History Main / GarbageWrestler

* {{Trope Namer|s}} (via the Baba quote above) Atsushi Onita, founder of Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling. Once a promising junior heavyweight in Baba's Wrestling/AllJapanProWrestling, a potentially career-ending knee injury forced him to take up a heavily brawling and gimmicks-based style in order to continue his career.

* In Mexico, these are known as "extremos" and are mostly associated with independent circuit promotions such as NGX, [=RevoluXion=] Hardcore, DTU and GLC due to Wrestling/{{CMLL}} not having much use for the style, having already lost one TV deal to MoralGuardians even after cutting all blood out of their shows. Some of CMLL's national rivals such as Wrestling/{{AAA}} have managed to broadcast these match types without losing any deals but only indy and foreign based promotions have divisions exclusively for extremos.

* In Mexico, these are known as "extremos" and are mostly associated with independent circuit promotions such as [=RevoluXion=] Hardcore, DTU and GLC due to Wrestling/{{CMLL}} not having much use for the style, having already lost one TV deal to MoralGuardians even after cutting all blood out of their shows. Some of CMLL's national rivals have managed to broadcast these match types without losing any deals but only indy and foreign based promotions have divisions exclusively for extremos.

* In Mexico, these are known as "extremos" and are mostly associated with independent circuit promotions such as [=RevoluXion=] Hardcore and DTU due to Wrestling/{{CMLL}} not having much use for the style, having already lost one TV deal to MoralGuardians even after cutting all blood out of their shows. Some of CMLL's national rivals have managed to broadcast these match types without losing any deals but only indy and foreign based promotions have divisions exclusively for extremos.

* According to Wrestling/CarlitoColon, garbage wrestling, or at least blood n' guts, is what the majority of Puerto Rican fans want to see. He may have a point, though garbage matches have been rarer in WWC since the new millennium they have continued on with scaffold matches long after they had fallen out of favor nearly everywhere else and company founder, his father Carlos Colon, was about as brutal a garbage wrestler as they come. In fact, the trope naming promotion FMW got the idea to use barbed wire from WWC! WWC was also the first promotion to create hazards by lighting things on fire. That famous ECW scene where the fans bury the ring in thrown chairs? That had already happened in WWC to Ox Baker! "Super Fly" Wrestling/JimmySnuka diving off the top of a cage? Puerto Ricans already associated that with Gypsy Joe!

* In Mexico, these are known as "extremos" and are mostly associated with the independent circuit promotions such as DTU due to Wrestling/{{CMLL}} not having much use for the style, having already lost one TV deal to MoralGuardians even after cutting all blood out of their shows. Some of CMLL's national rivals have managed to broadcast these match types without losing any deals but only indy and foreign based promotions have divisions exclusively for extremos.

* In Mexico, these are known as "extremos" and are mostly associated with the independent circuit due to Wrestling/{{CMLL}} not having much use for the style, having already lost one TV deal to MoralGuardians even after cutting all blood out of their shows. Some CMLL's national rivals have managed to broadcast these match types without losing any deals but only indy and foreign based promotions have divisions exclusively for extremos.

* According to Wrestling/CarlitoColon, garbage wrestling, or at least blood n' guts, is what the majority of Puerto Rican fans want to see. He may have a point, though garbage matches have been rarer in WWC since the new millennium they have continued on with scaffold matches long after they had fallen out of favor nearly everywhere else and company founder, his father Carlos Colon, was about as brutal a garbage wrestler as they come. In fact, the trope naming promotion FMW got the idea to use barbed wire from WWC! WWC was also the first promotion to create hazards by lighting things on fire. That famous ECW scene where the fans bury the ring in thrown chairs? That had already happened in WWC to Ox Baker!

* While not a wrestling game, EternalChampions features several fighters well versed in martial arts, and then it has the caveman Slash. His fighting style is listed simply as "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Pain]]". The game further describes his style as using underhanded moves such as eye gouges, nose tweaks and ear smashes to inflict a great amount of pain, making it increasingly difficult for his opponent to properly focus on the fight.

* Mad Man Pondo started off as a more subdued collar and elbow style wrestler but decided he would not make any money that way, so he took to the garbage death matches of IWA Mid-South, CZW, Big Japan Pro Wrestling and Wrestling/JuggaloChampionshipWrestling after seeing the shocked reactions his friends had to such (he was a little more subdued in Gateway Championship Wrestling). He also convinced 2 Tuff Tony to take up the death matches, so he could have a tag team partner.

* Pretty much the entire roster of ECW's upstart rival, Xtreme Pro Wrestling, are garbage wrestlers.
** Likewise, IWA-MS, founded by garbage wrestler Ian Rotten. Though this isn't really true of IWA-MS anymore and hasn't been for a good while; they still do deathmatch stuff, but their list of alumni also boasts the likes of Wrestling/CMPunk, Wrestling/ChrisHero, Wrestling/ColtCabana, Ace Steel, [[Wrestling/HunterJohnston Delirious]], and [[Wrestling/EvanBourne Matt "Evan Bourne" Sydal]].
** Likewise, much of the roster of Wrestling/{{CZW}}, though it shares several talents with Wrestling/RingOfHonor and Wrestling/{{CHIKARA}}. More, the garbage is usually limited to a couple times a show up until their big death match events. That said, CZW prides itself on garbage and when it goes there...they go pretty far.

* Necro Butcher, who has been a mainstay at the aforementioned CZW and IWA Mid-South, had the privilege of representing the garbage wrestling style in the movie ''Film/TheWrestler''. His scene was filmed at a CZW event.
* Nick Mondo of CZW, IWA M-S and others, alternatively looks back at his decision to partake in garbage wrestling as a mistake or with pride. Well, he takes pride in his matches and helping get CZW on the map but thinks it was a mistake to do ''so many''. He's actually a decent mat wrestler, striker and pretty good high flier but will forever be known for falling off buildings and getting cut with a weed whacker.
* Perennial Wrestling/AllJapanWomensProWrestling‎ heel Kaoru "Dump" Matsumoto. Although she was a straight-up power wrestler early in her career, she only really took off by living up to the name and utilizing various weapons, starting with a pair of scissors that she would often convincingly jam into the arms of her opponents, until she evolved into a full-on Garbage Wrestler.
* [=LuFisto=], CZW's first female Iron Man Champion, first woman to compete in their tournament of death and first female in their cage of death. Though she dropped the Iron Man Title after an injury that made her reconsider this path, she came back as hardcore as ever.

** Wrestling/{{Ivory}} and [[Wrestling/TerriPoch Tori (Terri Poch)]] had the first-ever women's hardcore match in Wrestling/{{WWE}} when Tori challenged Ivory for the [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/wwe/wwf-wm.html WWE Women's Title]] on the September 6, 1999 ''[[Wrestling/{{WWERaw}} Raw]]''. The match started in the bathroom and may have been even stiffer than the hardcore matches the men were having at the time, and featured [[ScreamingWarrior a lot of screaming]] and some creative choices in weapons, such as Ivory using SoapPunishment as they fought through the showers[[note]]passing a naked Wrestling/{{Jacqueline}} along the way. This doubles as FridgeBrilliance, since the person using the soap was named ''Ivory''.[[/note]] Ivory won by pulling a mirror off of a wall and smashing it over Tori's head, with Wrestling/JimRoss worrying about the barefoot Tori possibly getting glass in her feet. After the match, Ivory found a [[AxCrazy plugged-in iron and tried burning Tori with it.]] It took several referees to pull Ivory off of her and get her to calm down. On the 2000 VHS release ''WWF Divas: Postcard from the Caribbean'', right before scenes from this match are shown during Ivory's segment,[[note]]it featured the Kat, Ivory, Tori, Terri Runnels and Wrestling/TrishStratus,[[/note]] Ivory compares wrestling to a dance and how the guys have all gotten around to each other a few times over their careers and how the women don't "dance very often with the same partners or the same opponents, and I guess that's why the hair-pulling happens."

* New Jack, another wrestler from the old ECW, certainly qualifies here. His primary talents were hitting people with stuff, and diving off of high places. Although he worked a fairly "normal" style of wrestling (by comparison) in his pre-ECW days with promotions such as [[Wrestling/{{SMW}} Smoky Mountain Wrestling]].
* Wrestling/AbdullahTheButcher may have been one of the first garbage wrestlers, and managed to make a very long career out of it, with the fork being his WeaponOfChoice.
** [[Wrestling/EdFarhat The Original Sheik]] was another innovator of this style.
** Other early examples were Wrestling/DickTheBruiser and his "cousin", Wrestling/TheCrusher, although they could definitely wrestle.
** Abdullah Kobayashi is a spiritual successor to the butcher in Big Japan Pro Wrestling, having been trained by him. BJPW itself has been described as a garbage promotion.

* {{Trope Namer|s}} (via the Baba quote above) Atsushi Onita, founder of [=FMW=]. Once a promising junior heavyweight in Baba's Wrestling/AllJapanProWrestling, a potentially career-ending knee injury forced him to take up a heavily brawling and gimmicks-based style in order to continue his career.
* Wrestling/TheNastyBoys were a stiff, garbage wrestling tag team that hospitalized Wrestling/KenShamrock, back in his pre-[[UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship UFC]] days in the North Carolina-based South Atlantic Pro Wrestling promotion. They were thought to be genuinely tough but slightly dangerous to work with.
* Axl Rotten, known for his "This Is Gonna Hurt" painted chair. He would form a tag team with the aforementioned Ian Rotten called Bad Breed. Wrestling/BallsMahoney also made use of the same chair.

* Nowadays "Innovator of Violence" Wrestling/TommyDreamer has this reputation but during his early ECW days he was unpopular with the mutants because they felt he wasn't garbage enough. In WWE he was more famous for being hit with weapons rather than using them.
* Most of Wrestling/RobVanDam's finishing moves involve the use of folding chairs and he stated on WWE Byte this that his true talent would not be displayed until WWE gave him a hardcore title to compete for and defend every week.
* According to Wrestling/CarlitoColon, garbage wrestling, or at least blood n' guts, is what the majority of Puerto Rican fans want to see. He may have a point, though garbage matches have been rarer in WWC since the new millennium they have continued on with scaffold matches long after they had fallen out of favor nearly everywhere else and company founder, his father Carlos Colon, was about as brutal a garbage wrestler as they come. In fact, the trope naming promotion FMW got the idea to use barbed wire from WWC! WWC was also the first promotion to create hazards by lighting things on fire. That famous ECW scene where the fans bury the ring in thrown chairs? That had already happened in WWC to Ox Baker!
* Fellow Puerto Rican organization, WWL, which Carlito has also worked for, has gone DeliberatelyMonochrome in the event of heavy blood loss on its TV program, sometimes. It has its own "extreme" title dedicated to garbage wrestling and haven't been afraid to show wrestlers bleeding in matches for it, so the odd instances of squeamishness seem to be a circumstantial thing.

* Whenever you see a Puerto Rican fed with the letters EWO, be it Extreme Wrestling Organization, Entertainment Wrestling Organization or just "Ewo", you better believe you'll see some garbage wrestling before long.

* Mad Man Pondo started off as a more subdued collar and elbow style wrestler but decided he would not make any money that way, so he took to the garbage death matches of IWA Mid-South, CZW, Big Japan Pro Wrestling and Wrestling/JuggaloChampionshipWrestling after seeing the shocked reactions his friends had to such (he was a little more subdued in Gateway Championship Wrestling). He also convinced 2 Tuff Tony to take up the death matches, so he could have a tag team partner.

* Cleverly subverted at ''Wrestling/ProWrestlingNOAH Navigation with Breeze'', Day 4, May 17, 2005, during the Wrestling/GenichiroTenryu[=/=]Go Shiozaki/Jun Akiyama vs. Wrestling/{{K|entaKobayashi}}ENTA/Mohammed Yone/Takeshi Rikio. At one point, the action spilled out to the floor. Tenryu grabbed a table from behind the guard rail and threw it onto [=KENTA=]'s head. After some more action on the floor, Tenryu picked up the table and ''put it back behind the guardrail,'' to ''applause.''

