By Sean Farrell

Now the age of wrestling has evolved and is considered entertainment. With that comes a movie from the entertainment industry and wrestlers hoping to make it big in Hollywood. What is the point of this? Well as most movies containing wrestlers are quite awful, I found an interesting trilogy containing some of the biggest names in wrestling titled Ultimate Deathmatch.

Ultimate Deathmatch has ALOT of big names in the wrestling business such as Al Snow, Kid Cash, The Sandman, Brutus Beefcake, Tommy Dreamer, Ted Dibiase, Lodi, Val Venis, Raven, Abyss, Kevin Nash, and Shane Douglas. The plot of the first film is quite interesting actually and believe it or not this film isn’t as bad as it appears.

When a prominent Federation of Pro Wrestlers superstar is killed in the ring, the organization has their licenses revoked. Now, in order to stay profitable, FOPW promoter Jake Reid devises a plan to broadcast matches over the internet, where wrestlers will fight to the death for the entertainment of millions.

The first movie basically introduced us to the story, but the second movie was probably the best wrestling movie I have ever watched (honestly). As the FBI continues to collect information on Reid’s promotion, Shane Douglas is beaten but not killed and vows for his revenge and ending this malice once and for all. This set up the not so exciting third movie, which in all honesty was quite a let down given how great the second one was but still was decent. As the trilogy continued the third film seems like a legit movie for the most part. Better than that, they built this one up to look like an actual Ultimate Death Match (as a wrestling version Street Fighter with several wrestlers having underlining plots.) Legendary wrestler Ricky Morton (one half of The Rock-n-Roll Express) arrives to take his revenge on his friend’s behalf from the last film. Also, wrestling greats Larry Zbyszko and “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase joining him on his journey for two different reasons.

You also have Kevin Nash involved in a subplot that almost resembles the Godfather or the Goodfellas movies and it’s always great to see Nash using his charisma. The thing is however, these movies are made for WRESTLING fans. They give you a wrestling show mixed with a little bit of a plot like an uncut version of Monday Night RAW mixed in with the original ECW. The final time around there was a lot more plot and I liked that a lot because the stories were actually somewhat interesting, but I LOVE the wrestling in all three films more than the story. But even with me being one of the biggest wrestling fans you can find, I do wish the matches had been made shorter for the casual viewer, again this film is VERY REAL from a Wrestling perspective and I for one LOVE IT! I just love the idea of seeing Tommy Dreamer take on Shane Douglas again no matter when, where, or how. But to be labeled a movie, casual viewers will want more movie and less actual wrestling and to each his own. But all three of these movies are a lot of fun if you are captivated by the business of professional wrestling and want to see some old favorites as well as TNA’s Abyss unmasked.

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