this I became enthralled with all deathmatches and professional wrestling. I was amazed at the showmanship and guts of guys like Nick Gage, Sick Nick Mondo, and Necro Butcher (Butcher also appears in “The Wrestler” 10/10 film). This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart, these guys are bleeding a lot and get hurt. There is a distinction between “deathmatches” and professional wrestling, deathmatches involve lots of weapons like barbed wire and light tubes, and fighters are usually bloodied every match. Deathmatches commonly do not have the drama and storylines that professional wrestling like WWE has, it is much more about the violence of the match itself. Professional wrestling outside of deathmatches is great, but it is not really relevant to this story as this is something completely unique.

Tournament of Survival 7 was organized by GCW. Game Changer Wrestling has seen lots of growth over the past few years. They hold wrestling events almost every weekend across the US, lots of their events are deathmatches. The current world champion is John Moxley, he is signed to AEW. I mentioned Nick Gage earlier, he has also appeared on AEW but is currently signed to GCW and is basically the face of the company. If you are a fan of deathmatches you probably love Nick Gage. GCW also worked with Matt Riddle, he is currently signed to WWE and fights tag team with legend Randy Orton. The future looks good for GCW, they have lots of young talent and earlier this year they held, “The WRLD on GCW” a sold-out show in New York City.

When I heard about Tournament of Survival 7 I knew I had to go, when I bought tickets they had not announced any participants but it was clear it would be deathmatches after looking at videos from the previous years. I didn’t know what to expect though, I didn’t even start to understand who was fighting until the week of the event. Everyone looked impressive and I had no idea who the front runner was, I was excited and nervous.

We arrived as the first fight of the evening was starting, Hoodfoot vs Rina Yamashita. Honestly, I was shocked they would have a huge black man fight a Japanese woman half his size. It was also interesting to see the Japanese woman win. They were both great, they wasted no time and started smashing light tubes over each other’s heads and slamming each other into the ground. My friends and I were all in shock, glass was flying all over. The first row of seats was definitely getting hit. It was extremely exciting.

Next up was Matt Tremont vs SLADE, all of my friends wanted Matt to win. This was an amazing fight too. This was Matt’s first match of the afternoon; he would end up fighting three. They took turns hitting each other with a bat covered in thumbtacks, both fighters are bald and we could clearly see a handful of tacks sticking into their heads.

Toru Sugiura vs Shane Mercer. I was excited to see both Toru and Yamashita as both of these fighters are based in Japan and briefly in the States for deathmatches. This was an exciting match and Toru won. Shane was cool to see, he was selling merch for the rest of the event and we met him and got pictures.

Drew Parker vs Cole Radrick. If I learned anything from the event, Cole Radrick is a future star. The crowd loved him and he really put out even though he lost. He showed up in a pair of all-white pants, he left and they were almost completely red. He flipped over Parker right in front of where we were sitting, that was probably my favorite moment of the night, check the video. Drew won. We also met Cole after and got pictures.

The next match was a 6 person scramble match, this was not a deathmatch. No disrespect to the fighters but after seeing the previous 4 matches I did not want to see anything less than shattered glass and blood.

Matt Tremont vs Toru Sugiura. This was by far the bloodiest match. Toru was profusely bleeding out of his face he started leaning on the ropes and yelling at the crowd. This match involved a piece of plywood with barbed wire on one side, Toru leaned the board on Matt with the barbed wire facing himself then proceeded to jump through it. It was a delight to watch Toru show off in his last match of the night as Matt won and moved on to the finals.

Drew Parker vs Rina Yamashita. I loved seeing Rina again her persona of being insane works. This match involved lots of panes of glass. The spot with Rina laying underneath a pane of glass and Drew flipping from the top rope was extremely impressive. Drew moves on to the finals after beating Rina.

Drew Parker vs Matt Tremont. When I walked into the venue I saw a 15-foot-tall piece of scaffold and said to my friends, “I really hope they use that.” I went to the bathroom in the break before the final match when I came out I was excited to see the scaffold moved to the ring and the event workers replacing the ropes with barbed wire. Sick Nick Mondo and Alex Colon came out to introduce the match. I was extremely happy to see Mondo, his fights in Tournament of Death 2 (Chronicled in extreme detail in this amazing video) are heavily responsible for my desire to go to ToS 7 and my love for deathmatches. The match was great, the excitement for Matt was huge, I think many were disappointed Matt lost. Drew is getting set up to be a superstar and it is definitely exciting, he earned a lot of respect from me not to mention he fought this entire tournament with an injury from the previous week. My favorite moment from this match was seeing Drew get a dart stabbed through his cheek then pull it out on the top of the scaffold and stab it into Matt’s forehead, truly insane stuff.

One thing that was never clear until going to this event is how much respect the fighters have for each other, when a fighter would lose the crowd would go into a “Please come back!” chant. Go see a wrestling match if you’ve never been, watch some videos on any of these fighters, you will be impressed. Thanks to everyone whose footage I linked in this article, shoutout to BlakeO561 it was cool to see you at the event, thanks to my friends who came along and made the trip 100x better. If you want to watch the entire event you can purchase the replay here.