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

 

Atsushi Onita vs. Wild Bull Man, FMW Battle Crush Day Three (5/14/1990)

This was, seemingly, some manner of a chain match for Onita’s FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title.

It rules.

Do not misinterpret this. I am not telling you this is great. I am not saying that, in the pantheon of the great brawls, or even just the great FMW matches, there is a place there for this match. You do not need to see this. It is under six minutes, Bull Man is another nothing guy brought in seemingly to fill up some cards by giving Onita an impressive looking (foreign) big guy to get past to delay burning the big stuff so early on, and it’s fairly spartan as hell.

All the same it is very fun.

Wild Bull Man and Atsushi Onita have the sort of match in which going through its virtues is also simply going through a list of things that happened, as everything that happened in it is inherently good at worst and unbelievably sick as hell at best.

The match is almost entirely just punches and chair and table throwing. Masanobu Kurisu and Tarzan Goto get themselves involved to not only continue their issue, but also for Kurisu to get himself in on the action earlier by fucking BELTING Onita with a chair to the head on the floor. Bull doesn’t offer much of anything really, not even having much more than a competent punch to speak of (relative to other guys in a similar position throughout history, this is not nothing, it is nice, but also whatever), but Onita works it around him. Huge bumps for the chain whips, the standard beautiful all time energetic comebacks, hurling entire rows of hairs at Wild Bull Man’s gigantic ass wild bull skull as hard as possible, and the like.

Following a flurry of DDTs and a rarer enzuigiri, Onita puts on a Scorpion Deathlock seemingly rather than flowing the Fire Thunder on a gimme, and with Goto getting his own chair to hold ornery ass Masanobu Kurisu at bay, the shit assed gigantic rube taps out. Cue the surprise if you want, but you were never here to find out who won.

Another FMW fan cam match that is both decidedly Not Great, but also that absolutely whips ass, and will be worth the time of any other completionists out there.