An oft-cited criticism of the “hardcore wrestling” style that was popularized in the 1990s Western wrestling scene by Extreme Championship Wrestling -- even as it spread to both WWE and WCW -- is that the “car crash” spectacle of it didn’t actually require any wrestling skill. According to these fans, anyone can fall through a table.
It’s true that many well-known hardcore or deathmatch-style wrestlers were brawlers like Terry Funk, Cactus Jack, Atsushi Onita, and many more. However, that doesn’t mean that ALL of them were brawlers with no “finesse.” Without further ado, let’s take a look at some wrestlers in the hardcore scene that transcended those assumptions.
10 Jeff Hardy
Jeff Hardy has been a WWE guy so long that it actually feels weird to call him a “hardcore” wrestler. But fans who know their history remember that Hardy started off as a backyard wrestler who helped innovate modern WWE violence through the original TLC matches. Hardy is also a three-time Hardcore Champion in his own right. “The Charismatic Enigma” is hardly a brawler, though, as a lot of his offense involves aerial moves like the Swanton Bomb.
9 Sabu
Because Sabu is covered in scars and gained infamy for “botching” moves due to a willingness to try anything, many fans tend to think of him as a “garbage wrestler” with no in-ring acumen. But Sabu’s training involved technical, mat-based work, and during his heyday he won over crowds by incorporating high-flying moves into his deathmatch shenanigans. Instead of working as a brawler, Sabu did moonsaults through tables and often jumped off of chairs to execute crazy maneuvers.
8 Isaiah “Swerve” Scott
Before he became a rising star in NXT’s Cruiserweight division, Isaiah “Swerve” Scott was Shane Strickland, a high flyer who started making a splash in the early to mid 2010s wrestling for hardcore-oriented indie promotion Combat Zone Wrestling. There, he took on deathmatch wrestling notables like MASADA, Rickey Shane Page, and Sami Callihan.
His skills came to further use on Lucha Underground, where he donned a mask as Killshot, an ex-military luchador with a dark past and wrestled some pretty gnarly, epic deathmatches against Dante Fox (a.k.a. AR Fox) and Marty “The Moth” Martinez.
7 Hayabusa
Japan’s Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling put hardcore wrestling on the map in the early 1990s and was a direct influence on ECW, with whom they had a working relationship. One of FMW’s biggest stars by the mid-’90s was the masked Hayabusa, who was an incredibly innovative, influential high-flyer who frequently worked in the promotion’s signature deathmatch-style. In a lot of ways, Hayabusa was their equivalent of ECW’s Sabu.
6 Rob Van Dam
Speaking of Sabu, one of his big ECW rivals/partners was Rob Van Dam, with whom Sabu enjoyed a couple tag team title reigns. Van Dam could also be considered a high flyer thanks to moves like his Five Star Frog Splash, but even his approach to high-flying differs from the rest. RVD incorporated a lot of martial arts in his wrestling, even when he got more hardcore, as he often did in ECW. So instead of simply kicking a dude, he would kick a folding chair into a dude’s face.
5 Daisuke Sekimoto
These days, powerhouse Daisuke Sekimoto is a top-notch performer in Big Japan Wrestling’s Strong Division, which eschews BJW’s traditional deathmatch style in favor of more broadly appealing, hard-hitting Japanese matches that wouldn’t be out of place in All Japan or New Japan. But in his younger days, Sekimoto was a regular in BJW’s blood and guts spectacles and often shared the ring with division mainstays like Ryuji Itoh and Abdullah Kobayashi.
4 Rhyno
Another “ECW original,” Rhyno’s iconic move was delivering a spear (or “Gore”) through a table. The Man-Beast managed to win a few WWE Hardcore Titles, the ECW World Heavyweight and TV Championships, and also randomly the NWA World Title in TNA for a couple days.
While he certainly got into a lot of pretty brutal matches in his day, Rhyno wasn’t exactly a brawler. In fact, he was more of a powerhouse type, akin to Brock Lesnar or Goldberg, with whom he shares a finishing maneuver.
3 Tomoaki Honma
Modern fans may know Tomoaki Honma as the bald Hulk Hogan parody who constantly headbutts people on New Japan undercards -- and gets an absurd amount of cheers from Japanese crowds. But he actually spent the first four years of his career wrestling deathmatches for Big Japan, where some credit him for his innovative use of light tubes. As a wrestler, his work was notable not only for a lot of mat-based technique but also for a fast-paced style more often seen in Junior Heavyweight bouts than in deathmatches.
2 Taz
While he won the Hardcore Title a few times in WWE, Tazz was at his best in ECW, where management didn’t care that he wasn’t tall and he was able to put on some intense matches over the years. Dubbed “The Human Suplex Machine,” Tazz’s specialty (besides a variety of suplexes) was technical work, often based on his judo background. In fact, his finishing submission, the Tazmission, was a modification of the Katahajime chokehold.
1 Jun Kasai
With his unique look and loads of scars, Jun Kasai -- nicknamed “Crazy Monkey” -- is SUCH a Japanese deathmatch wrestler that you’d be justified in assuming that he’s spent decades doing nothing but fall through flaming light tubes covered in barbed wire. But Kasai is deceptively technical, not averse to wrestling bloodless comedy matches, and also incorporates high-flying moves into his repertoire, including his completely insane Pearl Harbor Splash that he seems to execute from the greatest height possible.