Nick Gage On Bringing Death Match Wrestling Back, AEW Hardcore Matches

GCW World Champion Nick Gage joined Busted Open Radio this morning to talk about his upcoming title defense against Matt Cardona at GCW Homecoming later this month. While Cardona has said he's ready for Gage in a death match, GCW's top star isn't convinced of that, comparing Cardona to Gage's one time opponent, actor David Arquette.

"I don't think so. I don't think so at all," Gage said. "I think it might be like, whoever that actor was, I forget his name already. I don't think he knows what he's getting himself into. And if he does, once he finds out and that glass hits him, and he starts getting them cuts in his body man, he's going to find out real fast. Because that shit starts burning, and when you get that deep cut and start bleeding, there's two ways. He can feel the fire and get into it, or he can get 'oh shit, I might've f**ked up on this one.' We're going to find out. But I know one thing; I love what I do and I'm the best death match wrestler in the world. And I can't wait to wrestle this guy man. I can't wait."

Gage also revealed he has huge respect for Cardona and what he's accomplished over his fifteen year career, and admitted the whole issue between them started due to him joking around with Cardona on Twitter. But while Gage respects his opponent, he is looking forward to going after Cardona come GCW Homecoming and believes this is a match he cannot afford to lose.

"Well I was kidding around with him a little bit on Twitter," Gage said. "Of course I have respect for him man. I've got respect for a lot of guys in this business man. This business is hard. You've got to love this business to do it. If you try to do this business and not love it, it'll chew you up and spit you right the f**k out. For someone to be in that business for that long, of course you've got to respect it man.

"I don't know man. I just know I'm going to take that pizza cutter and I'm going to carve his ass up. I'm going to try and carve him up so damn bad that he looks in the mirror every single day, and he knows the god of this shit did that to him. That's what I'm going to do to him. I take that GCW World Title very seriously man. This is my company, I love GCW and there's no way in hell I can walk out of that building losing to someone like Matt Cardona or Zack Ryder or whatever we're calling him these days."

Gage then transitioned to talking about his love for death match wrestling and how he felt it was going downhill while he was in prison. Along with his friend and GCW promoter, Brett Lauderdale, Gage spent his time in prison coming up with ways to bring death match wrestling forward, as a way to give back to all the people that supported him while he was locked up.

"When I was sitting in my prison cell, Lauderdale would come up and visit me all the time," Gage said. "And he'd be telling me that they were trying to kill death match wrestling. They were trying to go to the WWE style, where they're trying to do twenty back kicks, super kicks, slap their leg thirty times and all that. And I always loved death match wrestling, hardcore wrestling, ECW style wrestling. That's what I grew up with. When I got trained in wrestling school, that's what I wanted to do, be a hardcore wrestler. Now it's a death match wrestler. What I wanted to do was I wanted to put that shit back on the map. So me and Lauderdale sat down one time, at a table in a prison, and we were talking. We said 'you know when you get out, we're going to do an NGI. Nick Gage Invitational tournament, to give back to the fans.'

"Listen, the fans wrote me for the five f**king years I was locked up. They kept sending me stuff to keep my head up. I wanted to give back to the fans. What better way than to give them a death match tournament? And it went awesome man. We found success and we were like 'you know what? Let's start a company.' And I think GCW put it on a map. But not only that, we have the best death match talent out there. We've got guys that can go. Before it just be a bunch of guys hitting each other over the head, no wrestling involved, doing that stupid shit. We have guys that can go in there, wrestle, go hard, and use weapons and violence man. And then GCW blew up, put it on the map, and I feel we're the best company going out there. I don't like to call us an independent company no more, even though we don't have any backer, it's just us. But I feel like we passed that man. I feel like we're the next breed of ECW way man. We're just out there, everywhere we go we're selling the house out, tearing shit up. Yeah I think we put death match wrestling back on the map."

Later Gage was asked if he felt GCW was bringing back an edge to wrestling. He believed that was the case, and compared GCW to other promotions trying to do hardcore matches, most notably AEW.

"Yeah I think so," Gage said. "You're damn right we're bringing that back to pro wrestling. That edginess. ECW is the perfect example. You guys started using the alternative music, guys were using tables. Especially back then when it was corny. And then it seems like the other wrestling companies are doing the same style matches. AEW may be doing a little hardcore, but that's fake shit man. They're using that crushed f**king glass from movie sets and all that. They're snipping their barbed wire. All our shit is real. Our barbed wire don't get snipped, our glass is real. Yeah we're bringing that edginess back man."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Busted Open Radio and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription