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

 

Masanobu Kurisu/The Shooter #1 vs. Tarzan Goto/Sambo Asako, FMW Battle Crush Day Three (5/14/1990)

FMW fan cams, at least to this point, are weird things.

They’re often shot from a little farther away than those from other promotions you find around the same time, or if not, they feel like they are because these are less packed buildings than in your NWA/AJPW/NJPW fan cams from the late 1980s and early 1990s. The style is also less conducive to translating to fancams in the way a bigger style often can be, focusing more — at least in a match like this — on the basics and cool little things. Knowing these guys, save the masked Shooter #1, I know the punches are probably all sick as hell, but all that really translates from far away is how hard Kurisu is hurling those hands and feet, and the few chair shots given out.

So, this unfortunately is not half the viewing experience that it likely would have been if seen on a professional tape, or even just an amateur one from the third or fourth row.

Fortunately, it is still a match with Masanobu Kurisu in it, and to a lesser extent (as he does less), also a match with Tarzan Goto in it.

Every time one of them does anything, it rules, and breaks through even from so far away. Sometimes, that’s less obvious and comes quieter, all through visual qualitty. Sometimes it’s Kurisu selling for big ass Sambo Asako, or the Tarzan Goto tags and big punches. Other times, it is the easiest and, literally, loudest thing in the world, like Kurisu and Goto wailing on the other guys with chairs, or Kurisu beating the absolute shit out of Asako. It isn’t exactly the Kurisu rookie beating, but it is loud in an environment when that is ultra impressive and visually fantastic too. The headbutts, the chops that feel like the most disrespectful chops of all time, and most of all, one of the meanest kicks ever right to the middle of Asako’s gigantic ass to break up a pin. It’s beautiful violence, yet again, that makes this all worth watching.

Sambo Asako eventually taps The Shooter out, but that feels secondary.

It’s hard to call it a successful build up tag, given that one is left dying to see a totally different match (Goto/Kurisu) than the one this is theoretically building up for the end of the tour (Kurisu/Asako), but it’s still a match full of some awesome awesome work from two of the more awesome wrestlers alive.

No match where Masanobu Kurisu kicks a giant man as hard as possible in the asshole can truly be written off, after all.

Atsushi Onita/Tarzan Goto vs. Masanobu Kurisu/Dragon Master, FMW Texas Street Fight (4/1/1990)

(photo credit to BAHU’s wonderful site)

This was, surprisingly, a Texas Street Fight.

It feels too easy to just call it the best FMW match ever, easily, up until the point in which it happened. This is a very young company, and a match as great as this ought to achieve something with the ease that this match does. It’s an accomplishment, given some of the truly great matches to come from FMW already, but it also doesn’t feel like enough.

Forget FMW for a moment.

This is one of the best matches of its kind ever. Relative to its ilk — explosions of realistic violence in professional wrestling — you can count on one hand the matches, up to this point, that have done it as good as this, and fewer that I might say did it better. Over thirty four years later and counting, that list has grown, in no small part because of matches like these in a place like this,

What ought to be mentioned first is that this match is a delight for the senses, or at least the two big ones tickled by watching a wrestling match at home, sight and sound (not to be confused with the movie list).

Visually, this thing is stunning.

Part of that is down to the looks on display. This is almost definitely the best ever collection of looks in a single pro wrestling street fight. Onita and Dragon Master more than know what’s required here and hit the classics with shirts and pants, but it’s the other half of the match that shines. Tarzan Goto shows up with one of the all-time classic real early 1990s looks ever, a tank top over a super tight t-shirt, both tucked into sweatpants, with knee pads over those two. It’s so over the top and weird, so much of a specific period in time, that it makes this feel grounded and real in a way the simple stuff cannot quite achieve due to how often that’s been copied. The same, in a different way, goes for cranky old bitch Masanobu Kurisu, showing up in the pre-requisite jeans, but also with cowboy boots and a green and white plaid shirt, all looking like he ought to be playing an aging bandit trying to settle down on a farm in a Western, or like someone would eventually be cast as him in a later season of NARCOS: MEXICO. Like with Goto, it is such a specific and real feeling look, although somewhat foreign on Kurisu, that it makes everything feel that much realer.

In the moments when the two combine, when Kurisu and Goto fight each other, it feels less like a wrestling match, or even just a wrestling fight, than matches like this have ever felt, looking and thus feeling like an actual fight that just so happened to wander its way into a wrestling ring nearby.

The match is also filmed in such an interesting and spectacular way.

