Added: 12/31

FMW-E would run their final show of the year on December 19, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market with again no attendance being announced for the show. The main event would be a 20 Man Royal Rumble Death Match. The original plan was to use all the weapons that have been used through out all the shows, but that idea would be scrapped as they would do away with using the Jado Rocket as well as the Exploding Fluorescent Light Tubes after Onita's finger injury last month and instead do an Exploding Barbed wire, Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat, Exploding Table, Exploding Guitar which is new, and an Exploding Barbed wire Landmine outside the ring. It would come down to the final four of Atsushi Onita, Abdullah Kobayashi, Raijin Yaguchi, and Shadow WX as Mr. Pogo.

Pogo would once again blow a fire at Yaguchi's ass followed by Onita and Pogo brawling on the apron when Kobayashi would come over and drop kick them sending them both falling into the exploding landmine. Yaguchi would then turn on the exploding chair and smash it over Kobayashi's head and cover him to eliminate him. Yaguchi would then turn on the exploding barbed wire bat and shout "Hosaka!" as he would nail Pogo with it causing another explosion, but Onita would rush over and cover Pogo to eliminate him. This would lead Onita and Yaguchi as the last two with Onita grabbing Yaguchi and they both would go into the exploding barbed wire followed by Onita turning on the exploding guitar and smashing it over Yaguchi's head for Onita to pin Yaguchi at 46 minutes, 57 seconds to win the Royal Rumble. Onita afterwards would get on the mic and tell Kobayashi that he hopes he wins the All Japan Triple Crown in two weeks.

Atsushi Onita afterwards would stated he wanted to run May 5, 2022 to commemorate All Japan and 2022 being their 50th Anniversary. Onita even stated that since May 5th was "FMW Day" (a name I had never heard anyone else call it that when I started to at least by 2014) that he wants all former FMW wrestlers and fans of FMW growing up to wrestle on the show. This was specifically said to try and get IWGP Heavyweight Champion Shingo Takagi to appear for it knowing if it is going to be a big show, they are going to need some wrestlers that can help bring in fans.

Onita did not specifically say the show would take place at Kawasaki Stadium, but even the media connected the dots when writing about Onita and mentioned Kawasaki Stadium as the most likely location for a big May 5th show. Onita would use the All Japan 50th Anniversary tag line as well as the main event he wants for the show would be to take on their top wrestler Suwama in the main event in the hopes of the All Japan fan base also attending the show as well.

Onita has stated that All Japan's popularity right now is in a steep decline and that he is a bigger name draw than All Japan at this point, and that is the fault of Suwama who helps runs things for the promotion, and compared the situation to when Antonio Inoki ran New Japan but always made sure that interesting things were happening with him because he was the top star and booker.

Onita did not specifically say the show would take place at Kawasaki Stadium, but even the media connected the dots when writing about Onita and mentioned Kawasaki Stadium as the possibility of FMW-E running their show there. The first show was a Super Battle FMW event on June 8, 2017 at the Shinjuku FACE where Onita's team of himself, Kendo Kashin, and Hideki Hosaka defeated the All Japan team of Suwama, Atsushi Aoki, and Super Tiger when Onita pinned Aoki. They ran another show promoted by Atsushi Onita on July 16, 2017 at a Yokohama Yacht Club where the All Japan team of Suwama, Atsushi Aoki, and KIYOSHI defeated the FMW team of Atsushi Onita, Raijin Yaguchi, and Ricky Fuji in a Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat Death Match. Onita moved on to his many different rivalries before retiring in October of that year.

Atsushi Onita had expressed hope that Abdullah Kobayashi would defeat Jake Lee on January 2, 2022 at Korakuen Hall for the Triple Crown with Onita challenging Kobayashi and winning the Triple Crown and defending the title against Suwama on May 5th, but Jake Lee ended up suffering a fractured orbital bone and vacated the Triple Crown and Kobayashi is now no longer challenging for the title, which pretty much confirmed that Kobayashi was not going to win the title anyway.

The other two matches on the show were the Explosion Princess Tournament Finals Match between Suzu Suzuki and Akane Fujita in a Exploding Barbed wire and Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat Death Match. Both girls would end up headbutting each other with Suzuki falling down from it with Fujita throwing her into the exploding barbed wire. Fujita would then turn on the exploding barbed wire bat and swing it, but Suzuki would move out of the way and then deliver a German Suplex to Fujita followed by nailing her with the exploding barbed wire bat as Suzuki would pin Fujita at 13 minutes, 20 seconds to win the Princess Explosion Tournament. The opening match was a Mixed Tag Team match with Miss Mongol and Maku Donaruto defeating Ann Cham and The Yo-Chan in a No Touch Match based off Donrato's sexual behavior in his matches, but the no touch stipulation would no help out as Yo-Chan would end up submitting due to fear of Donaruto sexual harassing him. Click here to watch highlights of FMW-E 12/19/21.

The previous month it was announced that FMW-E would no longer be airing on YouTube due to them planning on releasing DVDs of the show for an international audience to be able to see them. No DVDs of the November 21st show were put up for sale. A website called Death Match World Wide was given the right to sell FMW-E t-shirts internationally, so I would have to imagine if FMW-E DVDs are actually released, it would be for that website. HASEGAWA's camera man that video tapes all his matches did record the entire Royal Rumble match since HASEGAWA was in it.

Also, although FMW-E is not planning to run a show at the Yokohama Fruit and Vegetables Market until March 22nd, they did officially announce their first show of the year will be on February 27th will be in Fukuoka Yanagawa although no location has been announced. Atsushi Onita has also announced that he will promote a show at the Tokyo Kitasenju White Studio on February 6th which is a small building that the A-Team promotion has mostly ran and announced 50 fans for pretty much every show they have ran there.

Atsushi Onita returned to Tokyo Nippon Budokan Hall for what I believe to be only the third time in his career. The first being a joint New Japan/All Japan joint show on August 26, 1979 where Onita was in a Battle Royal and then the second and last time being a ZERO1 show on August 30, 2001 where he took on Shinjiro Otani that ended with Onita getting DQ'd for spitting green mist in Otani's face. This was a special show as it was a New Year's Eve event called the 5th annual Momoiro Uta Gassen which had many different singers perform as it wasn't until four hours into the show that Onita went on. Onita would take on Shinya Aoki in a Exploding No Ropes Death Match. This was the only match on the show, so there was no point in actually setting up ropes for this as it was all about the explosions. Onita and Shinya Aoki have a little bit of a history as they faced off against each other in a six man for the first Blasting Koshien show on November 17, 2019 and then once again on August 27, 2020 at the Tokyo Nerima Toshimaen Amusement Park.

Onita would also keep his sweat shirt on the entire time as he would charge at Aoki but be met with kicks before Aoki would end up placing Onita in an Octoupus Hold before Aoki would let go. Aoki would then make the mistake of bringing in a table as he would be met with a barbed wire bat shot by Onita who would then piledrive Aoki through the table. Onita would then smash a chair over Aoki's head followed by placing Aoki on the chair and then nail Aoki with an exploding bat which not only would cause an explosion from the bat, but pyro at the entrance would go off at the same time as well as Onita would cover Aoki and get the win at 4 minutes, 34 seconds as Onita would proudly announce that this match was the first time that an explosion death match had taken place at Nippon Budokan Hall. Onita would then help up Aoki and have his arm wrapped around him as it would seem that their minor beef between the two from two years ago is now over.

FREEDOMS would run their ROAD TO BLOOD X'MAS show on December 2, 2021 at the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring where they would announce a crowd of 164 fans which was the maximum amount of tickets that went on sale which they were not able to do for the October Shin-Kiba show which was the first time going back to April.

Sugiura would go for a rolling elbow to Sakuda but Ueki would come over and headbutt Sugiura followed by Sakuda super powerbombing Sugiura on a guard rail. Sakuda would then place the guard rail over Sugiura and deliver a Swanton Bomb with a chair off the ladder and cover Sugiura at 16 minutes, 18 seconds to get the win.

