Tarzan Goto vs. The Gladiator, FMW Kitakami Decisive Battle! Day One (6/15/1991)

This was a Texas Bull Rope Death Match.

Although for how much they used it — yet again for a match on an FMW smaller show fan-captured recording (although this one holding up much better in terms of audio and video quality, desync, actually seeing the match) — it could have easily been a chain or a dog collar match, or nothing could have even existed for how rarely it was used, outside of the simple utility of binding them together.

None of that matters.

Goto has had a bunch of these hyper-dramatic big FMW matches by this point that blend his propensity for realistic feeling violence and high-level energy that makes everything he does cool as hell with a narrative utility, and the result has been some of the best and most memorable matches of the era. This is not one of those matches. There is no such narrative function, longer-term work either continued nor culminated, and there is very little in the way of character work.

Instead of all that, sometimes shit just rocks.

Handed a young but vaguely promising Mike Awesome in a six a half minute brawl, Goto creates maybe not quite a miracle, but something more than anyone else with Awesome so far, either in tags or singles. It’s not a complex matter though, despite what phrasing like that might suggest, so much as that Goto only lets Awesome do a few things, like his powerbombs and clotheslines, and fills the rest up with delightful nonsense. Hard shots of his own, cutting Mike up, and most of all, spending half of the match outside where both men hurl tables at each other’s face and smack each other in the head with chairs as hard as possible, all before coming back in to do a few more sick power moves.

The thrills are simple, but still so great and so satisfying.

Goto plants him with a real motherfucking pancake proto Neutralizer on his face and a bunch of the rope, and given that such a thing makes Goto’s splash off the top a lot more improbable than usual, that’s the end.

I am not going to tell anyone that they have to see this, but the joy of being an absolute psycho with projects like this is finding dumb little chunks of fun like this, and six minutes and change of Tarzan Goto and a young Mike Awesome hurling each other and pummeling each other with all types of objects makes a whole lot of things worthwhile.

hell yeah dude

Grigory Verichev vs. Atsushi Onita, FMW Shogeki Day Eleven (5/29/1991)

This was for Verichev’s WWA Brass Knuckle Heavyweight Title.

Assuming you’ve gone into this having seen their first match (and why wouldn’t you? Wrestling is almost always better in context!), this is essentially just that again, and it’s great for mostly the same reasons. Onita’s energy, the way Verichev carries himself and moves around the ring to casually feel like a gigantic killer, huge bumps, simple backdrop throws that though a combination of said bumps individually and the flow of the match to those points, and a typically dramatic ten count finish.

Granted, there differences.

First, in the fact that this time, like one expects in this sort of a cycle when the leader of the company has his rematch with the monster who previously pummelled him into oblivion, Onita wins and regains his title. It makes this match a little less interesting on a conceptual level, as at least for me, the disruption will always be more engaging than the return to the usual order, even with the sense of triumph that Onita puts behind it.

The other difference is how they get to that point, which is I think what makes sure it’s still interesting.

Rather than something like the Onita/Aoyagi matches over eighteen months earlier, where Onita perseveres at the end in roughly the same match, this is a lot different in terms of what they choose to do. Onita adapts Goto’s plan of rushing at the start into something more sustainable, both making better decisions after that initial shock and also changing his offense a lot, like breaking out an ahead-of-its-time dropkick off the apron. He gets a little lucky too, like when a judo throw takes Verichev over the top and he seems to bang his arm up some on the landing, later giving him openings that nobody else has had against the big man. Not only in the holds he has a chance at, but primarily in giving Verichev moments of pause after his gigantic throws, which allows Onita the chance for the one big match-altering lariat to break the sequence up that he never had in February, and that makes such a difference now.

Are these differences enough?

Sure.

Generally, the match lasts around the same length and has the same feel in terms of mechanics and construction. As a result, these narrative shifts and the change in what they do within the same type of match matter, and make sure this isn’t solely a retread, even if by the nature of what it seeks to do, the ceiling is lower.

Mostly though, I like it for the same reasons I liked the original, and I imagine that a lot of people would as well.

It’s big event wrestling where — although you can trim stuff out that doesn’t matter long term (this is why Goto/Verichev is the best of the bunch) — everything that happens feels like a huge swing, and every part of the match feels more desperate and valuable and important as a result.

Verichev finally gets dropped on his head one time too many by the second or third Thunder Fire Powerbomb, and Onita gets his belt back.

Not one for permanent tape, nor anyone after just the absolute best stuff, but that has never once been the province of this endeavor. For people wanting to find the joy in the regular strength great things, like the other non-all-time Onita vs. Legitimate Fighter matches or all of the other Verichev stuff, it is so so easy to enjoy, and I am valuing that sort of a thing more and more lately.

***

Atsushi Onita vs. Mr. Pogo, FMW Sennitsu Day Ten (5/6/1991)

(photo courtesy of BAHU’s wonderful FMW site)

This was an exploding barbed wire Double Hell deathmatch.

On that site linked to above, a phenomenal source of both further in-depth information a well as photos that would likely be borderline lost media without it, FMW results are split up into sections. Usually, it is year by year, either beginning or ending with what would become the gigantic spring (usually May 5th or 6th but not always) show, but the first section, comprised of a little more than the first year and a half ends with this show, and effectively, with this match.

It’s purely circumstantial, I think, bringing it to an end on the show whose general date range would become the signature event for the company, but it’s also perfect.

Before I began this, and to be honest even still sometimes now, I had a picture of FMW in my head, as one does. Even if you don’t always give a ton of thought to these things, I have to imagine that with anything one hears a lot about or perhaps also experiences only in small flashes or snippets or through famous photographs or widely praised wrestlers and/or matches, this happens.

This is, even more than the first exploding barbed wire match, the first FMW match to completely fit that vision that decades of loose video clips, pictures, GIFs, and recountings from others created in my head.

An unbelievable atmosphere, lent not just by the constant threat of danger but the beautiful sky and wide open setting with trees off in the distance, and late in the match, some kind of music far far far off in the distance, but just loud enough for the camera to pick up. Atsushi Onita covered in blood. Barbed wire and simple offense and dramatic selling. Above all, of course — as the reputation of FMW to those less familiar, at least at a time, was always a little more than just tables, chairs, wire, and blood, the standard harcore fare — there are explosions, and much bigger ones than the other major experiment with something like this.

Pogo and Onita have all of that in their second meeting, and it is all so cool.

It is not quite as good as their November 1990 match.

To some extent, that’s to what this match is and what it requires, a lot of teases shoving through or under the ropes into Double Hell, but that isn’t all of it. Kurisu and Onita had a great match with those same limitations and without the benefit of gigantic explosions due to Kurisu’s mechanical perfection. A lot of it comes down to that Mr. Pogo is just not great, especially not in the ways that can help a match like this out, and just as much to that this goes on a little long after the climax of Pogo being sent into a gigantic explosion after Onita ate two early on, as well as repeating itself in that last quarter or so when the best had clearly already passed.

What it has going for it does a lot to counteract that though.

First is that this is still a big event Atsushi Onita match.

Onita delivers in the way that Onita always seems to in these singles spectacles. Everything he does feels like something he wrings every drop out of or uses every available part of. Not only in terms of utility in the match, for the most part save some closing moments, but in terms of how much energy seems put into it. Again, he isn’t breaking out this massive arsenal of new attacks, but every punch and clothesline and headbutt and DDT looks like he’s trying to win with the exact thing he’s using in that moment. The selling of the two blasts he takes is also unbelievable. Not over the top, but quieter and so much more genuine feeling, like there’s just as much shock mixed in there as actual pain, which stands out so much more.

There are also those explosions and they are, as tends to be the case, sick as hell.

Particularly — although it is not to say Onita’s two earlier ones are not thrilling — it’s the third one that Pogo takes face-down that feels like goes off the largest. It’s the most fitting, the one the match builds towards and that is effectively the climax, resulting in the loudest sound, widest pyrotechnic outburst, and by far the largest cloud of smoke. Especially considering it’s the first, it’s a beautiful thing.

