10 Hardcore Japanese Wrestling Stipulations You Won't Believe Are Real

1. 445 Light-Tubes Death Match

We're finishing with a more recent match - this one happened in 2009 - just to make a point that Japan hasn't calmed down about this.

This match features a common modern staple of hardcore matches - light-tubes, or florescent tubes as we know them. They break easily, creating large explosions of dust and hundreds of little shards with which to make your opponents bleed. Sure, the dust inside of florescent tubes is toxic if you breathe it, but it's not our job to think about that. It's not anybody's job to think about anything anymore.

A 445 Light-Tubes Death Match is pretty simple. Stacked vertically around the ring, against the ropes, are 445 light-tubes. By the end of the match there will be no light-tubes.

I hope you didn't watch all of that, all of the blood, the glass, the endless stupid.

So that, dear readers, is the end of our horrible journey into the bloody heart of Japanese hardcore wrestling. Needless to say, the style migrated back west, coming full circle, not simply in the safer, more sanitised hardcore of WCW and WWE "Extreme Rules" Matches (can you even call them Extreme after this), but also with the appearance of several Japanese-style Death Match promotions like Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) or Juggalo Championship Wrestling (JCW). Their weapons include weedwhackers and staple guns.

For as long as there are wrestlers willing to shorten their lives for little more than shock value and a paycheque, there will be hardcore.

And with that, we're done.