FMW Year end sensation 1995

Going back to mid-nineties early indies, and it's simply staggering to see the crowds for smaller promotions at that time. For anyone who doesn't know FMW was the original MMA promotion. Onita was the ace and his thing was that he'd challenge shoot fighters (boxers, karate etc) and work his programme round that. It soon became infamous for their death matches and escalating violence and they (along with W*ING) really pushed that style of wrestling. 

- Gekko vs Gosaku Goshogawara

Gekko is this freaky looking clown guy. He looks a bit pissed off with having to do the match as all his stuff looks ridiculously stiff and not pulled at all. He boots Gosaku right in the face with his toe and this guys forehead just explodes. He gets another few kicks in and then dumps him on his head. After the match Gekko just carries on booting him. Definitely something iffy went on here. Match itself was only 3 minutes long. [strange] 

- Kaori Nakayama vs. Miwa Sato

FMW always treated joshi wrestlers as stars and at the time I think they were the only male promotion to have women's matches. It made sense financially to try it as Joshi at its peak far and above out sold the men's promotions (and arguably put on better matches [fight me!]) 

Iffy looking powerbomb was reversed into a pin. Looked like a botch but the ref went with it and counted to 3.

There's another joshi match, but it's not on the listing so no idea who is fighting! This one went to the outside and had some traditional garbage brawling. Nothing much to it and ends with an arm bar submission. [meh] 

- Katsutoshi Niiyama vs. Tetsuhiro Kuroda 

OK match, not much happened, but it was kept inside the ring. [meh] 

- FMW Brass Knuckles Tag Team Title Match - Hisakatsu Oya & Horace Boulder vs Daisuke Ikeda & Yoshiaki Fujiwara 

Horace (Hogans nephew, he's even got the balding friar tuck hairdo) Boulder cuts a terrible promo. Apparently he's going to kick 'y'all ass'. Oya was a pretty good miserable vet character from memory. Fujiwara is still wrestling to this day, who is pretty ridiculous. [OK] 

- Mr. Pogo vs Masato Tanaka

Pogo is this short, rotund guy who does very little in the way of wrestling and just carves opponents up. For parts of his career, he would bring a scythe like weapon and stick it in people's stomachs and blade them that way, which is pretty horrific. Remember reading about pogo in Foleys book, from memory he said he was stiff and generally sloppy in the ring. Tanaka is ridiculously young here, and considering what he did at the start of his career, its pretty amazing that he's still wrestling at a high level now. 

Match starts as a regular brawl, after a while Pogo gets his scythe out and cuts into Tanakas arm. It's weird to see people blading intentionally on parts other than their forehead. He's also bleeding pretty bad from his forehead, because that's what happens when you fight Pogo. They do a cool spot where Tanaka has a chain wrapped round his knee and his hung over the top rope by it. I despise when this spot is done round the neck, much safer variation. After the knee spot, Tanaka gets the scythe to the forehead again. 

After a while they do the neck spot and tease Mr Pogo breathing fire on Tanaka (another staple of his arsenal).  Barbed wire bat comes into play and Pogo continues to work over Tanakas bleeding arm. Tanaka is allowed to get some offense in, hits a table spot and with some broken chunks of table, he grinds it on Pogos forehead. Bit of to and fro action and it lasts longer than I thought a singles match with Pogo in. Pogo does do a nice ddt where Tanakas legs rest on the top rope. 

Tanaka kicks out of a piledriver onto a chair. For his trouble pogo hangs him with the chain over the top rope (again) and the ref rings the bell. I think they were going for a TKO style finish. Match was much better than it had a right to be and I'm putting this mostly down to Tanaka bumping like a bastard. Not a bad match if you want to see how he ended up with all those scars [good] 

- Aja Kong & Megumi Kudo vs Bison Kimura & Combat Toyoda

FMW had some excellent female wrestlers and with the frankly brilliant Aja Kong (one of the best monster heels in the sport) I've got high expectations for this. This is part of Toyodas retirement tour, and as such this seemed to have a more playful feel to it. AJW had a mandatory retirement age of 26 for the wrestlers safety and it was assumed they would want to have families. This arbitrary age was ingrained in a lot of joshi wrestlers psyche, and so Toyoda was retiring. 

