This was a No Ropes Exploding Barbed Wire death match for Onita’s WWA Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title.
As something of a well-read novice before the start of this project, this very much feels like the start of the picture that I always had in my head of FMW.
Goto and Onita have themselves not only a match that strikes upon the beautiful, pure, and simplistic violence and feeling of the best early FMW stuff so far, but also with a true sense of spectacle in a gigantic match like this. Where the barbed wire hell match nearly six months prior and others like it began to kind of test the waters, this feels like the first gigantic swing and a step into something else entirely. It’s not only, I think, the first (maybe Puerto Rico?) no ropes barbed wire match, the debut of what I think is the best match type in wrestling history, but also adds the explosions on top of that. My mental picture of FMW, prior to this and really only seeing the big venue Toyoda/Kudo NRBW and clips of like Onita/Funk or whatever, was this kind of match under these circumstances (albeit in a larger space than this gorgeous train yard, which has more character to it than most other venues ever). Violent, but so kind of operatic and immense in scope, based on how people often elevated these matches above “other” deathmatch wrestling, that it likely had this other element to it as well.
It lives up to all of that.
Talking strict mechanics, it is of course far from perfect.
Not every move is perfectly executed. When they try for quieter moments after early explosions, they seem almost unsure of how to fill that time in the best way and opt for two (2) longer Figure Four spots, and given the length of those spots, it’s a little frustrating that there is immediately no damage at all from them. The finishing run also gets a little repetitive with Onita hitting the same two moves three times in a row, removing at least a fraction of the drama from them. One naturally imagines a better version of this, one that’s tighter, makes slightly better choices, and that backs up all of that drama with greater mechanics and smarter minute detail construction.
But you are not here for that.
You are here for the blood and the chaos and the visceral thrill of an explosion and you are here for the big moments and the emotive selling and the drama.
In a lot of ways, the messiness is a major part of all of that.
The great joy here — even a little more so than the thrill of blood and explosions — is seeing two of the greats figure this match out, narratively speaking, in real time. Watch enough great No Ropes Barbed Wire Matches, and you get used to certain rhythms. Early teasing of the wire, caution and a healthy fear, in order to make it feel like a huge deal when someone goes into it. This being the first of its kind though, they have the benefit no other matches like it can ever have, which is the idea that nobody quite knows how this works.
Not just in the sense of not having the ropes there and thus falling further in, but especially the explosive element. They’re incautious in a way that no other matches to follow, that I know of, have ever been. Explosions come early through seemingly innocuous things, like Goto driving Onita back early with headbutts or later on, with Onita just rolling slightly too far and setting one off with his foot. They’re the results of people who have never experienced or seen or even heard about a match like this, because there is nobody to tell them about it and nothing to see, all culminating with Onita finally figuring out how to operate and succeed in this match and purposely driving Goto back into an explosion for the first time to feed into the end of the match, as the culmination of all of these big moments and ideas.
It’s beautiful stuff, and exactly how any kind of first match of its kind like this ought to go.
Very importantly too, to get into the why and even more of the how behind all of that cool stuff, it also feels like a fight between estranged friends.
Onita and Goto seem upset in a way that nobody has in an FMW match yet. We have seen hate before, we have seen many kinds of hate from Masashi Aoyagi’s ideologically based hatred to a sort of fuck-everyone-alive-who-isn’t-me energy from the god Masanobu Kurisu, but this feels so much smaller and more personal. Not small in scope, but in the sense that these negative feelings are literally only for this person. Every move feels like part of an argument, some shouted and some simply stated with the kind of destructive and firm calmness that’s so much meaner than anything yelled, but always pointed and direct.
That’s the stuff that really makes this what it is, and where the magic truly lies.
Every inch of this is not only cool and watchable because of the occasion and the set up and the venue, but carried out with the utmost feeling and sincerity by the wrestlers having the match as well. There’s as much anger put into a punch exchange or Onita’s finishing suite as there is to them struggling to get up or rolling around after the explosions, and when every moment of the match is visibly felt by the people within it, it becomes so much easier for everyone else to feel too.
Following the third Thunder Fire Powerbomb in a row, Goto finally stays down for the ten count, and Onita once again makes up with a foe after the bell.
Imperfect but thrilling, and wholly impossible to ever look away from.
FMW ass FMW.
***1/5
HANDWERK 