Original subtitles

With death -defying stunts and relentless bloodshed, Japan's frontier

arts wrestling burst into life in 1989, led by revolutionary pioneer Atsushi

Onida. Onida and his promotion, they were pioneers. In the late 1980s, the

was very homogenized.

WCW could get a little wild, but FMW took it to a whole different level.

You get Onida, it will bleed to death.

Every night he believed in death.

Other wrestlers have more good moves or a nice body or something.

But I wanted something inside, like a fighting spirit.

By putting himself and his roster of wrestlers in an increasingly dangerous

situation,

Onida 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 barbed wire,

then they go to the exploding ring, and then the electrified pool.

It just got crazier and crazier and crazier.

You've got to be just nuttier than a fruitcake to get into one of those

It got too hot, and 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

left its pop 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 Onida.

Superstar.

I am Atsushi Onida.

Yeah.

There was a manga called Giant Typhoon by Papa.

When I saw it,

I thought, wow, pro -wrestling is amazing.

I thought it was wonderful to have Japanese people who can play in Madison

Square Garden.

I thought pro -wrestling was the only way to go to the world.

Japan's vibrant wrestling culture was popularized by Giant Baba's All Japan

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 hollow -eyed scorpion.

Middle -aged and crazy. Crazy like a fox.

You know who that is?

That is me.

The best there ever was.

And the best there ever will be.

Terry Funk.

All right, ask me some questions.

And 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.

Onida 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, Onida rose through the ranks

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.

But for a few years, I was the American Onida.

And that was a huge, huge compliment.

Well, Terry had told me that Onida was sent to Amarillo.

Onida was very drawn to Terry's style.

He had watched me in barbed wire matches.

He really idolized me. That's why he came to Amarillo.

Be like Terry Funk, you know.

What a horrible thing to want to be.

He wanted to be an idiot too.

The mighty

fine tractor right here

out on a double cross ranch.

When Onida arrived in Amarillo, he was recovering from recent injuries suffered

in the Dominican Republic.

After refusing to lose to an opponent he deemed inferior, Onida was taught a

painful lesson by the promoter. He didn't agree with what they wanted to do

him, and they beat him up.

But it wasn't one guy. It was all of them. Rat -packing.

What was your first impression of him when you first met him?

Nuts.

I spoke Japanese like he spoke English. He spoke English like I spoke Japanese.

We both were lost.

But we got along.

I was there for him. I really was.

I bought him a used car.

I got him a job.

Send him on the road.

The Japanese team of Mr. Onita and Masafuchi.

After Onita recovers from his injuries, he and fellow protege Masafuchi travel

to Memphis, Tennessee to battle in the infamous Tupelo concession stand brawl.

Into the concession stand after tearing down the protection.

Onida pulling itself over the counter.

With an improved skill set and a willingness to inject thrilling violence

his matches, Onida makes a return to All Japan Pro Wrestling.

On the cusp of main event stardom, a freak accident results in a devastating

injury.

The injury permanently hinders Onida'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

the powers of perseverance and imagination.

What do you do when you're in your 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, Onida's thirst for stardom drives him to devise

a bold stunt.

He publicly challenges real -life karate champion Masashi Oyagi to compete in a

groundbreaking series of brutal matches pitting wrestlers against martial

artists.

Building upon the violence Onida was exposed to in America, their rivalry

headlines and draws massive crowds.

By the time Onida claims victory in their final bout, his frontier martial

wrestling promotion is officially born.

FMW. And FMW had a really good thing going because they gave you a full

meal. You know, you got your technical wrestling, line wrestling, incredible

women. But the hallmark was always the blood and guts.

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

injuries are not a bad thing.

They're encouraged and they are impossible to avoid.

How would you describe a typical FMW hardcore match? What are the things you

in it?

annihilation of the bodies to have a better match than what

the opposition did.

Okay, the barbed wire isn't enough. We're going to have to rig up like

electrical shocks to it.

Like this was, this was, this was insane.

To compete with Japan's two major promotions, FMW matches feature

dangerous stunts that result in legitimate bloodshed. I was at an FMW

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

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

out of my mind and go about with my main event match.

Onida's FMW roster includes like -minded performers Tarzan Goto, Mr. Pogo,

Masato Tanaka, The Gladiator, a .k .a. Mike Awesome, as well as up -and -coming

talent with North American experience.

People want to see the action.

People want to see something different.

Hi, this is Ricky Fuji from FMW.

People never seen before, like, in a crowd.

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 in 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

out of me.

They would be in there kicking you as hard as they could because that's all

knew how to do.

I was like, what the hell am I doing here? So I was never invited. I was

invited. It was completely luck.

