As a child, I grew up watching Combat Zone Wrestling and was fascinated by their deathmatches — the blood, the glass, the shock factor of it all. Wrestling in Japan was my ultimate goal, where the wrestlers in Big Japan Pro Wrestling and FREEDOMS were taking it to a new level.

Years later, I'd get to challenge one of Japan's best deathmatch fighters, Masashi Takeda, at Game Changer Wrestling's biggest show to date. I knew what I was getting myself into as a deathmatch wrestler by that point, but at just 21 years old, it was the closest I had come to legit dying in the ring.  

Deathmatch Bubble

After initially training in 2012 with Old Time Wrestling, I started going to the CZW school in 2015, where Drew Gulak was the lead trainer. Ironically, Gulak and the other people who ran the school tried to steer me away from working deathmatches, saying that it's difficult to get out of the "deathmatch bubble" once you've begun wrestling in them.

They were looking out for me, but I didn't care about that at the time. About a year later, I wrestled in my first deathmatch with Nate Hatred (RIP) for GCW. 

In the back, Nate and I are plotting out the match, and as I suggest a spot of my own, promoter Brett Lauderdale approaches to let us know that it's supposed to be a squash match — all Nate. I was supposed to get no offense in.

Brett walks away, and Nate says, "Fuck him. Get your shit in. Let's make you a moment." Brett pops his head back in the room to ask, "Fuck who?"

So, I did get my shit in. Thank you Nate, who didn't have to do that for me, but he did. It was that match that started to get me over with the GCW crowd and got me booked on the next GCW show.

Time Marches On

Less than a year later, I'm booked for GCW's Tournament of Survival 2. At this point, I've been wrestling deathmatches for about nine months and feeling a bit more like I'm figuring this shit out. Still, not all the fans have fully gotten behind me, so I know I'm going to have to prove myself to earn their respect.

Following his second stint in prison, Nick Gage is set for his wrestling return in GCW. Even with him in prison for all that time, it felt like GCW was his home.

It's me and him in the first round in my dream match, and he beats the absolute shit out of me. Fresh out of prison, he was jacked as hell, pissed off, confident, and happy to be there. In the back, we're calling the match together, and though it's supposed to be a showcase for Nick, he agrees to me getting a few spots in.

In the ring, he's hyped up and ends up cutting my suggested spots and no-selling anything I'm trying to do. At one point, I remember seeing a guitar in the ring and consider just smashing it over his head before realizing he still has two rounds to go. I can't risk knocking him out and fucking up the whole show.

The match ends with Gage pinning me with one foot. In the moment, I'm thinking that I need to kick out, I can't get pinned with one foot, but I realize y'know what, I'm just gonna lay down. This shit isn't about me tonight.

We get to the back, and I tell Nick how I was gonna kick out.

"Thank God you didn't, because I would have beat the shit out of you."

Grabbing the Brass Ring

Jumping ahead another year, I win a six-way ladder match at a GCW show in New York City to earn the Brass Ring, which lets me challenge anyone I want to a match at Spring Break 3. I'm picturing I'll get a dream opponent like Jushin Liger, but Brett has different plans for me: Masashi Takeda.

I had actually met Takeda a few times before this, so I knew him on that level, but I had never wrestled him. If you don't know Takeda, his nickname is "Crazy Kid," which kinda undersells just how insane a person he is in the ring. He fuckin' carries gigantic scissors to the ring, and his trainer/mentor was Jun Kasai. This is his photo on Wikipedia.

So, I'm booked to go toe-to-toe with Masashi Takeda in front of GCW's biggest audience. It was only the third year of our Spring Break shows, but each one had gotten more and more eyes as the show ran every Wrestlemania weekend.

I knew I had to deliver one of the craziest fuckin' deathmatches of all time and solidify myself in the deathmatch world. I wanted to prove it as much to myself as I wanted to prove it to the fans, and I was willing to do anything to make it happen. Shit. And I almost went too far.

We Need To Do That

The morning of the Takeda match, I head to Lowe's to buy some stuff we'll need that night. Gusset plates, plywood boards, and yeah, the scissors. I saw Takeda doing the scissor board spot in Japan and thought, fuck it, we need to do that at Spring Break. 

Backstage at the show, he and I discuss our match. Though he speaks Japanese and I speak English, we're fine using the universal language of wrestling. I pitch him on the scissor board, and he initially pushes back a bit, saying,

"Fukimoto-san took a bump on the scissors and went to the hospital for two weeks. No bump."

So, we settle on something else: he'll give me a kneestrike with the scissor board, then put the scissor board on my face and bash it with a chair. For the face part, I tell him "maybe no," and he tries to put my mind at ease: "No, no… easy."

I know the stakes are high for this match, and I don't want to argue with him. I don't know what the fuck to say, so I guess it's OK. Sure.

