The Hardcore World of Deathmatch Wrestling

In the world of wrestling, there’s nothing more brutal than a deathmatch: a fight where anything goes, and using weapons and spilling blood is the name of the game. New York wrestler Casanova Valentine runs a particularly hardcore circuit at the Tender Trap in Brooklyn, a bar where he and his opponents go at each other with barbed wire, fluorescent light tubes, thumbtacks, and garden tools, until there’s only one man left standing. Valentine sees the violent face-offs as performance art: He’s able to get in character, and share what makes him happiest with a roomful of folks who flock to his deathmatches for the bands he books and the paintings he makes as much as they do his fights. We met up with Valentine to find out what goes into putting on one of the wild events, and got a chance to see him duke it out with another brawler until they’d covered the place in blood and broken glass. WATCH NEXT: In the Ring with Mexico’s Ultra-Violent Wrestlers --