There’s a church near USC where people gather, with a beer in hand, to watch men compete in a deathmatch.
Mike Gevorgian, founder of Severe Violent Nature Wrestling, has been arranging deathmatches in Los Angeles every month since January. A deathmatch is a sub-genre of extreme wrestling that Gevorgian described as “the most authentic form of pro wrestling.”
A lot of professional wrestling is “overchoreographed,” Gevorgian said.
“It doesn’t have that same level of authenticity and that same level of believability, but when you see a guy take a chair shot to the head, get put through a pane of glass, get light tubes broken on him, just fall on thumb tacks, barbed wire, whatever it may be,” Gevorgian said. “People go, ‘This is not real.’”
Multiple SVN shows took place at L.A. Church, a Christian parish on East 15th Street that’s within five miles of USC. While people risked death and paralysis inside the building, members of the congregation raised money for the hall of worship at the patio tiki bar, selling food and alcohol.
Gevorgian started SVN in 2022 and toured around the nation. He said he decided to keep SVN in L.A. for 2026 because of the city’s appreciation of culture, music and art.
Pre-show, fans are cordial. Once the first bell rings, there’s animosity between the crowd and fighters. People come with their mind set on who they want to win, and it’s on the less popular wrestler to sway their opinion.
Many wrestling companies rely on a storyline to make a fighter popular. The hero, who’s referred to as a babyface, tends to defeat the low-down, good-for-nothing heel. At SVN, storylines are scarce.
Fighters fly from across the globe to compete at the wrestling promotion for money, emotional release or to prove they’re the best. For some, it’s a combination of all three.
After a decade of surviving brawls and hemorrhaging gashes, the deathmatch wrestler who uses the name Hoodfoot said he still “can’t really quantify” the feeling of being in the ring.
“It feels otherworldly a little bit,” Hoodfoot said. “It’s the adrenaline pumping. It’s the anxiety. You’re feeling the love from the crowd so you’re feeling the admiration. It’s all these things in there, man. It just comes out in a whirlwind of emotion.”
Anytime Hoodfoot entered the ring, the sound of fans cheering his name muffled his walkout song. “Hoodfoot, Hoodfoot,” reverberated through the halls of worship. He danced around to “DTP” by the hardcore band Inner Peace and chugged beer that the crowd handed him.
Fans celebrate the deathmatch wrestlers who’ve bled for them before. Fighters who enter with virgin, unmarked backs that survive their first bout get a standing ovation, once the shell shock left their face. Sometimes, the crowd boos everyone for fun, even the referee.
A wrestler at an SVN show wins the crowd over by telling a story of suffering and triumph through body language, facial expressions and unwavering grit. They endure large amounts of blood loss, absorb chair shots and body slams that could kill a man.
Still, violence isn’t a deathmatch wrestler’s focus: it’s only a tool for their artistic vision. Several professional wrestlers, like the one who goes by the stage name Rob Shit, see themselves as storytellers.
Shit, a hardcore wrestler who uses “splashes” of deathmatch wrestling in his matches, said it’s not about immediately giving the fans what they want, but rather “working towards it.”
“I bring the fans into it by engaging with them, with having them guess, “What will he do next? Where is this going?” And psyching them out. Making them think something’s going to happen and taking it away from them,” Shit said.
One way wrestlers engaged the crowd at SVN shows was by launching each other into and over the steel barricade. Clashes between men with 20-inch biceps and scar-filled backs often ended up in the audience or in the pews.
Wrestlers also excited fans by fighting in front of the church. Whenever the fighters stepped outside to exchange haymakers, the crowd would follow and enclose them against a planter.
People shouted “kill him, kill him,” as the fighters whacked one another with light tubes.
There are three types of people who join the wrestling industry.
“There are boys, and there are men, and there are monsters like me,” said Joe Dred, a deathmatch wrestler.
What separates a deathmatch wrestler from other types of fighters, Dred said, is a different mindset: “you gotta be a killer.”
“I’ve seen guys who were big, tough muscle guys get in the ring and do that with me and the first time they get cut with a light tube or barbed wire, they panic, and they hyperventilate, and they can’t keep going,” Dred said.
Professional and extreme wrestling are both scripted, but it’s not possible to fake a lot of the violence in a deathmatch. Deathmatch wrestlers have really set each other on fire and poured lemon juice into their opponents’ open wounds.
To deathmatch wrestlers like Dred, the most important thing, he said, is that fans see their style of wrestling as the “real deal.” After a match, fans and skeptics would find their favorite fighter at their merchandise booth bloodied, picking glass from under their skin or getting their head stitched together.
“WWE is a television show about what we do out here,” Dred said. “We’re fighting for our lives out there. This is my full-time job. This is how I put food on the table for three children and a wife. I’m fighting for my life out there every time.”
It’s not uncommon for a deathmatch wrestler to have multiple matches in a day — some do several in a row. Having the fans see someone, Dred said, coming back with the same mindset, same intensity and fighting through the fatigue, and never showing struggle, is what sets deathmatch wrestling apart from everything else that’s out there.
“If you’re looking for the most real and authentic thing in a world of AI, in a world of band-aids on the emotional disconnect of this world, try professional wrestling. Try watching guys who lay it all out there and give their life to something with such passion, and hopefully encourages you to do the same with something in your life,” Dred said.
Many independent wrestling promotions put on shows inside smaller venues because they don’t have the budget of a major corporation. However, SVN fans like Victor Carrillo said the church made the experience feel “way more intimate, and a lot more fun.”
Carrillo, a local air conditioning repairman, went with his girlfriend, Veronica Estrada, to “SVN: Tell Me When I’m Telling Lies” in May. He introduced her to pro wrestling when they started dating and have gone to shows together ever since, Estrada said.
Extreme wrestling may be violent. Some people might consider it unholy to hold deathmatches inside a church. But SVN fans are very welcoming.
Wrestling is one of the “very few places” in LA, Carrillo said, that doesn’t have “gatekeepers.”
“There’s people, ‘Oh, if you don’t look this way, dress this way, talk this way, you’re not allowed.’ Wrestling is one of the very few places that I feel like it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what color you are or what you believe in. You can come and enjoy yourself,” Carrillo said.
The next SVN Wrestling show is Saturday, Oct. 3, at L.A. Church. Doors open at 7 p.m. Bloodshed starts at 8 p.m.
Edited by Andriana Yatsyshyn and Camille Culbertson.