Pogo’s done after that, and although it takes too long to get there, Onita eventually adapts his off-the-middle DDT to be off the top instead to win.

It’s not the greatest match and I know that, but maybe sometimes some things take precedence of pure artistic quality. Given that I’m probably not going to forget about it any time soon, despite all of its flaws, I think it’s worth it, as a match that goes well beyond that sort of a measure.

ratings are bullshit and explosions rule 

 

Grigory Verichev vs. Tarzan Goto, FMW Sennitsu Day Ten (5/6/1991)

This was a Different Style Fight for Verichev’s WWA Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title.

Following Verichev’s absolutely-not-an-upset victory of the title and conquest of FMW over Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto gets his shot, not only to try and take the title back for the home team, but probably just as importantly, to do something that Onita could not.

He comes up short, of course, but he does so in an even better match.

A really significant part of that, and really like ninety percent of that is simply what this match chooses to be, and like so many of the great more “regular” early FMW main events, it’s a match with some phenomenal narrative work. .

Verichev/Onita was the way it was — a slower start before a series of explosions that Onita never found a way past — to further accentuate the value of Verichev as a top level talent and give his victory maximum impact, winning in the exact sort of match that Onita has been using to beat other legitimate fighters for the last eighteen months. It was a great idea resulting in a memorable match, an obvious success, and thankfully, this is a match that goes the complete opposite way.

In this match, Tarzan Goto whips Verichev’s ass.

Not only does it work, and work immediately after a running lariat, giving the match a new dimension than other Verichev matches, but there’s a further utility to it as well. It very much feels like what Onita should have done, as someone with an even more explosive attack than Goto, and because such a thing comes from Goto, there’s also something a little more pointed attached to it, trying again to surpass the king while showing him how he’s better.

Goto being Goto though, perhaps just the first to suffer from a curse on that name, it does not work forever.

Unable to pummel the big guy forever, he briefly goes to the knee, only to go back to pure fighting once it gets hard. His greatest strength — an overzealous and reckless lack of fear — is also his greatest weakness. Goto brains himself on the post, giving Verichev his first window for offense all match, and he rips the thing clean off the hinges. Within a minute, two at the most, Verichev hurls Goto on his head with what feel like even nastier suplexes than against Onita, and the poor guy cannot sustain it. After self-Nigeling himself on his one (1) error, Goto gets blasted with a few backdrop suplexes before, as if to punish him for trying to exist on the mat with him earlier in the fight, Verichev wins with a cross armbreaker.

That’s the good stuff, to me.

An incredibly flawed character taking on a seemingly impossible task, coming closer than anyone, only to be undone by the very thing that got him so far in the first place.

Wrestling isn’t just all narratives, characters, and great stories though.

On some level, this has to also deliver in the ring, or else, we’re only talking about one incredibly well executed piece of the puzzle.

So, does this whip ass?

God yes.

Compounding the moments like those — Goto hurling his body at everything in front of him or the way he lands on those Verichev throws late in the match — that are just objectively cool as hell, it’s also all done with such an energy and a force by both Goto and Verichev, and so expertly put together and executed.

Every swing feels like an attempt to end the fight in that immediate moment, and when he goes to the ground with the champion, Goto walks this perfect tightrope where everything both looks painful and, likely not on purpose, like he is more than a little outside his comfort zone. It’s also SUCH a tight package, the sort of match that’s not only perfectly put together in terms of the order of everything, but also in how vital everything that happens feels both to the match as this narrative arc as well as as this purely physical creature.

Given that it is almost entirely just person-to-person fighting, with slight chair use being the only moment in this match that the structure of a wrestling ring does not already provide, this wonderful energy and the frantic efficiency of the match combines with that clear narrative to create not just the sort of wrestling I love, that best of both worlds situation again from early FMW, but also something that feels like FMW’s closest foray into WCW big match wrestling.

Little feels quite as right.