To show the fun, if it can be called that, feeling Aja is double teamed by having her hands chewed on which the crowd find hilarious. Everyone gets a chance to hit their spots and show off. Bison does a variation on the bow and arrow with her feet in the lower of Kudos back. 

Bison and Kong have a headbutting duel, which looks bloody painful. And then Kong does a jumping piledriver, which will never not look fantastic. This kind of meandered and went nowhere for a while. Pretty disappointed with it. [OK] 

- Carribbean Barbed Wire Double Hell Glass Crushing Death Match - Hideki Hosaka, Jason The Terrible & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs Hido, Super Leather & WING Kanemura 

Here comes the garbage! Matsunaga was the first crazy wrestler I remember from these feds. Reading up on him is even stranger since. He came into pro wrestling late (and you can tell) but could just absorb a ridiculous amount of pain. This match had barbed wire wrapped around the ropes on two sides of the ring and a box with glass panes on top on the floor on both sides of the ring without the barbed wire. 

All men are in the ring at the same time so your focus is kind of all over the place. They do the usual of teasing someone getting dropped into the glass. Quite a few times, which has the opposite effect, instead of building tension in just frustrates. 

Kanemura is the first into the glass, and there's a satisfying crunch as he's rolling around in it. You know the match isn't going to end until someone goes into the other box of glass. And of course it's Matsunaga, who goes in belly first! 

Super leather is dressed up like leather face and the crowd is petrified of him. He starts walking towards the crowd and you can just hear women scream in horror. He does pick up a young boy and just launch him into the crowd though. 

Matsunaga has some panes of glass put onto his chest, which are then smashed with a nail board thing. Looks bloody painful. Super leather is clotheslined but botches going over the top rope. They simply just repeat the spot! 

After he gets out of the glass he has barbed wire stuck to him so he decides to walk through the crowd with it trailing behind him as the fans just run for their lives. OK match, with not much wrestling. Looks pretty dated compared to the death matches we see today. 

- Hayabusa, Koji Nakagawa & The Great Sasuke vs. Ricky Fuji, Super Delfin & TAKA Michinoku 

Hayabusa was FMWs high flying Superstar who suffered from terrible booking under Onita (his ego really showed through during his feuds with Hayabusa). Sadly his career was cut short after an in ring injury where he nearly snapped his neck (if you're curious, it's on YouTube), and sadly passed away a few year ago. 

Great Sasuke is one of the greatest high flyers ever, and this is when he was able to show it in the ring (instead of messing with giant dolphins and playing the piano). Delfin is massively underrated, but he also never really pushed it like the others did. He went off to form Osaka Pro Wrestling and kept a low profile. He has freaking dolphin shoulder pads as he walks to the ring. TAKA is the surly bastard he's always been, especially with his young NED moustache. Ricky Fuji is awesome and Koji is dressed like Brett Hart... 

Sasuke is so fast and smooth in the ring, he even does the little Ebessan jump, which gets a loud 'ooooh'. It's a bit of a slow burner at the start as Delfins team take turns working over whoever they've got. They do a cool spot where Fuji and Delfin hold Sasuke stretched out in the middle of the ring as TAKA jumps and stomps him in the stomach. It's after this point that it kicks up a gear, with dives to the outside (lovely moonsault by TAKA). 

Sasuke does a moonsault onto TAKA and then forcibly holds him down for the pin while TAKA really has to try and kick out. Not sure what the name is but I'm going to say a fisherman brainbuster by Hayabusa, looked ridiculously dangerous which was followed up by a twisting 450 splash. And then it was over. Slightly disappointed with this match considering who was in it. This was meant to showcase hayabusa, but he didn't do much throughout and just as it started it finished. MPro had some crazy tags around '96 which blows this away [OK]