[2000-07-13-DDT] Atsushi Onita vs Sanshiro Takagi (Barbed Wire Death)

[soup23]

It is tough to pinpoint the legend status of Takagi. He is the owner of DDT which naturally will create some goodwill amongst fans of the promotion. However, in the greater puro universe, with DDT being labeled as a comedy promotion, that kind of leaves the reputation of Takagi as a worker in somewhat muddled waters. I don't see it as entirely different as how people treat Quack as a worker and Chikara as a promotion. Quack did have the benefit of being in ROH, IWA-MS, and CZW. Here we have a match that had 0 comedy, was worked for the first 15 minutes on the mat and had a unique approach where the barbed wire wasn't necessarily used as a weapon but rather as a physical boundary that allowed neither man to escape from the other. The wrestling was really engaging and while I cam in expecting a bloodfest spectacle, I instead got a very thought provoking death match with logical mat work. The finishing stretch really changes that dynamic with Takagi taking three powerbombs from Onita right on his neck and kicking out of the first two to the delight of the DDT fans. This really felt like a local hero going up against a legend and seeing what his worth was on the overall pecking order. **** (8.0)

[Edwin]

Another match I haven't seen in ages... This is the old Shibuya Club ATOM where DDT ran for a while. It's crazy to think there was less than 200 fans in attendance for this event.

 

This is a local cult hero vs. a big name veteran. The local cult hero booked himself against the bigger name to test his abilities. The match starts out slow with some matwork and they slowly build to the barbed wire spots which are mostly seen as game changers here. Onita lands some brutal looking knees here while Sanshiro is on the ground during their matwork exchanges.

 

In the second half the intensity picks up as Takagi is introduced to the barbed wire out of nowhere. There's this cool moment when Sanshiro gets worked up and he runs himself into the wire just so he can gain some impulse to hit a facebuster on Onita. Sanshiro's comeback is short, but sweet as he hits Onita with a stunner and the crowd pops when Onita kicks out as they were really buying into Sanshiro pulling off the upset.

 

Aside from the wire, the only other prop that comes into place is a table which Onita uses excellently by hitting a piledriver through it. The finish was sick as Onita hit Sanshiro with 2 Thunder Fire Powerbombs, but couldn't put Sanshiro away and has to rely on tossing him to the wire one more time before hitting one final Thunder Fire Powerbomb on Sanshiro's neck.

 

Despite being a death match, there is no blade job or anything and the blood here in a minimum and it comes from the scars Sanshiro suffered from being run into the barbed wire.

 

Great stuff.

 

****

[Tim Evans]

Man this is one sleazy place to book a barbed wire match in. Love the atmosphere of the fans being up close to the wire around the ring. Onita coming in as the master don vs a local guy like Takagi is a good story for this. I liked that they worked the match as a regular match with barbed wire around. Takagi even forgets about it and grabs the wire. Eventually, they start using with the wire. Very little blood in this and it turns into a regular Onita match. Good stuff.

[drew wardlaw]

This is another one where Takagi works to really showcase the talent of his opponent. In this case its Onita and his main talent of course is using gimmicks and props in his storytelling to build drama in the match. They do this in a very interesting and unconventional way that kind of flips the trope of the barbed wire on its head, at least in the early portion of the match. In some ways this is a very prototypical DDT match in the sense that it mixes the absurd and the bizarre with logical and interesting match psychology.

[ohtani's jacket]

This was cool. Tokyo has a lot of live event spaces like this and it was surreal to see one of them being used for a barbed wire match. The shitty cover of Wild Thing that Onita uses reminds me of that old Swamp Thing cartoon. I don't find Onita as charismatic as others do but I have to admit that his entrance was pretty cool here and if you can pull that off in a club with 200 people as easily as you do a baseball stadium then you must have a fair amount of charisma. I like his look at this time as well. He reminds me a bit of veteran rocker, Eikichi Yazawa. I LOVED how this was worked on the mat. It probably went on for too long, and Onita is another of those Japanese workers who make strange breathing noises to keep from running out of breath, but I was frankly surprised that Onita could work the mat so well. I guess he hadn't forgotten his All Japan training after all. That was actually the catalyst for them to ditch the matwork as Onita started tossing some verbal grenades about it being a stalemate due to his All Japan background. They finished things off with a series of nearfalls that were fitting for the locale and the fans got right behind Takagi. Y'know when I'm looking off the match listings and Chad's star ratings, this is the kind of match I would scoff at and think "I can give that a miss" but it ended up being one of, I dunno, the 50 best matches in Japan in 2000. A large part of that was how unique and interesting it was but they really worked an excellent match in such a tiny crawl space and I liked it a hell of a lot.