The main event would be Jun Kasai and Rina Yamashita taking on Violento Jack and Masashi Takeda in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. Takeda and Yamashita would have a fierce battle with each other with Takeda throwing Yamashita into light tubes head first in the corner, but Yamashita would come back with a Reverse Fire Thunder on Takeda. Jack and Kasai would square off with Kasai hitting Jack with a One Winged Angel followed by a Reverse Tiger Driver on a stack of light tubes, but as Kasai would go for a headbutt, Jack would grab Kasai by the arm and place him in the Mexican Stretch and Kasai would have to tap out at 17 minutes, 52 seconds for the ERE victory.

The semi-main event would have Toru Sugiura, Tomoya Hirata, and Kenji Fukimoto take on the ERE team of Toshiyuki Sakuda, Takayuki Ueki, and Orca Uto in a Weapons Death Match. Sugiura would go for a rolling elbow to Sakuda but Ueki would come over and headbutt Sugiura instead which would be followed by Sakuda delivering a Super Powerbomb to Sugiura on a guard rail. Sakuda would then place the guard rail over Sugiura's body and deliver a Swanton Bomb with a chair off the ladder and cover Sugiura at 16 minutes, 18 seconds to get the win.

Takashi Sasaki and GENTARO would reunite as a team as they would defeat Takahiro Katori and Leo Isaka at 13 minutes, 19 seconds with GENTARO getting the win with a Backdrop at 13 minutes, 19 seconds with a Backdrop on Katori. The team of Daisuke Masaoka, Yuya Susumu, and Kamui would defeat Mammoth Sasaki, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, and Rekka with Kamui picking up the win at 11 minutes, 55 seconds with the Kamui Clutch. The opening match would see Kengo and Dragon Libre originally go to a DQ finish at 2 minutes, 47 seconds with the referee DQ'ing Kengo before re-starting the match. Kengo would then make Libre tap out at 5 minutes, 34 seconds into the rematch with a Chickenwing submission. Click here for highlights of the FREEDOMS 12/2/21 Shin-Kiba show.

FREEDOMS and 2AW held their final VERSUS show of the year between the two on December 12, 2021 at the Chiba 2AW Arena where they would announce a crowd of 82 fans for the show. The main event would Takashi Sasaki taking on 2AW's THE Andrew King Takuma in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. This match would have bottle caps placed on the mat before Sasaki would setup a miniature castle on a stack of chairs and suplex Takuma on to it. Sasaki would then follow that up with a D-Geist on a stack of light tubes to Takuma, before delivering a right leg kick breaking a light tube over Takuma's head and get the pinfall at 20 minutes, 24 seconds for the FREEDOMS win. The semi-main event would be Jun Kasai and Kamui teaming up to take on Kengo Mashimo and and Kunio Toshima with Mashimo picking up the win after Mashimo would make Kamui tap out to his No Way submission at 12 minutes, 8 seconds with Kasai and Mashimo going face to face afterwards looking to setup something in the future.

Daisuke Masaoka, Kenji Fukimoto, Yuya Susumu, and Tomoya Hirata would defeat the 2AW team of Taishi Takizawa, Tank Nagai, Kotaro Yoshida, and Ayumu Honda when Susumu would pick up the win at 16 minutes, 36 seconds on Honda with the Front Crash. The 2AW team of Ayato Yoshida Naka Shuma would defeat the FREEDOMS team of Toru Sugiura and Takahiro Katori when Yoshida would pick up the pin at 12 minutes, 39 seconds over Katori with his UNREAL finisher. Violento Jack would defeat Shiori Asahi with his Mexican Stretch at 10 minutes, 14 seconds with Jack shaking Asahi's hand afterwards. The match would see the 2AW team of Ricky Fuji, Tatsuya Hanami, and Takuro Niki defeat Mammoth Sasaki, GENTARO, and Dragon Libre when Hanami got the win at 9 minutes, 54 seconds over Libre with his Japanese Neck Real Clutch in what would be the beginning of a 3-3 tie between the two promotions for the show. Click here for highlights of the FREEDOMS vs. 2AW 12/12/21 show.

The 13th Annual (and 14th overall) Jun Kasai promoted BLOOD X'MAS show would take place on December 25th, 2021 at Korakuen Hall where they would announce a sell out of 719 fans. This beats last years number of 668 fans, but all that really means is they allowed more people in the building this year, as both shows stopped selling tickets long before the shows would take place. The next FREEDOMS show in February though will allow the return of the full amount of people to enter at Kawasaki Stadium although they will still not be allowed to shout or cheer during the show.

The main event of the show would be a rematch from December 25, 2017 at Korakuen Hall with Violento Jack once again defending the King of Freedom World Championship against Jun Kasai in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match. Jack would start by delivering a Package Piledriver off the apron sending Kasai through a stack of light tubes placed on a stack of chairs. Jack would then deliver a Kamikaze on Kasai sending him through the glass board off the turnbuckle. Jack would then hit Kasai with a lariat, but Kasai would get right up and Jack with a lariat of his own and then hit Jack with a Cross Armed Stimulation Piledriver to pick up the win over Jack at 22 minutes, 56 seconds to win the King of Freedom World Championship for a fifth time.

The plan is to have the promotions biggest drawing match which would be Jun Kasai defending the King of Freedom World Championship against Masashi Takeda for the biggest show in the promotion's history on May 3, 2022 at the Yokohama Budokan which seats 3,000 people. Kasai vs. Takeda has not been done since Christmas 2018 so they have saved it for three years at this point, as it

Kasai vs. Takeda drew the biggest Korakuen Hall crowd on August 28, 2021 when they drew 1,654 fans for the show. The problem though is that the show had been built up for a couple of months as Kasai's big 20th Anniversary show, Takeda was in the middle of being the hottest hes ever been as FREEDOMS and Big Japan champion while having awesome match after awesome match, and they ran the match again for the Christmas Death Match show four months later and drew 300 less fans which was still a good overall number, but the August show was just something special, that I don't think they can replicate nearly four years later as they are going to need to stack the undercard as well for this show which I imagine they know they will have to.

The semi-main event would have Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki defend their King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata in a Barbed wire Board and Weapons Death Match. Ueki would go up to the top with a concrete block and dive down on Hirata, but Hirata would move out of the way causing Ueki to fall face first on the concrete block. Hirata would then hit Ueki with a German Suplex followed by going up to the top and hit a Moonsault and get the pin over Ueki at 21 minutes, 43 seconds to win the King the Freedom Tag Team Championship for the new Sugiura and Hirata team.

Masashi Takeda would team up with fellow former Unchain member Gunso as well as Sendai Girls' DASH Chisako as they would take on and defeat Daisuke Masaoka, Kamui, and Rina Yamashita in a Hardcore Match when Takeda would end up putting Kamui away at 15 minutes, 20 seconds with a Reverse U Crash as they are going to need to build Takeda back up for May.

Super Crazy would make his FREEDOMS debut as he would team up with Takashi Sasaki to take on the team of Mammoth Sasaki and Takahiro Katori with Crazy picking up the win at 12 minutes, 4 seconds after hitting Katori with the Sorpresa to get the pinfall.

Tatsuhito Takaiwa, GENTARO, and Rekka would win the "get everyone on the show" match as they would defeat Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Dragon Libre with Rekka getting the win at 9 minutes, 47 seconds with the Inferno on Libre. The opening match would have the annual Tokyo Desert Man Homelessness Death Match with the Brahman Brothers as they would take on Kenji Fukimoto and former All Japan wrestler SUSHI with Fukimoto rolling up Kei after Shu would accidentally throw powder in Kei's face at 6 minutes, 19 seconds for the victory. Click here for highlights of the Jun Kasai 12/25/21 Korakuen Hall show.

Backstage at the Christmas Death Match show, Rina Yamashita went up to Jun Kasai and challenged him for the King of Freedom World Championship for the January 3, 2022 in a Death Match. Typically, the first show of the year in Shin-Kiba for FREEDOMS has always been a one night tournament, but even last year with the tournament winner actually earning a shot at the King of Freedom World Title the following month, the tournament aspect had seemed to run its course as the show last year overall was not good, and most of the time the tournament show has always ended up being a throw away show. The semi-main event will be Takashi Sasaki, Mammoth Sasaki, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, and Kenji Fukimoto taking on ERE's Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Hardcore Match. Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata will team up in a non-title match against Yuya Susumu and Kengo and Daisuke Masaoka will team up with Kamui against the Takahiro Katori and Leo Isaka. The opening match will be GENTARO and Dragon Libre teaming up against the Brahman Brothers.

The A-Team held their biggest show of the year as they returned to the Tokyo Shin-Kiba 1st Ring on December 12, 2021 and announced a crowd of 182 fans for the show. The main event was Kazuyuki Fujita coming in and defeating Tomohiko Hashimoto at 10 minutes, 23 seconds with a Facekick. Tatsuhito Takaiwa who has had a dominant year as Jr. Heavyweight Champion in both A-Team and FREEDOMS ended up dropping the WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title in the semi-main event in a money talks situation as HASEGAWA ended up getting the win at 15 minutes, 55 seconds after forcing Referee Stoppage on Takaiwa as HASEGAWA would become WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title for the second time as Takaiwa would pick up HASEGAWA and lift him over his shoulders in congratulatory fashion.

Koji Kanemoto and Kendo Kashin would defeat the A-Team of Takumi Sakurai and Bryan Ishizaka when Kanemoto would make Ishizaka tap out at 15 minutes, 29 seconds with a Boston Crab. ZERO1's Chris Vice and Yoshikazu Yokoyama would defeat Gajo and Daisaku Shimoda when Vice would end up nailing Gajo with a piledriver and Yokoyama would cover Gajo following that at 15 minutes, 37 seconds for the ZERO1 win. Masamune who looks to become a regular for the promotion going forward would defeat Jin at 8 minutes, 5 seconds with a Boston Crab. TORU, Rion Mizuki, and Ishiriki would defeat Raiden, Joji Otani, and Hashinosuke when Mizuki would get the win at 9 minutes, 51 seconds over Hashinosuke with an Atomic Bomb. Iori Sugawara and Grand Masaru would defeat MIKAMI and Kosaku Tonozaki when Sugawara would pin Tomozaki at 5 minutes, 25 seconds with a Crescent Tail. The opening match would be Kenshin and Raito Shimizu defeating Kento DiCaprio and Kenya Maeda when Kenshin would pin Maeda at 4 minutes, 58 seconds with a Northern Lights Bomb. The next show will be the A-Team returning to the Tokyo Kitasenju White Studio on January 16th with HASEGAWA defending the WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title against Bryan Ishizaka.

Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Kaicho Ram participated in the Tama Pro Tag Team Tournament for a series of combined TTT/666 shows from December 21st to December 24th with Kuroda and Ram winning the tournament by defeating TORU and Rina Yamashita when Kuroda would pin Yamashita to become the first Tama Pro Tag Team Champions. Kuroda and Ram's father Onryo teamed many times in FMW going back to Onryo's second month in the company as they teamed up on September 26, 2000 at Korakuen Hall in a loss to Mr. Gannosuke and GOEMON after Gannosuke would make Kuroda tap out to continue the Gannosuke/Kuroda feud.

Tetsuhiro Kuroda will also be challenging Guts Ishijina for the TTT Indie Unified Openweight Championship on January 8, 2022 at the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring as Kuroda looks to win his first singles title since winning the WEW Title in the Take Over the Independent Tournament Finals when he defeated Takeshi Minamino for it on September 12, 2012. Mr. Gannosuke was originally going to be the announcer for the NicoNico broadcast of the show since he has a long history and friendship with both men, and had even gotten permission from his job to fly to Tokyo from Kumamoto for the event, but because of the new Omicron virus, it was decided that he should not go into Tokyo, due to Gannosuke's job of taking care of the elderly at an assisted care facility and it being too risky for him to do it.

Hiroshi Osumi better known as Shinjuku Shark recently did a interview about his career and his time in FMW. Shark mentioned that he is no longer involved in wrestling although he has not retired, he has just faded out and is back to working as a carpenter which he did before he entered the business. Shark mentioned that he wanted to be a wrestler as a kid, but because of Rocky 3 he changed his mind and wanted to get into boxing instead. He got involved in boxing after graduating high school and had gotten out of wrestling, but then a friend of his brought him to the W*ING December 20, 1992 show in Saitama where Mitsuhiro Matsunaga took on Leatherface in a Nails Board Death Match. He was then invited by fellow W*ING wrestler Jun Kikawada who was also a boxer to attend the rematch of Matsunaga vs. Leatherface in a Spike Nails Death Match on May 5, 1993 in Odawara and became a fan once again.

After that, with W*ING nearing the end, one of the promotion that took in a lot of the W*ING undercard wrestlers originally was New Fighting Wrestling with Kikawada getting Shark a booking as the promotion did different style matches with Shark a boxer taking on a karate fighter. He made his debut against Shigekazu Tajiri of Masashi Aoyagi's Seishin Kaikan group on February 18, 1994. After New Fighting closed down, Shark got a job with SPWF.

Since there was a promoter that would promote both FMW and SPWF shows, Shark would find himself booked on a FMW show for the first time on May 29, 1999 against Hideki Hosaka. That lead to him being used again on July 31, 1999 at Korakuen Hall in a quick loss against Hisakatsu Oya. Shark talked about eventually FMW wanting him to join the roster and coming up with his name Shinjuku Shark. Shark being born in Shinjuku got that as a nick name by a column about him in Weekly Pro during his time in SPWF, but he doesn't know how FMW even found out about that nick name to give it to him as a ring name. Shark talked about knowing FMW was in financial difficulties because there was a time period where they did not get their paychecks, but no one in the group left because he felt everyone had a "lets do something to change this" attitude to have a positive attitude on what was happening.

Shark talked about after FMW closed that Mr. Gannosuke wanted him to join WMF and he was more interested in going there, but he felt a loyalty to Fuyuki especially after Fuyuki somehow knew that Gannosuke was looking to get him to join WMF and Fuyuki acted very upset by the news, which persuaded Shark to feel loyalty towards Fuyuki since he was the one that got him in FMW and as a result he continued with Fuyuki's WEW promotion instead. He states that Fuyuki vs. Kuroda Iron Man Match (he's mixing up Hayabusa vs. Fuyuki Iron Man and a Fuyuki vs. Kuroda match from 1/16/01) as his favorite match, and his two favorite wrestlers were Hayabusa and Kintaro Kanemura since his return to wrestling fandom was because of W*ING. Shark feels that even though he worked for WEW, Apache Army, and XWF looking back he has the most positive memories of his career working those two years in FMW.

I was recently able to finish the first Mitsuhiro Matsunaga book from 1998. It was quite the challenge, as it took me over 5 months as this one was much more difficult to translate than the Jun Kasai book was which took me 5 weeks to translate. It was very interesting though to find out his true feelings about Atsushi Onita and Hayabusa and just FMW in general as it is very apparent that he will always think of himself as a W*ING wrestler and just never feels he never really fit into FMW from 1993 to 1996. If you have not had the chance to read it, you can find it at http://fmwwrestling.us/Matsunaga1.html as I do feel it is a very informative book. He also wrote another book in 2009 which I do hope to get to one day, it's just hard to start on a project like that knowing how it's going to take a long time. I also started translating Hayabusa's memoirs a year ago that I would like to be able to finish in 2022 as well.

Michael Penzel passed away on December 22, 2021 at the age of 64. Penzel worked as Leatherface in W*ING from 1992 to 1993 and then became Super Leather in FMW from 1995 to 1999.

Penzel passed away due to a heart attack. His wife Tina was there when he began to suffer it, and try to save him, but the heart attack was too severe and he was pronounced dead in the hospital.

He is the first person I have written a obituary for twice as WWE.com announced his passing in October 2006 which had me write up a piece about him on the site before it came out that WWE.com had it wrong and misidentified the wrong person as passing away. I edited out the part about him passing, but you can still find my original piece in the 2006 News section.

Back in 2006, I informed Mr. Gannosuke of Super Leather's passing incorrectly. Gannosuke posted about it online, and then that day Kintaro Kanemura's Apache Army promotion ran a 10 bell memorial salute for him before it would come out that it was not Michael Penzel that passed away.

This time I told Mr. Gannosuke about his passing and he just stated "Oh My God" to me but did not make a public comment about it. I also told Kanemura who lost his phone earlier that week, so he did not see my message or anyone else's to him about it, but then saw my History of FMW Facebook group post about it several days late and asked me if I was sure, which I confirmed it was with Kanemura just stating RIP.

I also informed Mitsuhiro Matsunaga who was very shocked by the news. He asked me if I was sure it was Mike Penzel and I was not confusing him for the Rick Patterson or any other Leatherface as Matsunaga only ever faced off against Penzel and never any of the other Leatherfaces which I confirmed to him it was Penzel. Matsunaga then took to social media about trying to confirm with other people letting him know it was true. Matsunaga had been writing pieces on social media since about it.

I do not believe any Japanese wrestling news media outlet has ever posted anything about his passing like they usually do even for a foreign wrestler. WWE.com did announce it correctly. This is sadly the third former FMW/W*ING wrestler to pass away in just a little over four months with both Hideki Hosaka and Hido also passing away.

I have written up another obituary for him. This one much more detailed then the previous one I wrote in 2006 as I have learned much more Michael Penzel since then that you can find at http://fmwwrestling.us/Leather.html

Added: 12/1

Atsushi Onita was able to clear quarantine after living in a hotel for ten days and was ready to compete for FMW-E's "Wild Thing" show on November 21, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetable Market. The show did not release an attendance figure for the show. The main event would be the FMW-E team of Atsushi Onita, Raijin Yaguchi, and Ricky Fuji taking on the Big Japan team of Mr. Pogo, Abdullah Kobayashi, and Hideyoshi Kamitani in a Falls Count Anywhere Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat, Exploding Table, Exploding Chair, and Exploding Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match.

The match would have all the wrestlers brawling around ringside with Pogo near the entrance shooting a fireball catching Yaguchi's backside on fire. Ricky and Kamitani would brawl to the other side of the building with Kamitani nailing Ricky over the head with an exploding chair. The Big Japan team would bring Onita in the ring to triple team him with Yaguchi eventually getting in the ring and attack them with a barbed wire bat. Onita would then setup and piledrive Kamitani through the exploding table and then Yaguchi would grab a hold of Kamitani with Ricky taking a swing with the barbed wire bat, but Kamitani would move out of the way and Ricky would nail Yaguchi with the bat instead. Kamitani and Kobayashi would then turn on two exploding bats and hit Onita with both of them at the same time. Pogo would then grab the exploding fluorescent light tube and break it over Onita's head and cover Onita and although Onita would try to kick out the match would be rewarded to Pogo for his second tag team pin over Onita at 10 minutes, 13 seconds for the Big Japan win. Onita would then do his Onita Theater and notice a severe cut to a finger. Some of the broken glass of the exploding fluorescent light tube had ended up breaking onto Onita's finger and he would end up suffering a laceration. Onita would go to the hospital to get his finger stitched and would be told he could not wrestle for two weeks although he did not have anymore bookings for the next month anyway. Onita has stated it has been a struggle to take a bath with the stitches.

The fire department and police department were once again called to the building since the Fruit and Vegetable Market is just in a regular neighborhood in Yokohama which resulted in many people living on the street not knowing what was going on when they heard loud explosions and saw flashing flights from the building. Neighbors called the police afraid of acts of terrorism going on in the building due to the noise and lights so the police and fire department came by to check on the situation. FMW-E once again apologized for them to have come by again and check which is what they had to do back in July for the first show due to all the smoke coming out of the building from the powerful explosions they were using.

The two semi-finals of the Explosion Princess Tournament would take place as Risa Sera and Akane Fujita would go up against one another. Sera would turn on the exploding barbed wire bat but give a really weak looking swing with Fujita moving out of the way and then knocking the bat away from her and picking it up and nailing Sera with the exploding bat shot to get the win at 10 minutes, 14 seconds to advance to the finals. The other semi-finals tournament match would be Miss Mongol taking on Suzu Suzuki. Mongol would have Naoshi Sano in her corner who would stop Suzuki from having the exploding barbed wire bat turned on and then later Sano would get in the ring with the exploding bat activated as Mongol would grab a hold of Suzuki with Sano swinging the bat and Suzuki moving out of the way and Sano accidentally hitting Mongol with it as Suzuki would pin Mongol at 10 minutes, 44 seconds to also advance to the finals. The undercard matches would see Monster Leather, Kisazaru Kid, and Longhorn Ozaki defeat Naoshi Sano, Jin, and big time Onita fan The Yo-Chan when Leather would pin Jin at 6 minutes, 21 seconds with a Guillotine drop. The opening match would see Yuichi Taniguchi defeat Buatsushi Futonita at 8 minutes, 29 seconds in a comedy match "Fluorescent Light Exploding "Wind" Match where the wrestlers would pretend the bat they had explosions in with Taniguchi getting the win at 8 minutes, 29 seconds after using the pretend exploding fluorescent light tube. Click here for highlights of the FMW-E 11/21/21 show.

 FMW-E owner Hidetaka Kajiki also came out to talk to the fans. He announced that this November show and next months December will not air on YouTube like the October show which has become its only form of visibility for the promotion after they stopped using ZAIKO due to low profits. Kajiki announced they could not air the shows on YouTube because they going to be selling DVDs of these two shows instead. He also stated that the December show will be the last show at the Fruit and Vegetable Market until March. Nothing has been announced for any show in January or February but this was the same strategy that Blasting Koshien which essentially is what FMW-E became as they take the two coldest months of the year off as they can't run indoors and do the amount of explosions they want to do. The Yokohama Fruit and Vegetable Market has become the home of the promotion because it has a roof but also has access to the outside which allows the smoke from all the explosions to be able to escape it couldn't in a normal building.

FMW-E announced the lineup for the final show of the year on December 19, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market. The show will be entitled "Welcome Carnival Fun Fair". The main event will be a 20 Man Royal Rumble with the following names announced so far. Atsushi Onita, Raijin Yaguchi, Mr. Pogo, Abdullah Kobayashi, Ricky Fuji, Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, Hikaru Sato, Naoshi Sano, HASEGAWA, Yuichi Taniguchi, Takumi Sakurai, Mr. Atomic, Kosaku Tonozaki, The Yo-Chan, and Kazuki Enosawa with four more wrestlers that will also show up. This gimmick for this will be that all the gimmicks that have been used through out the year will be used in this one match which is entitled "Hell's Explosion Blast Hardcore Rumble" as this will include an Exploding Barricade outside the ring, an Exploding Barbed wire Baseball, an Exploding Table, one side of the ring with Exploding Barbed wire, and the Jado Rocket. The other two matches on the show will be the Exploding Princess Tournament Finals Match between Akane Fujita and Suzu Suzuki with two exploding bats being used in the match. The opening match will have Ann Cham and The Yo-Chan against Miss Mongol and Maku Donaruto.

Atsushi Onita has announced plans to returning to America in late March to early April 2022. He has announced that he will working in three different cities. The first one will be in Philadelphia which he did not say anything more than that but it will be at the former ECW Arena and most likely for Bully Ray's Battleground Championship promotion.

