TRIPLE ONITA

This is a commercial release that highlights three FMW cards from August and September of 1994. Each headlined by an Onita death match. But we’re not here for Onita, we’re here to see Hayabusa take on Sabu, back when Sabu was a big deal!

Hayabusa . . . works Sabu’s style of match and still manages to totally outclass him in every way.

Tarzan Goto . . . beats the crud out of anyone that is unlucky enough to be booked against him.

Mr. Gannosuke . . . looks like someone to potentially keep an eye on down the road.

The tape starts proper with undercard clips of the first show on 8/28, there’s not enough of anything shown to gauge what might have been good, although the idea of the Great Sasuke teaming with Damien is rather intriguing.

COMBAT TOYOTA © vs. YUKIE NABENO (WWA Independent Women’s Title)

Most of what’s shown here is Toyota on offense, which isn’t a bad thing itself, but it’s telling that only two spots of Nabeno’s are shown in her big title win. Nabeno’s knee is heavily taped up, suggesting that it was hurt coming into the match, but all we see of Toyota working it over is her standing on the knee and a couple of crab holds. If nothing else, Nabeno has a good set of lungs on her, she screams like she’s auditioning for a bit part in a slasher movie. What we see is Toyota laying quite the beating on her, a nice backdrop suplex, a couple of powerbombs, and several running boots and dropkicks. All we’re shown from the eventual winner is a sloppy takedown to a Fujiwara armbar, and her pinning Toyota with a moonsault that sees Nabeno nearly spike herself on her head. She’s certainly no Kudo.

SABU vs. HAYABUSA

Despite the disparity in their experience at this point, (Hayabusa only had three years under his belt while Sabu had nine) it’s clear that Hayabusa is the better of the two. His flying, such as the early tope con hilo, was much more smooth and almost effortless, while Sabu’s looked out of control, and required him to use a chair for some assistance in getting all the way up. The only misstep from Hayabusa was an Asai Moonsault that didn’t get enough distance and required Sabu to rush forward to catch him, but that’s the only one from ‘Busa, compared with almost all of Sabu’s dives that were shown.

‘Busa also seemed to try to make the work between big spots matter, such as the kicks to Sabu’s ribs, which should have eventually paid off when Hayabusa hit the SSP, but Sabu didn’t feel like playing along, and the match wound up being the typical Sabu spotfest where everything took a backseat to the big spots. As a result, Hayabusa’s pin after the SSP was due to Sabu wiping out on his 450 through the table rather than anything ‘Busa might have done to him. If nothing else, this is a nice enough look at what Hayabusa was capable of doing, and it’s almost symbolic with this being the FMW debut of “Hayabusa” (he’d previously worked rookie matches under his real name) while Sabu was on his way out.

THE GLADIATOR vs. BIG TITAN

These two look like they’d have been right at home as tag team in the WWF at this point. Two big guys with face paint and tough names like Titan and Gladiator. They could have been Vince’s “New Generation” version of Demolition or the Road Warriors. As for the match, most of what’s shown is Titan on offense and it’s none too impressive. He seems to work the same way that Awesome does. He uses his power to his advantage, and shows that he can fly too. The problem is that he’s working with Awesome, not TAKA, so the spots usually look ugly, and he’s nowhere near the flier that Awesome is. The best spot from Titan is the Frankensteiner, and there have been plenty of big guys who’ve done the move a lot better. The dropkick is passable at best, and Awesome’s tope con hilo smokes Titan’s pescado. Titan misses a charge and dives into the turnbuckle and Awesome gets the quick pin with a powerbomb. Titan challenges Awesome to a rematch in Sapporo, lucky me!

Mr. POGO vs. MITSUHIRO MATSUNAGA

This isn’t so much Pogo and Matsunaga having a match as it is heat mongering, with minimal effort from both of them. It’s hard to fault them for it, because it’s not like they’d be able to go full speed ahead with this sort of match and do it night-in and night-out. The bulk of the match is Pogo putting the hurt on Matsunaga and Matsunaga not staying down, and making comebacks to keep the crowd hot. It starts with Pogo using a barbed wire bat, and even doing a few wrestling spots with it, such as a powerbomb and DDT. Matsunaga comes back and has some fun of his own with the bat, and Hideki Hosaka intervenes to let Pogo go back on offense. Pogo starts using the sickle on Matsunaga, and even gets really nasty and pours rubbing alcohol on the open cuts. After a while Matsunaga comes back again and tries to choke out Pogo with the barbed wire bat, so Hosaka blinds him with powder. Pogo lights up the bat and finally keeps him down for good. The work isn’t exactly deep, but it was fun to see their little story play out with how far Pogo was willing to go to win and how much punishment Matsunaga was willing to take.

TARZAN GOTO vs. HISAKATSU OYA

I don’t think I’d want to see all twenty-five minutes of this, especially based on the ending the clip, which looks like overkill with Goto dropping Oya on his head and stacking up chairs, but the clip of the early parts of the match was nice, with both of them showing some nice stuff. Goto had an armbar takedown that left Nabeno’s in the dust as well as a variation on the Cobra clutch, while Oya had a nice counter on Goto to a Cobra twist as well as a couple of moments where he hit Goto by surprise with a backdrop suplex. And this is out of fed that often gets pigeonholed for being little more than sleazy death matches. Once Oya starts spiking Goto and Goto retaliates with the bell hammer, it starts going downhill, they’re both content to sit there and bleed. Again, the finish is overkill with Goto spiking Oya with a brainbuster and then adding chairs to the mix until he keeps him down after doing a front piledriver onto three chairs. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of either of them, but I’d prefer to see them in a regular match to see what other tricks they might have up their sleeves.