Wonderful episodic wrestling, getting the next part of a monster reign (although admittedly a shorter one than usual) just as perfect as it got the first part, while also happening to whip a ton of ass.

***1/4

Atsushi Onita vs. Grigory Verichev, FMW Korakuen X2 Day Two (2/27/1991)

This was a Different Style Fight for Onita’s WWA Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title.

Verichev is the latest in a long line of shoot fighters to go after Onita in FMW’s early days, but with all due respect to Aoyagi and the future Jerry Flynn and Lee Gak Soo, Verichev is a little different. Not just as a Russian fighter, which every even reasonably well-informed wrestling fan knows is the most dangerous thing possible, but also as a bronze medalist at the 1988 Olympics, and a medalist in the last three world championships. On top of that, he’s been in FMW regularly for four months now, pretty much running through everyone put in front of him in around five minutes or less.

Essentially, what worked before likely will not work now, Verichev is another type of being entirely, and ought to be taken so much more seriously than any other genuine fighter to come through FMW.

The joy and tragedy, of course, is that Onita is the last one to know this.

It’s a great match in the way that I love for matches to be great, successful for two different reason, with each working together in perfect synchronization to create some real beautiful pro wrestling.

What I love about this, as a wrestling match, is first, that it rules. Verichev is the perfect guy for this match and story, as a big man who is impressive without being immediately imposing, allowing his dominance in the back half to not totally come out of nowhere, but to strike from a less familiar angle. All of his throws look like absolute hell to take, and Onita’s selling is perfect. He’s able to convey less and less hope and greater desperation each time he gets up, he’s able to inject that into his limited offense as well, and it makes a finish that reads as a little whatever on paper into one of the more striking and memorable scenes in FMW history.

It’s another one of those perfect examples of every single thing in a match stacking on top of what came before it, creating something memorable and enhancing it at the same time. So, while yes, things like the Onita fire ups and all Verichev’s gorgeous and nasty throws are all super fun to look at and so easy to enjoy on a gut level, there’s also such a utility to everything. Every move and motion and look is not only itself good as hell or, at worst, effective, but contributes to the larger whole in the way that’s so impressive, while also working with an efficiency that a lot of other matches I would praise (and have praised before) like that don’t even come close to.

What I love about this too, more narratively speaking, is that much like most great tragedies, it is completely understandable why Onita makes every choice that he does.

Having survived most of this sort of thing before, along with now tons of barbed wire and explosions, it makes sense, in a sort of a ROCKY III or ROCKY IV sort of a way. It’s plainly hubris, but it’s a well-earned hubris that anyone with a little knowledge of the history of the promotion so far can understand. Likewise, his approach is essentially one crafted by other matches like this. He lays low in the first half on the ground, just staying alive in there, before striking with the classic Onita stuff, and it makes sense, because this is what’s worked before.

It just doesn’t work at all this time, or even close.

The very moment Onita leaves Verichev open, everything collapses.

Verichev crowds him with throws, and for the last three or four minutes of the match, the only shot Onita gets in is a weaker-than-usual Lariat, and it’s one that Verichev tops right after when he completely wipes out Onita with one of his own. Onita’s headbutts — in one of the great bit of visual shorthand ever — only break open Onita’s forehead and not Verichev’s, calling into question if he can be killed or not, but more than that, showing Our Hero as being literally unable to leave a single mark upon his challenger. Judo throws lead to slams lead to the repetition of these nasty nasty side belly-to-belly suplexes, and after eight or nine, Onita just cannot do it anymore.

In one of the best executed versions of the idea ever, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, Onita grabs onto Verichev’s gi on his knees at the count of eight, but cannot make it all the way back up to his feet by ten. Onita collapses, losing his title to an outsider finally, as Verichev stands over him with his arms raised.

For what it lacks as a match, it makes up for as pure pro wrestling brilliance.

