Commissions continue again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor SSJW Gogeta. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.
This was a barbed wire current blast death match for Toyoda’s FMW Independent & WWA Womens Title, and also Toyoda’s retirement match.
As I write this in late January of 2024, it is not some great secret, having mentioned it in passing a few times on this site and more elsewhere or whenever asked about such a thing, but while I’ve seen some, for the most part, FMW (and while the company is more than just this, really 90s deathmatch wrestling in general) is one of my great blind spots along with Portland and AWA, when it comes to specific things. The sort of thing that, like I did/am slowly doing with older lucha, I hoped to one day make a project out of, and may yet one day, even if that just means that 100 Best FMW Matches compilation.
So, again, this is a great use of a commission, something I either haven’t seen yet and/or have been putting off for a while, and in this case, a little of both.
It’s really really great.
Before anything else, the thing that I don’t need so many hours logged to appreciate on some level or proper context to enjoy is that on a nuts and bolts level, on a mechanical level, simply looking at the what and how of this match, it is a phenomenal match.
The thing they’re supposed to do, the tease of the gimmick before it gets used, they do very well. It isn’t exactly unique to this match alone, the teases of the wire before hitting it, that bit itself home to a fascinating phenomenon where people who “don’t like deathmatches” always praise that either here or in other prestige adjacent deathmatches despite that basically every great NRBW match does well, along with the way the escalate its use, but in more micro detail, this does it better than most. After minutes of avoiding more conscious efforts to go into it, Kudo is sent in first less by design and more through a sudden shift away by Combat, and the other major wire/explosion spots follow that pattern. The result is that you get a real sense of how hard it is to send someone in, making not only the moments where it works more impressive, but also making them feel so much bigger.
Outside the major stuff, and more in terms of actual wrestling moves, they have the same great sense for proper escalation. Real sick stuff, with the offense gradually getting bigger and nastier, phenomenal spacing and selling of each thing, and hitting that point I love in these huge spectacles, particularly NRBW matches where nobody can hang onto any advantage because each major moment takes so much out of both of them. The result of all of that is that every time both make it to their feet, it feels like a restart in the best way, having something akin to a boxing kind of rhythm by the end.
Without knowing anything, air dropped in, it is already a great match.
Part of me worries a little — given, spoiler, this match’s place on a lot of lists as an all-timer and at least according to compilation listing, as the best FMW match ever — that it’s sort of a bad place to first dive in. Context, history, a million other things. It’s not that, just dropping in here for the ending, that this is lacking in any real way, in terms of being able to pretty immediately grab onto what’s going on. Really, it’s more that with a little more knowledge — seen more so than heard or read about — of their matches together, how things went, and all of that outside a few here and there or interpromotional tags, there’s a chance that, the next time I watch it, it might become even better. Another part, the louder one, says that “huge deathmatch with longtime enemies in one’ retirement match” is probably more than enough (and also to stop being a baby and just feel it).
Both are probably correct, although the latter so much more so than the former.
Watching this, even with basic knowledge, it still whips so much ass, and is very very easy to latch onto.
There is an obvious big and small element to this, Toyoda also with the look of a classical joshi villain and Kudo being one of the great babyfaces and all of that, but there is clearly more. Between simply how the match is assembled, with more back and forth and less obvious control even in the sort of match that is not always about classic formula, and also the obvious situation and how Toyoda carries herself, along with the post-match outpouring of emotion, it’s a much more even match in a way that adds a lot to it. For as easy as the visually obvious approach is, “old villain does her best against her most storied rival in a dangerous match” has far far more to offer.
It’s seen all over the match, but best illustrated in the final third or so. Unable to match the speed and not recovering quite as fast as Megumi Kudo, Toyoda takes a gigantic swing when she catches Kudo by the wire, and in a split second call, drops back into the exploding wire with a German Suplex to take Megumi Kudo down with her.
Beautiful thing that it is, as the go down, you’ll notice Combat Toyoda hitting first.
She doesn’t take ALL the punishment, of course — Megumi Kudo is still suplexed back into barb wire and some of the explosion — but it’s enough to essentially nullify it, if not leave her outright worse off than a moment earlier. She never really has a chance again, super admirably taking a gigantic swing and not quite making it, before a MOTHERFUCKER of a powerbomb followed by the Kudo Valentine for the win.
It is exactly how someone like (or at least, in limited viewing, someone who feels like) Combat Toyoda ought to go out. Respectable and tough and in one of the coolest matches ever, eating shit in a way that is both more than a little petty, admirable as hell, and that also sees her the victim of her own plan.
The match itself is maybe not the most perfect there ever was, but gets so much right that it never matters. Not quite a pure morality play so much as an emotional epic, but not one without something to say either. Home to two incredible performances, a study in construction for a match like this, great on levels large and small, with both minor and major moments that are pretty hard to forget. Given what it is, it does every single thing you could want out of it and more.
A genuine spectacle, and one of the great chunks of pure Pro Wrestling that there is.
***3/4
HANDWERK 