Onita then will be going to Dallas, Texas in what would most likely be for WrestleMania weekend. Onita announced he wants to team up with Terry Funk on the show that he would participate on. This caused some negative feedback as many people reached out to Onita stating to him that Funk has dementia and should not be in a wrestling match. Onita who talked to Terry on the phone while he was in Philadelphia in October stated he does not believe Terry has dementia which the phone conversation to Onita would not make it seem like he did because Terry was able to have a normal conversation with him and recall back to the days of Onita of when Onita bought a car from Funk over 40 years ago. Funk has good moments and bad moments. Age and the amount of punishment he has taken has just caught up to him. Also, I believe Funk is just at the early stages of dementia to where it is easier to remember something that happened 40 years ago than 40 minutes ago. Onita stated that even if Funk is unable to wrestle, he would like to still meet him once again as they have not seen each other since they teamed up on January 28, 2001 for All Japan's Tokyo Dome show.

 The last location that Onita announced that he would be attending before heading back to Japan would be Los Angeles, California. I have not heard anything about what promotion that would be for. None of these shows will most likely have anything to do with explosions and will most likely just be Street Fight type matches.

FREEDOMS returned to Korakuen Hall for their November 17, 2021 show where they would announce a crowd of 527 fans for the show. The main event would be a number one contender match for the King of Freedom World Championship as Jun Kasai would face off against Daisuke Masaoka in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match.

Kasai would end up hitting Masaoka with a Reverse Tiger Driver off the apron sending him into a board with light tubes stack up on chairs. Kasai would then set Masaoka up under the glass board and look to hit a Pearl Harbor Splash through the glass board when Masaoka would get up and reverse hurricanrana sending Kasai into the glass board. Masaoka would then set up a board outside the ring himself and hit a Spanish Fly off the apron before getting back in the ring and charge at Kasai but he would be met with a Package Piledriver on a stack of light tubes by Kasai. Kasai would then nail his Pearl Harbor Splash on a stack of light tubes across Masaoka and then finish Masaoka off at 22 minutes, 30 seconds to get the win with the Reverse Tiger Driver.

Kasai afterwards would state that he was going to defeat Violento Jack for the King of Freedom World Championship and then go on to defend the title on May 3, 2022 at the Yokohama Budokan against Masashi Takeda. If Kasai were to win the title from Jack, I would expect that to be the plan as Kasai and Takeda has proven to be the biggest draw and this show will be in the biggest building FREEDOMS has ever ran in, and Kasai vs. Takeda will have been held off for nearly 3 and a half years by the time May 2022 rolls around. Jun Kasai vs. Violento Jack will also mark 9 years to the day that they first faced off against each other in a tag match in Christmas 2012 and will be 4 years since they last wrestled each other at Korakuen Hall when Violento Jack defeated Jun Kasai in the main event to defend his King of Freedom World Championship that night.

Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata would face off in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Thumbtacks Death Match with Hirata grabbing a light tube and charging and breaking it over Sugiura right at the start of the match with Sugiura escaping to the outside and Hirata hitting a tope to him. Hirata would bring Sugiura back in the ring and hit him with a German Suplex and then a lariat, but he would try for a Moonsault and miss which would allow Sugiura to hit him with the Swift Driver and then finish Hirata at 15 minutes, 36 seconds after hitting him with a right elbow to a light tube breaking it over his body to get the win. Sugiura would get his wish as the two would shake hands afterwards and agree to team up and challenge for the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki at the Christmas Death Match show.

The ERE team of Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, Takayuki Ueki, and Orca Uto would defeat Takashi Sasaki, Mammoth Sasaki, and Takahiro Katori in a Hardcore Match when Uto would nail Libre to get the win at 13 minutes, 3 seconds with a Lariat. Tatsuhito Takaiwa would defend his UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Yuya Susumu and get the win at 12 minutes, 40 seconds with a Death Valley Bomb off the turnbuckle to successfully defend the title for the third time.

Kamui and Kenji Fukimoto would defeat Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei when Fukimoto would pick up the win at 7 minutes, 9 seconds after rolling Kei up with a Jack knife. The opening match would see Kengo and Rekka defeat GENTARO and Leo Isaka when Kengo would make Isaka tap out at 9 minutes, 17 seconds with the STF. Click here for highlights of the FREEDOMS 11/17/21 Korakuen Hall show.

FREEDOMS would do their annual tour of Southern Japan which use to be a summer tradition has turned into a Fall tradition. Their first show would take place on November 20, 2021 at the Fukuoka Kitakyushu Moji Red Brick Place where they would announce a crowd of 95 fans. The promotion would work with the Gamushara promotion through out this tour as they have worked together years when running these Southern Japan shows. The main event would Jun Kasai, Takashi Sasaki, and Toru Sugiura defeating Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki when Sugiura would put away Sakuda at 15 minutes, 32 seconds with a Swift Driver. The semi-main event would be Mammoth Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka defeating the team of Van Vert Negro and Van Vert Jack who I have talked about before, as when I last saw them, they were both very talented backyard style wrestlers when it came to highflying moves although they are always going to eat the pin in matches like this as Masaoka would end up pinning Jack at 12 minutes, 30 seconds after reversing a La Magistral for the win. Yuya Susumu would defeat Kenji Fukimoto at 8 minutes, 34 seconds with a Small Package. Kamui, Tomoya Hirata, and Takahiro Katori would defeat El Faruko, Yousei Esterella, and Shoki when Kamui would pin Esterella at 10 minutes, 19 seconds with a Tiger Driver. Tsuchiya Crazy and YASU would defeat GENTARO and Dragon Libre when Crazy would get the win at 7 minutes, 55 seconds with a Shining Wizard over Dragon Libre. The opening match would see Treno Guerrero and HIROYA defeat Tetsuo and Yoju when Treno would get the pin at 9 minutes, 19 seconds over Tetsuo.

The next show on the tour for FREEDOMS would take place on November 21, 2021 in Yamaguchi at the DROKEE's YANAI-RING drawing an announced 44 fans for the show. The main event would be a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match with the ERE team getting the win this team as Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki would defeat Jun Kasai, Daisuke Masaoka, and Tomoya Hirata after Ueki would get the win at 15 minutes, 16 seconds with a light tube assisted Death Valley Bomb on Hirata for the pinfall. The semi-main event would see Takashi Sasaki and Toru Sugiura defeat Mammoth Sasaki and Takahiro Katori when Sugiura would finish Katori at 15 minutes, 10 seconds with a Right Elbow. Van Vert Jack, Van Vert Negro, and Yousei Estrella would defeat Yuya Susumu, Kamui, and Dragon Libre at 13 minutes, 44 seconds when Negro would get the win over Libre with his FDH. GENTARO and Kenji Fukimoto would defeat Shoki and El Faruko when GENTARO would pick up the pin at 10 minutes, 35 seconds after hitting Faruko with a Backdrop Suplex. Gamushara Pro's Astro Z would defeat fellow Gamushara wrestler YASU at 7 minutes, 10 seconds with a Siroku. The opening match would be an Iwakuni Pro match as Sydney Shota Stevens and TAKA Fukishima would team up to defeat Hasuman and Yancha Man when Fukushima would pin Hasuman at 7 minutes, 38 seconds with his Century Lovers Rock finisher.

The last show on this tour would be FREEDOMS vs. MY WAY group competition on November 23, 2021 at the Fukuoka MYWAY Auto Studio where they would announce a crowd of 80 fans. The main event would be Jun Kasai and Takashi Sasaki defeat Van Vert Jack and Van Vert Negro when Kasai would put away Jack at 17 minutes, 28 seconds with a Reverse Tiger Driver. Violento Jack would get the win in the semi-main event at 9 minutes, 30 seconds over Yousei Estrella at 9 minutes, 30 seconds with the Amaturan. Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata would team up to defeat Shoki and El Faruko when Hirata would get the win at 9 minutes, 39 seconds with a Big Tower Press. The opening match would have Yuya Susumu and Dragon Libre defeat TOSSHI and Urakan Marino when Susumu would made TOSSHI tap out at 13 minutes, 23 seconds to the Cross Face Lock.

