That Was Then, Is This Too? 07.14.09: Harcore Indy Injuries

Good morning to the fine ladies and gentlemen of 411mania’s wrestling zone! My name is Jasper Gerretsen and it’s my honor and privilege to write for you. You are reading the first edition of “That Was Then, Is This Too?”, in which I’ll be looking for parallels between past and present or future events. Now, while the first subject of my column is entirely based around the indy scene, I’ll be striving to cover not just independent wrestling but also events in the big three. With that being said, let’s move on to our main feature! Banner!

That Was Then, Is This Too? – Hardcore Indy Injuries

On the sixth of June, 2009, Combat Zone Wrestling held its annual Tournament of Death, one of the largest deathmatch wrestling tournaments in the country. With such stipulations as the “Weedwhackers Elimination Match” and the “Ultraviolent Divide & Conquer, 200 Light Tubes & Lumberjack Match”, this tournament is always the bloody affair you can expect it to be. The 2009 edition was nothing different, with matches like the “Thumbtack Kickpads Match” and the “Jack In The Box Death Match” (something involving panes of glass, cinder blocks, light tubes and syringes). And that was just the opening rounds.

In the final rounds however, something horrible even for CZW standards happened. During the “200 Light Tubes, Panes of Glass, and All the Other Shit in the Back We Could Find” match, one of the company’s top wrestlers nearly died in the ring. After crashing through a row of light tubes that had been set up between the ring ropes, wrestler Nick Gage was cut open from armpit to hip and suffered a severed artery in his arm. He ended up losing such an incredible amount of blood that he had to be flown out for emergency surgery in a helicopter. Incredibly enough, this was the first such injury in CZW, a promotion that’s constantly one-upping itself in the violence department through the use of pretty much anything from garden tools to beds of nails and glass. It’s the kind of deathmatch insanity that’s, thankfully, rarely seen outside of a select few promotions such as IWA-MS, FMW and WAR.

That Was Then…

When I read the news, my mind immediately wend to an incident that, in my opinion, was remarkably similar to what had happened that night. On November 18th, 2007, on what was supposed to be CHIKARA’s final show of the year, Lince Dorado almost died in the ring. In the semi-main event of the night, Lince’s mask was on the line against Mitch Ryder. The finish of the match came when Lince hit his trademark Shooting Star Senton (a Shooting Star Press with an extra half rotation) for the pinfall. However, he was unable to control the momentum of his rotation and ended up landing on his neck in stead of his back. He still managed to finish his match in pretty much the same way Steve Austin completed his match against Owen Hart after the botched piledriver. What followed was one of the most horrific scenes imaginable, as reported by chikarafans.com:

[After the pinfall] Lince kept shaking. He wasn’t breathing right at all; you could see him sucking his lower lip under his upper teeth over and over, really fast. Quack (Mike Quackenbush, owner and head trainer of CHIKARA) got into the ring really fast and was trying to get him to talk, but Lince said nothing. Lince eventually slowed his breathing down and stopped shaking; he wasn’t moving at all. NO ONE made a noise in the entire place. Daizee Haze ran down and tried to help Lince talk as well, but he didn’t respond.

They didn’t have a stretcher, so they got a table and managed to put Lince onto it to get him to the back. Quack took off his mask and covered his face with a towel, which was actually quite scary to see. The hair-shaving was REALLY surreal because it just seemed so extremely out of place. When it was quiet, I heard a woman sob loudly, and I looked over at an older woman covering her mouth. I feel certain it was his mom.

While everyone left the ringside area slowly and confusedly, you could hear a woman yelling from behind the curtain. She yelled, “MY BABY,” a couple times, so I’m pretty sure that it was his mom. That was what really hit me that I should get out of there, and I’m pretty sure Destiny had been thinking that for a few minutes by then.

We left and I wanted to go to my car, but someone told me not to go in because an ambulance was coming. I asked if I could just go to my car, and I did, but we didn’t leave because I didn’t want to block the eventual oncoming ambulance. There were many wrestlers out back; someone was trying to calm a woman down, and she may have actually fainted. I moved my car because it was pretty much where the ambulance would be pulling in. I called my brother to let him know the news, and we heard applause coming about 10 minutes after the ambulance had arrived. That probably means that he was alert, but I have no idea if he was walking or not. I tried to not look at the ambulance for privacy reasons. After the ambulance left, I left too.

…Is This Too?

Of course at first glance the comparison seems very strange. After all Nick Gage is a deathmatch wrestler working in a promotion which is known for its deathmatch style, and Lince Dorado is a luchador working in a promotion which is known for its heavy lucha libre influences. CHIKARA’s lucha influences go so far that they even tried to keep Lince’s face covered while he was carried to the back. Fortunately for both men their injuries were not as severe as initially thought. Nick Gage was released from the hospital the next week, and Lince Dorado was up and walking in time to attend the extra CHIKARA event held in December.

But the bottom line is that both their health scares came when they were working on the very edge of their respective styles, doing moves that only a handful of people would even consider doing. This is something that you can see all over the indy wrestling landscape. After all, indy wrestlers and indy promotions are a dime a dozen. To truly stand out (and make money) in this landscape, you have to do something special. And both CHIKARA and CZW and Lince Dorado and Nick Gage were doing something special when they suffered their near fatal injury. There are plenty of unfortunate injuries in professional wrestling every year, and can happen on the most mundane of moves. After all, Eugene tore his quadriceps on a dropkick and CM Punk fractured his skull on a neckbreaker.

But these two men aren’t known for their mundane moves, and they didn’t injure themselves with mundane moves. While doing shooting star sentons and crashing through light tubes might be perfectly normal for them and the promotions they work in, it’s still the kind of work only a marginal amount of wrestlers would do. In their attempts to stand out from the pack, they suffered near-fatal injuries. In the months after his injury, Lince Dorado initially stuck to the mat far more than he used to, utilizing more submission moves and using less dangerous aerial moves. Time will tell if Nick Gage will slow down his style too, but considering his reputation this seems extremely unlikely. Of course if he does want to get out of wrestling he’ll always have his contacts at Discovery Channel to fall back on: