Found Footage Friday: PRE-KAMALA~! WRIGHT~! ONITA~! WISKOWSKI~! MOROWSKI~! UFO~!

9/13/80 Hanover, Germany

Big Jim Harris vs. Bob DellaSerra (UFO)

MD: Now and again someone will wax poetic about how wrestling today is better than it ever was and we have so many four+ star matches on TV every week and whatever else and what people seem to miss in that is what we've lost. A match like this is what we lost and no amount of choreographed counters and athletic spots and constant fast pace will ever get it back. The social contract between the crowd and wrestlers changed. It's not about people thinking it's real or kayfabe. It's about the way the crowd reacted.

I'm not saying it can never come back but it's going to be hard especially with the incentives all broken.
For instance, if you watch FTR vs Nigel/Garcia from Double Or Nothing, the fans don't pop for each of Nigel's comeback shots out of the corner. They may react overall, but they're not living and breathing with each move done on either side. They may react to momentum shifts, but generally they're only going to react to big spots and more often than not, the way they react is that they're just glad to be there, just glad to see a spot. They don't have a horse in the race anymore, except for that the race is as exciting as possible. 

It's amazing how over Della Serra is here. Just constant UFO chants. A real connection with the crowd that he then makes the most of. This was on the card but not on the tape label so it's a bit of a bonus match and I'm glad we have another look at Harris. I watch the way he moves here, his swagger, his confidence, and I think he could have had a run with Dusty as this character in the mid 80s. You say that there was Bad News Brown or Leroy Brown or a few others that fill that gap but I just think between his size and how he moved and how he carried himself, he could have done it without Kamala. I'm just not sure he would have been an always in demand top guy for those years like he was. 

This went the full draw, over twenty minutes, and it was pretty good the whole way through. They had Harris lean on UFO building to big, hot moments of comeback. Everything was pretty simple and straightforward but they kept it moving and everything Harris did was credible and when he missed a charge or a splash and UFO was able to fire up, he sold big enough to make it all seem believable and meaningful. And when UFO finally slammed him, the fans went nuts, even if it didn't lead to a finish. I'm kind of amazed that they filled the time as well as they did but it was just a case of the right guys doing the right stuff in front of the right crowd.

ER: I love what Matt had to say about losing wrestling like this. This is wrestling at its barest essentials presented to the exact people who wanted those essentials. Big Jim Harris was two years away from Kamala and maybe 50 matches into his whole career and working a crowd like this must have been a breakthrough for him. Yeah, just put me up against a beloved babyface and I will be a tall black guy who throws downward strikes all match and it will get nuclear reactions. It's just that easy. Was it that easy? It couldn't have been that easy. This wasn't about the fans having lowered expectations, it was about the fans believing in UFO and rooting him on against this large tri-hawked presence. The men in the ring also knew how to best make use of the rounds system. They were good at saving something big for the bell in every round, like a serial where something was just about to happen but you'll have to tune in after this musical interlude. 

The first round ends with Harris breaking a front face lock agreeably at the bell but then whipping down hard with a strike not unlike his Kamala/Baba chops a decade later, except this one looked like Finlay smacking someone in the back of the head. Kamala learned to lighten up on the chops but Big Jim Harris was still throwing those long arms full strength. He lands one big downward strike after breaking so genially, then walks away with his hands up like he did everything that was asked. He understood the assignment. Harris cannot run the ropes yet but when he tries he looks like any guy his size would look attempting to run the ropes. He barrels into UFO like a large man completely out of control and UFO falls back rigidly, as if the contact of the shoulderblock/full body block knocked him out before he hit the mat. 

We get a round that ends with UFO actually hoisting Harris up onto his back and Harris using physics to fall back into a crucifix just as the bells sounds. This was the best round ending and while nothing in this match was clean or any kind of revolutionary offense, when have you ever seen Kamala rolling up ANYBODY with a crucifix? This is something I have never even pictured, or thought possible. What man could even attempt to get Kamala up on their back like that? Who would want to? What situation would Big Him Harris ever find himself in where he was lifted up on another man's back. No fireman would be able to carry him out of a burning building, only UFO. UFO hitting an ugly bodyslam on Harris felt like such a big moment, even if it only got a one count, because every single shot that landed on the big man was treated by everyone in that room as the greatest thing that could be happening. This was 20 minutes of build to one messy bodyslam, which will sound like the absolute worst shit to people who I have no interest in watching wrestling with, but they weren't there. It wasn't for them, and it didn't have to be. It's a testament to a babyface a specific crowd wants to live for...and also probably the threat of a large black man. 

Sal Bellomo vs. Moose Morowski

MD: Long match but a pretty good one. Bellomo had a special connection with the crowd too but I'm not sure if it had as much to underpin it as UFO. I get why it made a lot of sense to try to push him as an Italian American star in the WWF in the early 80s but I also get why maybe it didn't work. Plenty of energy and pluck. But at this point some of his timing was just a little suspect now and again. Morowski is infinitely credible. Able to just smash someone into the corner or toss them from the ring or hit a cheapshot from his knees as at a moment's notice. When he leaned on someone, he really leaned on him but then he could backpedal and take as good as he could give.

He took more of this than Bellomo and a number of times when Bellomo came back it was either due to a round break (catching Morowski as he charged in) or due to the ref intervening. At one point he goes so far as to swipe with someone in the crowd (maybe another wrestler/official but it's hard to tell from the footage). It's pretty constantly entertaining because the fans go up for all of Bellomo's comebacks and the cutoffs are mean and believable even if I'm not sure I need quite so many rounds of it. Finish has Bellomo knock Morowski off the top to the floor with a big bump but then get posted as he goes after him and made short work of once he makes it back to the ring.

Steve Wright vs. Klaus Kauroff

MD: Every new Wright match is a blast. You look forward to every exchange because you have no idea what he'll do next. The downside generally is that he does tend to eat up his opponents. With Karoff, however, that wasn't going to happen. This was more like a three act play than you usually get in these German matches. 

Wright clowned him early including some ridiculously elaborate sequences where he bounded and cartwheeled and twisted and turned and then turtled up. Karoff leaned hard on him in the middle with lots of big shots and cutoffs whenever Wright tried to fire back. And then Wright fought his way back into the ring headfirst and really pressed Karoff until he tried that head first lunge one too many times and ended up clotheslining himself on the rope. Karoff followed with this great over the shoulder backbreaker where he pressed Wright's neck up onto the top rope from underneath. Only problem is that it was very illegal and he got DQed for it. Overall, though, it was a fun, complete match.

Takashi (Sumo) Ishikawa/Atsushi Onita vs. Kim Duk/Ed Wiskowski

MD: Pretty surreal match and a great early look at Onita. It's not our earliest match of his but it's pretty close. Wiskowki and Duk are a tall, tall team. Duk really towers over Onita and trolls him early with a test of strength tease. By 82 you can definitely see signs of Onita in Onita but I was wondering if they would show up here and they did, not just in a perfectly milked hot tag but also in the way he'd get knocked to the apron and hang off by his feet. Just hamming it up in a way that had visual impact.

Ishikawa knew how to get over with this crowd too. A lot of sumo charges that were almost more football tackles, one of which missed and had him sailing out of the ring. The Japanese team would get beaten down (Onita especially) and make big comebacks and Duk and Wiskowski would bump and stooge until they could take over again. Wiskowki willingly got carded by jumping off the top so that he could win the first  fall. That's always a clever bit. In the second, they were firing back on Duk until Onita got caught in a tombstone. Pretty good match overall and as noted, a great look at young Onita in an interesting setting.

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Found Footage Friday: BABY MISAWA~! ONITA~! SATO~! INOUE~! TENTA~! KABUKI~! JIVE TONES~! CADETES~! MISIONEROS~!

Mitsuharu Misawa/Atsushi Onita vs. Mighty Inoue/Akio Sato AJPW 12/08/82

MD: This is, I think, the earliest Misawa match on record that was identified in a handheld cache from a couple of years back and that's now online due to our new friend in Japan. We have some Goto vs early Kawada matches that we'll hopefully take a look at in the next couple of weeks too. A lot of this was putting Misawa through his paces with the basic spots you'd expect from someone in the system at his age. There was one point where he seemed a little lost on a whip and there were some things he did, like a big backflip off the top that you couldn't quite attach to the wrestler he'd someday be. In general, it was a good showing for his experience level, generally competent. Onita had that electricity that made you think that 82 Randy Savage vs 82 Atushi Onita would be the most interesting match in the world. He drew the eye with everything he did because it stood out so much to everyone around him. And it's not like Sato and Inoue were slouches. These two had as good a finishing combo as you'd see in 82, with Inoue's fireman's carry gutbuster, two flipping sentons, and Sato's wind up hook kick. 

ER: This was mostly simple juniors stuff, a lot of armdrags, some grounded headlocks, and some movements that seem destined only to ruin knees. You see Onita leaping off the top rope to the floor and landing on his feet, just to back off Inoue, and you think about how his knees were pure bone dust less than two years later. Inoue and Sato work over Misawa's knee (Sato had a really nasty grapevine kneedrop that did not prevent Misawa from backflipping off the top rope late in the match) and has a cool backbreaker. Misawa gets to show some spunk with a hard back suplex that gets paid back shortly after. I loved how the match built to a wild Inoue/Onita exchange, with Inoue hitting his high cross block and then FLYINF over the top to the floor after missing the immediate follow up, giving Onita the opening to fly into him with a great tope. The Misawa/Inoue stuff was nice and spirited, with Misawa missing a cool leaping crossbody off the top and getting his insides rearranged with a gutbuster and two fat flipping sentons. Misawa was only 20 years old here, but you could really see how high his floor was just from his young boy work. 

The Jive Tones (Pez Whatley/Tiger Conway Jr.) vs. John Tenta/Great Kabuki AJPW 9/2/89

MD: Jive Tones were generally supporting Abdullah (who was building up to his big, heavily promoted singles match with Baba) on this tour. We get them in some six mans but it's nice to see a straight tag match with them doing their thing. Tenta was winding down on his way to the WWF, having not been utilized all that much in 89. Kabuki, of course, would jump between lower card matches like this and being a second or third guy in Jumbo vs. Tenryu main event trios matches. Maybe that's why it was so enjoyable to see him goof and stooge about with Conway and Whatley here. There was a beautiful exchange where Conway escaped a headlock by dancing this way and that and Kabuki answered by mocking his little dance. The crowd was definitely into the act, popping for each bit of oscillation or jiving that Conway or Whatley pulled out. You never quite got the sense that they were going to win, between the hierarchy of it all and Tenta's sheer size, but they definitely irritated their opponents along the way. That made the post match dancing and strutting around the ring of Tenta and Kabuki all the sweeter after their victory.

ER: Matt really has a strong grasp on the kind of matches that will lure me into writing late on a Friday night. I didn't know the Jive Tones worked an All Japan tour, let alone in a featured tag match, so I was going to be here for this. You see, it's the way Conway shimmies Whatley's white jacket down his arms and shoulders, really taking his time, wiggling his partner free. He will continue wiggling his way through the match, but building to some surprising stiffness and a cool story. I would have enjoyed this if they had kept the early match vibes, like Kabuki barreling out of control doing rope running with Conway, leading to him eating an armdrag and dropkick, or how Tenta swung super low on a clothesline and then caught Whatley's high crossbody, only to go down in a heap from Conway's Thesz press. 

I thought this would settle down pretty quickly into Tenta and Kabuki dominating, and the fun twist in the match comes when Conway gets manhandled into the wrong corner. This is clearly where he was about to take a long beating, and instead, wins a punch out with Kabuki that turns into a nice heat segment on Kabuki, even giving us a Conway butt butt off the ropes. One of Tenta's best traits as a wrestler is how good he is at looking Actually Mad in the ring. He has great body language and is good at selling, but he's so good here at looking genuinely pissed off at Whatley's antics, coming off like someone who was upset that the Jive Tones weren't treating Professional Wrestling with enough Respect. It's so cool seeing such a big dude get knocked around by Conway and Whatley, and my favorite part of the match was this excellent last second pinfall save by Conway, flying into frame with a stage dive that Charles Peterson should have captured in black and white. Kabuki barely gets the win with an inside cradle as Tenta is getting smashed into the ringpost on the floor. Negative points to the cameraman for not giving us more of Tenta and Kabuki's celebratory in-ring strutting. 

Solar/Súper Astro/Ultraman vs. Black Terry/El Signo/Negro Navarro Primer Festival De Lucha Libre Regia 3/21/10

PAS: Always cool to see a new match from Navarro and Terry when they were in their mid 50s and smack in their prime. Terry was the greatest brawler in the world in 2010, but this was more of a Navarro vs. Solar style llave exhibition, which was fun but not revelatory. Everyone kind of hit their beats here, pretty heavily matched up, so we didn't see much of Navarro or Solar doing their things with the other guys in the match. We did get a nice Super Astro tope and some flips from him, and I liked how they teased the traditional Solar vs. Navarro double pin finish, only to switch it up and have Solar win by submission. 

MD: This felt like these guys playing the classics, especially with the initial exchanges, but they're classics for a reason and even though we shouldn't have been surprised by it, because we have Solar vs Navarro even a number of years later, it's absolutely impressive on paper. It was a lot of fun seeing Super Astro use Signo's sheer size as an absolutely literal base to use to bound around the ring. Navarro and Solar had a lot of time and they used it to the fullest with one interesting tricked out hold after the next, holds that almost no one else in the world could make plausible but them. Things opened up a little on the second or third set of exchanges and that let Black Terry unleash some of the shots you'd expect out of him from this time and it gave things some variety, but they snapped back to old form shortly thereafter. Past the action itself, my favorite bit of this was the audio of someone explaining to their kid who each tecnico was based on the color of their gear. It was matter-of-fact and wholesome, spreading the love of these guys across generations.

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SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR: WAR 6/20/99

WAR 6/20/1999

Masao Orihara vs. Tomohiro Ishii

SR: Both these guys were pretty great in the late 90s, so I was pretty salty about this being clipped down just a couple minutes. Ishii was a wreckingball during this period, but Orihara easily outstiffes him trying to crack his jaw with lariats. We also get Ishii working Orihara over with chairs and whiping him out with a crazy rolling senton to the outside. Fun stuff but I wanted atleast 3/4ths of the thing.

Nihao vs. Koki Kitahara

SR: This was a CAPTURE showcase match and holy fuck after this I‘d kill to get the entire CAPTURE back catalogue. Brutal brutal match, just the most primitive grimy shootstyle you can imagine, two  guys with gloves trying to pummel each other into oblivion. Nihao takes Kitahara down and bloodies him with punches and headbutts, but the boss comes back just trying to crush his face with punches and teeth loosening kicks. There was one spinkick that would‘ve made Daisuke Ikeda wince, and also at one point Kitahara reverses a takedown into an armlock that looked to almost tear Nihaos shoulder. They showed 4 out of 6 minutes, and really would it have killed them to include those 2 minutes? Still 80 % of a sick spectacle is better than most, and those 4 minutes were some of the most insane of the year.

Ryuma Go vs. Thunder Warrior Alpha

SR: I respect Tenryu's tendency to bring in Go to squish random aliens. This was clipped to almost nothing but we got to see Go acting crazy and destroying the alien.

Genichiro Tenryu/Magnum TOKYO vs. Nobutaka Araya/Sumo Fuji

SR: The boss is involved, so we got the full match here. Didn‘t know what to expect from this, but it ends up a really entertaining match thanks to Tenryuisms. Basically Sumo Fuji acts like a big shot and annoys Tenryu some and ends up paying for it. Also really liked Araya as a scuzzy guy potatoing Magnum TOKYO. Toryumon guys also looked solid in their sections against each other, and TOKYO hit a pretty great top rope asai moonsault amongst other things. Loved Tenryu here, I think he didn‘t even take a back bump but pretty much carried the match by being a prick, as he usually does.

Osamu Tachihikari/Arashi vs. Daikokubo Benkei/Ichiro Yaguchi

SR:We get about 30 seconds of this and I am not bummed at all about that. I liked Tachihikari busting out random move like an STO and a Magistral.

Yuji Yasuraoka/Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Super Delfin/Naohiro Hoshikawa

SR: This was 4 solid pro wrestlers doings lots of solid pro wrestling, building to a pretty exciting second half. WAR reckless kicker Mochizuki ruled, I am just going to pretend he retired after WAR folded. He had some pretty great exchanges with Hoshikawa here, and I loved him flying into the scenery out of nowhere to take out people with spin kicks. Delfin & Hoshikawa worked well together and it was cool to see them acting as a crew. For some reason, juniors getting dumped on their heads or diving around the place was a lot more satisfying to watch in the 90s.

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Yuji Yasuraoka

SR: I guess Mochizuki wasn‘t happy with Yasuraoka's performance in that tag, so he gets on the mic to challenge Yasuraoka to a singles. Yasuraoka then proceeds to hit his awesome dive, getting insane height, and we get a fun short explosion of them throwing bombs at each other. Wouldn‘t have minded if this went longer, but they just did a 17 minute long match before so it made sense for this to be short and intense.

Shigeo Okumura/Sambo Asako/Atsushi Onita vs. Nobutaka Araya/Genichiro Tenryu/Shoji Nakamaki

SR: Exactly what it looks like on paper: Six tubby asskickers brawling all over the place, bleeding and pasting each other with chairs and lariats. That plus the megastar charisma of Tenryu and Onita. Tenryu is such an awesome menace here, punching people in the face and chucking chairs at them. Him vs. Terry Funk would’ve been one hell of a program. Then again, Tenryu  was pretty much untouchable at this point in his career. Onita & Asako looked pretty much like regular guys at this point, which made Asako getting abused by Tenryu feel all the more violent. Okumura was in charge with bringing a slight bit of workrate to the match and he did fine, hitting a pretty stiff dropkick. Very predictable match but all too fun.

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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.

 

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head: Misawa v. Kawada V. WAR v. FMW

Atsushi Onita/Tarzan Goto v. Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara (WAR 3/2/94)

PAS: Epic match with everyone playing their parts perfectly. Onita replaces his normally psychotic masochistic hurling of his body into barbed wire, with psychotically and mascochistically allowing himself to be toe kicked in the temple by Tenryu and shoot headbutted by Hara. Tenryu is a mean nasty prick roaming around the beginning of this match unloading on both guys. Both Goto and Hara are awesome as the bruiser tag partners whose job is to beat on the opposing teams big hitter. Hara brutalizes Onita early with headbutts busting him open, while Goto cracked Tenryu with lariats, superfly splashes and a a face first piledriver on the table. Then they clear out and let the two megastars match up. The finishing run may not have been the smoothest wrestling I have seen, but holy shit are Tenryu and Onita pair of charismatic motherfuckers who know how to draw you in a match. Tenryu's selling was brilliant here, at about the ten minute mark of the match he gets caught with a big DDT from Onita, and he is never able to shake off that shot. He goes back on offense, hits some big moves, but he has this awesome thousand yard stare even when he is firing back. When he finally goes down, it is a huge monster deal, but I buy Onita getting the win, even without explosions. The main event interpromotional WAR tag is one of the greatest thing in wrestling history.

ER: This was so great, and so different than what I was expecting! FMW coming into WAR's turf, yet Goto is the never say die bullied babyface, Onita makes puppy dog eyes, and Tenryu is the guy wandering around being a stoic asshole. I love this match though. It's so messy, really not pretty, but builds so cleanly and satisfyingly. Goto and Hara are the bulldogs being sicced on the opposing side's big dog, and the way we get there is classic. Stiff headbutts and lariats to the side of everybody's neck ensue, and Tenryu kicks Onita in the eye and forehead a dozen or more times. It's fairly routine in the beginning, until Goto has the nerve to break up a pin, and then Tenryu flips out on him, tosses him to the floor, and slaps and chops him into a pile. And it's a tasty moment, because Tenryu flying off the handle and getting so distracted by Goto doing his job leaves things wide open for Onita to recover a bit and DDT Tenryu as he gets back from jumping Goto. Just as Rick Rude sells an atomic drop finer than any other man before or since, Tenryu has always done the same glory to DDTs and piledrivers. His body always curls up a little as one hand holds his neck and the other focuses on the hot pain on top of his head. He eats another, manages to kick out, and also manages to tag Hara in. And brother, Goto does NOT forget about that beating that Tenryu gave him for saving Onita. As Onita is tangling with Hara, Goto storms into Tenryu's dwelling and blasts him with a chair, and spends the rest of the match making Tenryu pay for that early extra aggression. He really targets Tenryu and leaves him softened up for Onita. That piledriver slam on the table was ridiculous. I never even considered that the FMW boys might pull this off, but the longer this went I kept thinking "man a WAR comeback at this point would be just silly!" but that Onita pin was still super shocking.

Misawa v Kawada Review

PAS: Verdict, I loved this, WAR inter promotional tag is a style which resonates way more with me then All Japan main event puro classic. Still Misawa v. Kawada is the apex of that style, while this is an awesome interpromotional potato WAR, but a step below the incandescent stuff between WAR and NJ. 6/3/94 by a hair

ER: This match felt really unique, with some great strategy and several little stories running throughout. It's messiness was part of its shaggy charm, but it was also going up against something trimmed of fat and immaculately executed. So very different. But 6/3/94 is the peak of its own style, whereas we have seen better interpromotional wars (basically all of which I love), and I have to give respect to the king. 6/3/94 wins again.

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Until There's a Kurisu...

The joy of Kurisu, a man with a legit long career in both New Japan and All Japan, he was around during the start of FMW, during an important year of WAR, and trained guys like Koji Kanemoto. He's also a guy I don't believe I've seen footage of before the age of 40. Kurisu exists as this perpetually middle aged Japanese Randy Marsh, whose interests include chair shots and shoot kicking people in the face. Until There's a Kurisu is a foundation dedicated to raising awareness of the pain caused by chair edges to the back of heads.

Kurisu vs. Shoji Akiyoshi (FMW 12/10/89)

Good grief, Kurisu. I think we all use the words "destroy" or "nasty" or similarly animated words to describe wild moments in the wrestling that we watch. But this match probably belongs in its own category. Because it's basically just Kurisu kicking rookie year Jado in the face for a few minutes until he's actually knocked out. Now, there is other stuff. It's not some weird snuff film where a stationary camera just zooms in on a man's face as you watch life drain from his eyes. There is a competitive (sort of) nature to it. But no matter what happens, it always comes back to Jado getting kicking in the face. This is the type of desultory beating that could really turn somebody into a vengeful psychopath, something that could really alter you. You can picture Jado visiting elderly Kurisu like Vito Corleone visiting Don Ciccio. So yeah, Kurisu kicks face, and as Akiyoshi is selling being kicked in the face he gets kicked more in the face. He finally escapes to the floor, which just leads to Kurisu getting on the apron and kicking him in the face, pre-dating Trevor Lee by 25 years. Then he grabs a chair and literally just hits Akiyoshi as hard as he can with it, several times, and kind of leaves him for dead. Back in the ring, though, Kurisu gives him a little comeback. Akiyoshi locks on a crab and Kurisu actually sells his back nicely for him. Akiyoshi goes up for a missile dropkick (inexplicably going to the turnbuckle farthest away from Kurisu) and eventually drops him. But then Kurisu has had quite enough of that and goes right back to kicking face, with the final kick catching Akiyoshi right under the chin and legit turning off the lights. The craziest thing about it is Kurisu goes to pick him up for more of an ass beating, realizes immediately that he is picking up a corpse, and then makes a face like "oh yeah, that makes sense!" and pins him. The screen freezes and fades to black and white, and I was half expecting to see a "In Memoriam" graphic pop up for Akiyoshi. He certainly earned his long career with this one.

Kurisu vs. Jang Yong Wow (FMW 1/7/90)

Kurisu against a karate guy, in the opening round of a tournament. "Japanese indy scum vs. Karate guy" is pretty much a guaranteed source of pro wrestling joy, as I imagine almost all of the scenarios involved some guy from a local dojo offered money to fake wrestle once, and the person he's wrestling eventually flips the script and goes off page on him. And that's what happens. Wow throws some spin kicks in the 1st round, 2nd round is Kurisu being Kurisu: throwing the nastiest unprotected chairshots to an unsuspecting Wow (his reaction made it seem like he knew Kurisu would be hitting him with a chair, but something tells me the shots were explained differently to him than the ones he got blasted with) and then back in the ring he allows himself to be dumped on his head with a Saito suplex and lies there while Kurisu puts him in a half crab. This was clipped to hell, and the match never had that wrestler vs. karate guy moment where the karate guy realizes he's being fucked with, instead Wow just kinda rolled over and played ball. But damn those chair shots.

Kurisu vs. Matsunaga (FMW 1/7/90)

I wonder how the transition happened, when Matsunaga went from normal karate guy to crazy deathmatch guy. Is it like prostitution? You're looking for a way to make some quick money one summer, and the money turns out to be WAY better than you anticipated, and then pretty soon you're doing it full time, and then the drug use kicks in, and eventually some long haul trucker buries you out on Long Island Sound and a jogger finds you a year later. The death match money likely doesn't come close to a night of hooking, but it's somehow less dangerous. But I really am wondering if one day you're a karate guy and then they convince you to let Kurisu hit you with a chair and then a week later you're in a piranha tank with your gi hung neatly in your locker. If you had never seen 90s Matsunaga you wouldn't have given him a second thought in this match. He was very much a karate guy who didn't look like he knew pro wrestling. And he was clearly told the same thing Jang Yong Wow was told in the first match: "Throw some pulled kicks throughout the 1st round, then in the 2nd at some point Kurisu will hit you with a chair." I am operating under the assumption that they expected the chairshots because it looked like they were waiting and bracing themselves to be hit by a chair. Kurisu even makes them wait a little too long. But yeah, Kurisu eats some nice low kicks eventually catches a kick and kind of muscles Matsunaga over the top to the floor. And then you see it: Matsunaga lying on his stomach, knowing that this is when he gets hit with a chair. And Kurisu finds a chair, and literally walks around Matsunaga's body, craning his neck in to look for the most painful angle bounce a chair off him. And he finds it. Kurisu ends up teeing off golf style with the edge of a chair to Matsunaga's head, then gives him a few shots to the body....then grabs a couple more chairs and gives him a few more shots, and then rolls in for the count out victory. If I had to guess, Matsunaga knew "take a chairshot, get counted out". Something tells me he was not told there would be 14 chairshots.

Kurisu vs. Tarzan Goto (FMW 1/7/90)

This is the finals of FMW's weird karate fighter tournament, with all the lumpy scuzzy indy guys advancing. Goto comes into this with his ribs wrapped and his mullet all wooly and fluffed, and wouldn't you know it, Kurisu goes after Goto's ribs. Goto punches him out of the ring to start and then goes up for a dive off the top, and Kurisu ole's him right into the floor. Kurisu grabs a chair and begins doing his signature move, that being "hit opponents' tender spots with a chair at a violent angle, repeat". And that's the story of the match. Kurisu targets the ribs, kneeling on them, jamming his fists into them, at one point he is literally just leaning on Goto's taped up area. They also find plenty of time to headbutt each other. We get tons of moments of these two just looking each other in the eyes and clonking heads in painful ways, until Kurisu keeps deciding he's had enough of Goto's giant dome and goes back to kicking him in the ribs. Goto doesn't last long, whole match goes maybe 8 minutes. These kinds of matches can't go too long as they were just out there taking tons of shots to the head. If this was booked to go 20 they'd both be vegetables by the end. But it's definitely a mistake to go into a Kurisu match with something taped up. It would be like me walking through the Richmond BART station asking if anybody has any change for all of my hundreds. Onita comes out afterwards and he and Kurisu go at it, with Kurisu leaping at him off the apron with a chair. We get a bunch of still photos progressing the action, as though Chris Marker suddenly decided to make a poetic garbage wrestling documentary. And then I've never wanted to know how to speak Japanese more, as Onita cuts an insane, passionate crying promo backstage, just sitting there in his blue tiny trunks with belly bulging in white tank top, hunched over awkwardly, bleeding, and passionately crying. This is the kind of promo that can go viral. GIFs of his plaintive eyes can easily be inserted into any conversation thread. Crying Onita can become our Crying Jordan. Crying Onita has always been our Crying Jordan.

