LIVE ENTERTAINMENT WRESTLING

April 23, 1998

FMW celebrates their ninth anniversary with their first ever show on pay per view! There’s some ECW talent to add freshness to the roster, as well as add to the aura of a big show, along with the biggest main event that FMW could have possibly put on at the time.

Hisakatsu Oya . . . gets mediaeval on both FMW young boys and ECW young boys.

Bam Bam Bigelow . . . mostly squashes Masato Tanaka in a manner that would never happen in ECW.

Mr. Gannosuke . . . fights tooth and nail to defend the Double Titles, despite a dislocated kneecap.

HIDO vs. HIDEKI HOSAKA

This isn’t anything too horrible, although I’m not complaining that the match was joined in progress. Most of what’s shown is Hosaka trying to finish off Hido, and Hido not staying down. Hosaka isn’t too interesting, although the pair of powerbomb near falls from Hosaka is nice, and there’s another nice spot with Hosaka overbombing Hido across the top rope. Hido rolls through a rana and gets the flash pin on Hosaka, and is good enough to continue selling his neck and head from the powerbombs.

HISAKATSU OYA vs. KOJI NAKAGAWA vs. CHRIS CHETTI

Now this I’d have liked to see in full, especially if it involved grumpy Oya going crazy on the two kids. But, it’s not to be, this is shown broken into several clips and less than a third is shown. We see that Nakagawa’s arm is heavily taped, and Oya winds up tapping him out to an armbar. Chetti shows off a nice German suplex and double jump moonsault, but wipes out on the second one and Oya finishes him with the backdrop.

RICKY FUJI/JOHN KRONUS vs. GEDO/JADO

I’m back to not being too upset that the whole match isn’t shown. Kronus’ flying stuff is impressive for him being such a big guy. Once you realize that he can’t do much of anything else, the impression quickly fades. Kronus shows off his stuff and he and Fuji hit Jado with Total Elimination. The ref gets distracted and Jado steals with win with a low blow and brainbuster.

JINSEI SHINZAKI vs. YUKIHIRO KANEMURA

This is actually really fun for what it is, which is essentially the babyface overcoming the odds to beat the heel along with a couple of tables and a barbed wire bat thrown into the mix. Neither of these two are especially great workers, which is probably why this relied so heavily on props and run-ins, but I was rather impressed to see Shinzaki continue selling his midsection long after Kanemura hit him in the ribs with the bat. Of course, I also wasn’t too surprised later on, when Kanemura hit a diving senton and Shinzaki quickly jumped to his feet.

Of course, the fun here is in the booking. Anytime Shinzaki starts mounting a comeback, Go Ito is there to play spoiler and keep Kanemura in control. It finally boils over after Shinzaki blows off the senton and knocks Kanemura loopy with a couple of shots from a piece of table. Ito breaks up the Straightjacket hold and Shinzaki takes him out with the Dragon screw and chokes him out with the Straightjacket hold (to a big pop). With the playing field finally level, Shinzaki easily beats Kanemura with the powerbomb. This obviously wasn’t going to be anything great, but it was nice to see that they realized that and built the match around their strengths which is that they’re both strong characters.

HORACE BOULDER/SUPER LEATHER vs. THE GLADIATOR/TETSUHIRO KURODA

Hey, this actually isn’t a total waste. It’s a little bit south of being one. It looks more like a barroom brawl than a wrestling match, especially with them all wearing street clothes. The match is just a big brawl and it’s usually not very well done. The only bright spot here is seeing Awesome go up for a couple of spots, namely the double powerbomb and the tombstone from Leather. The spinebuster from the top that Horace finishes off Kuroda with was original, if nothing else.

BAM BAM BIGELOW vs. MASATO TANAKA

I can only assume that Tanaka getting dominated like this was a trade off for Kronus laying down on the undercard. It’s not a bad match at all, but it’s impossible to shake the feeling that they have a better match in them. The work itself is perfectly fine, Bigelow uses his size and power to control Tanaka, and Tanaka finds good openings to smartly work in his own offense, such as the rana counter to Bigelow’s powerbomb and following that up with the elbow. Tanaka gets off a nice offensive run toward the end that starts with him stunning Bigelow by getting the boot up on the blind charge and it culminates in the rolling elbow for a decent near fall. Bigelow is just too big and too strong for Tanaka to take down, and Bigelow puts Tanaka away with Greetings from Asbury Park.

