When I heard that Matt Tremont was going to face Atsushi Onita on Halloween night, I was intrigued. But when I learned it was an exploding barbed wire death match I was all in.
After all, when I think about everything I’ve photographed over the years, including all the wild stuff at ECW, I’d never shot an exploding barbed wire death match.
Now, there was once supposed to be a exploding death match in ECW with Onita and The Sandman but it never happened. I was even at one of ECW’s infamous 3 a.m. “press conferences” where it was announced.
And this Onita-Tremont event was nearby, at the Trenton Thunder Ballpark, in Trenton, New Jersey.
Talk about checking something off my bucket list!
The show was H20 Wrestling: Destiny, and Tremont actually came out of retirement for it (shades of Terry Funk, who also has history with the exploding barbed wire death match). It was years in the making, noted Tremont in interviews previewing the show.
In case you’re keeping score, this was Onita’s first exploding death match in the U.S.A.
I shot the match sitting in the press box since they really didn’t have a hard camera area. My gallery is below. But in a short version of what happened — there was a barbed wire bat, chairs, a light tube bundle, and more as they brawled both in the ring, and in the baseball infield. Tremont was the first into the barbed wire, and a giant fireball went up. From there, more chaos, including a fireball from Onita, an exploding light tube bundle, a barbed wire board that was lit on fire.
For the record, Onita “won,” after pinning Tremont. They hugged afterward.
To see more of George’s non-exploding barbed wire death match photos, visit his website, georgetahinos.smugmug.com
GEORGE TAHINOS’ FIRST EXPLODING BARBED WIRE DEATH MATCH GALLERY
[modula id=”111109″]