* Cleverly subverted at ''Wrestling/ProWrestlingNOAH Navigation with Breeze'', Day 4, May 17, 2005, during the Wrestling/GenichiroTenryu[=/=]Go Shiozaki/Jun Akiyama vs. [=KENTA=]/Mohammed Yone/Takeshi Rikio. At one point, the action spilled out to the floor. Tenryu grabbed a table from behind the guard rail and threw it onto [=KENTA=]'s head. After some more action on the floor, Tenryu picked up the table and ''put it back behind the guardrail,'' to ''applause.''

[[folder:Video Games]]
* Rip Saber from ''[[VideoGame/SaturdayNightSlamMasters Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II]]''. Of course, in a wrestling federation where people generate electricity and turn into falling meteors (to name two examples), he needs to use more powerful weapons, including ''grenades''.
* Leo Bradley from ''3 Count Bout''. In a game where any character can pick up a spiked cudgel or a broken bottle, he stands out by having huge chains as a major part of his moveset. His stated specialty is "hardcore matches", and while he can perform actual wrestling maneuvers he doesn't have a very impressive repertoire of them. Once in a while in arcade mode a match is either a street fight outside of a ring or a hardcore match with electrified ropes; in both cases weapons are lying around to be used.
* While not a wrestling game, EternalChampions features several fighters well versed in martial arts, and then it has the caveman Slash. His fighting style is listed simply as "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Pain]]". The game further describes his style as using underhanded moves such as eye gouges, nose tweaks and ear smashes to inflict a great amount of pain, making it increasingly difficult for his opponent to properly focus on the fight.

* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'' parodied this during [[http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail183.html a Strong Bad email about wrestling]]. Strong Bad has had several gimmicks, but really made a name for himself in a tag team with Strong Mad... although there were some misfires, such as their "Foreign Object Bros." gimmick, where they apparently solely made use of the various foreign objects on their costumes, including a ''gun'' shoved down Strong Mad's singlet.

[[folder:Film]]
* [[CombatPragmatist Mad Dog]] from ''Film/OngBak''. His fighting style consisted in using absolutely everything that came to hand as a weapon, even ripping out electrical wires to attack his opponent.
* Opening match in ''Film/MonsterBrawl'' is between two fighters of this type: Witch Bitch, who has a hidden cleaver and doesn't shy away from underhanded tactics and Cyclops, who uses his smithing hammer.
* One of the luchadores in ''Film/NachoLibre'' has a moveset largely dedicated to hitting opponents with a metal folding chair. As he does so, he shouts "¡Siéntate!", which means "Sit down!", or if you want to get cute, "Have a seat!"
[[/folder]]

* DDT also has the [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/japan/ddt/ddt-ex.html DDT Extreme Title]], which is more formally their secondary championship. The champion often can select the type of match the title will be defended in, and while it can vary from standard rules to extremely silly ones (such as the "Noise Prohibition" match - competitors were penalized for making loud noises), most defenses are hardcore/garbage rules.

** Wrestling/{{Ivory}} and [[Wrestling/TerriPoch Tori (Terri Poch)]] had the first-ever women's hardcore match in Wrestling/{{WWE}} when Tori challenged Ivory for the [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/wwe/wwf-wm.html WWE Women's Title]] on the September 6, 1999 ''[[Wrestling/{{WWERaw}} Raw]]''. The match started in the bathroom and may have been even stiffer than the hardcore matches the men were having at the time, and featured [[ScreamingWarrior a lot of screaming]] and some creative choices in weapons, such as Ivory using SoapPunishment as they fought through the showers[[note]]passing a naked Wrestling/{{Jacqueline}} along the way. This doubles as FridgeBrilliance, since the person using the soap was named ''Ivory''.[[/note]] Ivory won by pulling a mirror off of a wall and smashing it over Tori's head, with Wrestling/JimRoss worrying about the barefoot Tori possibly getting glass in her feet. After the match, Ivory found a [[AxCrazy plugged-in iron and tried burning Tori with it.]] It took several referees to pull Ivory off of her and get her to calm down. On the 2000 VHS release ''WWF Divas: Postcard from the Caribbean'', right before scenes from this match are shown during Ivory's segment[[note]]It featured the Kat, Ivory, Tori, Terri Runnels and Wrestling/TrishStratus.[[/note]], Ivory compares wrestling to a dance and how the guys have all gotten around to each other a few times over their careers and how the women don't "dance very often with the same partners or the same opponents, and I guess that's why the hair-pulling happens."

