This was part of the Mixed Martial Arts Tag League tournament.
It is a major step forward, as save for the opening show with the Onita/Aoyagi match caught on handheld, it feels like the best FMW fan cam match yet.
Mostly, it’s because even when caught from much farther away (although, to the credit of the fan who captured this show, with far greater filming discipline than anyone else to illegally record an FMW show so far) and only from one location meaning the brawling part on the floor wasn’t captured as well as always, this sort of a thing hits too many of the obvious notes not to be awesome.
Borderline great, but fun and interesting and short enough to land on the right side.
The match doesn’t come together immediately, but when they stop messing around and get to the hits — abuse and bloody up the super likeable fat guy to set up for a sick Onita hot tag — there’s enough of a drastic leap forward in quality that it does not matter anymore. Asako is, more secretly, one of the more sympathetic babyfaces of the time, and it’s a blast to see what Goto and Fuji come up with for him. Goto’s stomps to the face have never looked better, on top of breaking out some newer offense like these springboard short headbutts stepping off the middle rope with a foot while holding onto Asako’s hair neaby, and Fuji has enough nice punches on him to not let down his side of things. It’s great great formula stuff, aided a lot by how bloody the big fella gets too.
Onita is then Onita, the linchpin to tie it all together and take it from really good to borderline great. The usual furious energy, now also involving chair and table throwing outside, breaking down into a fight where everyone hurls themselves and anything in fight at the opposition as recklessly as possible.
Sambo gets the defining shot of the match for a little comeback himself, absolutely trucking Goto out of the ring and setting Onita up to beat Fuji with his powerbomb.
Nothing ever has to be so complex.
Super super fun, and secretly, on the basis that you don’t start someone with the absolute best stuff possible and ought to ease someone in with smaller scale work showing the greatness of more base level aspects of something, among those great sort of introductory matches from early FMW.
HANDWERK 