Blood on the Mersey: TNT’s D.O.A. 2026 Tournament Review
It’s been a fair few months since I last threw a Deathmatch wrestling review onto these pages, I think that the last one was the RISE weekend late last year (see Games of Death 4: Deathmatch Wrestling from a Ringside Fan’s View) so here I present another from the front row at the show one for TNT’s D.O.A. 2026 Tournament held in Liverpool, UK.
TNT have been running shows for over ten years now and present a decent quality production that obviously has a bit of money and imagination behind it. My Partner in Gore, Willow, and I arrived in the windy city of Liverpool the night before so we could spend the day building up to the tournament checking out the museums (The British Music Museum is astonishing) plus go to the gym (yeah, we’re typically annoying gym nerds, wherever we go we try to work out for an hour).
Anyhow, Hanger 34 was the venue, and the genuinely sold-out show had a giant queue building. Once inside, we spoke to a couple of regulars on the Deathmatch follower’s scene that we know, plus a few words with wrestlers, then to the merch table for t shirts.
We have a stipulation in our heads to get to the front wherever we are for two reasons — it’s fun to be hit by broken glass, human bodies and splashes of blood, plus if you get it right, it’s a chuckle to watch the future DVDs and see yourselves.
As per usual, the tournament has rounds that the warriors must get through. Match one, the UKs Deathmatch Grandad, Iceman took on the big sometimes comedy cowboy, Tim Strange. Tim wasn’t playing tonight thankfully, and neither was the 20 plus years veteran, Iceman. This one was hard hitting and bloody.
In-between matches, the TNT Bombshells came out. Two tattooed sour faced women who danced and played with fire in sequences out of date by about two decades. Most of the crowd were talking or looking at their phones whilst they swayed and did nothing at all with the fire. They were like the Fisher Price version of the women on stage at Motley Crue’s Carnival of Sins show — check out the DVD or YouTube.
Huge USA name, Shlak (he’s been mentioned in a few of my old Deathmatch reviews (if Chris Severed ever agrees, they’d all be in their own category. Until then, have a search) goes up against Iceman’s son, Jack for match two. Jack sells his genuine horror of seeing the short but stocky gorilla-built beast head out. No mercy. Blood all over the floor before us, and Shlak hit our barriers knocking us both back — Willow was so proud of the bruising on her legs afterwards. We were absolutely stunned by the finale to this match as we were convinced that the loser would get it. The fact we’re huge fans of the winner; we went insane with supporting yells.
Imagine the Master in The Strain TV series or in fact the vampire hoards from the same film or Blade II going up against a heavy metal zombie. That’s what we got with one of the most outstanding outrageous fights of the night — Isaac North Vs Tombie. Both are criminally underrated, and I read a few social media comments from American fans who watched the unfortunately off synch stream that night, Tombie needs to make it to America. In the last few years, loads of wrestlers from our shores have hit the USA and really made memories for fans. Anyhow, Tombie and Isaac North played well with tattoo needles plus other sharp objects including the barbed wire ring ropes.
Speaking of UK names making it in America, Big FN Joe, one of the best modern workers – he’s genuinely at near enough every Deathmatch show and a few standard wrestling gigs in the UK that you can see, plus travels regularly to the US (as does Jack Harrop) had a slobber knocker against someone we hadn’t seen before, Luke Jacobs. Talk about star making – Luke Jacobs is a serious monster on the rise. A young lad who can take the pain and give it. An absolutely marvellous way to end round one.
Willow and I chatted to other fans whilst ignoring the so-called Bombshells dancing. Then round two came and delivered in gory spades with a fair few twisting wrestling moves to satisfy the purists until two surviving cut-to-bits final men faced off amongst the debris and crimson soaked ring. This was a second encounter for them as they’d faced each other at Combat Zone’s Tournament of Death. Afterwards, they were one win apiece. Bring on the third rubber match lads!
As an addition and stunningly performed send off, after the tournament was a jaw dropping title Vs title match with Emersyn Jayne and Tate Mayfairs totally annihilating each other for about twenty-five minutes. This has brutality, high flying, bit of technical grappling, and above all a male vs female fight that did not hold back. This, for us, was match of the night.
Afterwards, we spoke to wrestlers Alton Thorne and Big FN Joe, checked out the merch tables again, then, since we were filming for me and my son’s YouTube channel, Hell City Streetz, we did an outro in the blasting wind outside.
TNT’s D.O.A. 2026 Tournament was one of the outstanding shows we’ve attended over the years. Everyone worked hard to make this memorable. We’re heading back to them in September (plus we may slip off to another show or two beforehand as, like RISE, they aren’t too far away from us).
I don’t know if they’re releasing this on physical media, but I know it’s on a couple of steaming places.
Meanwhile, if you want to see a few moments alongside my narrative, and a couple of quick interviews, here’s a link to our video on Hell City Streetz — please check our other videos and subscribe. We should be including some horror and music stuff soon as well.
Photography by Eyes of the Fan, Christo Maass, Willow Brian, Alton Thorne.
