Hatred Stirs up Dissention, But Yoshiaki Fujiwara Covers Up All Wrongs

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Yoshihiro Takayama v. Atsushi Onita/Shinjiro Ohtani Big Fireworks Promotion 3/21/14 - GREAT

PAS: This is a pretty nasty exploding barbed wire match.I can just imagine how awesome this would have been 20 years ago, and considering how old and washed up most of these dudes are (outside of our boy Fujiwara, he will never be washed up) this was damn surprising. Although when you think about exploding barbed wire matches they are really more about charisma and facial selling then insane bumps, and these are four guys with boatloads of charisma and expressive faces. Ohtani has gotten really bald and fat, with that gut and hairline he looks like he is working a Phil Schneider gimmick, he totally looks like a ringer for old FMW dudes like Sambo Asako or Kurisu, he isn't Kurisu great in this but he has some fun exchanges with Fujiwara and a great spot where he gets too enthusiastic with his signature boot scrapes and scrapes his way leg first into an explosion. Onita at one point gets caught in the Fujiwara armbar and has to set off an explosion to escape. Fujiwara gets a showcase after he gets smashed with an exploding chair, he comes out like an action movie hero covered in debris and mist and starts fucking dudes up. The stuff between the big spots was a bit meandering, but I enjoyed this way more then I should have.

ER: Man what a weird little match. I mean step back and think about this match. You have four guys who all had very successful and pretty damn unique careers. And here they are, with a mean age of 52, working an exploding barbed wire match. And it's super fun and just bizarre the whole way through. Fujiwara looks so damn great in this. He's 64!! But he shows the most fire of anybody and at one point takes a chairshot to the chest. Oh, and the chair was wrapped in exploding barbed wire. What the hell!? Takayama was one of the main guys who got me fully into puro back in the early 2000s, but now he has the reflexes of a guy who went 0-10 in MMA or something. It's also possible that he's working a post-OD Terry Gordy gimmick. Onita looks like a deadbeat dad who also happens to really be into Eno-era Roxy Music. Onita grabbing the exploding barbed wire to break an armbar was an incredible spot. Just looking at Onita, mentally struggling with whether to let Fujiwara rip his left arm off, or save the left arm by grabbing the barbed wire and getting his right arm blown off; it was like something out of a Saw sequel. This match was both bad and awesome.