Hardcore wrestling
Taking place in usual or unusual environments, hardcore wrestling matches allow the use of numerous items, including ladders, tables, chairs, thumbtacks, barbed wire, light tubes, shovels, glass, baseball bats (sometimes wrapped in barbed wire) and other improvised weapons used as foreign objects.
As professional wrestling entered the mid 20th century, promoters and performers looked for ways to heighten audience excitement.
Blood, while initially taboo, was found to be a significant draw, and the advent of the now common "no holds barred" match marked the beginning of what is now known as hardcore wrestling.
During the 1950s and 1960s wrestlers such as "Wild Bull" Curry, "Classy" Freddie Blassie, Dory Funk, Sr. and Giant Baba were among those who introduced the bloody brawling style which caught on in Japan and the American South.
The Detroit territory was home to The Sheik, Abdullah the Butcher and Bobo Brazil, and featured long, bloody brawls.
The Memphis territory featured Jerry Lawler, Terry Funk, Eddie Gilbert and Bill Dundee and introduced the empty arena match and fighting among the crowd into the concession stands, improvising attacks with whatever appliances could be found.
In the early 1990s, the Puerto Rican promoter Víctor Quiñones arrived in Japan, being invited to FMW as the special manager.
The Philadelphia-based Tri-State Wrestling Alliance held occasional supercards that featured big name stars among their own local talent, and showcased wild bloody main event brawls with Abdullah the Butcher, The Sheik, Jesse James Sr. and others.
In ECW, 'hardcore' referred to a strong work ethic, high levels of effort, dedication to the fans, and lack of fluff or filler.
Sabu had developed a gimmick of throwing himself through a propped-up table in Japan in order to entertain the crowd and get his character over as a wild and possibly insane man.
New elements included fluorescent light tubes, scattered thumb tacks, flaming ropes and live piranhas.
Most of the wrestlers who competed in these deathmatches, including some non-FMW rosters such as Shinobu Kandori, Lioness Asuka, and Mayumi Ozaki,[3][5] were sent to the hospital afterwards.
For example, Street Fights and Bunkhouse Brawls are hardcore-style matches which emphasize that wrestlers need not be in typical wrestling gear when they are battling, while the No Holds Barred match emphasizes the no-disqualification rule, the "HardKore X-Treme matches are the version of hardcore rules match except weapons include flaming tables, flaming chairs, flaming weapons, razor wire, sheets of glass, and weapons that are covered in barbed wire, and Deathmatches that emphasize fluorescent light tubes, panes of glass, barbed wire, fire, thumbtacks, razor blades, gusset plates, syringes, needles, explosives, bed of nails, staple guns, concrete blocks, alive piranhas and all other foreign objects to provoke extreme and heavy bleeding.
The GHC Openweight Hardcore Championship had a unique stipulation in that if a challenger who was outweighed by the champion survived 15 minutes, he won the match and the title.