It isn’t new, and anyone reading this likely knows a rematch will come, along with all that will come with it. That doesn’t matter to me, not when the set up is this great. Onita suffers his first genuine defeat since the very first FMW show, and it isn’t even a close one. It’s ideal action movie shit, Our Hero so used to his success against all comers that he doesn’t just lose a close one, but gets completely obliterated, so as to establish a beautiful triumph to come in the future, and with that in mind, it achieves this goal totally and completely.

The match just happening to also be great is a fun little bonus on top.

Not a pristine chunk of chaos or high-level violence, but more in line with the very first FMW shows. Classical pro wrestling ass pro wrestling and, to be perfectly honest, also some of the best Inokiism of the 1990s to date as well.

***

Tarzan Goto vs. Sambo Asako, FMW Korakuen X2 Day Two (2/27/1991)

Not the worst or most stunningly and violently impressive beating in FMW history, or even just the worst/nastiest/most horrifying one to ever happen to Sambo Asako, but all the same (and given that Goto cannot entirely match the casual sort of hate it takes a man like Masanobu Kurisu decades to acquire), yet another wonderfully mean-spirited display of violence.

The match works more or less the same as the latter, with what it lacks in Kurisu’s specialized old bastard cruelty made up for in smaller ways.

Sambo Asako is one of the more sympathetic wrestlers active at this point, give or take a Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, through a combination of having a likeable presence and also by virtue of the unbelievable charm of being a fat guy whose skillset (hint: it’s his name) is very specific and not the most perfect fit for the environment, doubling up on the fish out of water thing. These qualities are only amplified as he’s gotten more experience in the last year, so now a raw charm comes with larger displays of energy when he makes a comeback, or him breaking out a wheel kick or, for the first time in this match, a flipping senton off the apron, or especially becoming even better at selling and trying and failing to fire up.

It’s something that Kurisu/Asako match nine months earlier scratched the surface of and that this comes a little closer to getting to the center of, which is that while a beating to someone naturally sympathetic works, said person coming back, whipping a little ass of their own in a surprising fashion, before then getting beaten up even worse is so much more effective.

Helpfully, the beating is also phenomenal.

Goto does nothing that isn’t fantastic, but the parts without what one might call “traditional” wrestling offense are the best. Reckless throws of a table into the large man’s face at full force, headbutts that feel like someone challenged him to try and crack a melon but he’s confused it with Asako’s face, things like that. Goto also once again puts on a punching masterclass. Every other basic attack like his stomps to Asako’s forehead lying down or his Kawada style punts when Sambo is bent over (although when comparing the force, one has to conclude that they really ought to be called Goto kicks) is phenomenal, again hitting that combination of perfectly thrown and extremely violent, but the right hands are on another level. Goto not only throws them from a lot of different angles, with his arm held differently and his wrist and hand turned a little in another direction ever time, but he throws such loud ones too, always with a unique smack or crack, the sound matching the picture perfectly. The same principle applies to ever Lariat that Goto hurls out there, each a little different in a realistic sort of a way, ranging from the classic full contact underside of the elbow ideal to what feel like a proto-Ikeda running cross disguising itself as a Lariat too.

It’s all so great, and constantly gets bigger and louder and meaner in equal measure.

Finally, when Goto has headbutted him enough time in the face consecutively, so much so that it’s hard to know for sure what amount of the blood on Goto’s face is entirely his own, poor hopeless Sambo Asako stays down for three. 

Deeply enjoyable and hypereffective violence, showcasing the greatest abilities of each man, with enough highlights and blood spilled to thrill all the sickos too. Ideal non main event FMW work.

Once again from our man in the gi, one of the best squashes of the year.

***

Atsushi Onita vs. Tarzan Goto, FMW Korakuen X2 Day One (2/26/1991)

Again, it’s great.

Some matchups feel like they cannot fail, and through two and a half matches (one a three minute tournament show outing in early 1990) on tape, Onita and Tarzan Goto feel like one of those. Even with a smaller sample size than many other pairings one might say those things about, there is something about it that feels correct, like pieces in the exact right place. A physical chemistry and ideological cohesion that’s hard to find just anywhere. Although much lower stakes — a regular (presumably) no disqualification style FMW match rather than a big headline-grabbing gimmick match like six months prior — it is, once more, truly phenomenal, and feels like the best thing that FMW has in its back pocket at this point.

