Bear Bronson Talks Deathmatch Wrestling Journey, Gabby Forza Discusses How It Scares Her

Bear Bronson and Gabby Forza discuss Bronson’s foray into Deathmatch Wrestling during a recent interview with Joel Pearl of Fightful.

Bear Bronson recently returned to the independent wrestling circuit after his tenure with AEW came to an abrupt end. Since returning to the indies, Bronson has spent some time teaming with his partner, Gabby Forza, as the Savage Gnomes. However, he has also spent some time getting familiar with his Hardcore side and dabbling in the world of Deathmatch Wrestling.

During a recent interview with Joel Pearl, recorded at C4 Fighting Back 14: Wrestling With Cancer, Forza discussed her apprehension about her partner competing in these dangerous matches. At the same time, Bronson spoke about how being hardcore is a mindset.

GABBY FORZA: “So I am not very familiar with deathmatch wrestling. It wasn’t part of the training at Create A Pro or anything. Not the part of the itinerary that I was taught. But Bear continues to surprise me and wrestling continues to surprise me with things I didn’t know I would love. It’s terrifying, it’s scary to see the person you love going through a real-life horror film. Yeah, my heart rate is always through the sky and… um, what else? You… Scare me. You frighten me sometimes. That’s because I love him and I care about him and my first deathmatch I’ve ever watched live was because Bear Bronson was debuting in deathmatch wrestling, which is the scariest thing ever.”

GABBY FORZA: “You know what’s so cool? I put [Cruel] through a door. I did that. I’ve done that before, but the thing you do is crazy. I, too, am hardcore.”

BEAR BRONSON: ”Here’s the thing, the word hardcore—on a serious note—the word hardcore is a mindset, I feel. It doesn’t always involve weapons, doesn’t always involve chairs, tables and all that stuff. Hardcore is more of a mindset. If I say, ‘I feel like I’m hardcore,’ even on shows like these, I feel like we can have fun, but we go hard as well. You never phone it in. You never take it easy. That’s just how I feel. Even when I say I’m taking it easy with people, I feel like my taking it easy is other people’s going hard. That’s just how I live. I respect wrestling too much to phone things in and not give it the respect it deserves. These trips, I would never drive nine hours to take it easy. I’m going to make it worth it. So with that mindset, you go not one step, but a few steps higher into the deathmatch world. The thing is you gotta be about it. You gotta really love it. There are people that do it for the wrong reasons. I had to prove I wasn’t doing it for the wrong reasons. Things like doing it for clout. Even if you really don’t want to do that stuff ‘cause it does harm your body physically. I did it. I didn’t care if anyone watched it. I didn’t care if anyone didn’t like it. I was like, ‘I want to do this because I’ve been a long time fan of it since I was like 12, 13 years old.’ There’s way more reasons not to do it than reasons to do it and if you’re going to do it, you have to be about it. So on a serious note, I don’t feel like she should do it because it terrifies her. There’s no reason to. If fans are like, ‘No, you should do it. You should do it.’ Not a good reason.”BEAR

BRONSON: Coming out of this contract with AEW, there was a lot of things I wanted to do. When I sat down with Gab and told her, ‘I want to do this, this, this, and this, and this,’ the Deathmatch stuff, was like, ‘I don’t care what comes from that. I might do one,’ who knows? People might say, ‘Don’t ever do that again. You sucked at it.’ Not the case, but that could have happened. I just said, ‘I just need to do that to reconnect with the fan in here that I lost for a very long time.’ I actually presented myself to it and when I had shown up to GCW, I didn’t tell anyone I was going, it was actually Richard Holliday, he really put me in touch with the right people. It was him, I credited it to him to getting me in touch with Brett and getting me in touch with that company to say, ‘Hey, he has a lot to offer and this is something he wants to try,’ and the rest is history.

The recent C4 event helped raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society. Learn more about the organization and how you can help make a difference here.

Elsewhere in the interview, Bear Bronson and Gabby Forza discuss working together inside the ring and balancing it with their lives outside of it. Read more here.

Check out the full interview with the Savage Gnomes embedded above.