No shot exists in what I would refer to as anything approaching cinematic, but that’s sort of what I mean. The match itself isn’t quite horror, but there’s a kind of found footage feeling to parts of this, as the camera seems almost lost among the chaos. It moves, trying to capture things like chairs being thrown or swung, but occasionally has these sudden steps to the side or back, or a drop down a few inches or feet, ducking out of the way of something flying, or trying suddenly to stop out of the way with someone runs into the frame holding a table or a chair. It is almost assuredly accidental, a consequence simply of being this close to a match this out of control, but the art is the art, and this match gains so much from not just how it looks — the outfits, the colors, the messiness — but in how that’s captured, to the extent that it’s almost definitely a worse match seen from farther away, let alone without the same sense of frantic movement.

It’s also an auditory delight.

Constantly, throughout the match’s near eleven minute runtime, there is something wild that you not only see, but that you can hear. Some things, like great chair shots or strikes thrown with a clear visual connection, will always have some value, but there’s a difference when you hear it, and in this match, you HEAR IT. The chairs have an extra audible impact, every chop is as loud as possible, and there’s a roar to Korakuen Hall at all times here that adds as much — if not more — than any individual sound of impact.

Having said all of that, this isn’t great because it looks so interesting, either on an individual level or up close and at large, or because of all of these loud crashes and vibrant thuds that make it impossible to ignore.

This is as great as it is because, more than most other wrestling matches ever, it’s real fucking violence.

For no longer than eleven minutes, three of the greatest brawlers of all time and a very very capable fourth in the Dragon Master go completely insane. What they’re doing is fairly simple, whipping chairs at each other, simple strikes like chops and punches and kicks, and basic offense. Far more important — and really the key lesson of this match — is how it’s all done. When Kurisu uses his cowboy boot, he gets as much out of it, both in physical impact and the feeling put into the shots, as possible. These chairs are not just swung, they are whipped forward or hurled with as much force as the man responsible can muster up, with enough hatred to power a city. They are not just simple shots either, they are these remarkably cruel and/or vengeful shots, in so many different places and moments, from Onita being chased into the crowd by an insane Dragon Master chair throwing parade and trying to get feet up to block them before returning fire, or each team slamming them down on heads outside, or in my favorite, Onita frantically diving in the way of those on Goto to cover him up in a scene with the sort of genuine feeling that, five years later, Kenta Kobashi could only ever dream of.

Every strike is thrown with more hate than, even knowing what these guys (especially Kurisu) are capable of, I could imagine.

Not many real pro wrestling moves happen in this, as much a byproduct of the runtime as it is the style. We’re talking double DDTs, double suplexes, a Piledriver or two, and the Onita signatures, in a match otherwise populated by these absolute mother fuckers of chops, punches, and some especially Kurisu’s gross short punts to downed opponents. The thing is though, that (a) the lack of wrestling moves in a brawl is a positive in my eyes, the sort of thing that makes it that much more realistic, & (b) each one of those moves has such an impact to it. Not just speaking physically, although yes absolutely, but in how it’s executed by the man giving the move. Each one of these moves has an unspoken “fuck you” added onto it, sometimes in all caps, or the feeling of an exclamation point in it.

In talking about all of the extremely visceral and sick stuff that happens in this match though, it’s easy to also miss that this is simply perfect old ass blood and guts meat and potatoes pro wrestling too.

Wild bad guys starting major fights, putting Our Heroes in real feeling jeopardy as each prospective comeback gets snuffed out with increasing force, and eventually getting every shot revisited upon them and then some. It’s not a marvel of construction and narrative heft or anything, but like all the truly truly great FMW matches to this point, there’s always a struggle. Not just in the movements themselves, but in the entire scope of the thing. The struggle of Onita and Goto to get back in it, the struggle to fight through different things and overcome this awesome physical onslaught, and finally, the struggle to end it in the few moments once they pull together, itself feeling like a desperate and earned reaction to how badly they got beaten up for the majority of the match. It’s the best of all the worlds FMW wants to show you, the easy and tried and true formula, spruced up not only with such phenomenal presentation, but an unmatched commitment and willing to take these ideas to lengths like these.

Onita and Goto finally pull it together in the end, gang up for the first time all match, and Onita manages to pull it out with the Fire Thunder Driver.

The good guys win, prevailing due to self sacrifice and heart in the face of unyielding violence from two of the least likeable wrestlers around. It’s elemental stuff. Not that everything has to be quite so simple, but a match this great with material this spartan shows, yet again, that it never really has to be more than this, so long as you put in the effort, the energy, and the overall feeling that all four of these guys do.

An immense chunk of violence, as real as it gets.

