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Death trash weapons12/12/2023 ![]() ![]() Tanky recalls one match where a fighter got sliced across the neck: “He was bleeding really bad, but kept going ‘til the fight was done. While fighters are not meant to harbor actual malice for one another and actual Death Match deaths are extremely rare, the fights can be legitimately dangerous, despite the presence of doctors and medics. ![]() On the East Coast, where interest is strongest, fights draw crowds in the hundreds in Southern California, the audience tends to range from about 20 people to 75. In 2001, the ECW folded, but independent promoters began putting on similar events, called Death Matches, usually held in empty warehouses and VFW halls, with little governance from any central league office or local authorities. followed suit, and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was born.Īt first, the ECW’s fights were concentrated in Philadelphia, the New York metro area, and Detroit, but soon spread west, and the league’s popularity exploded once its fights began to be broadcast nationally on Spike TV (known at the time as TNN). In the years that followed, promoters in the U.S. The birth of Death Matches is often traced to the early 1990s, when a Puerto Rican fight promoter named Victor Quiñones moved to Japan and introduced a series of hardcore wrestling bouts which boasted frightening new weapons-baseball bats with barbed wire, fluorescent light bulbs, even live piranhas-and as a result, were frequently awash in blood. Of course, he is not making a Stradivarius but an improvised instrument of war that someone will soon use to whack another human being bloody. But despite his hard-edge taste in music, Tanky approaches his craft with the artistry, care, and intricate technique of a violin builder. “I’m not exactly a Simon and Garfunkel kind of guy,” he smirks. suburbs is a small, tin storage shack that Hellraiser Radio, a popular wrestling podcast, has christened “Tanky’s Twisted Toolshed.” In the weeks leading up to a fight, a visitor might find Tanky leaning over his workbench, surrounded by the tools of his trade: razor wire, bags of thumbtacks, duct tape, scissors, pliers, a hot glue gun, and a staple gun he’s nicknamed “Bitch.” Most nights, as he works on his weapons, Tanky blasts a headbanging playlist of horror-core rap-D-12, Bizarre, Hopsin, Tech N9ne-though, if he’s in a “mellow” mood, he’ll rock out to Slipknot instead. The workshop behind his house in the East L.A. Tanky builds his weapons mainly at night, once his daughters have gone to bed and his girlfriend has left for her overnight shift working the register at a local Von’s grocery store. Tanky, 28, has become famous in Death Match circles for his devilish, inventive creations: tomahawks made with splintered CDs a cane converted into a wicked scythe a Super Soaker speckled with outward-facing thumbtacks, eager to bury themselves in an opponent’s skin. He is Cayetano “Tanky” Reyna, and his role here is vital-he’s the one who crafted these weapons. One fighter lifts a wooden baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, the other wields a club slathered in shards of broken glass, and the two men begin circling each other, talking playfully vicious smack: “Only thing you’d win is an Ugly Contest!” As violence looms, the crowd urges them on, while a stout, big-bearded man in the back of the room surveys the scene through fashionable, octagonal glasses, his face a mix of rapt curiosity and unabashed delight. The two men are not boxers or mixed martial arts fighters-they’re competitors in a series of gory, small-time wrestling bouts known as Death Matches, where fighters with names like Homeless Jimmy, Chewy, Danny Havoc, and Kyle The Beast bludgeon each other with terrifying homemade weapons, some designed and created by the fans themselves. ![]() On Halloween night, a few weeks back, in a dank, dimly-lit Elks Lodge in the blue-collar Los Angeles suburb of Downey, two brawny men step into a ring, ready for combat, as a crowd of 50, thirsty for blood, howls in anticipation. A collection of homemade weapons made for Death Matches by Southern California talent Tanky. ![]()
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