[1997-04-29-FMW] Atsushi Onita & Masato Tanaka & W*ING Kanemura vs Cactus Jack & The Gladiator & Terry Funk

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

You'd expect lots of fun with these six, and the brawling is pretty wild (Funk burns Onita with a branding iron and spits fire at Onita in a memorable visual) but it all seems weirdly lethargic. Maybe it's the crowd. A match like this really needs a ton of heat and this didn't have it. I also wouldn't say Foley was dogging it, but he was saving his best for the WWF at this point. I love Onita blocking Funk's barbed wire baseball batshot with the board. It felt like demented fencing. These guys work hard and put on a good show (especially Funk with his "You motherfucker!" taunting) but even though the finishing stretched salvaged this, it just isn't as exciting as it should be since they aren't getting the reaction they deserve.

 

The wrestling exchanges get the biggest pops in this match. Whether that means the FMW crowd was ready for a shift or not I guess we'll find out.

[FLIK]

I think this is one that gets better upon repeat viewings. I think it's a great match now but was disapointed when I first watched too.

 

Never noticed the crowd not being into it myself

[Kevin Ridge]

Funk as ECW Champion. Cactus Jack but wearing his Mankind tights. I wonder if Cactus was booked way in advance to be on this card. Funk team gets no audible reaction from crowd during introductions. Flaming branding iron! It's a strange match where the fans aren't as responsive to Funk's team but they really get behind Onita's group as the match goes on. I thought they guys did their thing and did it well as I ended up enjoying this.

[soup23]

I enjoyed this a lot. Funk as ECW champ and Mankind coming off a title match wrestling for a Japanese indy feels so random. Awesome had a few awkward spots but looked like a great power man in other stuff. This kept building and building and mixed in some sick hardcore spots effectively. This was one of the most fun matches so far in 1997.

[PeteF3]

A pretty frenetic closing stretch saved this from a slow start, but ultimately I felt like this went on too long. The saves were well-timed and dramatic, especially when Onita was involved because that's what he does best, but once Tanaka ate a top-rope power bomb through a table and that turned out not to be the finish, I started tuning out. You reach a point where nothing can conceivably put anybody away, save or not, and then it's a matter of a match coming to its arbitrarily chosen ending rather than the culmination of a long war that sees one guy give out first. That said, they *do* try to salvage a logical ending, as Funk takes out his whole team with an attempted moonsault to the floor, leaving Gladiator to be put away. I don't want to dog this too much--it was fun, and Tanaka was the man of the match and turned in a truly great performance, and it's good to see Onita back in the swing of things even if he welched harder on his retirement than Gannosuke and Hayabusa just did on their stipulation match. But this has been a disappointment of a card from FMW so far. Let's see if Shark Tsuchiya can save us.