The Product of Compromise, Onita vs. Hayabusa Is Perfect FMW
The Product of Compromise, Onita vs. Hayabusa Is Perfect FMW
Tears, blood, barbwire, explosions — Hayabusa throws himself through it all to earn the respect of Atsushi Onita.
To call this No Ropes Barbed Wire Current Mine Explosion Time Bomb Death Match for the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title a “retirement match,” or even a “passing of the torch” from FMW’s founder and primary protagonist Atsushi Onita to his student/heir apparent to the role of ace Hayabusa, one has to watch it through a vaseline-smeared lens. That is, admittedly, how one must approach every significant professional wrestler’s billed retirement (except perhaps Sting), as the notion of living in a world without the towering hero of one’s favorite wrestling promotion is a promotional trick whose potency is perhaps second only to the prospect of their return, but there’s more to it than that.
Atsushi Onita is not retiring at the conclusion of this match because he wants to, but because a year prior he got a little big for his britches and challenged Genichiro Tenryu to a No Ropes Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match at FMW’s 5th Anniversary Show the year prior, putting his career on the line to get the match, and lost. That he’s here at the 6th Anniversary Show is because he fudged the truth of that stipulation, giving himself the gift of a year-long retirement tour.
That Hayabusa is his opponent is itself something of a compromise, as Onita never saw Hayabusa as his successor, nor was he Onita’s first, second, or even third choice for an opponent. His first, Tarzan Goto, left FMW because Onita refused to lose. His second, Mr. Pogo, also declined, wrestling Onita instead on May 4 and losing the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title to him in the process. His third, Takashi Ishikawa, demured after Hayabusa, who had to that point wrestled two matches in Japan under that name, interrupted the press conference meant to sign the match, and pleaded his case before a furious Onita to the extent that Ishikawa stepped down, forcing Hayabusa into the picture.
If you’re wondering why Onita approaches Hayabusa as if he’s a young boy in this match, working leg submissions when there’s a barbwire cage rigged with explosives around them, to say nothing of the time bombs ticking away in the background, its because, to him that’s what Hayabusa was, and yet he’d been chosen by new FMW owner Shoichi Arai as his successor. The question of this match is not whether or not Hayabusa can defeat Onita, but if he’s worthy to stand in the same bloodsoaked, debris-strewn ring as him. Putting him in a Scorpion Death Lock and a single leg crab, Onita is forcing him to look at his surroundings, to watch as the clock ticks down, and ask himself if he really, truly wants this.
Onita’s real-life treatment and opinion of Eiji Ezaki aside (and covered in thorough detail on the podcast The History of FMW and other projects by BAHU, aka Bret, who is the leading light of FMW history), this is a bold, heavy piece of pro wrestling storytelling, an attempt at solidifying the legacy of one participant while paving the road to the other’s success and the future of the company they stand as the figureheads of.
The wrestling is not incidental to this. Onita is a pioneer of this genre of professional wrestling, barbwire and bombs so central to his image at this point that it’s easy to forget that FMW was founded because nobody in the UWF responded to his challenge in 1989. Onita wrestled 69 times in 1995. This is his 52nd barbwire match during that stretch. By contrast, this is Hayabusa’s first ever. He knows what he’s doing, though — trapped in a headlock at the beginning of the match, he twice attempts to shoot Onita into the bomb-laden cage, forcing Onita to take him to the mat. His offense, when he hits it, is unlike anything Onita’s experienced since his days as the ace of All Japan’s junior heavyweight division — the style clash between them was also a bone of contention as to Onita’s view of FMW’s future and what came to be. When Onita tries to whip him into the cage, he slides to stop his momentum, gets up, and stares the ace down. When Hayabusa does the same to Onita a minute later, Onita actually smiles, gesturing that the two are playing a game of tit for tat. Maybe it won’t be so easy after all.
Aside from the famous spot where Hayabusa flies headfirst into the cage as it’s exploding, these early teases are some of the most effective moments in FMW history insofar as establishing the violence inherent to its main event. The footage is as gorgeous and crisp as the technology of the time allows, and serious money has been spent on capturing every possible angle — this is what it’d be like if WWE assembled an entire match out of the special cameras they bring to stadium shows, provided that those camera operators were good and the editors even better. There is no commentary in your ear telling you how the cage operates, but the footage does it for you — right after Hayabusa narrowly avoids running into the cage, you see a wire running from the barb wire, to a detonation device, to an explosive. Then the camera zooms in on the ongoing struggle between Hayabusa and Onita, one man’s headlock and the other’s attempt to escape.
