FMW Se-N-Ri-Tsu! (5.6.91) review 

 

May 6, 1991 

 

We’re in Suita, Osaka, Japan. I was going to try and track down the main event here for my year end mop up and stumbled across the entire show on YouTube. Fuck it, let’s go! The venue here is the Osaka Expo Festival Land, which was designed for the 1970 World’s Fair. The site of the world’s first ever IMAX film. Other wonders of the age included LAN technology, maglev and mobile phones. On tap for tonight’s show; Onita vs Pogo in an explosion match, martial arts, Horace Hogan, Mike Awesome, luchadores, shootstyle and more!!!! 

This is a 90-minute tape version of the show released on BMG Video. Onita has started drifting towards outdoor venues, setting FMW apart from other promotions and allowing EXPLOSIONS.  

This is what the venue looks like before the fans start traipsing in. This is totally my shit. A very different feeling show to the millions from Korakuen Hall I’ve seen in my lifetime. 

 

Kumiko Matsuda & Yukie Nabeno vs. Mayumi Shimizu & Rie Nakamura 

The ladies start us off. This went 12 minutes but is clipped to about 5:00. There’s a definite vibe from the crowd that they don’t care about this in the slightest. I appreciate Onita booking a women’s division when no one else was in Japan. Also in training and exploiting, I mean using, women’s talent. Booking them in the second longest match on the show is either cruel or an example of Onita’s approach to feminism. Onita was such a feminist he had sex with 20,000 women*. He just loved them THAT MUCH.  

 

*This is his claim and who am I to dispute it? Even if it means, in his prime, he was probably going through three different women A DAY.  

 

Anyway, back to the match, which is a decent back and forth with Matsuda, the future Tsuppari Mack, landing a lot of kicks. She finishes with a running bulldog. This was fine but nothing I’ll remember. *¾  

 

Different Style Fight 

Katsuji Ueda vs. Yukihide Ueno 

Ueno, a kickboxer and martial artist, is wearing boxing gloves. Ueda, someone who understands wrestling, is not wearing boxing gloves. Has wearing boxing gloves in a wrestling match ever worked out? (SPOILER; it’s about to!) This is way before UFC #1, so the concept of MMA is in its infancy. The first round is all Ueno throwing strikes and Ueda trying takedowns.  

Ueno gets the better of it, surprisingly, and Ueda is unable to get an effective takedown. Near the start of round 2, Ueno clocks Ueda with one of the greatest worked punches you’ll ever see. He fucking decked him. It looked like a legitimate boxing punch. The crowd are cackling afterwards. It’s SO good. Sadly, that’s not the finish, and they do another punch for the actual knock out. Ah man, should have just finished on the good one. Called an audible. It was SICK. The match was weird and stupid, but that punch was unbelievable. If you watch the tape, it happens at 16:25 into the show. Just watch the punch. *½  

 

It’s interesting to note FMW, who started out doing shootstyle to mimic the success of UWF, have now gone off in a totally different direction. A direction which would become the staple of 1990s wrestling; the garbage match. Onita is one of the most influential wrestlers from the time. Along with more widely recognised influencers like Jushin Liger and Vader.  

 

El Professor vs. The Shooter 

Katsutoshi Niiyama is the Shooter. Cagematch doesn’t tell me who El Professor is, but I suspect it’s not a luchadore and actually an American based on style. HE BE CLUBBERIN’ TONY! He also yells “drop him on his head” at one point. “Right on his head. Break his neck, break it”. It’s a piledriver so at least he’s embracing the fundamental dangers of the piledriver in lucha libre. El Professor hits several low blows right in front of the referee. The era of awful heel work is upon us. They spend a lot of time talking in this and still can’t get on the same page for spot work. El Professor finishes with a superplex, after they’ve had a long old chinwag about it. *¼  

 

El Pandita vs. Amigo Ultra 

Amigo Ultra has a Liger style gimmick. Pandita, predictably, is a panda. This is very lucha libre stuff. At least that means TOPES BABY. They make a mess of a few sequences and have to reset with Pandita going after Amigo Ultra’s mask. Maybe he thinks its bamboo? The crowd spend most of the match laughing as the style is very comedic. The bumps are all lame. Some of it is in slow motion. Having realised they can get better reactions by doing shitty moves, they lean into it.  

The giggling of the crowd is contagious, and I find myself laughing at how shit the match is. They gave this 11:00 btw. Amigo Ultra finishes with a MUSCLE BUSTER! HAHA, HOLY SHIT! Five stars.Who ends a comedy match with a fucking Muscle Buster? Who uses the Muscle Buster in 1991? An madness from Amigo Ultra.  

 

Combat Toyoda, Eriko Tsuchiya & Yoshika Maedomari vs. Megumi Kudo, Miwa Sato & Yuki Morimatsu 

Kudo is the ace of FMW’s women’s division. The entire opposing team is what she’s got to work with. This is a street fight with captain’s rules so the team can only lose if the captain is pinned. Despite the violent brawl at the start, it soon settles into heat on poor ickle Miwa Sato. Toyota plants Sato with a big dropkick and she’s pinned. Heels now have a woman advantage. Kudo taps out Maedomari to even the numbers. Morimatsu is murdered with a spike piledriver on the floor though, essentially leaving Kudo with two opponents and no back up.  