The only altogether odd thing about the match was seeing Bigelow drop Tanaka with a single chair shot. Tanaka’s matches with Awesome showed that it took a lot more than that to keep him down. Of course, I’m not entirely familiar with the FMW totem pole at this time, other than the top two being Hayabusa and Mr. Gannosuke. I do know that Bigelow in April ‘98 was toward the top of ECW, so maybe it’s not too ‘out there’ for him to treat Tanaka the way he did.

ATSUSHI ONITA vs. KODO FUYUKI

If Onita was on offense as much as Fuyuki, then this might have been at least watchable. I’ll admit to not seeing much of Onita outside of deathmatch settings, but he couldn’t have possibly been worse than Fuyuki. The intensity shown here is welcome, but this is way too much of Fuyuki on offense (read: long stretches of him sitting in the stretch plum, running in place, and clawing and biting at Onita’s forehead) to be any good. The only real offense Fuyuki has are his various lariats, and they quickly get killed off as a finish when four of them still aren’t able to put down Onita. Just about the only impressive thing out of Kodo was the dive off the top onto Onita and pretty much everyone else. His selling isn’t anything special, he sucks up a board shot and hits Onita with a big lariat just seconds later. Fuyuki winds up pinning Onita with a powerbomb that’s badly botched and looks like it could have seriously injured Onita.

Onita isn’t a whole lot better here, but at least he digs out some real offense, such as the Thunderfire powerbomb and even a Tiger driver. He adds a nice tope, to make up for Fuyuki’s ugly plancha. He’s also good at getting over the fatigue and blood loss from the stretch plum and Fuyuki’s clawing and biting, even though Fuyuki doesn’t seem to be concerned about it. Again, the intensity was nice and they tried to maximize the drama with lots of near falls, but Fuyuki’s suckage put the kibosh on this being even close to decent.

Hayabusa vs. Gannosuke, the top babyface and the top heel. Two legitimate friends that trained together and came up in the business together, and then went on separate career paths, only to come full circle. It’s no surprise that this is a good match. Hayabusa has always been amongst the best workers in the promotion, and Gannosuke had gotten good enough over the last year to stand alongside him. What’s surprising about the match is the fact that, despite being Hayabusa’s big win over his chief rival, it’s Gannosuke who winds up impressing the most.

The fact that Gannosuke injures his knee (from a low dropkick from ‘Busa) only a few minutes into the match and works through the pain is impressive enough by itself. But Gannosuke always manages to keep the knee injury in mind, even when he’s on offense and planting ‘Busa with his bigger spots like the Falcon Arrow and Thunderfire driver. Gannosuke also remembers that he’s the top heel, so he also throws in a few nice heel touches, such as mocking Shinzaki (Hayabusa’s second) with the praying powerbomb. Gannosuke’s other great parts of the match are soon after he gets hurt, he gives ‘Busa some time to work it over, and then comes back with offense that’s both logical as well as able to protect his knee.

The fact that Gannosuke puts in the better performance isn’t to say that ‘Busa is bad at all. He puts on a great match in his own right. He brings the graceful flying that he’s become known for. He heels things up on Gannosuke a bit when he first hurts the knee by going right after it. He doesn’t exactly look like Ohtani when he’s sharking the limb, but the fact that he went that route is a pleasant surprise. There’s also the low blow to Gannosuke when he was in trouble, and ‘Busa also gets in a cheap shot with a springboard dropkick to the bad wheel. Beyond the shots to the knee, he shows exactly how far he’s willing to go to beat Gannosuke, when he spikes him with a Falcon Arrow and drops him with a huge Tiger suplex. They’ve got a great finish, because they take the time to build up to it. Gannosuke knows that if Hayabusa his the Phoenix splash that he’s as good as done, so every time ‘Busa scales the ropes, Gannosuke fights through the pain and stops him. It’s not until ‘Busa hits a roundhouse to the head and then spikes him with a Dragon suplex that he can hit the splash and take the titles. Honestly, the only mark against this is the fact that it slowed down considerably when Gannosuke first got hurt, which is expected when someone gets seriously injured during the match. ***1/2

Conclusion: The main event definitely makes this show. Without it, it’s fun, but nothing that anyone needs to rush out and find ASAP. I know the title match was included on a couple of Tokyopop DVDs, so that might be the better way to go.