FREEDOMS returns to the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring on December 2, 2021 for their Road to Bloody XMas show. The main event will be Violento Jack and Masashi Takeda teaming up to take on Jun Kasai and Rina Yamashita in a Death Match. Toru Sugiura, Tomoya Hirata, and Kenji Fukimoto will go up against ERE's Toshiyuki Sakuda, Takayuki Ueki, and Orca Uto in a Death Match. Takashi Sasaki and GENTARO reunite to take on Takahiro Katori and Leo Isaka. Mammoth Sasaki, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, and Rekka will take on Daisuke Masaoka, Yuya Susumu, and Kamui as it would be interesting to see if they make Takaiwa vs. Masaoka for the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title for Christmas at Korakuen. The opening match will have Kengo take on Dragon Libre.

The A-Team would run November 28, 2021 show at the Tokyo Oji Basement Mon*Star which is the first time this year they weren't running from the Kitasenju White Studio. This show would draw an announced 100 fans as this was promoted as HASEGAWA's 8th anniversary in professional wrestling. HASEGAWA who is a long time wrestling fan that grew up with money was the key factor in bringing back the Apache Army promotion with Kintaro Kanemura returning as the top wrestler of the promotion in 2010 although HASEGAWA would be the boss of this promotion instead of Kanemura as he was the money behind the promotion. HASEGAWA slowly started to get more involved through out the years. I actually got to meet and talk with him several times during my trips to Japan and he was always nice to me. HASEGAWA would make his debut in November 2013 but by that point the Apache Army promotion was at a point where they could no longer run monthly and would only run seldomly mostly in Osaka. This would continue until Kanemura's retirement in December 2016. HASEGAWA not wanting to lose as much money as he did the first couple of years of the Apache Army would work with Tomohiko Hashimoto on finding more sponsors to be able to start up a smaller promotion called "A-Team" in 2017.

HASEGAWA has improved very much over the years, but there are still few outside wrestlers willing to put him over due to his reputation of someone that was able to get in at a very late age due to money. HASEGAWA was able to find one of them in Chikara for the main event of this show as HASEGAWA would end up making Chikara tap out at 16 minutes, 5 seconds with a Cross Armbreaker. The semi-main event would be Tomohiko Hashimoto defeating Jin at 8 minutes, 40 seconds with his XCT. In a Single Elimination Match the team of Gajo, Raiden, and Gran Masaru would defeat Takumi Sakurai, Bryan Ishizaka, and Hashinosuke with Raiden being the sold survivor for his team after getting the last elimination at 12 minutes, 53 seconds with a Tiger Driver on Bryan Ishizaka. TORU would defeat the newest member of the promotion Kosaku Tonozaki at 10 minutes, 2 seconds with a Border City Stretch. MIKAMI would put away Joji Otani at 13 minutes, 42 seconds with a Contrail Knee Drop. Super Tiger and Tatsuhito Takaiwa would defeat Daisaku Shimoda and Iori Sugawara when Tiger would put away Sugawara at 11 minutes, 14 seconds with a Gazan. The opening match would have Rion Mizuki and Monster Leather defeat Raito Shimizu and Kenta Maeda at 8 minutes, 17 seconds when Mizuki would put away Maeda with a Middle Kick.

The A-Team's biggest show of the year will take place on December 12, 2021 as they returned to the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring for the first time in two years. The main event will be Tomohiko Hashimoto going up against Kazuyuki Fujita. The WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title will be on the line in the semi-main event as it will be interesting to see if Tatsuhito Takaiwa will be willing to lose to HASEGAWA and drop the WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title as the booking would make sense here for HASEGAWA to end Takaiwa's reign at their biggest show. Kazuyuki Fujita's agent Kendo Kashin will also appear as he teams up with Koji Kanemoto to take on Takumi Sakurai and Bryan Ishizaka. Gajo and Daisaku Shimoda will go up against ZERO1's Chris Vice and Yoshikazu Yokoyama. Masamune will appear to go up against Jin. TORU, Masahiro Sase, and Rion Mizuki will take on Raiden, Joji Otani, and Hashinosuke. The opening match will have MIKAMI and Kosaku Tonozaki go up against Iori Sugawara and Gran Masaru.

Last year during the beginning of the pandemic and indie wrestling in Japan pretty much being shut down for a couple of months allowed me to write some history pieces on FMW which I really enjoyed. One of them was about the FMW video library and who owns what. I have been able to uncover some new information that I wanted to write about. About 10 years ago I was in Japan and was able to purchase an FMW show from February 21, 1999 that included a really poor Hayabusa vs. Mr. Gannosuke singles match that never aired on video for a website called Players TV. This was before I would have had any idea on how to save the footage and Players TV has been long closed down to ever try and save the footage. A year later while sitting with Hayabusa I asked him who distributed a video series called "F" in 2004 that was based on an unknown secret man having access to the FMW video library which contained the 1998-2002 PPV footage and transferring the footage to DVDs and selling them. He told me it was WMF President Yamada so I was under the impression up until last year that Yamada owned all the PPV footage, which he does own a good deal of it, just not all of it, as I have learned that nothing is cut and dry when it comes to the FMW video library.

Working with Darkside of the Ring the past year was able to get me access in communication with a lot of people in regards to the FMW video library and one of those people was the former WMF President Tatsuya Yamada. Through many conversations with him, I was able to find out he owns some FMW footage, but he doesn't even really know what he owns. A lot of the footage he obtained in 2002 after the FMW bankruptcy hearings for financially helping FMW during its last couple of years. The footage is also all unlabeled and he does not seem to recall where all the different locations he has put all of it over the years. He has been kind enough to go through what he was able to find for me, to let me know what unaired footage does exist, and what he has found is mostly June-July 1996 house shows and the three 2000 Differ Ariake shows from July to September. He was also able to find two shows from China that FMW held in February 1996 that I did not even know about as well as the entire E3 weekend where FMW was in Los Angeles back in May 2000.

That is all the footage he has been able to find other than some short backstage stuff, although he knows has more somewhere else, just doesn't know where. He also can not find any of the PPV footage from 1998-2002 which he used to make the "F" DVDs, but he did tell me that he did not own all the Hayabusa era (95-02) footage and that the footage that Players TV which released shows online from 1998-1999 were not by him, but most likely someone else that also helped FMW financially at the end and received some of the footage for it. So most likely, the Hayabusa era footage is broken up into many pieces. Sadly, Hayabusa probably would be the only one to really have answers and more information as Players TV paid him to promote the footage being available online ten years ago.

The other information I was able to obtain while working on the series is that Sony who absorbed BMG Victor which released the Onita era commercial videos (91-95) straight out said they do not own any FMW footage. Universal Music Japan which absorbed Toshiba EMI which released the Hayabusa era commercial videos said they simply do not know anything about owning the FMW library and said they would look into it, but wrote back to me saying they just could not find anything that shows that they do own it. I really do still believe both own the footage, but are just such huge companies that some independent wrestling footage from the 90s is so low on them caring to do the deep research to see if they really do own it or not, and most likely it doesn't really mean much anyway as I think they only owned what they aired and nothing unedited anyway.

That leads to the final part of this. The first year of FMW footage (January 7, 1990 - February 27, 1991) was filmed by Mickey Ibaragi's video company. W*ING was created based on this company after Onita felt that Ibaragi was stealing the video profits resulting in Ibaragi to leave and form the rival company. Ibaragi has stated if it wasn't for him and his video company that the first year of FMW would have been undocumented and not nearly as popular if it wasn't for him getting those shows filmed, which he has a point, but also is most likely an admission of guilt. I have always been told that Mickey Ibaragi owns that first year of FMW footage and many other people have said it as well including Ibaragi. Dark Side of the Ring got in touch with Ibaragi as they wanted to pay him to use the footage he owned. Ibaragi when receiving the contract to get paid then stopped responding to them.

This resulted in me getting in touch with a long time Japanese friend of mine who has many FMW contacts to try and get Ibaragi to sign the contract and that made things even more complicated. My friend who also has contact with former FMW Vice President Hideki Takahashi states that the reason Ibaragi did not sign the contract was because he sold the footage to the Quest company when they released the footage on DVD in 2010 along with many different W*ING DVDs. I can see that, but like I said Quest also released many W*ING DVDs with Ibaragi and unless Ibaragi also sold all his W*ING footage to Quest as well, which he for sure still acts like he owns that W*ING footage with how much he shows clips of it on his YouTube channel, and I can't see why they would just buy one year of FMW footage and not W*ING.