 

The match is a little rough around the edges but works for the most part. Kudo is an obvious stand out, and I often wonder whether she’d have been considered a great pro wrestler by more people if she’d worked elsewhere. She takes a beating here and does a good job of selling, bumping and desperation kick outs. Eventually she can’t kick out, and Toyoda wins with a powerslam. This was decent. FMW had a women’s division that already feels like it could be worthwhile. **½ 

 

Sambo Asako & Ricky Fuji vs. Gladiator & Horace Boulder 

I love pudgy underdog Sambo Asako. He’s one of my favourites. Gladiator is the future Mike Awesome. I’ve already reviewed a match he had in FMW, and he quickly slotted in as top gaijin. Horace is somewhat famous as he’s related to Hulk Hogan. The Hulkster is his uncle. He’s also cousins with Mike Awesome, according to Wikipedia. Horace is stringy and long, rather than rangy and tall. Awesome is kinda green here and is doing lame, low impact stuff like stomps and choking. More cheating in front of the referee here. LAME. Get that shit out of here, Horace, you lamewad.  

 

Asako is in a mood and won’t sell for Mike, so he eats an almost deadweight AWESOMEBOMB for his troubles. Holy shit! Sadly, the Gladiator is reduced to taking bumps for Ricky Fuji’s chops and oh my god, does that ever suck. The match falls apart in front of my eyes. Fuji takes one bump way before he’s hit. His shitty timing makes Gladiator look awful. Fuji ends up cleaning out Awesome with a high crossbody for the win. Mike took the fall? REALLY? Good lord, this whole thing sucked. The only good spot was the Awesomebomb. ½* 

 

The more I think about this match, the more steamed I get about Ricky Fuji. Ricky Fuji fucking sucks man. He fucking sucks. Unfortunately, he’s an FMW mainstay and will be there the entire time the company is running. Imagine Marty Jannetty….then make him way, way, way worse. That’s Ricky Fuji.  

 

WWA Martial Arts Championship 

Grigory Verichev (c) vs. Tarzan Goto 

This is FMW’s main belt. Verichev beat Onita for it earlier in the year. Verichev is a Russian judoka. Onita’s response to Inoki’s brief dalliance with Soviet shooters. Goto’s approach is less technical and more chair shots. More cheating in front of the referee btw. I hate that shit. At least try and conceal it. I think FMW and ECW tend to get away with it a bit more because they’re hardcore, outlaw promotions. It became contagious though. 

 

Verichev looks completely unprepared for Goto’s savagery and gets his ass kicked from the opening bell. Verichev spends more time answering ten counts than he does wrestling. Goto headbutts the ring post in a dumb spot, which leads to an obvious bladejob with El Professor standing in the way, so it’s not done on camera. A bloodied Goto then eats a bunch of throws and an armbar finishes. *½.  

An odd match with Goto dominating until his own stupidity derailed his chances. Goto did fire up quite nicely in the final minutes, but the match was already dead in the water by then. I didn’t really enjoy this. 

 

Barbed Wire Barricade Mat Mine Explosion Death Match 

Atsushi Onita vs. Mr Pogo 

Pogo has replaced Goto as Onita’s nutball dance partner in these crazy stipulation matches. We get a quick demonstration of what the “mat mine” does. If you touch it or even disturb it….it explodes. For those who didn’t get to see Onita, despite his many flaws as a worker, he was a fucking rock star. He had presence that most people can only dream of.  

All while sporting a beer gut, white vest and blue trunks. He comes into this match with so many bandages he looks like a mummy. There are barbwire boards around the ring, which have those mines on them.  

So, Onita gets a little close to one of the mines and BOOM. FMW’s crew totally miss it, but he did tumble into the wire. What kind of sicko comes up with this sort of match? Barbwire is horribly unpredictable. Here Onita gets his arm lacerated but nothing else. You never know if you’ll get hurt badly every time you go near that shit.  

The mine gimmick isn’t really working. Onita tumbles onto the barbwire again and as soon as he touches the rest of the mines explode, nowhere near him. This trip is less kind to Onita with the wire. He comes back up bleeding from the head, the ribs and both arms.  

Pogo spills out the other side and KABOOM, KABLOOEY! Fucking hell, lads. This place looks like a war zone. Onita comes strolling through the smoke, bloodied and battered. It’s an unreal visual. I couldn’t get a decent screenshot of the actual smoke bit but fucking hell, this is crazy.  

Onita proceeds to beat up Pogo for about five minutes and then just pins him for the win. The feud would continue and it lasted so fucking long they’ve actually wrestled each other this YEAR at time of writing (2026). ***¼. Bonus points for the crazy explosions but they did put on a legitimate match around the gimmick. Good effort from both and totally different to everything else in pro-wrestling at the time. 

 

The 411: 

FMW is perhaps an acquired taste. I happen to love the concept. All the explosions and madness. Most of the undercard is quite bad, and an ongoing theme of FMW was sloppy undercard stuff. We’ll see a lot more. Onita, mad bastard, has to be experienced though.