Kurisu vs. Onita (Barbed Wire Board Match, FMW 2/12/90)

I really liked this, but it's the type of match that I don't really think would play today due to the desensitization of death match culture. This is before the death match boom, and you don't get any guys taking stunt falls into elaborate weapon structures here. Instead, you get two men not at all dressed for a death match, actively trying to avoid falling into barbed wire. Death matches were still in their incubation period here. It would still be MONTHS before some weirdos decided to throw a cobra into a ring sealed by saran wrap or fight in the middle of a grocery store. So Kurisu and Onita wrestle in their normal trunks as the ringside area is completely covered in barbed wire boards. And these two insane men sanely do not want to land in the barbed wire. But they are vicious in how they each want the other to land in the barbed wire. Kurisu especially just jams his boot into Onita's throat to try and force him over the apron and into the wire. There are some great shots of Onita dangling perilously off the apron as Kurisu's outstretched leg pushed at his throat and jaw, forcing him down into the wire. And when he finally does fall into it, we don't get a modern back bump we've all grown bored of, we get a guy reacting the exact same way you or I would react if we accidentally fell into barbed wire. There's no rolling around in it, just a man trying to move as slowly as possible so as not to rip the shit out of his skin. Sheesh Onita is kneeling in it while trying to get his singlet untangled. His kneepads are not covering his knees. Personally, I hate kneeling on any hard surface, so I can only imagine how awful is it kneeling in barbed wire. Kurisu keeps kicking Onita into the wire, and in a great moment Onita finally catches Kurisu's leg and starts yanking him towards the wire. And man Kurisu does NOT want to go into the wire.

When I was 13 my mom let me throw a back to school pool party. It being a pool party, there were moments of meatheads throwing girls into the pool. My friend Brigit had just started her period and really had zero interest in going into that pool, but meatheads trying to throw someone in a pool LOVE resistance. They love the chase, they love the screams. They are monsters. Brigit eventually went into that pool, but man did she put up a fight on the way there. It took a few guys to drag a 115 pound girl into a pool. Kurisu held onto that bottom rope as strongly as Brigit held onto every damn thing she could get her hands on to slow down her eventual drop into the pool. Kurisu looked like a guy who had been promised backstage that he wouldn't have to go into the wire...and was realizing in real time that Onita was going to get him into that wire. Kurisu looked like a kid who had been tricked into going to the dentist, with Onita as the dad trying to drag him out of the damn car. Onita gets far more cut up by wire, Kurisu mostly avoids it by hanging on as long as possible and mostly falling underneath the apron, away from wire, and then taking his time to carefully get out of it. Again, he looked exactly how any of us would have looked in the same situation. And before long Kurisu is back on the apron and they're laying in shots to each other. The barbed wire stuff is amusing, but I like these two punching face. And we get some face punching, and Kurisu does a not recommended superplex. It looked like two people trying out a superplex for the first time. And then Onita decides to punish Kurisu for all of those shoves into the wire by just absolutely planting him with the thunder fire bomb. I mean vertically planting him. I wonder how many young boys watching secretly celebrated as Kurisu was just driven headfirst into the mat? It's not enough to stop Kurisu, so he gets another bomb for his troubles, and even then kicks out the as soon as the 3 is counted. Again this was a match that I don't think would go over today, but due to the personalities involved and the time it happened, I really enjoyed it. FMW was such a strange turning point in wrestling history.

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1990 Match of the Year

Atsushi Onita/Tarzan Goto v. Kendo Nagasaki/Masanobu Kurisu FMW 4/1/90

PAS: Just a hellacious balls to the wall street fight, taking everything great from Memphis brawls like Fabs v. Moondogs and amping it up just a bit. The crazy thing about this match, is you know that there is a directors cut of this match which is just as good focusing on the other two guys off camera. When we are watching Nagasaki recklessly hurling chairs at Goto's head, Kurisu is assuredly off camera kicking Onita with toe of his boot in the eye. This feels like a career match for Nagasaki who is an unhinged maniac, he comes into the match dressed in sweatpants and a white T-shirt looking like a guy home sick with the flu, and he is a whirling dervish, chasing Goto through the audience flinging chairs like Donkey Kong throwing barrels. We get some great Onita melodrama selflessly covering Goto with his body to ward off chair shots and emoting deeply. Kurisu may be one of my favorite wrestlers ever, this shlubby fat balding guy, who comes into a wrestling match with no fidelity to the traditions of safety and appropriateness that wrestling has been bound by. He will kick you with the toe of his boot, headbutt you in places you aren't suppose to be headbutted in, chop you in the throat, chair shot you with weird angle and edges. This kind of reckless disregard is perfect for this kind of brawl. Everyone is Kurisu here and he is the king of this grubby kingdom. The whole match goes 9 minutes, doesn't outstay it's welcome, and ends when it should. It is problamatic that enjoy this kind of crazy violent shit, it would be healthier for me if I didn't, but this match appeals to my darker angels and does it well.

ER: What a match! This really feels like a total Segunda Caida match (whatever that means). Nagasaki really is dressed as Man Playing XBOX on a Wednesday and Kurisu is dressed as Man Running Errands; Goto is dressed in comfort fit sweat attire, truly the worst collection of tight fitting sweat clothing you've seen, and Onita is all mummied up in bandages and tape, and we have a fight. I agree with Phil about Nagasaki in this match, really did feel like a career performance. I've never seen him look this inspired, and the hate in his eyes as he beats up Goto makes it look as if he were told he would not be paid tonight, right before the match started. Nagasaki knows how to make use of a bunch of chairs here, hitting both Onita and Goto with them at totally unpleasant angles. Kurisu doesn't even look like a guy in this match, just wandering around in his button down tucked into jeans. Then he pairs off in the ring with Goto and heeeere's where Kurisu gonna Kurisu. The boots he throws at Goto are the best you've ever seen. Watching those kicks and you finally understand what it means to put the boots to someone. He just beats the hell out of Goto, throws some famously nasty headbutts, and Onita drops him a bunch with his great over the shoulder powerbombs. This was all epic painful madness, the best part of those early year FMW shows. It was a fed where Jimmy Del Ray could just hang around and not look like the biggest skuzz.


