411’s Dark Side of The Ring Report: ‘Blood and Wire: Onita’s FMW’

-Episode 3 of the second half of season 3 is upon us and I think we may get through this episode without Ric Flair having to issue a statement. We’ll see I guess. Let’s get to it!

-As a reminder, Chris Jericho is our narrator for this season.

-‘WARNING UNCENSORED CONTENT’ flashes on the screen as we open with exploding barbed wire and a real ring exploding unlike what AEW gave us. Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling, founded by Onita, brought the bloodd shed in 1989. Talking heads discuss Onita’s willingness to bleed to death every night and he became a legend for hardcore wrestling. ELECTRIC POOL! Terry Funk and Sabu! The promotion had a meteoric rise but then their top star was paralyzed and the CEO died.

-Atsushi Onita starts us off as thankfully he is here to discuss his own promotion. Subtitles which makes recapping this a bit harder, but it’s what I do. Onita talks about reading a comic called Giant Typhoon that was based on Giant Baba. He immediately thought pro-wrestling was amazing and he thought it was the best way to see the world. Jericho gives us a brief history of New Japan and All Japan with it’s hard hitting style. Then Dory and Terry Funk brought their crazy brand of wrestling and the fans loved them.

-Terry Funk introduces himself as the best there ever was or every will be. Chris Jericho next as he worked two tours for FMW. Onita rose through Baba’s dojo systems and then was sent to The US to learn more styles. That brings in Mick Foley who is the King of the Death Matches and says for a few years he was the American Onita. Onita was drawn to Terry Funk’s style and went to Amarillo to visit. Funk laughs that wanting to be Terry Funk is a horrible thing to be. “He wanted to be an idiot too.”

-Onita speaks on the community among wrestlers and how they talk amongst each other. He trusted Terry Funk the most. Onita was in the Dominican and didn’t agree with what the promoters wanted to do, so he got the crap kicked out of him by several wrestlers down there. Then he showed up to Amarillo and Funk took him under his wing though they didn’t understand each other. Funk bought Onita a used car, got him a job and sent him on the road.

-Onita and Masa Fuchi travel the US and get involved in the infamous Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl in CWA in 1981 against Eddie Gilbert and Ricky Morton. Wild stuff! Onita says Tennessee was the origin of hardcore wrestling for him. He mentions a young woman kicked him in the face with her heels and it gashed his face. He realized in that moment that hardcore wrestling triggered excitement in people.

-Onita returns to All Japan and looked to be on the verge of being a top star and then a freak accident happens. They show him leaving the ring and when he lands after jumping down, he breaks a bone that pops out of his knee and through his skin. His kneecap was shattered and he was told there would be no coming back. It took away his athleticism and he became limited as an athlete. So he created something that had never been done and challenged a real life karate champion in a series of wrestler vs martial artist matches. The rivalry draws headlines and massive crowds. Good lord they show a powerbomb that looked like it killed the poor guy. That was the birth of FMW and they gave high flying, heavyweights, women, but the main draw was the blood and guts.

-Barbed Wire Matches: Mick says real injuries are not a bad thing. They are encouraged and impossible to avoid. Onita says he learned barbed wire was scary. Funk says they had a lot of guys that would go to no end to destroy their bodies in an attempt to have the best match.

-The next step is electrical shocks with the barbed wire. Onita wanted to do things Baba and Inoki would never think of doing. Foley says he was at a FMW show where a female wrestler was burned by a fireball and it burned the fabric of her outfit into her skin. There is video and pictures and that poor lady. Foley was getting ready for his match and could her the sounds of her suffering and sobbing. He had to block that out of his mind and go about his main event match.

-Commercials!

-FMW roster includes Tarzan, Pogo, The Gladiator (Mike Awesome), Ricki Fuji, Tanaka among others. We meet Ricki Fuji and Jericho says that was his connection to FMW as he worked in Calgary. Jericho’s first match in FMW was the main event which was crazy considering his age and it was against a karate guy who kicked the shit out of him. He questioned what he was doing.

-Next we meet Sabu and we see highlights of his crazy stuff from ECW. He says he wasn’t invited to FMW and got there by accident. He talks his uncle being The Sheik and Onita was one of the young boys in Japan that took care of Sheik. Twenty years later Onita is running FMW and invites The Sheik for barbed wire tag matches and Sheik says he will bring his nephew. Foley and Sabu talk about how much it sucks to do barbed wire matches. Sabu talks gluing his wounds and doing the same for some of the boys. Foley says Sabu’s scars make him look like a pre-schooler.

-Onita was limited physically, but connected with the fans because they looked like him. Onita says it was rough spilling his blood every night. Foley mentions they faced fear on a nightly basis, but you had to embrace it. Onita would take a beating and spill everything he had to point he would be in tears and the fans cried with him. Then they would play ‘Wild Thing’ and the place would explode. He would then take an ambulance ride out of the arena.

-We see video of the fights in exploding pools and Foley thinks there was a good chance Onita was going to die in the ring. That leads to The Fire Match and Sabu says the idea came from Puerto Rico and Onita wanted to top it. Foley says that type of match wasn’t comfortable for him and Sabu took the match figuring they knew what they were doing. So it’s Tarzan and Onita against Sheik and Sabu and yeah, it’s insane. This isn’t WWE controlled flames hanging around the ring. This is just a ring set on fire and the flames just kept getting bigger. Sabu mentions the FMW logo in the middle of the ring melted in their hands. Again, insane! You couldn’t hear anything or breath, so Sabu jumped out and started throwing buckets of water. Tarzan and Onita got out and Onita says he regrets Sheik couldn’t get out. He continues that the ring was surrounded by fire and it was impossible to rescue him. He was able to get out the other side but suffered burns to 60% of his body. Sheik kept fighting Onita though because well, he’s The Sheik. Sabu dumped water on him and his skin peeled off his back. Sabu doesn’t hold anger towards anyone as it was just something that went bad. He says he can’t be mad at Onita because “he gave me life.”

-Commercials!

-Onita reveals in the trappings of his new found stardom and stated being treated as a king. Funk laughs that Onita had sticky fingers as he took all the money. Onita says his success had side effects and he got a big head. He owned five cars and got a big house. He was making 2 million a year at his peak. His fortune also came from ties to The Yakuza. Funk says they were in control of the arenas. Jericho says it was a money laundering scheme and Foley mentions a lot of the sponsors were missing pinky fingers. He wasn’t comfortable with it, but accepted it. Sabu mentions they were told to stay away from certain sections as there would be 10 guys sitting in a section with 50 empty chairs. You don’t tell Sabu what to do so he brawled around what were mob bosses. Well, after the show they attacked Sabu and Mike Awesome had to come save him. “Saved my life. I loved him after that.”

-FMW puts on an exploding ring death match and invite Terry Funk to participate. It gave the promotion a shot of legitimacy with Funk taking part. They had nearly 40,000 people in the stadium and Funk calls the fans in the front rows idiots. He says he is a glutton for a crowd being into a match and he was just ready to capture the crowd. Again, this is what Mox and Omega were going for as the ref is wearing a weird protective suit and the same siren goes off to count things down. Onita gets out but realizes his mentor is out cold inside the ring and goes back in and shields him (again, Kingston did to Mox), but their explosion ends up looking legit. Jericho calls it the greatest babyface move he has ever seen. Jericho calls it a 5 star match as it had the drama and hooked people into caring. Funk is asked if he was satisfied with what he was paid and he says “hell no.” Onita would hide from him and he wouldn’t see him until the next time he was needed.

-Onita was all over the place in Japan with game shows and talk shows and then after five years of FMW he announced his retirement. Funk: “you can go out like he did with several million dollars.”

-Commercials!

-Onita works one last year while they groom someone to be his successor as the headliner. Hayabusa is the heir apparent and Foley says he was elegant and also willing to do the extreme stuff. Jericho mentions he worked with him a bunch and his big move was a moonsault which nobody did. I mean, by this time we had seen moonsaults from Muta in the 80s.

-We meet Ayana Ezaki, the daughter of Hayabusa. She calls her father an exceptional person who fit right in with The Hardcore style. Onita had a retirement match with Hayabusa and it was barbed wire and explosions and Hayabusa was out of his element. These explosions are just insane and that ring looks all kinds of stiff. Onita hits a moonsault off the cage and then a nasty powerbomb to get the win. He cuts a promo in tears as this was his last match. He told the world he was leaving and wanted to stay on as President.

