FMW TV

Taped 4/21/96

 

Shoichi Funaki . . . more or less puts on a demonstration of how to amputate a leg below the knee without any medical instruments.

Masato Tanaka . . . makes an extended squash match with the Headhunters just barely watchable.

W*ING Kanemura . . . uses a small package, to disprove the myth that deathmatch workers don’t know how to actually wrestle.

 

KOJI NAKAGAWA © vs. SHOICHI FUNAKI (Independent World Jr. Heavyweight Title)

If nothing else, this is a nice look at what Funaki is able to bring to the table and given that he’s probably better known for being the “Smackdown Number One Announcer” than anything else, that’s actually pretty remarkable. Nakagawa, the champion here, gets in maybe four spots for the entire match, and he wins the match on a fluke cradle. The rest of the match is a clinic on watching Funaki work over Nakagawa’s leg. He mostly sticks with legbars, although he does throw a couple of nice heelish touches in there as well, such as a springboard dropkick to Nakagawa’s bad leg, and two separate times he manages to outwrestle Nakagawa to cut off a comeback and go back to working a submission. Nakagawa mostly does an OK job putting the leg over, although there are a few noticeable lapses, such as his easily climbing up to the top and hitting a diving shoulderblock. He goes back to selling after the spot, but you’d think that it’d have been more of a struggle for him to make the climb in the first place. I suppose that the finish does its job of letting Nakagawa retain without making Funaki look bad, but you’d think that the defending champion that’s five months into his title reign by this point would be able to do something to actually win the match.

 

MASATO TANAKA/KATSUTOSHI NIIYAMA vs. HEADHUNTER A/HEADHUNTER B

 Without Tanaka, this would be a complete waste of time, and even with Tanaka, it wasn’t very far off from being one. The only time that this is even remotely interesting is when Tanaka is firing away at one of the Headhunters, and he does a passable enough sell job that it looks as though Tanaka might be able to fully take control of the match, and it culminates with Tanaka doing a backdrop suplex and also getting a near fall from his Tornado DDT. Niiyama looks and works like Kensuke Sasaki which isn’t exactly effective against this particular set of opponents. The only sense of drama as the match winds down is whether or not Tanaka can make another save to keep the match going, and when Headhunter B keeps him busy on the floor, it allows A to hit the moonsault to end it.

 

Street Fight: W*ING KANEMURA/HIDEKI HOSAKA/HIDO vs. SUPER LEATHER/SHOJI NAKAMAKI/CRYPT THE KEEPER

There may have been some storyline reason for this to happen that caused someone to care about this match but watching this as a one-off match didn’t do a thing for me. It’s just a big brawl with plenty of props and no real structure or story to it. They even manage to make the props seem meaningless by having Kanemura take multiple shots with a board of nails, and not only does it fail to beat him, but he even makes a comeback afterwards. And just in case anyone thought that the props might have some sort of purpose, the match ends with Kanemura beating Crypt Keeper with a low blow and small package. So just remember that next time someone says that deathmatch guys don’t know how to wrestle!

 

Conclusion: I only picked this up for the Funaki match, so I guess I can’t complain too much. But this only reaffirms my notion of FMW having almost no appeal outside of a couple of names.