** The above applies for Wrestling/TerryFunk as well, who despite being the grandad of all garbage wrestling, is a ''damn good wrestler'' and even held the Wrestling/{{N|ational Wrestling Alliance}WA [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/nwa/world/nwa-h.html World Heavyweight Title]] in his heyday.

** Abdullah Kobayashi is a spiritual successor to the butcher in Big Japan Prowrestling, having been trained by him. BJW itself has been described as a garbage promotion.

** That said, fellow Puerto Rican organization, WWL, which Carlito has also worked for, has gone DeliberatelyMonochrome in the event of heavy blood loss on its TV program, sometimes. It has its own "extreme" title dedicated to garbage wrestling and haven't been afraid to show wrestlers bleeding in matches for it, so the odd instances of squeamishness seem to be a circumstantial thing.

Often times, particularly in {{Hardcore}} ProfessionalWrestling promotions, there are some wrestlers who really can't actually wrestle. Nor can they particularly do any high flying moves. Nor are they particularly good on the mic. But they can hit people pretty well, and they can hit people with things. So, they get a gimmick based around hitting people with foreign objects, and generally all-around brawling, and not particularly using any wrestling moves at all (or very few wrestling moves). Inversely, they're also known for amazingly dangerous "bumps" (professional wrestling stunts, particularly those that involve getting hit) such as Wrestling/MickFoley flying off the Hell in a Cell. Fans of their style tend to appreciate the fact that these wrestlers are willing to implement such a dangerous style simply to entertain.

* Leo Bradley from ''3 Count Bout''. In a game where any character can pick up a spiked cudgel or a broken bottle, he stands out by having huge chains as a major part of his moveset. His stated specialty is "hardcore matches", and while he can perform actual wrestling maneuvers he doesn't have a very impressive repertoire of them.

** The above applies for Wrestling/TerryFunk as well, who despite being the grandad of all garbage wrestling, is a ''damn good wrestler'' and even held the [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/nwa/world/nwa-h.html NWA World Heavyweight Title]] in his heyday.

** That said, fellow Puerto Rican organization, WWL, which Carlito has also worked for, has gone DeliberatelyMonochrome in the event of heavy blood loss on its program, sometimes. It has its own "extreme" title dedicated to garbage wrestling and haven't been afraid to show wrestlers bleeding in matches for it, so the odd instances of squeamishness seem to be a circumstantial thing.

* Axl Rotten, known for his "This Is Gonna Hurt" painted chair. He would form a tag team with the aforementioned Ian Rotten called Bad Breed.

* Part of Matt Tremont's {{face heel turn}} in CZW had to with the fact the promotion was cutting back on this trope, ''slightly'', in part to being banned in certain areas if they did not and the fact they were making some room for other styles of wrestling.

* Bram started calling himself "The King Of Hardcore", his first action in TNA involving attacking Wrestling/JeffHardy with a crowbar. He proceeded get involved in a large number of garbage matches with Abyss and ECW alums.

* Mad Man Pondo started off as a more subdued collar and elbow style wrestler but decided he would not make any money that way, so he took to the garbage death matches of IWA Mid-South, CZW, Big Japan Pro Wrestling and Wrestling/JuggaloChampionshipWrestling after seeing the shocked reactions his friends had to such. He also convinced 2 Tuff Tony to take up the death matches, so he could have a tag team partner.