ALL TIME MOTY MASTER LIST

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Within Segunda Caida's Wheelhouse: FMW vs. UWF vs. Barbed Wire

Yoshihiro Takayama/Masakatsu Funaki/Takuma Sano/Mitsuya Nagai vs. Atsushi Onita/Ricky Fuji/NOSAWA Rongai/Raijin Yaguchi (No Rope Barbed Wire, FMW 6/21/16)


ER: I have no idea what this was, or who it was designed to appeal to, or...well I guess I just don't understand Japan. The cat is outta the bag. What would be the American equivalent to this? Maybe an old timers softball game, except when Ozzie Smith picks up a ball then Dave Winfield is allowed to punch him in the dick? This match feels one step removed from WWE including a clause in their Legends' Contract stating "We reserve the right to one day film a WWE Network reality show where you may be hunted for sport". Several of these guys had very respectable, high end careers. Funaki is a pioneer, Takayama had one of the great puro runs of my lifetime, Sano has had great matches spanning decades, just seems a weird and sad and weird match to even be taking place. Nagai is the lone UWF guy with the sense to show up in jean shorts and a t-shirt. Takayama, Funaki and Sano are all in their trunks and kickpads, looking older and confused, as if they were tricked into being there. I refuse to believe that Takayama still regularly wrestles for actual real promotions. He wrestles the way people think they remember brain damaged Terry Gordy wrestling. I don't think he was able to throw one kick without immediately losing his balance and stumbling backwards. Sano now weirdly resembles Bob Backlund in the face, and I would be greatly interested in seeing a 2016 Backlund/Sano match. I guarantee you by the end of the year I'll have watched good matches featuring older luchadors. NOSAWA looks the same as he always does, Ricky Fuji looks like old weird Gregg Allman, Yaguchi looks like glam Kabuki, and Onita still *looks* like a fucking rock star. Dude could be playing bass in Guitar Wolf for all I know. I do hope he plays bass better than he approximates pro wrestling though. This was about 10 minutes of guys trying not to touch barbed wire, caring mostly about seeing where the barbed wire was in relation to their person, instead of caring about throwing decent strikes. We got SOME decent strikes. Onita took a kick to the eye. Onita also took a couple whips into the wire. I actually thought Funaki was going to be crazy enough to go into the wire, but he reversed Onita into it. Takayama got slammed through a barbed wire board, Sano got hit with a chair and fully looked like he did not want to be there. Some brawling on the floor made up in spirit what it lacked in quality. Onita won with some sort of chickenwing choke on Sano that was so loosely applied that I did not realize he had a chickenwing choke on Sano. I thought he was holding him or something, so that another old FMW guy could inflict actual damage on him. This was a match with old FMW guys and old UWF guys and barbed wire for ropes. I am going to go ahead and assume that all puro is currently just like this.

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MLJ: Atsushi Onita, Mil Mascaras & El Hijo del Santo vs. Tarzan Goto, Negro Casas & Giant Warrior

Atsushi Onita, Mil Mascaras & El Hijo del Santo vs. Tarzan Goto, Negro Casas & Giant Warrior
05/15/92 Tijuana, B.C. El Parenke

This was one night before the CA show, just with Goto on the other side and Nitron and Mascaras (there's a toss up) in the match instead. It's well worth watching as well, though, because while there were similarities, enough was different.

Similarities first. There was no reason in the world for Casas and Santo to not do the same exact opening exchange the next night. The crowd would almost certainly be mostly different. And lo and behold, it's move for move the same. That's okay though, because they hit it so quickly and so smoothly and so beautifully that it's actually a joy that we get it from a different camera angle.

That's really the only thing that's the same here. Mascaras' presence and Goto being paired against Onita changes everything. Mascaras is amusingly annoying. He'll sell for Giant Warrior but won't give Casas a single thing. At times, it gets hilarious as he just eats him up. Obviously, if Mascaras is going to be crushing someone, you want it to be someone who can make it entertaining and Casas can do that. It's still fairly bemusing though. Worth watching but bemusing.

Goto and Onita do their thing, and that's a lot of fun in this setting too. Goto is such a force, flying about with headbutts, and the sheer shining babyface charisma out of Santo and Onita paired together works better here because the match never really spirals around the arena like the one in CA did. It felt more contained with more interaction between the competitors.

I wish there were another ten of these matches from this tour because the two that we have are just a blast.

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MLJ: Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto & El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas, Horace Boulder & Tim Patterson

Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto & El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas, Horace Boulder & Tim Patterson
05/16/92 Los Angeles, CSLA Gym

What the hell guys? Why didn't any of you tell me that this existed? It was from some FMW USA tour or something but it was in a gym (Cal State?) with a hot crowd, lots of Japanese people there to see Onita, lots of people there to be Santo.

And this was a blast. It's exactly what you'd expect, really. The only shame is that for the most part, Santo and Casas work each other and Goto and Onita work Patterson and Boulder (one of which you barely even see in the match, really).

I mean, it's really exactly what you'd expect, like a greatest hits of this sort of thing. Goto was awesome bouncing off the ropes and headbutting people and clotheslining them left and right. Onita brawled around the crowd, had dueling chair wars and the world's most charismatic DDT. Santo and Casas worked some of their super fast, super smooth, 1992 exchanges. Santo hit his senton/tope into the corner, and this was a crowd that knew him well enough to expect it, so time seemed to absolutely freeze in the moment.

We get spattering of Casas shtick too. He wants nothing to do with Onita after stealing the second fall with La Casita. Earlier on when Goto threatened to come in after all of the outside the ring extracurricular, he actually used Santo as a human shield for a few seconds, which is, again, awesome. Patterson and Boulder were just there, neither helping nor harming the match, really, but playing their role so that Goto and Onita could play theirs. It was a whole lot of nothing but man is it ever glorious nothing. This must have been so great to be at live.

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Thursday Night Digging in the Cates

Hashimoto would have turned 49 today. That's sad. Here's a weird match he was in.