-Shoichi Arai, the FMW ring announcer, takes control of the company. Jericho does his impression of the announcer and calls him a chubby guy that wore a tuxedo that was too tight. Next is Shell, who is the daughter of Shoichi Arai. She says her dad was a really nice person, but she didn’t know what he was doing. Onita gave the company to Arai, but he had no knowledge of how to run it. Funk: “He gave jack shit to the ring announcer. I promise you that.” Soon FMW went from packed arenas to a few hundred people by 1995.

-Onita did one movie and realized his star was fading, so he returned to FMW as a heel. The idea of old vs new FMW was entertaining to him. In the city they cheered Hayabusa, but in the rural areas they cheered Onita.

-Arai wanted to move away from Death Matches and Sabu backs that up as they wouldn’t air their shows unless it was a special. Arai hires Fuyuki and he brings a belt called World Entertainment Wrestling. His ideas included men getting in a circle and pissing on an opponent, eating gross foods and fire crackers in ass cracks. So Jackass then!

-Onita says they were having a meeting and Arai lied to him. Arai told Onita to leave FMW as they were going to run Hayabusa on top, so Onita was kicked out of the place he built. Hayabusa struggled to draw crowds, but his high flying style was gaining fans.

-Oct 22, 2001: Hayabusa tries a springboard moonsault off the second rope and slips and dear lord it is nasty. He just lands directly on his head and it bends back in a way that is sickening. Fans are basically begging for him to get up and it’s not happening. He can talk, but he can’t move. Sabu: “he didn’t die, but it was worse. I would have rather died.”

-His daughter mentions he was depressed and worried about the future. Foley says his career was cut short in it’s prime and with him went FMW. Without a star attraction Arai had no way to bring in the money. Arai was apparently using money from his family to pay what he could in FMW. Onita says Arai was too proud to ask him for help. The Yakuza came calling as well and that is never a good thing. Arai and his wife divorce.

-Sabu says his last match he wasn’t paid and the next day Arai killed himself by hanging in a school yard. Sabu: “When you borrow money from the Japanese mafia, even if you kill yourself they will get the money from your family.” He continues as it is seen as being a coward because you took the easy way out and now they have to get the money from your family.

-Commercials!

-His death triggers a life insurance payment, but it can’t cover his debits. The house was seized and the family was never able to get back in and get their stuff. Onita: “I don’t want to talk ill of the dead, but Arai failed in business. I am still here. I survived somehow.” Arai’s daughter feels Onita used her dad because he was too kind and too pure. That’s why he is gone. Onita doesn’t think it was the Yakuza or loan sharks and he lights up a cigarette as he talks about it. “You can get away from debts. Tell them you can’t pay. It was more of an emotional thing for Arai.”

-FMW rose one more time with Onita back in the ring in 2015. Hayabusa was part of the show and it’s sad seeing him come out with his wheelchair. Tragedy strikes again as less than a year later, Hayabusa collapses in his home and dies at 47. His daughter mentions his injury never stopped him from doing new things. Foley says Hayabusa was able to walk again and it was one of the most emotional moments you will ever see as he was able to walk to the ring.

-We wrap up with the talking heads discussing FMW and it’s legacy. Foley says it was part of wrestling history and it is still borrowed from to this day. Sabu took what he learned to ECW and says ECW was born from FMW. Funk is asked what he would say to Onita and he flips a double bird before saying he loves him. Onita gets the final words: “It’s like this Hulk Hogan is Hulk Hogan, no one can replace him. Antonio Inoki is Antonio Inoki. Giant Baba is Giant Baba. Onita Atsushi can only be Onita Atsushi. One generation, no successor.”

-Well, this was something as I was only mildly familiar with FMW through Foley’s book and some other stories. I knew the names and I appreciate getting a more detailed history. They did a good job of getting a great job of talking heads to cover as much as possible. This started out as a look at the craziness of the promotion as expected and yes, it was insane, but these people took that risk. The tragedy comes in Haybusa getting the worst injury off a basic wrestling move he probably did a thousand times. Arai’s fate was also tragic as he apparently felt there was no way out and if Yakuza was involved it was quite possible there wasn’t. This was fascinating and tragic and a good watch. Just be prepared for some graphic photos and whatever that was with people pissing on a guy in the middle of the ring. Thanks for reading!