- [Grunting] - [Cheering]
With death defying stunts and relentless bloodshed,
Japan's Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling burst into
life in 1989, led by revolutionary pioneer,
Atsushi Onita.
Onita and his promotion, they were pioneers.
In the late 1980s, the WWE was relatively homogenized.
WCW could get a little wild,
but FMW took it to a whole different level.
You get Onita, will bleed to death.
Every night, he bleeds to death.
By putting himself and his roster of wrestlers
in increasingly dangerous situations,
Onita filled stadiums with diehard fans,
and became a global icon of hardcore wrestling.
As much as they were known for the brutality,
it was really the imagination that made that company click.
A no rope barbed wire match.
And then they go to the exploding barb wire,
then they go to the exploding ring.
And then the electrified pool.
It just got crazier, and crazier, and crazier.
♪
You've gotta be just nuttier than a fruitcake
to get into one of those matches.
It got too hot, everybody ran to the middle.
And everybody's saying, "Get out of here,
get out of here, get out of here!"
The promotion's meteoric rise was followed by an equally
spectacular crash that left its top star paralyzed and
its new CEO dead.
Some place the blame for FMW's tragic downfall on
its founder, who sacrificed everything
for fame and fortune.
Some of my dad's fans say that he killed my father.
Did he run over some people?
I'm sure he did.
But, it was necessary to be Atsushi Onita.
Superstar.
♪
I am Atsushi Onita.
Yeah. Oh...
[Speaking Japanese]
Japan's vibrant wrestling culture was popularized by
Giant Baba's All Japan Pro Wrestling,
and Antonio Inoki's New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Both championed an authentic,
hard-hitting style.
When Texan brawlers Terry and Dory Funk came over
to perform, their over the top western personas
instantly captivated Japanese audiences.
For some reason,
the people took to me in Japan.
♪
Meaner than a rattlesnake, tougher than shoe leather.
More dangerous than a hollowed eye scorpion.
Middle aged and crazy.
Crazy like a fox.
Do you know who that is?
That is me. The best there ever was.
[Announcer] Oh, my god!
And the best there ever will be.
[Announcer] We've got a new champion!
Terry Funk. Alright, ask me some questions.
Terry Funk is one of the most universally loved
performers in Japanese history.
And he worked All Japan, he worked New Japan.
He'd be known as an all-time great.
My name is Chris Jericho and,
I worked for two tours in FMW.
Onita was a guy that started out in,
I think it was All Japan, and he was kind of a high flyer.
A young disciple of Giant Baba,
Onita rose through the ranks of All Japan's dojo system
before being sent to America to further his craft and
learn from the styles of the west.
Japanese wrestlers would be sent to the different
wrestling territories to further learn their trade.
It was almost like an apprenticeship.
My name is Mick Foley.
I'm known as the king of the death match.
[Cheering & screaming]
For a few years, I was the American Onita.
And that was a huge, huge compliment.
Well, Terry told me that Onita was sent to Amarillo.
Onita was very drawn to Terry's style.
He'd watch me in barbed wire matches.
And, he really idolized me.
That's why he came to Amarillo,
be like Terry Funk, you know, and...
what a horrible thing to want to be.
He wanted to be an idiot too.
A mighty fine tractor ride here
out on the Double Cross Ranch.
When Onita arrived in Amarillo,
he was recovering from recent injuries suffered in
the Dominican Republic.
After refusing to lose to an opponent he deemed inferior,
Onita was taught a painful lesson by the promoter.
He didn't agree with what they wanted to do with him
and they beat him up. But it wasn't one guy.
It was all of 'em. Rat Packed him.
Nuts.
♪
I spoke Japanese like he spoke English.
He spoke English like I spoke Japanese.
We both were lost. [Chuckling]
But we got along.
I was there for him, I really was.
And, I bought him a used car.
And I got him a job and sent him on the road.
The Japanese team of Mr. Onita and Masa Fuchi...
After Onita recovers from his injuries,
he and fellow protégé, Masa Fuchi,
travel to Memphis Tennessee to battle in the infamous
Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl.
Into the concession stand after tearing down a partition!
- [Fans screaming] - Slams Onita!
Totally covered there by that big fan!
Onita, pulling himself over the counter.