****

Atsushi Onita/Tarzan Goto vs. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga/Jerry Blayman, FMW Battle Creation Day Six (12/10/1989)

This was a Barbed Wire Death Match.

Unlike many other barbed wire matches in (what would come to be known as) a deathmatch fed, the wire is in addition to the pre-existing set up. Strands are between the ring ropes, but strung around the ringposts. Although it was hard to tell in footage that old and that, as far as I remember, never gave a clear shot of how it was set up, it feels roughly the same as the Jerry Lawler barbed wire matches in Memphis, one of which (vs. Sweet Brown Sugar, 10/19/1981) featured a young Atsushi Onita working on the undercard.

Having seen at least one of those matches before, it’s not hard to see the influence, having far more in common with those matches than barbed wire matches yet to come in FMW’s futures.

That’s to say that, there isn’t ever really any one gigantic bump into the barbed wire, or this great building up of the drama to that. Like those matches, it’s a largely regular style brawl, with the barbed wire put on top of it to give it just a little extra sense of danger. The extent of its use is to occasionally push someone into to draw some blood on Goto, and in one instance, to give Onita a real gnarly cut on his right bicep, eventually covering most of that arm in blood within a minute or two, to really give this match some additional visual flair.

As a match, otherwise, it’s also something you’ve likely seen before in other recent FMW matches.

Goto and Onita punch and hurl themselves, while the karate fighters — now including a young Jerry Flynn in his own professional debut, already having something of that natural watchability — kick and punch the shit out of them. The wire adds something to it, and it’s certainly more of a brawl than the previous matches with the legitimate fight gut, but between Onita’s match against Matsunaga, the other great tag brawl, and the Onita/Aoyagi series, the energy and narrative and overall material is pretty similar to what’s come before.

However, again, that match is one of the best and most exciting things in history, so adding a little more drama and a lot more blood to it can only help.

Largely, it’s because for everything else, the performances are still so great.

Matsunaga looks even better than he did a week and change earlier, for one. It’s not a major leap forward, he did not become the best wrestler alive or even on the show in nine days, but he already seems so much more confident. He not only carries himself with a certain element of danger, but his kicks are both more accurate now and feel like they come with just that miniscule additional ounce of force, taking him from someone with promising signs into, here at least, already looking like an outright good wrestler. Although asked to do the least here — basically just be annoying and to get his ass kicked at the end — his partner occupies that previous role of being someone with clear positive signs, who gets the big ideas right enough to count. Goto is, similarly, not the most important part of his time, but he walks the line perfectly between ass kicking off of his own tag in the middle and then sympathy. Even if, like his role in the match, his big shots stand in the shadow of Onita’s, they’re still all real great looking, and have the spirit that helps this stay at a certain level when he has to be in the ring.

It’s Onita that makes this what it is though.

Perhaps only behind the second Aoyagi match, on FMW’s debut show, it’s my favorite Onita performance yet. Most of that comes down to selling, both of his gigantic flesh wound, but also in general. After being hit with a bunch of kicks all over for a count from the referee, Onita has one of the greatest versions of dead leg selling I’ve ever seen, even if it never goes anywhere (the right call, if someone ever did prolonged leg work in a barbed wire match, it would be an indictment of everyone involved), dragging himself up in a way that suggests pain far less than a momentary loss of feeling like when you sit on it for too long. Just as admirable, and even smaller, is some of the great on-the-apron selling ever, constantly hitting and shaking his arm out, while also being animated as hell about the match itself. The same level of mastery is there, yet again, with the comebacks. Onita’s huge fire back clothesline is one of the best regular spots in the entire world at this point, never feeling like it comes as it might in a normal wrestling match and always feeling both frantic and triumphant, feeling more like a block than it does any sort of made shot or field goal, and the final tag totally nails the other part of that, all fist-pumping triumph and hooting and hollering ass kicking.

Onita gets in at the end, trucks total rookie Blayman, and while Goto finally manages to keep Matsunaga back like neither had all match, Onita collapses Jerry with the Fire Thunder Powerbomb for the ten count TKO.

There are greater matches to come, but given what this is, the first real step out of the ordinary into something showier and with more flair — albeit just a little bit more — it’s a total success. While it’s not even the best Onita tag brawl of the past week, it manages to combine that feeling of importance with the earthier type of straightforward brawling, as well as taken the FMW vs. Karate feud to another level cool. It’s not quite the best of all worlds, but it feels like the “most” early FMW match so far, managing to combine the ideology at play in the first few shows, the heavier and grittier type of brawling, and the overall spectacle into one cohesive thing for the first time.

A major leap forward, just so happening to also contain a really great match.

***1/4