I'm Sabu.

I was in FMW for three years, New Japan for a year, and then independent the

rest of my life.

There you go, Sabu. Oh, did you see that? For the love of God.

My uncle was the sheep, and he was a great guy.

He's a mean guy and he's a nice guy.

Oneida and Tarzan go to, they were young boys when the Sheik and Abdul 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, Oneida starts a company and he calls up the Sheik and

we're going to 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 have chose anybody, but he chose me.

What's it like to work with barbed wire?

Oh, it sucks.

It sucks.

The 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

hospital. It took too long. So I started crazy gluing my cuts and then taping

them. 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.

You know, Sabu really paid the price, you know, with a roadmap of scars.

It makes me look like a preschooler.

FMW's wrestlers sacrifice their bodies on a nightly basis, but none can connect

with the audience quite like the promotion's founder and star, Atsushi

Onida 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.

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, putting on a show, you're doing what you love, but you're also

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.

Only after the big show and stadium arena, right after, he's going to the

ambulance.

In the ambulance, he think himself, OK, what the neck?

That's all I have.

Welcome to...

So if he could think that he was going to do it, I think there was a reasonably

good chance that he was going to die in that ring.

In Onida'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.

Where did the idea for this fire match come from?

I don't know.

I assumed Puerto Rico because they had one before and Onida 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

someone else has created for you. I'm not comfortable with that. And I've seen

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, and 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.

I jumped out, and immediately turned around through a bucket of water.

But he went out the other side. I didn't see that. He got burned by the fire

pretty bad.

My uncle carried on wrestling Onida outside the ring. And I was trying to

water on my uncle because he had his back burned up. I threw a bucket of

on him and the skin on his back came off.

Were you angry at all with Onida or anybody else about how dangerous that

I wasn't angry at anybody.

I was angry that it was bad.

You know, and the plan was bad.

I can't be angry at Onida. He gave me life.

Riding high with an expanding fan base and sold -out shows, Onida reveled in

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.

The thing that changed me was... The thing that changed me became a big head.

And then my house became a 4LDK.

And then I bought five cars.

So the training when I succeeded was...

Onida's fortune is not only gained from the violence he presents in the ring,

but from ties with the nefarious underworld.

So the Yakuza, the Japanese mob, how much were they a part of wrestling

promotions in Japan at the time?

They were in control of the arenas.

So the Yakuza were definitely there.

It's kind of almost like a money laundering scheme, holding shows that

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.

I wasn't comfortable with it, but I accepted that that was part of what made

scene possible.

They told us to stay away from a certain section, and I go, well, there's not

many people in that section. Who cares?

It was because that was the mafia section, and they had like 10 people

with 50 chairs empty because nobody was scared to sit by them.

I started biting over there anyway.

And they wouldn't move for us. Usually people move.

These are 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 knocked me down.

And when I was down, I was getting kicked.

And all of a sudden, Mike Austin was there.

Mike Awesome, you know, the huge monster heel.

Guys started getting blown up.

Mike Awesome would start throwing guys up and save my life. I loved him after

that.

In four short years, Onida overcame his injury to build a promotion to rival his

competitors.

To celebrate, Onida invites his mentor from America to participate in FMW's

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

It was stadium full.

About 30 ,000, 40 ,000.

And they don't charge 50 cents a ticket over there either.

There's the idiots.

There's the front row people.

We're going to have an exploding ring match tonight.

I want a front row ticket.

Bullshit.

Did they show you where the explosives were going to be and stuff?

Why, hell no.

I had no idea.

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.

I am God.

So the siren starts going off.

And at the end of this time clock, the ring would explode.

And finally, Onida gets the win and he leaves the ring.

And this thing is going down 45 seconds, 30 seconds. And Onida realizes that his

hero, almost the god of Japanese pro wrestling, is going to be exploded in

ring.

So he goes back inside the ring and he tries to wake Funker up and he can't

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.

Then 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 baby face thing I've ever seen in my life. He covered Terry

Funk to save him from the explosion after he pinned him.

That's Oneida.

What FMW did the best was create a spectacle.

You know, Funk survived thanks to Oneida, and they were kind of like

each other, 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 Oneida really

how to do.

He was a genius at it.

Do you remember being satisfied with what you were paid on that match?

Why the hell no, I wasn't satisfied.

I never saw it all needed after a match either until I came back the next time.

I think he ran and hid.

FMW was at least the number three promotion in the country, if not number

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

wrestling. He was doing game shows.

TV drama or singing shows, something like a talk show.

Almost every day, like, turn the TV on, and Onida was there.

All the time, yeah.