♪
With an improved skillset and a willingness to inject
thrilling violence into his matches,
Onita makes a return to All Japan Pro Wrestling.
On the cusp of main event stardom,
a freak accident results in a devastating injury.
[Cheering]
The injury permanently hinders Onita's athleticism,
instantly ending his dreams of becoming a high flying star.
He was limited, as an athlete.
He realized that his future in wrestling lay in the
powers of perseverance and imagination.
What do you do when you're in your,
you know, late 20s, early 30s,
and your whole career is gone?
Well, he created something that had never been done before.
After years of working odd jobs,
Onita's thirst for stardom drives him
to devise a bold stunt.
He publicly challenges real-life karate champion,
Masahi Aoyagi, to compete in a ground breaking series of
brutal matches, pitting wrestler against martial artist.
[Bell ringing]
[Cheering]
Building upon the violence Onita was
exposed to in America...
Their rivalry makes headlines,
and draws massive crowds.
[Cheering]
By the time Onita claims victory in their final bout,
his Frontier MartialArts Wrestling promotion
is officially born.
FMW had a really good thing going because
they gave you a full course meal.
You know, you got your technical wrestling,
flying wrestling, incredible women.
But the hallmark was always the blood and guts.
Ah, it was like a buffet of brutality.
The thinking that goes behind replacing ring ropes
with barbed wire is the audience comes first.
We care about them far more than the safety of
the people doing this.
And, real injuries are not a bad thing.
They're encouraged.
And they are impossible to avoid.
A lot of guys that would go to no end...
to self-annihilation
of their bodies...
to have a better match than what
the opposition did.
[Bell ringing]
Okay, the barbed wire isn't enough.
We're gonna have to rig up, like,
electrical shocks to it.
Like, this was, this was, this was insane!
In Onita's pursuit to compete with Japan's
two major promotions,
his matches feature increasingly dangerous
stunts that result in legitimate bloodshed.
I was at an FMW show when one of the female wrestlers
got hit with a fireball.
And, her outfit, it burned the fabric into her skin.
And, I'm getting ready to do my match and I just hear
these almost other worldly sounds of suffering.
Tears streaming down her face,
sobs like I have never heard before.
And it's like, we talk about a price,
that's really, really steep.
And I had to block that out of my mind and go about with
my main event match.
Onita's FMW roster includes like-minded performers
Tarzan Goto, Mr. Pogo, Masado Tanaka,
The Gladiator aka Mike Awesome,
as well as up and coming talent with
North American experience.
Hi, this is Ricky Fuji from FMW.
We had a connection with a guy called Ricky Fuji,
who had spent time in Calgary,
that was able to bring some guys over to FMW.
My first match ever at FMW was the main event,
which is hilarious when you think about a 20-year-old
Chris Jericho in the main event against a
karate expert who was just beating the shit out of me.
They would be in there kicking you as hard as
they could 'cause that's all they knew how to do.
I was like, what the hell am I doing here?
So, I was never invited. I was never invited.
It was completely luck.
I'm Sabu. I was in FMW for 3 years.
New Japan for a year,
and an independent the rest of my life.
There goes Sabu! Oh, did you see that?
- For the love of God! - Oh!
[Indistinct shouting]
My uncle was The Sheik, and...
He was a great guy.
He was a mean guy, and he was a nice guy, ha.
Onita and Tarzan Goto, they were young boys when
The Sheik and Abdullah the Butcher was in Japan
in the early 70s and 80s.
Every time they came to town,
they took care of those two guys.
So, 20 years later, Onita starts a company,
and he calls up The Sheik and says,
"We're gonna have a tag team tournament.
You can come there.
Come and bring anybody you want."
He goes, "I'll bring my nephew."
And he could've chose anybody,
but he chose me.
Oh, it sucks, it sucks.
My first barbed wire match, I got hurt.
They took me to the hospital.
I was in there all night long getting stitches.
After that, I never went to the hospital.
It took too long.
So, I started crazy gluing my cuts and then taping 'em.
I basically taped and glued up all the boys, too.
♪
A single barb can do a lot of damage in a hurry,
and it has.
There are some gaping wounds.
I mean, Sabu really paid the price,
you know, with a roadmap of scars.