Then my friend stated that Hideki Takahashi who also started up Super Battle FMW and ran it from 2015 to 2018 actually owns FMW and as a result co-owns that video footage with Quest and Sony. This also resulted in Hideki Takahashi wanting to be paid by Dark Side of the Ring for the FMW footage to air since he claimed they were using the footage he owns on television. I reached out to an FMW wrestler who would be one of the few that would have better insight than me even and asked him if Takahashi actually owned FMW and he could not say for certain that he did or didn't and stated if he was Dark Side of the Ring, he would want proof that he owned it before paying him for the footage. Hayabusa once told told me that "no one owns FMW" as it was so many millions in dollars in debt, there was no reason to buy it for millions when you got nothing for it, other than the name Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling as you weren't even getting the video library with the purchase.

The only thing I can think of is if Takahashi actually does own FMW then he would have purchased Onita's FMW that stopped running in 1995 before Arai started a new FMW company to not have to take in Onita's debt that was on the books due to such high paid salaries. The debt that Onita's FMW was in when it closed was nowhere near what Arai's FMW got to. That was also fit with the claim they co-own the video library with Quest and Sony which released Onita era footage, but it doesn't fit with Sony straight out saying they do not own the footage unless it's just different representatives having different knowledge of the situation. I also asked Takahashi's right hand man (Takahashi doesn't have e-mail) questions about the video library including if Takahashi was willing to answer any of my questions about what specific FMW shows that he owns that did not ever get released on video much like Yamada did for me, and all I got told was because the footage is co-owned, he can't just go through the footage and see what's there. Like I mentioned earlier, a year of research has lead me to just learn that the video library situation is even more complicated and nothing is cut and dry when it comes to FMW which had two separate companies close down in debt and the video library footage be completely broken up into so many pieces and only one person when asked is willing to let it be known what he owns and that's after he just let unlabeled footage sit in a cabinet for nearly two decades.

Added: 11/8

Atsushi Onita's fourth trip to America in recent years from October 27, 2021 to November 4, 2021 was a very eventful trip like only you could expect for it to be with Atsushi Onita. It started the day before he even arrived when the three explosion engineer technicians, that Onita wanted to bring in to get every thing set up for Onita's first real explosion death match in America were not allowed to make it through customs due to what kind of explosives they were trying to bring over. I don't know exactly which were going to be brought over that didn't make it, but like I mentioned last update that Onita had hinted towards trying to bring the Jado Rocket over.

This left Onita who had own travel issues with rental cars and hotels the first night having to scramble with his technicians on what they were going to do to make up for the fact that they were in America with no explosives for an explosion death match later that week. They ended up going to home depot to look for new weapon ideas to use with his engineers and him thinking on the fly of new things they could do. The electricians still were going to be able to do the explosion landmines which at the bare minimum was the one thing that had to be done. They decided to throw in a one minute fireworks show when the landmine explosion would take place at the off chance of the explosion was going to be a dud and felt that the fireworks would be able to save it, if it were in fact one. I attended the show live and stayed at a hotel 7 miles away from the stadium and could hear them testing the fireworks the night before. They also decided to create a new explosion weapon since independent wrestling likes to use light tubes so much, the technicians decided to create an exploding fluorescent light tube. To make this a surprise though, they would use basic light tubes as well in the match. Atsushi Onita has gone on record as hating to do light tubes because of the mercury involved in them. The only time he had been hit by one was from Jun Kasai following a tag match they were in at a FREEDOMS show on May 30, 2013 to continue their feud which was based around Onita hating light tubes which so many of Kasai matches were based around.

The co-promoted FMW-E and H2O show would take place at the Trenton Thunder Ball Park on October 31, 2021 with them announcing a crowd of 1000 fans for the show. This obviously is a worked number as I was told about "300 to 400" people were there as I honestly would have guessed around 400 were there, but it was hard to actually accurately say with how spread out the seating was, so I would just put in the middle of 300 to 400 number and say around 350 people were there for a building that fit over 6,000 people. Their first match did around 1,000 people for the CZW Once in a Lifetime show on August 5, 2017 with about it seeming like half the audience was there for Onita, and the other half were just the regular CZW fans that barely even knew who Onita was. This show there were far fewer actual traveling fans for the event although everyone knew who Onita was for this show as this seemed to be a more well knowledge group of fans compared to the CZW show in 2017.

The main event was the second singles match between Atsushi Onita and Matt Tremont this time in a Barbed wire Exploding Landmine Exploding Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. It was around 52 degrees that night so sitting through a three hour undercard so the crowd was very much ready for the main event as this was the match everyone came to see.

October 31st was actually a symbolic day for both as Tremont had retired one year ago on that day, and Onita had also retired for the last time on that day four years earlier. This was Tremont's come back to the ring one year from his retirement match. Atsushi Onita would come out wearing his Great Nita mask that he wore on May 3, 2003 in a match against Hiroshi Hase for World Japan. Anthony Mossow who is a super Onita fan had met up with Onita the night before and showed him the mask that Onita wore many years ago with Onita asking if he could use the mask for his entrance the next night.

The crowd was very into the match from the start as Onita ended up attacking Tremont right away. They took turns doing mist spots before Onita would take his one light tube spot to the head followed by Tremont taking multiple. Barbed wire was wrapped around the ropes but was never used in the match. They teased knocking each other off into the landmine outside the ring before Onita finally would do it with Tremont going into it with the impressive explosion although coming away as unharmed as you could be from such a huge fireball going off right next to him. Onita would then pull out the exploding light tube unbeknown to the crowd with the explosion going off over Tremont's head as the crowd was really into the match at this point. Onita would then begin to set a barbed wire board on fire which would stall for a moment before Onita would just end up throwing Tremont into the fire with the fire catching onto Tremont's back in a scary spot. Onita would pin Tremont at that point at 13 minutes, 32 seconds to get the win. Tremont who had impressed Onita for what he had just gone through physically would get up and cut a promo with Onita, but as soon as the adrenaline would wear off the pain of the severe burns he he had suffered from the fire would become so painful that he would need to go to a hospital where he would be checked into a burn ward.

The big controversy came following the event after many people on the internet discovered that Rob Feinstein had been at the event for Atsushi Onita's merchandise table. Feinstein who was the founder of the Ring of Honor promotion in 2002 was force to sell his ownership in 2004 after being caught in a online sting operation from the Perverted Justice website with it appearing from chat logs that Feinstein was trying to meet up with a 14 year old for sex. Feinstein's rebuttal to this is that the chat log was fake and he was going to see a man that said he was in college, and it was a setup by those trying to get his ownership of ROH and get him out of the promotion which worked. This was a very big story at the time, but Feinstein has managed to remain in the wrestling business through out the years due to his shoot interview series and being a vendor for autograph signings at wrestling conventions.

Many people on the internet were very upset at H2O and Matt Tremont following this information coming out. H2O wrestlers took to social media to state that they did not know Feinstein would be appearing at the building, and had no interaction with him and there was nothing they could do once he was there as he was there with Onita and they were not going to kick Onita off the show with the event was based around him.

I can only tell you from my personal experiences from attending the 2017 CZW show and this 2021 H2O show. I did not attend the 2018 CZW ECW Arena show nor the 2019 WrestleCon convention that Onita appeared for both, but I was under the impression that Feinstein had worked with Onita every time that he had came to America so while I truly believe most of the locker room did not know that Feinstein would be there, it was something that if you paid any attention to prior, you would know it was going to take place.