He'd become such a big part of the culture. I think Onida had bigger plans.

In just five short years after creating FMW...

Onida announces his retirement, which comes as a shock to his fans.

He didn't want to do it anymore.

He 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.

Onida continues to headline shows for another full year while the promotion

grooms a young wrestler.

to become his future headlining successor.

Hayabusa was the heir apparent to

Onida. He was, the word that's coming is elegant, but he was also willing

to do the extreme stuff.

E .G. Zaki is his name, who later became Hayabusa.

We worked together quite a bit. My second tour at Kawasaki Stadium,

was against izaki and at the time the big move that he did was a moonsault

nobody did

At FMW's 6th anniversary show, Onida's retirement match features the special

effects and extreme gore that made him an icon.

But his opponent is out of his element.

When you retire, you start to look back.

You reflect on yourself.

You leave the ring.

It's a

lonely thing.

Oniva leaving FMW, that would create a huge hole that I think would be next to

impossible to fill just because of how synonymous with that company he was.

And vice versa, it'd be hard to see Onida anywhere else other than thinking

They're one and the same.

An unlikely successor emerges to take the reins of FMW, the

promotion's ring announcer, Shoichi Arai.

And he's kind of like, kind of a chubby guy.

He kind of wore a tuxedo that was a little bit too small for him.

But then you hear, like, arise the new, like, general manager.

Like, really?

Like, wow. Like, well, why not? Like, he was probably at every show.

Onita retire, then after, okay, you are the president. What?

He don't know what to do.

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 say that, OK, I'm going to 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.

Before, like all the time I was there in the FMW, everywhere always packed the

arena. Many people.

New FMW started, then just...

Little people.

Without Onida's star power, FMW's popularity wanes.

After just one starring film role, Onida realizes his appeal is limited when

he's not wrestling.

Less than a year after his retirement, he unexpectedly returns to FMW to work

for his former ring announcer.

If you do it in Tokyo, everyone will applaud.

I'll be the heel.

But if you do it in the countryside, it's different.

A completely different phenomenon will occur.

I'm more famous and have a big name.

The audience will applaud me like this.

But strangely enough, it was only jealousy.

When Arai was running the company, he kind of wanted to move away from death

matches, right?

Yeah, because they wouldn't air our stuff only on specials because it was

violent. To take FMW in a new direction, Arai hires veteran Japanese star

Hiromichi Fuyuki to handle the company's creative direction.

That's why, like, something changed.

And I always, like, ask Fuyuki, ask Fuyuki.

Then Fuyuki say, do this, do this, do this.

Fuyuki wants to do some, like, entertainment style.

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 Onida's vision for FMW

and Fuyuki's new direction forces Arai to arrange a meeting with his top

Yeah,

I said to the auditor, please, leave FMW.

We got to do this, and I want to talk on the high -end stuff.

While Hayabusa struggled to draw the crowds of 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.

Before, he missed something. He always get up.

By the time they're watching that, he never get up.

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 need 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 thorough traction, Arai struggles to keep his fledgling company

afloat. I said, wait, please wait, please wait.

I'll never get paid.

I remember that my mom say, don't steal house money or something.

And what do you think that meant? Was he using the money from the family to help

pay for the business?

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 because I was too young.

And in my last match there, We didn't get paid. He said he'd send it to me,

he killed himself the next day.

Hung himself in a schoolyard.

When you borrow money from the Japanese mafia, even if you kill yourself,

they're going to get their money from your family.

So that wasn't the end of the story. They're saying he was selfish for doing

that, a coward, because now his family owns that money, 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 to 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 were all in that house, but it's all gone.

That's why I don't have anything.

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.

I'm sure it was a shock.

He was shot in the neck.

I don't care about the debt.

I understand that he was killed by a drug dealer or a drug dealer.

It's not like that.

I don't care about the debt.

I don't have to pay.

I was caught up in a mental thing.

Over a decade later, FMW briefly rises from the ashes with Onida back in the

ring and Hayabusa acting as an executive producer.

But less than a year later, tragedy strikes again when Hayabusa collapses in

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

by members of wrestling royalty from several different promotions.

And it's one of the most emotional moments you will ever see when Hayabusa

to the ring.

FMW was the wild, wild west of professional wrestling.

I mean, it was in the east geographically, but it was this lawless,

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

from to this day.

What I learned in FMW, of course, I took it to ECW.

ECW was formed from FMW.

Onida basically built a promotion around himself, an undersized

underdog wrestler, and made it a huge success.

If you could say anything to him right now, what would you say?

Is there any reason that you want to flick him off?

No, hell no.

I love him.

I think it's probably limited to one unit.