[1997-05-25-FMW] Atsushi Onita & W*ING Kanemura & Hido vs Masato Tanaka & Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Koji Nakagawa (Barbed Wire)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

I'm enjoying the Onita/Tanaka stuff, but I remember thinking this before and still think it - Onita doesn't have as much physical charisma with shorter hair. Very good match that to their credit is not at all 15 minutes of pushing guys against barbed wire. This is pretty action packed and fast-paced, actually. Tanaka is the star of this as the bloody underdog with the cool moves. Just like the previous six-man, the finishing sequence is the highlight. Onita winning pisses me off because I wanted Tanaka to beat him, but it is what it is.

[Kevin Ridge]

Pretty tame Barbed wire match overall. Just mostly about Tanaka fighting off all of Onita’s team. Good effort by Tanaka but his partners were barely visible in all of this.

[soup23]

I wasnt too crazy about this also and am still looking for that blow away death match from 1997. The action here was ok and sustainable throughout the amount of time given but it felt very much like a been here seen that situation especially with Onita winning at the end.

[PeteF3]

Onita's problem isn't the haircut, it's that he's working heel, a situation that doesn't seem to play to his strengths at all. He's all about heat, selling, and big comebacks--here he works like the Undertaker, no-selling and shrugging off pretty much everything that's thrown at him. Not sure what the story is behind the turn but it's not for the better. Tanaka is far and away the star here, putting on a compelling performance both on top and (mostly) underneath, as this comes off as a glorified Tanaka-Onita singles match with occasional contributions by Kanemura--the other 3 may as well have not bothered to show up. Onita being so dominant would be fine if this built to a huge comeback where Tanaka pays him back for everything he did, but outside of a few token moves Onita doesn't actually give him anything. Maybe he's less Undertaker and more Hollywood Hogan. Then Onita pins Tanaka anyway after kicking his ass the whole match. This was a pretty decent match, window-dressing partners aside, but pretty lousy booking. If this leads to *another* match where Tanaka actually pins Onita, then I'll be less upset. Something tells me that's a pipe dream, though.