Though GCW was growing more and more at the time, it's so much bigger now in 2025, and there's so much more money in it. They're still taking insane risks, but I think there's generally more planning now for riskier stuff than there was back then.

Let's See What Happens

I'm sitting there backstage, waiting for my music to play. The crowd was hot all night, but I'm not sure all of them knew what they were getting themselves into. 

You wouldn't know it from my face when I come through the curtain, but right before stepping out? It's the first time I feel worried about what's about to go down. I know it sounds insane, but I'm just thinking about how I'm about to do some crazy shit in this match. I could die. 

At that point in my life, I think wrestling was all I cared about. It was the only thing I really had at that time. Fuck it, we're here. I'm ready to go. Let's see what happens. My music hits, and it's on. 

A Sprint

I'm waiting for Takeda in the ring while his music plays through the White Eagle Hall in Jersey City. I stare him down and I’m in the zone. My worries from earlier are completely gone by now.

We wrestle for a bit before getting to the weapons. Takeda sets the tone by placing a tube in the ring and taking a back bump on it. I do the same to show him that I'm not backing down. He plants a gusset plate into my forehead, and I give him one as well. We're aiming for complete chaos, a sprint. A match you could see any part of and you're not bored.

I actually didn't have a gig on me for this match, so I was praying the gusset plate in my head would do the job. Boy, did it — before long, I was bleeding like a stuffed pig. I hear people around us saying things like, "Oh my God."

Shit starts to get even crazier, and the crowd is totally game for all of it. I don't think light tubes are allowed in this venue anymore. They may not have been allowed then. We just did it. 

It's tough to know just how much I'm hurting at this point, because my adrenaline is going fuckin' insane, but I know I'm OK. I try a couple of tube spots that don't work and decide to smash the bundle over Takeda's head. The crowd doesn't mind at all that they didn't break the first couple times, they're just with us for the ride.

Takeda's on the floor, and my back is to him. I hear the crowd get even louder. This time it sounds like they're in disbelief. I turn around and see Takeda holding up the scissor board.

Running With Scissors

I'm in the corner, and Takeda trips my leg to set me up for the scissor board spot. Fuck it, we're here.

He pumps up the crowd and walks the scissor board over to me, places it on my chest, scissor-side against my body. He takes a few steps back, then rushes the board with a knee strike, breaking the board and sending the scissors into my body.

Video credit: DJ Tony D

I panic. I think, "It happened." I feel a handle by my neck. I'm thinking, "Am I handle-deep?" I grab the handle and pull it back, throw it to the side. Which is a stupid thing to do. If it was actually deep in me and I pulled it out, I would have bled to death. I check my neck. Gary, the camera guy at my side, is signalling to the cameraman across the ring, pointing at his neck. My friends are all watching the match live, and they all thought I was dead. Well, I wasn't.

The crowd is absolutely shocked, but we still have shit to do, I need to get Takeda back. He sets up a knife board in the corner and hooks me for a reverse suplex. Maybe his finisher, the U-Crash, this lifting DDT thing. I get up for it and land on my feet and powerbomb him through the board. One knife looks like it got him in the back of the head, but I can't tell. We trade more reversals, and the fans are chanting my name.

The noise is reaching its limit in the room as Takeda and I break tube bundles over our heads in unison. Improvising, he suplexes me through a door covered in tubes, then knees me hard in the chest with a bundle. He covers me, I kick out at one, and the crowd is going fuckin' ballistic. Finally, he hooks me with that U-Crash on a bunch of tubes and pins me. I'm alive.

I get to the back, and I'm circled by Gage, Janela, and Giancarlo, all hyping up how great the match was. I know we delivered. I heard someone in the crowd fainted and another person threw up.

The next week, I run into MJF, who tells me to never do that again. At a convention, Darby comes up to me, telling me how wild he thought it was and asking if it really fucked me up or not.

The crazy part is that G-Raver's injury actually fucked me up mentally way more than the scissors. It was way more traumatic. The reality that you could… I drove him to the hospital and everything. He was fading in the back of my car, I thought he was dead in the backseat of my car. I was banging on the fuckin' door, crying for someone to answer the door at the hospital. For about a year, it affected my deathmatches, for sure. I was way more nervous, and it made me too cautious about getting other people hurt.

Eight Minutes and a Moment

I didn't know the scissor board would be the thing that did it for me, but now I look back on it like it's my Nick Mondo weedwacker moment, my Thumbtack Jack needle moment.

Looking back, I would still do it again. I think I'd be more cautious, but there's always a chance I would do something like that. This is my moment that will live on forever.

Jimmy Lloyd is an independent wrestler and a former child actor. He has worked for such promotions as GCW, BJW, CZW, MLW, ICW-NHB, and FREEDOMS.