Shinya Hashimoto & Shinjiro Otani vs. Atsushi Onita & Great Sasuke WEW 5/5/02

PAS: Fun inter-promotional Puro match which is one of my favorite types of Puro matches. One minute in Onita sprays Hashimoto in the face with mist and we get a DQ and a crazy brawl with the ring filling up with WEW and Zero-One trainees. We get some mic work and a restart and we get a solid match with Hashimoto doing some nasty pummeling, Sasuke hitting a couple of crazy dives and Onita and Hash having a charisma off. Onita gets DQ'ed again for a fireball, and unfortunately the youtube cuts out at the bell and we don't get to see much post match melee. Not a stone cold classic or anything, but the inter-promotional war is a venue which Hashimoto excels in, and this is a neat little seen example of that.

ER: This is pretty bad, but also not bad and completely worth your time. I love ring clearing brawls from Japanese sleaze promotions, and this one had one early. Onita tries like one shoulderblock exchange with Hash, it doesn't go well so he immediately mists him and tons of people in white jogging suits run in and everybody kicks the shit out of everybody. It didn't have quite the same fire as his own Ocean Pacific wearing FMW punks vs mulleted karate doofs from early FMW, but the sentiment was there. Otani has a good time here and Hash projects an attitude of "why the hell did I sign up for this match", just wandering around and throwing thundering left kicks to Onita. Onita is lean and ripped, probably due to his Japanese Diet (wakka wakka) and he seems plenty willing to get kicking and have his face stomped on. Sasuke is still a total nut at this point, doing two wild swantons from the top to the floor, completely 100% whiffing both of them. One of them sees Otani laid out on a table in the foreground, while Sasuke swantons to nothing in the background. Later on he wings himself off the top and crashes and burns to the floor again, right past his standing opponent. Moment and visual of the match has to be Hash beating Onita into the corner and hitting a wild kick, resulting in Onita spitting out mist into the air. Never seen a guy's mist attempt backfire and I loved the spit take visual.

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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.

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SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!! 3/2/94

WE DECLARE WAR

Jado/Gedo v. Nobukazu Hirai/Masanobu Kurisu

Both Jado and Gedo had really weird hair. Gedo had the sides of his head shaved with a long black half mullet half ponytail, while Jado had hair like the guy from One Tree Hill who is directing Atlas Shrugged. This was pretty JIP, but I enjoyed what we got. Kurisu leveled one of the nastiest beatings I have ever seen against Jado on one of the early FMW shows, so I was hoping for that match up to pop more. Pretty exciting finish run, I am looking forward to some good Jado and Gedo during this project. This wasn't it, but it wet my whistle.

Koki Kitahara v. Kim Duk

This is definitely a JIP match I would have liked to see in full. Duk is such a nasty fucker, he throws these short little punches to the kidneys and throat which look like they totally suck. Kitihara throws a couple of sweet kicks too. Still we don't get enough of this to get much of a sense of the match.

Riki Fuyuki v. Arashi

Another pretty clipped up match I would have enjoyed seeing in full. This was a rounds match and Arashi is in a yellow mask and sumo gear. Fuyuki has the kind of weird charisma that can make this kind of thing work, and from the clips we got this was chaotic, heated and fun.

Ultimo Dragon/Masao Orihara v. The Great Sasuke/SATO

This had some really strong moments and good performances, but I just don't think these kind of matches are doing a ton for me in 2010. It went too long, even with a clip in the middle, and didn't feel like it had much of a structure. Just a lot of guys doing a bunch of things, some of the things are really cool, but it didn't build much of a coherent tale. I really like Orihara as either an underdog fighting through a beating, or a dickish asshole stiffing people. He can do both in one match and make it work, but here it felt a little like he was shifting back at forth randomly. Also Sasuke brutally blew the Sasuke Special #2 which ruined what had been an awesome dive train. Otherwise Sasuke was pretty great, as he really has a awesome overall shtick, graceful and crazy, as adept at quick lucha exchanges as lunatic bumping. Man is SATO (aka Dick Togo for yall that don't know) stellar too, such crazy agility for a stocky dude, he had the best dive in a match with Orihara, Ultimo and Great fucking Sasuke which is really something. Ultimo had some nice moments, I loved him dickishly breaking up a pin by kicking Sasuke in the eye Tenryu style, but he is still consistently the least guy in almost every match I see him in. I think folks will enjoy this, but I wanted it to be better.

We now get about 90 seconds each of Chris Jericho v. Super Strong Machine and Haku v. Mr. Hughes. From the clips I wouldn't have minded seeing more. Haku was just chucking Mr. Hughes around. DAMN YOU WAR EDITORS

Koji Ishinriki vs. Koji Kitao

Have no idea who Ishinriki is, I would assume some sort of shoot style guy by his boots and manner, but the name doesn't ring a bell. No matter as this is basically a Kitao sqaush, Ishinriki gets a takedown and works an armbar for a bit, but Kitao kicks him in the face and steamrolls him for a KO. Nothing to see here, keep it moving.

Genichiru Tenryu/Ashura Hara v. Atsushi Onita/Tarzan Goto

This match won the Tokyo Sports MOTY for 1994. That is 1994, the year of Misawa v. Kawada, Vader v. Takada and the Super J Cup. Still you watch this match and think "Yeah fuck a Misawa v. Kawada, this is it right here." Epic match with everyone playing their parts perfectly. Both Goto and Hara are awesome as the bruiser tag partners whose job is to beat on the opposing teams big hitter. Hara brutalizes Onita early with headbutts busting him open, while Goto cracked Tenryu with lariats, superfly splashes and a a face first piledriver on the table. Then they clear out and let the two megastars match up. The finishing run may not have been the smoothest wrestling I have seen, but holy shit are Tenryu and Onita pair of charismatic motherfuckers who know how to draw you in a match. Tenryu's selling was brilliant here, at about the ten minute mark of the match he gets caught with a big DDT from Onita, and he is never able to shake off that shot. He goes back on offense, hits some big moves, but he has this awesome thousand yard stare even when he is firing back. When he finally goes down, it is a huge monster deal, but I buy Onita getting the win, even without explosions. The main event interpromotional WAR tag is one of the greatest thing in wrestling history.

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