Jun Kasai and Jaki Numazawa Accomplish Something, I'm Just Not Sure What

The barbwire board that says "EXPLOSION!" on it doesn't even explode.

I’ve always assumed that I’m too soft for BJW and its style of deathmatch, so I haven’t seen much of it. Given that extreme close-ups on fish hooks and syringes and things like that are a feature of the form now, I still assume that I’m too soft for BJW, but this?

This was kind of boring.

I’ve felt a lot of things reviewing what Joseph and I have laid out for BIG EGG, but boredom is a new one. I know the deal here — the razor board is a new invention, something Kasai carries to the ring like Cactus Jack and his barbwire cross a decade prior, or Jesus centuries prior, or, uh, other guys who got crucified. You are meant to wonder who will take a bump on that thing, what that bump will be, and what the aftermath will look like.

Well, it’s Jun, a powerbomb, and it looks like about two dozen razors dug into his back.

I’m not particularly desensitized to violence. Just last week I wrote about a match that first caught my attention because I’d never seen or heard someone take a VCR to the head at full speed. I go into these matches having read as little as possible, as I want everything I watch to hit me new. Most of the time, it works out pretty well for me. Here, though, I found myself disappointed, and then I found myself feeling kinda bad that I felt disappointed given that, yes, a bump onto two dozen razorblades would fucking suck.

I know the deal though: for the most part, I prefer theatrical deathmatches, pitched battles between emotional opposites on a battlefield that has been wired, literally, for danger. I think barbwire is one of the most effectively gruesome weapons in wrestling history, and has been long before any barbwire matches made their way from the southern territories of the United States of America to tape. I frequently extol the virtues of Onita, Cactus Jack, Hayabusa, Mike Awesome, Masato Tanaka, the W*ING Monster Army, Terry Funk, and so on.

There is a difference between what those wrestlers did and what Kasai and Numazawa are doing here. When the clock counts down to zero and the bombs surrounding the barbwire cage go off, FMW’s cameras zoom out. They show you the scope, the spectacle of the match, what Onita braves to save his rival and the referee. It’s stadium wrestling. Here, when Kasai rolls off the board, the camera zooms in. It has to, because otherwise there isn’t a grisly visual payoff for the spot beyond Kasai’s blood-streaked body, which I’m guessing is the effect for the majority of the fans in attendance.

In other words, it feels small.

It also isn’t supported by much of a match. Things pick up after the razor board spot, as Numazawa brings out a bag of tacks to further target Kasai’s back, filling his mouth with tacks and punching them out a couple of times, but a lot of this match is spent constructing spots, and both men are kinda blown up before the board really comes into play. There is zero sense of urgency on pin attempts, and most of the strikes look weak. They just kind of meander. Madness of Massacre Crazy Slaughter match, indeed.

I’ve often wondered what I’d do when I finally came across a BIG EGG match I didn’t like. I don’t have anything grand to say about how my vision of wrestling doesn’t align with Kasai’s or Numazawa’s, and my expertise does not lend itself towards positioning this in the vast cosmos that is the deathmatch as a genre of professional wrestling. I don’t like this match, but it’s not because it’s bad or because I find it gory without purpose. It’s just a match, something that happens from one bell to the other without moving me. That’s fine. Happens all the time. I grew up watching Nitro, after all. It works for someone, just not for me. The weird anime video sharing app I downloaded to watch this match has hundreds more on it, an unfamiliar stretch of open highway. I can take it for as long as I please. I can watch anything I like.