Matt Tremont “Likely Hospitalized For Up To A Week” Following Match Against Atsushi Onita
Atsushi Onita is one of the most revered men in the eyes of hardcore wrestling fans. The former All-Japan star was so popular in Japan that he became the third professional wrestler to gain a seat in the Japanese Diet, following Antonio Inoki and Hiroshi Hase.
The deathmatch icon has seen a recent surge in popularity in the United States following a feature-episode on Vice’s Darkside of the Ring on FMW, a deathmatch promotion that was promoted by Onita from 1989-1995, and known for its explosions.
The 63-year-old announced FMW-E this past May and has since begun promoting with Matt Tremont’s H20. H20, The Hardcore Hustle Organization based out of New Jersey, has become one of the top independent promotions in the country following its success on the IWTV streaming platform. Tremont has been one of the top deathmatch wrestlers in the Nation for the better part of fifteen years, seeing success in CZW, GCW and IWA Mid-South.
Tremont had retired from in-ring action during the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 17th, Tremont had announced that he’d be coming out of retirement to wrestle at the FMW-E/H20 supershow “Destiny” against Onita, which took place this past weekend.
At different points in the match Tremont had been set on fire and kicked into a display of fireworks. Naturally, you anticipate this sort of event in an Onita exploding ring deathmatch.
Unfortunately for Tremont, Mike Johnson of PWInsider is reporting that Tremont is “likely hospitalized for up to a week.”
Tremont discussed his match with Onita in an interview with Wrestling Inc on October 28th:
““There was a whole lot behind it. There were many many variables and reasons of why I wanted to step away for the work and the shoot of it. Was the body beat up? Yeah. I needed a little bit of a break mentally and physically. I don’t mind saying it for the first time, a lot of it had to do with real life. That was in the heart of the pandemic, and I was four months behind in rent because we were running live shows but we could only put 25 to 50 people in the building at the time. Still took care of all the boys every show, and while we continued to struggle behind the scenes and going into Extravaganza weekend last October, I was struggling.”
“It was a couple things, it was to pay tribute to our friend Danny Havoc that passed, and this was a big event and a big weekend that had a lot of eyes on it. The last deciding factor of me retiring was presenting myself with the idea of, this weekend is already big but it needs a match that’s going to sell more tickets.”
“And I said, if I retire and put myself in that position, then it’s going to do good business. And I don’t mind stepping away and have more time behind the scenes, and be able to take care of my body and just to have more time to do a lot of things. I use it now as a teaching example with my students, that sacrifice part.
I sacrificed my own career so I know we could make money that weekend, so I can keep this building and this company going a year ago. That was the biggest reason. That is the first time I really ever put that out there, and now a year later, we’re here. And then once I got into retirement, I was happy, content, and I had no plans, no intentions of coming back. Did I think I would ever wrestle again? One hundred. But not within a year, and in March is when Onita touched base and this process started, and it’s been crazy.”
We here at Bodyslam would like to wish Tremont the speediest of recoveries in any injury that may have occurred at H20 Destiny.