Makes me look like, you know, like a...
like a preschooler.
FMW's wrestlers sacrificed their bodies on
a nightly basis, but none can connect with
the audience quite like the promotion's
founder and star, Atsushi Onita.
Onita had an ability to allow people to feel his pain.
And, see themselves in him.
Some people can't connect with
a larger than life superhero.
They can connect with somebody who looks like they do.
Who is limited, physically,
but not limited of will.
[Bang]!
[Cheering]
You know, there's man against man, man against himself,
and now you enter man against the wire,
man against flames.
Where, you're making a living,
you re putting on a show, you re doing what you love,
but you're also facing fear on a nightly basis.
And you have to tackle it.
And you have to earn their respect,
and you have to embrace it wholeheartedly.
The whole end of his match would be,
basically, crying in front of the fans.
The meaning was he had given it his all,
and he was crying...
because the fans had stood behind him.
And they played Joan Jett's version of 'Wild Thing'.
And everybody would get up out of their seats and
crowd around the ringside
as he poured water on his head and cried.
And dude, it got over so huge.
♪ WILD THING! ♪
Wee-ah, wee-ah, wee-ah!
[Bang]!
So, if he could think it, he was going to do it.
And, I think there was a reasonably good chance that
he was going to die in that ring.
♪
In Onita's pursuit to consistently top himself,
a tag team match with Tarzan Goto versus Sabu and
his 65-year-old uncle, The Sheik,
goes terribly wrong.
I don't know.
I assume Puerto Rico 'cause they had one before,
and Onita wanted to top it.
I didn't care.
I figured, they know what they're doing.
They know...
it would be safe.
Wow, that's taking things outside of your own hands
and trusting the environment someone else
has created for you.
I'm not comfortable with that,
and I've seen a lot of people get burned, literally.
It got too hot way too fast.
If it was a building, I would have jumped off it.
There was an FMW logo in the middle.
It melted in our hands.
It melted in our elbows, hands and knees.
You couldn't hear nothing, you couldn't breathe.
It was a roar.
[Indistinct shouting]
I jumped out, and immediately turned around,
threw a bucket of water.
He went out the other side. I didn't see that.
He got burned by the fire pretty bad.
My uncle carried on wrestling Onita outside of the ring.
And I was trying to throw water on my uncle because
he had his back burned up.
I threw a bucket of water on him and
the skin on his back came off.
[Shouting & bells ringing]
I wasn't angry at anybody.
I was just angry that it was bad.
You know, and the plan was bad.
I can't be angry at Onita. He gave me life.
Riding high with an expanding fan base and
sold out shows, Onita revels in the trappings
of his newfound stardom.
He may have started as a scrappy underdog,
and he became...
the king.
And was treated as such.
And he had sticky fingers.
He took all the money.
♪
Onita's fortune is not only gained from the violence
he presents in the ring, but from ties with
the nefarious underworld.
They were in control of the arenas.
♪
So, the Yakuza were, they were definitely there.
It's kind of almost like a money laundering scheme,
holding shows that the mafia will kind of sponsor and put on.
We would go out to dinner sometimes with sponsors,
and I would just check out their pinkies.
And, by and large, a lot of the sponsors were missing
their pinkies because of the line of business they were
in where, sections of the pinkies would be eliminated.
I wasn't comfortable with it,
but I accepted that that was part of
what made the scene possible.
Well, they told us to stay away from a certain section,
and I go, there's not many people in that section,
who cares?
It was because that was the mafia section and like,
they had like 10 people there with 50 chairs empty
'cause nobody was... they were scared to sit by 'em.
I started fighting over there anyways,
and they wouldn't move for us.
Usually people move.
He's a mafia boss, we don't know that.
But then, later on, we're in the dressing room
getting bang, bang, bang on the door.
They're looking for us.
I run down this hallway and I got trapped.
And a bunch of these Japanese guys
are knocking me down.
♪
And, when I was down,
I was getting boot... ed, kicked.
♪
And then all of a sudden, Mike Awesome was there.
Mike Awesome, you know, the huge, monster heel.
Guys started getting flung off.
Mike Awesome starts throwing guys off and,
saved my life. I loved him after that.
♪
In 4 short years, Onita overcame his injury
to build a promotion to rival his competitors.