Not only because the two combine to have a great brawl, one even better than the last and that’s among the best FMW work ever up until this point, but because more than any other combination, Onita vs. Goto also illustrates what FMW is more clearly than any other matchup can.

Part of that is, again, the enormity with which they not only wrestle, but move.

Everything that Onita and Goto do in this match feels gigantic. There’s little waste, which helps in that classic Big Fight sort of a way, on top of how every move comes with such a powerful movement and force behind it. Deliver everything like it’s the most vital and important thing you could be doing in that specific moment, and it’ll all feel like that, and Goto and especially Onita are masters of this. Even the stare down before the match begins, at least knowing these wrestlers and characters, feels as tense and significant and dramatic as any one wrestling move can. Goto, immovable from the center of the ring with his arms crossed and a hard stare, while Onita puts his hands on his hips approaching him, full of this “alright, come on” energy, maybe not illustrating the full point (they are not enemies to the level they were in August 1990, but tension still exists, largely from Goto, who has not just stopped being a mean mother fucker overnight) to any new viewers, but also even more clearly establishing the overall tone of the thing before it ever starts.

The other part is that it just rocks.

Alongside how all of it feels vital and important, small parts of a larger struggle but each with what feels like a significant impact on said struggle, everything they do also rules on a pure lizard-brained level. It’s both hands working together perfectly, as yes, the action is efficient and meaningful, but it’s also executed super well and almost all rules. The match follows that ultra-tense stare down with the other half of this, Onita immediately drawing blood with thirty seconds of gross headbuttss and a dive, perfectly illustrating the appeal. In between the big emotions, the match offers up a million wonderful thrills like people having tables hurled into their faces, a piledriver through a table, nasty chair swings, some of the best punches I’ve seen in recent memory from Goto, and yet another perfect Onita babyface comeback. It’s so much god damned fun, missing any one gigantic big set piece or huge gimmick moment, but so nasty and mean and easy feeling at the same time that the larger whole overcomes that.

That’s not to say it’s perfect.

Beyond just that (a) almost nothing ever is, & (b) that FMW of this era and matches like this in general would lose some real charm if every move was executed perfectly, there’s a minute or two of Goto working Onita’s leg that never matters at all once it’s over, and they repeat the Thunder Fire Powerbomb a whole lot at the end (although the final one feels like a result of a wonky count by the referee on the one before it), even considering that the general idea is that Goto isn’t quite good enough to beat Onita but might be harder to keep down for him than anyone else in FMW. The match very much feels like the riff session version of the match, not so much practice because practice is not like this, but relative to matches with big props and explosions, something both more bare bones and a lot looser, which while allowing for a lot of the match’s wonderful free-flowing nature, also allowed for some smaller missteps.

I won’t tell you these things don’t matter, because they do.

They’re just the reason this match is “only” really great, and not something even better.

Weigh these smaller problems and minor (although very real) annoyances against the large pile of awesome stuff on the other end, the sort of stuff that makes wrestling fun and rewarding to watch, and one side of that scale tips all the way over to whatever purpose you put it on in the first place. The match is too good in too correct of a way to deny and works in the way that so much of this stuff does, because it gets that, in whatever way they can force that connection, what matters the most is the feeling.

Be it through the purely physical, the glorious violence on display, or the larger sweeping dramatic movements spread out around all of those violent acts, Onita and Goto make sure you feel it at all times. It’s the essence of not only why this is a great match, but why FMW itself is so great. It’s a match that, although not the best one to do this, perfectly lays out all that this is and ought to be.

Equal parts main event and reaffirmation of the original mission statement.

***1/3

Atsushi Onita/Sambo Asako vs. Tarzan Goto/Ricky Fuji, FMW Bakushin! Day Seven (1/15/1991)

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.

***

Atsushi Onita vs. Mr. Pogo, FMW 1st Anniversary (11/5/1990)

This was a Texas Death Match for Onita’s WWA Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title.