The only way Onita manages to escape is by running himself and Hayabusa full bore into the cage. After the explosion, there is a cut to an onlooking FMW roster and a stunned crowd, a cut to and zoom in on the digital readout of the timebomb, close shots of Onita’s bleeding arm. Having hit the cage for the first time, Hayabusa’s real test begins. Onita begins going for pinfalls after backdrops and DDTs, his measured kicks having some real oomph to them. He whips Hayabusa into the cage, and it’s uncontested — the future ace flies into the barbwire and eats a bomb all by his lonesome. While the referee checks on Hayabusa, he looks up at Onita and signals at him to do something — pin him? show mercy? The opportunities he gives Hayabusa for that would be embarrassing: stay down, tap out, leave before the countdown reaches its terminus, spare yourself the life Onita led. Hayabusa doesn’t quit though. In fact, he sends Onita into the cage. Then the klaxons begin their wail. Three minutes to go.
Hayabusa makes a mistake when he has the advantage, putting Onita in a figure four while the world is ending, but the slap exchange between the two is rich and angsty, and Hayabusa’s refusal to stay down for Onita’s powerbomb and DDT are the beginnings of the legend the rest of this match works to establish. The ring announcer begins a ten second countdown with Hayabusa temporarily taking control, backing up to take a run at Onita. Onita ducks, tackling the referee down to the mat to shield him from the blast as Hayabusa runs face-first into the cage, triggering a bomb mere seconds before the timed explosives go off, shrouding Kawasaki Stadium in ash.
This moment is the one on which the axis of FMW shifts. It is a final act of true bravery by Onita, seemingly in the final moments of his career. He will later renege all of that, returning to action in December 1996 after his charisma and presence fails to translate to a film career, but this moment, covering a helpless referee’s body with his own as the world around them ends, is akin to Sting absorbing punishment, beating his chest, and pressing his attack. It’s how you want to remember your heroes. Hayabusa, on the other hand, is not a hero yet. He is a young man with a point to prove, and to do so he is willing to make a blind, desperate lunge at Onita and suffer the consequences should he miss.
I remember screaming the first time I saw this match, when Hayabusa kicked out of Onita’s post-bomb folding powerbomb. How? Because wrestlers are people who live beyond our conception of pain and common sense, because the respect of Atsushi Onita and the adulation of the FMW audience is worth more than life itself. The “HAYABUSA” chants that ring out after the nearfall compel him to reverse another powerbomb into a rana that Onita finds himself in stunned disbelief of, once he’s kicked out of it. Not satisfied with the risks he’s taken thus far, Hayabusa follows up his own powerbomb by climbing the cage and moonsaulting off of it, sending ash billowing into the air when he lands in the space Onita narrowly vacates. He takes another powerbomb and kicks out. He takes another one but Onita doesn’t land him flush enough for a pin attempt. He takes a third and, finally, that’s it; except, of course, for the crying — Onita’s, Hayabusa’s, and ours.
There aren’t many wrestling matches that make me cry. It’s not that I’m a hard-ass — far from it, actually — it’s just that there’s a certain tone melodrama has to strike to get me to cry, and it’s incredibly difficult for the in-ring aspect of wrestling to get me there. Sting and Darby Allin vs. The Young Bucks made me weep through its examination of the legacy of a wrestler I have loved since I was a child, fatherhood, and mortality. Mankind’s first WWF Championship victory over The Rock makes me cry because Mankind was and is so identifiable, because I love Mick Foley and his story, because his is the rare instance of a truly impossible dream within professional wrestling coming true through sheer force of will.
Here what makes me cry is that the beliefs of two of wrestling’s biggest dreamers are simultaneously realized. For Onita, it is a triumphant send-off, a signature performance in a signature match in front of nearly 60,000 fans who were largely there due to his magnetism. FMW was born of compromise, of Onita’s inability to wrestle as he once did in AJPW, of UWF’s refusal to respond to his challenge, of misfit wrestlers from Japan, Mexico, and the United States chasing a madman’s dreams and visions of himself as the top professional wrestler in Japan. FMW had true believers, and Hayabusa was one of them. Victor Quinones offered Hayabusa a good contract to be the ace of IWA Japan, but he chose to stay loyal to FMW, who had him on a nothing contract while he toiled away in Mexico. All he wanted was a chance to prove himself worthy of FMW, and he wanted it badly enough that he humbled himself to his disbelieving teacher and his hand-chosen opponent, barely a week’s remove from May 5. The charged emotion flowing between the two as they embrace? That’s two wrestlers getting nothing less than everything they deserve.
Rating: **** & 3/4