To celebrate, Onita invites his mentor from America to
participate in FMW's most spectacular stunt to date.
So, they had an exploding ring death match.
And they were really smart in bringing in Terry Funk.
For him to come to FMW,
it changed the perception of this company.
"Terry's here?"
It was stadium full. About 30, 40,000.
And, they don't charge 50 cents a ticket
over there either.
There's the idiots, it's the front row people.
"We're gonna have an exploding ring match tonight."
"Oh, I want a front row ticket!"
Bullshit.
Oh, hell no. I had no idea.
[Bell ringing]
[Cheering]
I just went out to the damn ring.
I'm a glutton for a crowd being into a match, you know.
I was just out there ready to capture that crowd.
And we did.
[Screaming & cheering]
♪
[Cheering]
[Siren]
So, the siren starts going off.
Wee-ooh, wee-ooh, wee-ooh.
[Cheering]
And at the end of this time clock,
the ring would explode.
And finally, Onita gets the win,
and he leaves the ring.
And this thing is going down:
45 seconds, 30 seconds.
And Onita realizes that his hero,
almost the God of Japanese pro wrestling is going to be
exploded in this ring.
So, he goes back inside the ring and he tries to wake
Funker up, and he can't wake him up.
And now it's 10 seconds.
He can't wake him up, so what does he do?
He shields Terry Funk with his body.
- [Bang!] - [Shouting]
And it's a bunch of like, boom, boom, boom,
concussion bombs and fireworks and just,
by the time it's done, you can't see anything.
It was the greatest babyface thing I've ever seen in my life.
He covered Terry Funk to save him from
the explosion after he pinned him.
That's Onita.
What FMW did the best was create a spectacle.
You know, Funk survived thanks to Onita,
and they were kind of like carrying each other out.
Crying, once again.
And Funk was great at it, too,
crying, crying, crying.
To me, it's a five-star match because it had
the drama and hooked you into it,
to where you cared.
And, that's the real secret of what wrestling is.
That's what Onita really knew how to do.
He was a genius at it.
Well, hell no, I wasn't satisfied.
I never, never saw Onita after a match either
until I came back the next time. I think he ran and hid.
♪
FMW was at least the number 3 promotion in the country,
if not number two, depending on what was going on with
the two big ones at the time.
He legit was one of the most popular performers
in the country, and not just in wrestling.
He was doing gameshows.
He'd become such a big part of the culture.
I think Onita had bigger plans.
In just five short years after creating FMW,
Onita announces his retirement,
which comes as a shock to his fans.
He didn't want to do it anymore.
He'd had enough.
And you can fail and not have any money at all.
Or you can go out like he did with
several million dollars, I'm sure.
Onita continues to headline shows for another full year,
while the promotion grooms a young wrestler to become
his future headlining successor.
Hayabusa!
Hayabusa was the heir apparent to Onita.
He was...
ah, the word that's coming is elegant.
But he was also willing to do the extreme stuff.
Eiji Ezaki is his name, who later became Hayabusa.
We worked together quite a bit.
My second tour at Kawasaki Stadium was against Ezaki.
And at the time, the big move that
he did was Moonsault, which nobody did.
At FMW's 6th anniversary show,
Onita's retirement match features the special effects
and extreme gore that made him an icon.
But his opponent is out of his element.
[Cheering]
[Screaming & shouting]
[Cheering]
[Bell ringing]
[Cheering]
Onita leaving FMW,
that would create a huge hole that I think would be
next to impossible to fill, just because of how,
how synonymous with that company he was.
And vice versa.
It'd be hard to see Onita anywhere else
other than thinking FMW.
They're one and the same.
An unlikely successor emerges to take the reins
of FMW, the promotion's ring announcer,
Shoichi Arai.
- [Japanese announcement] - [Cheering]
"Sudden Impact, Lance Storm, Chris Jericho-ah!"
And he's kind of like, kind of a chubby guy,
but kind of wore a tuxedo that was a little bit
too small for him.
But then you hear like Arai's the
new like general manager.
- [Bang]! - Oh!
Like, really? Like, wow. Like, well, why not?
He was probably at every show.
[Cheering]
My dad was really nice person.
He was really pure.
