One half of the directing duo behind A24’s horror movies Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, Michael Philippou is headed into a wrestling ring for an extreme death match pulled straight out of a horror movie. “Come watch me die,” Philippou begins the announcement on Instagram!
Philippou explains, “I’m wrestling in an Exploding Barbed Wire Rope Deathmatch.”
The Game Changer Wrestling & Lucha Libre Vanguardia event will be taking place on September 20 in Pachuca, Mexico. Philippou teases, “You’ve never seen anything like this!!”
The violent match will see Philippou and other wrestlers competing inside a ring outfitted with ropes made of barbed wire, with explosives rigged to the barbed wire. It’s a type of match popularized in Japan, with the promotion AEW making headlines a few years back with their own exploding ring death match between Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega.
If this all sounds completely out of left field for the horror filmmaker, well, it’s actually not as strange as it may seem. Michael and his brother Danny Philippou are currently directing a documentary for A24 about the twisted and bloody world of death match wrestling, with the documentary set to spotlight a previous death match that Michael Philippou competed in.
The brothers teased, “It’s extreme performance art with glass, barbed wire, thumbtacks.”
Stay tuned for more on the death match doc as we learn it.
