Quebrada

by Mike Lorefice (M.L.Liger@juno.com)

October 11, 1996

Since IWA Japan, the countries #2 hardcore promotion, has lost Masaji "Tarzan" Goto, Mr. Gannosuke, and Flying Kid Ichihara to Tokyo Pro Wrestling, the group is supposed shutting down. With their last card being on 10/26, I thought it might be interesting to examine the history of the two major hardcore (or garbage) wrestling leagues in Japan.

Atsushi Onita was a promising Jr. Heavyweight wrestler for All Japan in the late 1970's- early 1980's. His career was cut short, in 1983, when he blew out his knee performing a tope against Hector Guerrero. Onita attempted a comeback in 1984, but the injury was too severe and he had to call it quits. In 1988, Onita resurfaced running a card where he headlined in a mixed match vs. martial artist Masashi Aoyagi. The bloody match got over pretty well with the fans. On July 28, 1989 Onita held a press conference announcing the formation of Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling or FMW. The group would be built around blood and gimmick matches and Onita was the top star. Onita recruited a crew of veterans that the other leagues didn't want, green wrestlers who were willing bleeders, boxers, and martial artists. The style was short on skill and long on gore. Onita only had $400 when he formed the company, but luckily the first 2 shows sold out, so the league was able to stay afloat. The undercards were generally weak because only a few of the guys could work. The wrestlers generally brawled, using objects such as chairs, and then bladed in attempt to mask this fact. The weal undercard didn't really matter to the fans, who were there to see their hero Onita. Onita usually fough Mr. Pogo (must have fought him over 1000 times) in the main event. They main event was almost always some sort of death match with barbed wire and other pleasentries. Pogo would use his machete to carve up one of Onita's body parts and then blow a fireball on Onita. Onita would eventually come back using the DDT and win with his ThunderFire Powerbomb. A bloody Onita would grab the house Mic (like Terry Funk used to do) and scream and cry while they played the song Wild Thing. Onita would also pour water over his cut up body after the match.

FMW's popularity grew enough that Onita was able to run Kawasaki Baseball Stadium on 9/23/91 for a death match against sometimes #2 face sometimes bitter enemy Tarzan Goto. The show was a major success drawing 33,221 fans. Onita was known for having a gigantic ego which was at least one of the reasons Mickey Ibaragi split with FMW to form his own group W*ING (Wrestling International New Generation). W*ING was very similar to FMW in that they had the same type of workers and tons of gimmick matches, but they booked better foreign talent through Victor Quinones.

FMW was back at Kawasaki Stadium on 5/5/93 with Onita vs. Terry Funk with more stipulations added to the death match including a bomb going off at the 15:00 mark. The show was even more successful than last time drawing 41,000 and $1.8 million gross. Funk did the job, but whatever promises Onita made to Funk for putting him over were never fulfilled.

FMW had another baseball stadium show, this time in Nishnomiya Stadium (suburban Osaka) on August 22, 1993. The show drew 25,000 which at the time was an Osaka area record. They borrowed wrestlers from other companies like All Japan Women and Michinoku Pro for this show, so the undercard was pretty decent. The main event was Onita vs. Mr. Pogo for the vacant WWA World Brass Knuckles in an no rope barbed wire exploding ring explosive match. Small bombs (like M 80's) interlaced in the barbed wire. Onita won this one when he DDT'd Pogo on a burning torch. Neither man could escape the cage before the 15 minute mark when the huge explosion was set to take place. The explosion was very dramatic, with Onita covering the ref to protect him.

While W*ING had a good product, they apparently weren't run that well and wound up folding in 1994. Meanwhile Onita pinned Genichiru Tenryu , a former Sumo star and I believe the only wrestler to pin both Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki, in a tag match on 3/2/94 at Sumo Hall. This set up the main event for the now annual Kawasaki Stadium Show on 5/5/94. Since Tenryu was a mega star who ran WAR and had already done a job to Onita it was obvious to the Japanese fans that Onita would be doing the job here. Onita added the stipulation that he would retire if he lost the match to try to garner more interest and throw off the fans. The show drew a turn away crowd of 52,000 with Tenryu going over. Onita didn't retire though, instead he said he would retire a year to the day at the next big Kawasaki Stadium show.

On 5/23/94 the International Wrestling Association-Japan (IWA Japan) held their first card at Tokyo Korakuen Hall. IWA ran more diverse gimmick matches than FMW. The group seemed to have barbed wire boards or panes of glass outside the ring for every main event. IWA Japan with, Victor Quinones as booker, used many of the same workers as W*ING. Quinones built the company around foreigners using some really good workers like Miguel Perez Jr., the Headhunters, and Los Cowboys (Silver King & El Texano). They also used Cactus Jack and Terry Funk, who was glad to work for an Onita rival. IWA had Shoji Nakamaki and Hiroshi Ono as the top foreign babyfaces. Nakamaki had little technical skill, but was an awesome brawler with absolutely no regard for his body. Nakamaki was noted for taking crazy bumbs such as being sandwiched between barbed wire boards and moonsaulted by a 350 pound Headhunter.

FMW drew good houses for the first part of 1995 because fans wanted to see Onita for the last time. Onita was a total one man draw, which was a problem because he was on his way out. The undercards generally weren't good and the gimmick matches were getting stale because they had already used everything from fire to time bombs to explosive barbed wire to machetes. Even the main events weren't the same as the Onita vs. Pogo match had been done so many times that it worn out. Onita had been grooming Hayabusa (Eiji Ezaki) to be the groups top star, but he was a Lucha libre style aerialist not a brawler/bleeder.

W*ING attempted a comeback, but their return show on 3/26/95 using ECW and IWA wrestlers drew a whopping 400 at Tokyo Theater. They ran two tours in 1995, neither of which were successful.

IWA's first big victory over FMW came on 4/2/95 at Weekly Pro Wrestling's Tokyo Dome Show in which 13 different promotions sent one match each. IWA's match of Funk+Nakamaki & Leatherface (Rick Patterson) vs. Cactus Jack & Headhunters was the second best on the show (JWP). The match contained one incredible spot after another and even though the finish was blown when the board wouldn't light. Funk more than saved the finish when he became by far the oldest wrestler to ever perform the Orihara Moonsault (moonsault block from top rope to the floor named after its originator Masao Orihara). FMW's match of Great Nita (Onita doing Muta gimmick) vs. King (Mr.) Pogo was hampered because they didn't allow fireballs, so Pogo was without one of his major spots. The match didn't hold up on a show with such talent and would have sucked either way.

Onita's retirement match was set for 5/5/95 at Kawasaki Stadium against Tarzan Goto with the same stipulations as the previous two years. Goto was expecting to come into power with Onita gone, but he wasn't that popular with the wrestlers and Onita wound up choosing Katsutoshi Niiyama as road manager instead. About two weeks before the show, Goto and his friends Gannosuke and Ichihara walked out on FMW in favor of IWA. Onita was going to fight Takashi Ishikawa who runs Tokyo Pro Wrestling, but that would have been a big letdown because Ishikawa isn't that big of a star and he isn't that good. Before Ishikawa could sign the contract at the press conference, Hayabusa challenged Onita and Ishikawa bowed out. The show sold out for the 2nd straight year and grossed $2.5 million. For reasons that only Onita can explain he had to retire by beating the guy he wanted to be the companies top star.

With Onita gone FMW's attendance plummeted as Hayabusa and Gladiator didn't fight the brawling style. Their attempts to follow in Onita's footsteps by performing crazy stunts just led to injuries. IWA's attendance got a bit better because their style contained more blood, gimmicks, and stipulation matches than FMW was running.

IWA's August tour was very successful. They were able to sell out Korakuen Hall without the use of foreigners. This was probably a bad thing because it may have put the idea that they didn't need the foreigners to draw in their head.

IWA's biggest show was on 8/20/95 at Kawasaki Baseball Stadium drawing 28,757 for the King of the Death Match tournament. Cactus Jack won the 8 man tournament which had seven different death matches defeating Funk in a no rope barbed wire explosive time bomb death match. The card was stacked with big names such as Dan Severn, Tiger Jeet Singh, Terry Gordy, etc. Hiroshi Ono, one of their top natives retired on this show to become a chiropractor. It was about this time that IWA claimed to be the #3 group in Japan behind New Japan and All Japan which was hardly the case.

The demise of FMW continued and in September they were forced to get rid of Mr. Pogo because they couldn't afford his $120,000 contract (he wound up returning in a few months). On 10/28 with the main event of Hayabusa & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs. W*ING Kanemura & Masato Tanaka they failed to sell out Korakuen Hall for the first time in years. The group finally began to pick up in December selling out 5,500 seat Yokohama Bunka Gym (with the help of Michinoku Pro) for an awesome Lucha style match where Great Sasuke, Hayabusa

Koji Nakagawa defeated Taka Michinoku, Super Delfin, & Riki Fuji.

FMW's 1995 house show attendance figures claimed 153 shows averaging 2,622 to IWA's 81 shows averaging 1,200. FMW's figures seem way too high even though the first 4 months were mainly sellouts.

IWA basically killed themselves by getting rid of booker Victor Quinones and almost all the foreign talent (Cactus and Leatherface were still booked). Akio Sato (aka Shinja or Sato from Orient Express) became the booker. They figured they could pit Goto against a bunch of chair swinging dinosaurs or has-beens and still draw as well, but save on salary and travel. The groups only remaining draws were Nakamaki and Goto and they had about two good workers Takashi Okano & Ichihara. I understand that they group had some financial trouble and needed to get rid of some high priced talent, but I question the replacements. Wrestlers like the Great Kabuki and Umanosuke Ueda were years past their prime and meant little at the box office. This would be like the WWF replacing Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels with Jim Neidhart and Greg Valentine. Nakamaki left for Big Japan a few weeks later, so Gannosuke was probably the #2 native.

FMW retook whatever advantage IWA had achieved by hiring their booker Quinones and much of their foreign talent. FMW, with draws like Funk, had a strong tour leading up to their annual stadium show. The 5/5/96 Kawasaki Stadium show had the 1st woman's no rope electrified explosive barbed wire death match between Megumi Kudo and 28 year old retiring star Noriyo "Combat" Toyoda which Kudo won with her reverse Gori special bomb. In the main event, Funk & Pogo defeated Hayabusa (who returned prematurely from injury for this show) & Masato Tanaka in a brutal no rope electrified explosive barbed wire time bomb land mine double hell death match when Hayabusa was stuff powerbombed on a burning chair. After the match, Hayabusa needed 110 stitches while Tanaka needed 65.

IWA continued to flounder thinking people might still want to see the Great Kabuki (Ueda was forced to retire after being in a severe car accident). In August they got ECW to come to Japan for two shows. Even though it was ECW's first official appearance in Japan they could only draw 1,800 in the 4,900 seat Yokohama Bunka Gym the first night. They did sell out Korakuen Hall for what on ECW tv appeared to be an awful show.

This basically leads us back to today with FMW once again the dominant force in garbage wrestling and IWA is basically finished. Even if IWA comes back, they will have to pass other garbage promotions like Big Japan and Tokyo Pro Group before they will be taken seriously. I wouldn't be surprised to see Onita in the ring again though.

Note: attendance and money figures taken from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.