ATSUSHI ONITA vs. MASASHI AOYAGI (Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch)

My initial impression of the match was that, no matter his reputation for having a huge ego, Onita wasn’t selfish in the ring as far as bumping goes. He takes the first two barbed wire bumps as well as quite the shellacking from Aoyagi and his million kicks. Onita’s ego kicks in toward the end, just after he and Aoyagi both take a wire bump and he rolls back in before getting counted out, Onita makes a superman comeback and starts unloading on Aoyagi with powerbomb after powerbomb until he can’t answer count. It was cool to see Onita letting Aoyagi dominate him like that, but it’d have been nice if he didn’t totally negate it in the last three minutes.

MEGUMI KUDO/MIWA SATO/YUKIE NABENO vs. SHARK TSUCHIYA/COMBAT TOYOTA/CRUSHER MAEDOMAN

Hardly any of this shown, and the best part of the little that is shown is all Kudo, which isn’t a big surprise. Shark winds up pinning Nabeno, presumably to make her the next challenger to the title. Toyota gives Nabeno a powerbomb afterwards which Shark seems to have a problem with for some reason. This leads to Shark and Toyota brawling as well as Kudo and Sato brawling with each other, who knows why?

THE GLADIATOR vs. BIG TITAN

Just like their previous match, this is shown in various clips, so it’s hard to piece together any semblance of story to their work. The match doesn’t look all that different from their other encounter, except that Titan’s ugly power offense has been replaced by big man clubbering and chair shots. He still shows that he can fly and it still doesn’t look all that good, neither does Awesome’s flying, for that matter, he almost spikes himself on the floor with his tope con hilo. Titan survives the powerbomb this time and hits Awesome with a Thunderfire powerbomb of his own and avenges the prior loss.

TARZAN GOTO/HISAKATSU OYA vs. Mr. GANNOSUKE/KATSUTOSHI NIIYAMA

Grumpy veterans killing spunky youngins, now this I can get behind! This also pretty clipped up, but twenty-six minutes is an awfully young time for the vets to kill the kids, so it makes sense. But, what’s shown here is pretty fun. Goto gives Gannosuke his armbar takedown, not once but twice, and then atomic drops both of them through tables on the floor. They try to fight back with dropkicks, but Goto and Oya just lariat them down and continue their assault. Goto even brings out the bell hammer and cracks Niiyama twice in the forehead, just for the hell of it. Oya drops Niiyama with a big backdrop and Goto gives the front piledriver to Gannosuke and they’re smart enough to stay down and not answer the count.

Pogo/Matsunaga was fun because they injected a little storytelling into the mix, but this is just mindless crap. There are a few teases at first of Pogo going into the wire and doing all that he could to avoid it. But after each of them had their first taste of it, they just haphazardly threw each other into the wire strung up in the ring and into the wire pits on the floor like it was nothing. Hell, at one point Onita threw Pogo into the wire pit and then dove in after him. The match is structured almost the same as Onita/Aoyagi. Onita lets Pogo tear into him for an extended period of time, and then makes the big comeback to win. It was fun to see Onita turn the tables on Pogo and spit the fire after Pogo had done it to Onita before, but that was the only unique thing in the whole match.

TARZAN GOTO/HISAKATSU OYA vs. MITSUHIRO MATSUNAGA/YUKIHIRO KANEMURA

It looks like this will be Goto’s chance to beat up W*ING outsiders instead of spunky kids. Goto has a little bit of fun, he turns Kanemura inside out with a big lariat and then wears both of them out with a chair. But then Oya turns on him with a backdrop, it doesn’t stop Goto from continuing his assault on the W*ING boys, but three-on-one is too much for even Goto to take. Onita makes the save and a big brawl erupts. Goto doesn’t seem to appreciate the help, but, sadly, he doesn’t take his anger out on Onita.

ATSUSHI ONITA/Mr. GANNOSUKE/KATSUTOSHI NIIYAMA vs. Mr. POGO/THE GLADIATOR/HIDEKI HOSAKA (Barbed Wire Pool Elimination Deathmatch)

This isn’t exactly the setting for a great trios match, the ring is floating in a giant swimming pool and eliminations occur by pin, submission, or being thrown into the water. Pogo and Onita have the same sort of exchanges as they did before, only this time there’s a good reason why Pogo doesn’t want to go into the water. But, it’s mostly Pogo tearing up Onita with the barbed wire and his sickle until it’s time for Onita to make the big comeback.

The real story, to me, was watching Gannosuke get some rub out of the match. Although Onita stood tall as the sole survivor, it was Gannosuke who did the heavy lifting for the team, eliminating 2/3 of the heels, including Pogo! While Onita and Pogo were doing their thing outside the ring, Gannosuke and Niiyama were getting decimated by Awesome and Hosaka. Niiyama was quickly taken out, but a lariat from Awesome that hit Hosaka let Gannosuke dropkick Awesome into the water. A bit later Gannosuke got burned by Pogo, but he didn’t stay down (which got nice reaction from the crowd), and he sent Pogo out of the ring and dove onto him to send them both into the water. That left Onita and Hosaka, and anyone reading will probably be able to guess how well that went for Hosaka. This sort of match is probably better served for a comedy match, not a main event deathmatch, but it was fun watching the story with Gannosuke unfold.

Conclusion: If you’re looking for great matches then you’re looking in the wrong place, Onita’s matches are horrible, and too much of the stuff that looked good was left on the floor of the editing room. There is still fun to be had watching the clips of Hayabusa/Sabu and all of the Tarzan Goto matches. I’m leaning in the middle on this one.