Terry Funk vs. Onita, A Barbed Request

Terry Funk vs. Atsushi Onita FMW 5/5/93

ER: Ah yes, nobody ever expects the No Rope Exploding Barbed Wire Exploding Ring Time Bomb Death Match, the only wrestling match stip with as many words as a Billy Ocean song title. This was the huge main event of FMW's 4th anniversary show, held in Kawasaki Stadium with over 40,000 people there buzzing to see two men get ripped up by barbed wire and then potentially explode. The video even starts with shots of fans doing the wave, reminding us that not only were we watching pro wrestling in a baseball stadium, but a baseball stadium in hell. Funk enters the ring to a kind of instrumental video game version of Peter Gabriel's "Big Time", and I found myself thinking about how these American wrestlers didn't really know what they were getting into. Terry Funk was a star. He was still a popular gun for hire, a guy you could bring in to add instant credibility to a card, but how well could they have really communicated what was going to happen in this match? Surely he understood the barbed wire ropes, but how well could he have really understood how the explosions were going to work? And how much concern was lingering in his head? There can never be 100% confidence when explosions are involved in any stunt, and I would love to know what kind of waivers had to be signed before even agreeing to this match, and how much his payday was.

Onita comes off every bit the legend, X's take on Wild Thing feeling like the iconic version of that song in this moment, reminding us of what Major League taught us, and reminding us that we were still in a baseball stadium. Funk meets Onita in the entrance way with Onita merely addressing him by saying that he's now going to walk this way to the ring, brushing past to Funk's left, with Funk eyeballing him and following him into the ring. A stadium filled with youth in jean jackets singing along to Exene Cervenka is always going to be a killer visual, and I wonder if X knew, and when they found out, that their cover was being used in such an iconic way. And why was X never offered the chance to play Onita out to the ring? To add to the spectacle, the referee is decked head to toe in silver: silver boots, slim cut silver pants, a long silver coat tied at the waist, and a helmet that made his entire outfit look like one of Palpatine's Royal Guard reimagined for Woody Allen's "Sleeper". Funk is wearing his black on black jolly roger tights, while Onita is wearing his Donkey Kong Jr. gear.

Our armored referee actually checks both men for weapons before the match, sticking to protocol while surrounded by barbed wire and explosives, hoping his routine will calm the storm. It won't matter. Both men struggle to shove the other into the explosive barbed wire, Onita's face selling some great anguish of locking up with Terry. Terry breaks first and cracks him with an elbow, a great headbutt, and a huge chop. The fans actually start getting behind Terry as he dances around Onita while throwing punches; a hard jab into Onita's ear, and then a big swinging left before Onita - earlier than expected - flies backwards into the wire, sticking to it momentarily while the flash of explosions goes off, Onita falling forward with actual blackened char marks on his back and a series of cuts all over his arm and body which will soon be dripping with color. Onita sells the shock of that hit well, lying on his stomach while Funk rips at his tank top, trying to unceremoniously drag him off the mat, while Onita just needs time. Funk hits a great piledriver, and Onita gets Irish whipped into the wire from all way across the ring, and Onita really commits fully and runs into those ropes full speed, the wire taking his weight and gripping him. As Funk tries to force Onita eyeballs first into the wire in what would have been the most disgusting moment of any death match, Onita saves his eyesight and hits a big back suplex, then a DDT that spikes Funk vertically, and Funk also goes into the wire. He doesn't appear to take as bad a hit as Onita, but Funk sells it like the explosives short wired a circuit in his brain. Onita gets recovery time from his injuries while Funk staggers around the ring, off balance and stumbling towards every side, fans getting noticeably louder every time he staggers anywhere near the wire before faceplanting onto the mat. He staggers towards ropes the same way Mr. Magoo would stagger towards construction sites. Funk's forehead is dripping with as much blood as Onita's body.

We build to Onita repeatedly headbutting Funk, no hands, just thrusting his head into Funk's head, Funk staggering inches away from the barbed wire with each headbutt, four headbutts, Onita timing them to catch Funk as he staggers away from the wire, all building to the killshot. But when Onita rushes in for that fifth headbutt, Funk sidesteps him and sends him hard into the wire, Onita's full body weight now being supported by the wire, no part of him touching the mat, just Onita tangled in that web. He tumbles to the floor, freshly sporting a few deeper wounds: A deep cut into his back and what appears to be some badly mangled fingers. Onita's hand appears to be damaged, the way he holds it away from Funk, the way he barely uses it the rest of the match, the way he appears to panic while looking at it after getting up from his trip through the wire and out the other side.

And then the countdown starts. 10 minutes gone quick, and an alarm begins to sound, the kind of alarm that sounds when some idiot hits the self destruct button and you realize you have only 5 minutes to locate survivors, kill the queen, and save your cat before holing up in an escape pod. Funk drops odd, drunken, dog paddling blows onto Onita back in the ring, and we go into a few bomb trading exchanges, more staggering, more headbutts, and a fantastic spinning toehold spot: Terry locks it on (unexpectedly paying off a kneebreaker he hit early in the match), but Onita kicks him off and Terry takes a spectacular explosion into the wire. But the fans are left surprised after Onita wins with a DDT, more than a couple minutes before the ring is set to explode. Both men are covered in blood, and Terry doesn't want to leave. He wants to keep fighting. He knocks the ref's helmet off with a brutal downward strike lariat to the back of the neck - crueler than maybe any strike he dished out to Onita's body - and chokes Onita with wrist tape. Onita hits a couple thunder fire powerbombs, dripping blood while doing them, and leaves Funk to explode. With 1 minute left before self destruct, an ear piercing air raid siren goes off. What must the fans front row ringside be thinking? They have listened to 4 minutes of alarm, and now another, far louder alarm is sounding, and here they are waiting 10 feet away from a bomb target.

Onita is not a man driven by sane thoughts. He rolls back into the ring with 10 seconds to go before detonation. Did he want to save Terry? Did he feel remorse for leaving a soldier? He slaps Terry a few times to rouse him, attempts to drag his dead weight, but with 2 seconds realizes that escape is impossible. He throws his body over Terry

And then the bomb goes off.

What happens next is incredible. We see nothing but smoke, smoke passing through the remains of the wire, looking not unlike the playground chain link fence Sarah Connor stands at, yelling, warning of the pending nuclear explosion. And then a single, clear guitar solo begins to play. We hear no crowd, we don't know how they're reacting. We hardly see any humans. We hear guitar, and our camera follows the gray brown smoke as it lifts up and off out of the stadium. A mournful guitar weeps and moans as we see the two men lying in the ring, doused with water, gray with soot, blood mixing with ash and lycra, guitar solo doleful but still clear as a bell. And Onita begins to stand. And as he stands, he lifts Terry up with him, two men no longer in a war against each other, both men rising from the ashes of a future time war, having taken down the death machines risen from the rubble. Butch and Sundance ride off into the apocalyptic radioactive sunset.

They now stand - barely - as two men, survivors of the same war. Terry says he fought Onita under Onita's terms, and next time Onita would meet him on his own terms, his own ground. Onita begins to cry as if his father just walked out on him.

But they would never have a return match.