So, I didn't know why he was trying to
get into that company. I still don't understand.
My name is Shell. And, Shoichi Arai is my dad.
Onita suddenly says that, "Okay,
I'm gonna give this company to you.
You can do whatever you want."
But he has no knowledge at all.
Excuse my language, but he gave jack shit
to the ring announcer. He didn't give nothing to him.
I'll promise you that, I'll swear to it.
Without Onita's star power,
FMW struggles to hold its audience.
After just one starring film role,
Onita realizes his appeal is
limited when he's not wrestling.
In less than a year after his retirement,
he unexpectedly returns to FMW to work
for his former ring announcer.
[Cheering]
Ah, yes, because they would air our stuff
only on specials because it was too violent.
To take FMW in a new direction,
Arai hires veteran Japanese star Hiromichi Fuyuki to
handle the company's creative direction.
He had a belt called World Entertainment Wrestling,
like WWE, but World Entertainment Wrestling.
And they stopped having death matches.
The tug of war between Onita's vision for FMW and
Fuyuki's new direction, forces Arai to arrange
a meeting with his top talent.
♪
While Hayabusa is unable to pack stadiums like
his predecessor, his athletic style was winning
new fans and realizing success for FMW.
♪
Until tragedy struck on October 22, 2001.
He did a second rope Moonsault and
his foot slipped, and he went backwards and
landed on his forehead.
Hayabusa... [Speaking Japanese]
Hayabusa? Hayabusa?
Hayabusa?!
[Bell ringing]
He didn't die.
It was worse, he was paralyzed.
I'd rather have died.
Just terrible. Terrible injury to happen to just
a great guy, a great, great performer,
and a legit kind of future legend.
All the boxes that needed to be checked,
he had it.
His career was cut short in his prime.
And I think with his career went the future of FMW.
They never really found somebody to replace Hayabusa.
Beyond being a serious emotional blow to FMW and
its fans, Hayabusa's injury also sets in motion
a financial disaster.
Without their star attraction,
Arai struggles to keep his fledgling company afloat.
I remember that my mom say,
"Don't steal house money," or something.
Oh, yes.
He owed money from the Yakuza and he couldn't pay them back.
His phone was ringing all the time.
My mom was like panicked, and she screamed.
So, I thought it's not a good thing.
My mom and dad, like, they divorced.
I think he was really suffering.
And, I didn't realize 'cause I was too young.
And then my last match there,
we didn't get paid. He said he'd send it to me.
And then he killed himself the next day.
♪
Hung himself in a school yard.
When you borrow money from the Japanese mafia,
even if you kill yourself, they're gonna get their
money from your family.
So, that wasn't the end of the story.
They were saying he was selfish for doing that,
a coward, because now his family owes that money.
You know, and they'll get it.
Arai's death triggers a life insurance payment,
but it's sadly not enough to cover his family's
newly inherited debt.
They came my home, suddenly, and they changed the key and
they changed everything,
and we couldn't get in our house anymore.
My picture, my video, my memories
was all in that house, but it's all gone.
That's why I don't have anything.
Hm... I feel a little bit that
Onita used my dad.
A lot of people say that he was too kind.
And too pure. That's why he's gone.
♪
[Japanese announcer]
Over a decade later, FMW briefly rises from the ashes
with Onita back in the ring and Hayabusa acting
as an executive producer.
But less than a year later, tragedy strikes again when
Hayabusa collapses in his home and dies
at the age of 47.
♪
He did walk again.
I mean, it's one of the most gut wrenching things you see
when he's surrounded by members of wrestling royalty
from several different promotions.
And, it's one of the most emotional moments
you will ever see when Hayabusa walks to the ring.
[Applause]
[Japanese commentary]
♪
FMW was the wild wild west of professional wrestling.
And I mean, it was in the east, geographically,
but it was this lawless, wild frontier.
If you could think it, you could do it.
The spectacle always came first.
And, it was a big part of wrestling history,
and something that's still borrowed from,
to this day.
[Fans screaming]
What I learned in FMW, of course,
I took it to ECW. ECW was formed from FMW.
Onita, basically, built a promotion around himself.
An undersized, under dog wrestler,
and made it a huge success.
♪
[Laughing]
No, hell, no. I love him.
♪