Before even going into the match, one has to first talk about everything that came before it. A little bit of that is Tarzan Goto’s brief turn to the darker side in the spring and summer by bringing evil Mr. Pogo into FMW, but way more of it is the story that most people have heard of. The story from the sleaze-thread-turned-website that even a lot of people who don’t know a lot about FMW besides the big things (me, before undergoing this project) probably at least know about.

So, rather than just quote or summarize the thing, here’s a better look into it all from the source for many great FMW stories and photos, BAHU’s wonderful site.

Some shred of better sense would eventually prevail when Onita returned home, and Jose Gonzalez was pulled from the show and match, and replaced instead with Mr. Pogo, who not only was part of the attack, but has had a history for many months now with Onita in FMW, making for what might be less insane to consider, but what also probably works a lot better as the anniversary show main event.

To match a build like that, this is imperfect, messy, and also totally fucking rules.

For one, especially when one has even a cursory understanding of the fact that these two would go on to have not only more matches over the next several years but also bigger ones with bigger gimmicks surrounding them than a simple brawl, it’s very easy to see that this is the first in a series. Onita is a sparse kind of wrestler in general, so it isn’t to say this is held back or anything in terms of what they d (and in fact features some bigger Onita offense than usual), but there’s an unfinished feeling to it. Admittedly a lot of that comes with the power of hindsight, but even just thinking in terms of the fight, nothing seems totally resolved by the end in the way that Onita’s bigger event singles matches against Goto or Kurisu earlier suggested by their conclusions.

Another part is that Mr. Pogo, at least to what I’ve seen up to this point, is not the greatest wrestler. He isn’t as great on offense as the other big Onita opponents and, while not lacking a certain presence, also doesn’t quite have it like Goto does. He doesn’t bring a whole lot to this match on offense, with even his attack on the chest (above) and the classic cut up bicep at the start looking closer to relaxed than violent.

However — and this is the trick — all he really has to do is bleed a lot and step on the marks at the right time, take a few bumps here and there, and Onita builds something wonderful around him as the latest monster to be toppled, suffering before surviving, and building to Pogo finally going down.

When that time comes, Onita not only does that Onita shit again, bleeding from the arm and hurling his body with full force into every single inch and moment of the match, but he has a really wonderful new addition to the arsenal to take down the big man too, which is hurling his skull into his about a hundred times, opening him up, and then hurling his skull back into Pogo’s a few hundred more times.

As far as ways around things go — be they that the opponent is not the best wrestler alive, or in a narrative sense, a way to break through a wall — this has long been one of my favorites. Pogo isn’t quite an unkillable monster, but as a big fucker who won’t stay down, it’s appropriate enough, on top of just how heavily a blood-soaked series of unprotected full-force headbutts to the face hits on that lizard brain within us all. It rocks, it really fucking rocks, and once again one of these big Onita matches manages to not only get the framework just right enough that there’s nothing to get in the way of how much something like this rules, but to add a sense of triumph on top of all the hooting and the hollering when one lays eyes upon a comeback that perfect.

Pogo finally stays down after the millionth headbutt to the face pins him, the last few coming while down on the mat, and Onita prevails again.

This is perhaps not one for the all-time lists or record books. If common opinion is to be believed, even if just as a guideline, they will top this several times. It is, at best, the fourth best Onita bloodletting and/or brawl of 1990. All the same, there are millions of worse things to do with eleven minutes or so than lie back and enjoy an incredibly incredibly fun piece of real ass classical pro wrestling, Our Hero turning back yet another monster, with enough blood and mayhem to satisfy all but the most discerning and/or concerning vampires out there. If not that classic 89-90 FMW mix of the best of both worlds, certainly another lovely mix of them that overcomes everything in its way.

Once more, proof that the spirit and feeling (and a lot of blood) can not only overcome a whole lot, but are really what matters most.

***

Atsushi Onita vs. Tarzan Goto, FMW Summer Spectacular in Shiodome (8/4/1990)

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