Feinstein was with Onita at the CZW show in 2017 as he had been the go to guy from Zandig to get the exploding bat that was used on the show that Onita eventually would end up calling 'cheap'. Onita had worked with Highspots before the show to take pictures with fans, but after that was finished, everything else with Onita was ran through Feinstein including after the show, where Feinstein offered free pictures with Onita if you bought his t-shirts that he had for sale before the show, trying to get rid of all the merchandise that they brought over. Apparently they did something similar on this event, but I did not stay around after this show ended. I would have honestly been surprised going into the show if Feinstein had not been there, as it was obvious that Onita had a business relationship with Feinstein this weekend after he posted a clip of him with Onita talking to Terry Funk on the phone for their first interaction in possibly 20 years.

That raises the issue with bringing in Atsushi Onita and if the H2O company felt like it was worth it. One source told me that without Feinstein there would be no Onita. I was told Onita was paid 10,000 dollars by Feinstein with Onita agreeing to do a bunch of signings for him as well as a shoot interview with him with the agreement that Onita would not charge H2O a booking fee to wrestle on the show. I was also told that Feinstein paid for Onita's airline ticket as well, which I could see, but if true, that would have also meant Onita's wife Miyako who flew with him would have also had her ticket purchased by him most likely. Onita also had three technicians come with them on the trip, but they took a separate flight and I can not see Feinstein purchasing their tickets at all.

Again, that is what I was told personally from a source, but that does not mean it is correct as both H2O and Onita's camp state differently. A member of H2O states that Onita and Tremont made their own deals for the show, and Feinstein was simply there with Onita because he paid Onita so much to do the shoot interview and signings that he essentially bought himself in to become Onita's guest and that Onita wasn't going to do the show without him there. Onita's camp says something similar except that last part stating that Onita and Feinstein did business before the show and Feinstein was invited as Onita's guest to help him with the merchandise pricing and then bought the left over merchandise so that Onita would not have to bring it back and if Feinstein was simply just told to leave by H2O due to people having issues with him, then Onita's side would have asked him to leave and he would have, but no one ever did.

So all this leads to the question of was Onita worth it, and only Matt Tremont can answer that. Tremont grew up idolizing Onita through FMW tapes. It was his dream to have a match with Onita, and through years of reaching out to Onita on social media to have a program with him, when it finally worked for the Once in a Lifetime show in 2017, it ended up leaving a bad taste in a lot of fans mouths due to the politics that lead to the match being turned into a six man which is still talked about by American fans as a negative betrayal which Tremont knew, although he was just happy to be in the ring with Onita finally that night. That match did lead Tremont and Onita interacting three more times afterwards in person before this show which ultimately lead to Onita having a real fondness for Tremont to where he has a picture of them out together in his own home.

This match was to be the closest thing to an FMW Kawasaki Stadium Onita explosion match from the 90s that you could get for America and another childhood dream accomplished for Tremont. I know IWTV helped a lot with the finances as well, so I really don't know if this show did that much financial harm to the small H2O promotion even though just looking at the number of empty seats, you would just assume the show was a disaster financially. I can not see it being anything of a big financial success although like Highspots in 2017, H2O got the profits of Onita signatures and pictures from fans prior to the show as I would consider the line for that long, but at the end of the day, there just wasn't enough total people in the building to where I could believe this was an actual financial success unless somehow a deal was struck with the building and IWTV to where this show would just be covered and every ticket sold was just a bonus. I don't believe that would be the case though.

So to Tremont it comes down to, was having your childhood dream match worth having to sacrifice your body and go to the hospital to make the fans go home happy that night, you had to eat the negative publicity on the internet due to Feinstein being there, and many of your own roster members that you work with every show were left upset as they state they did not know they were going to be working on the a show that Feinstein would be attending. Again, back in August 2017 at the CZW show, Feinstein was there, and there was over twice as many fans at that show, and I remember being surprised at the time there was literally no negative reaction at all about him being around, but obviously with the Speaking Out movement in 2020 taking place in independent wrestling, issues that were glossed over then are now magnified as many are looking to clean up a business that has been dirty for a long time.

Following the show there now seems to be issues with Tremont and Onita as Onita's camp has been very vocal about feeling like Tremont has screwed over Onita financially of over $10,000. Tony Meyers who spent a good amount of time with Onita through out the week while he was in America stated that IWTV gave all the money for the show to Tremont when Onita was suppose to get a good amount of the percentage of the finances from the show as well, but Onita has seen nothing with the feeling that Tremont took the money to pay for his hospital stay as well as help pay for the H2O Dojo that has been behind on rent. This situation is going to be on going, but it looks like the official end of the Onita/Tremont working relationship unless something changes.

It looks like Atsushi Onita has a goal of returning in April 2022 and as he would work for the Battleground promotion at the ECW Arena. Onita has also expressed interest in working Texas for WrestleMania weekend to meet with Terry Funk which would be the first weekend of April. The FMW-E account also mentioned that Onita is interested in working Chicago one day.

One of the highlights for Onita on the trip though was with Tony Meyers help getting to meet Mr. Pogo's daughter Kiyomi who currently lives in New Jersey. It was the first time that Onita had met his daughter as she had mostly been separated from Pogo most of her life due to issues between Pogo and his ex-wife and only really started to get to interact with him through Skype the last couple of years of his life before he passed in 2017.

Onita also had issues being able to fly to Japan back when he was scheduled as he went to CVS for a COVID test, but they did not get the negative results back in time when they were expecting, and as a result had to stay in America one more day. Onita was eventually able to fly back the next day and is currently in a hotel for his two week isolation with his first match back for the FMW-E November 21st show.

It was announced that main event of the FMW-E show on November 21, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market would be the FMW-E team of Atsushi Onita, Raijin Yaguchi, and Ricky Fuji teaming up to take on the Big Japan team of former Big Japan wrestler Shadow WX going by the Mr. Pogo name, Abdullah Kobayashi, and Hideyoshi Kamitani in a Exploding Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match as it is a mix of FMW with the explosions and Big Japan with the light tube aspect. This will also be Falls Count Anywhere and there will be an Exploding Chair and Exploding Table so Kamitani better be prepared to go through that exploding table. No TV has been announced, but I would expect it to be on YouTube like the last show with that being their new way to watch it unless they end up saying something else.

FREEDOMS ran their annual "Heel don't think" show on October 28, 2021 at the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring drawing an announced crowd of 131 fans for the show. This was the first show in awhile that they did no sell out due to limited tickets available with FREEDOMS stating it was a well attended show considering they had just ran the building a little more than two weeks earlier. The show opened with a 10 bell salute to Hido with Jun Kasai, Takashi Sasaki, Mammoth Sasaki, and GENTARO all who had known Hido for around 20 years or longer in the ring to give tribute to their friend.

The main event would be Toru Sugiura and Daisuke Masaoka taking on Jun Kasai and Tomoya Hirata in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. Masaoka would go up to the top turnbuckle but Kasai would go up as well and piledrive him off the turnbuckle. Kasai would then grab a stack of light tubes with Masaoka blocking them and then headbutting them breaking them across Kasai's head but it would not be long after that Kasai would grab a stack of skewers and shove them in Masaoka's head and then clothesline him. They would tag out and Sugiura and Hirata would face off with Sugiura delivering a German Suplex to Hirata and then a running elbow followed by placing a light tube over Hirata and breaking that light tube across him and cover him and get the win at 18 minutes, 15 seconds to setup their singles match at Korakuen Hall on November 17th. Click here for highlights of the FREEDOMS 10/28/21 show.

Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, and Orca Uto would defeat Takashi Sasaki, Mammoth Sasaki, and Dragon Libre when Jack would make Libre tap out at 15 minutes, 41 seconds to a Mexican Stretch. Tatsuhito Takaiwa and Leo Isaka would defeat Yuya Susumu and Takahiro Katori when Isaka would pick up the win at 11 minutes, 10 seconds over Katori with Takaiwa and Susumu agreeing to a UWA Jr. Title match at Korakuen Hall. Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki would defeat GENTARO and Rekka at 11 minutes, 59 seconds when Ueki would finish Rekka off with a Death Valley Bomb. The opening match would see Kamui, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita defeat Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Kengo when Fukimoto would get the pin at 11 minutes, 22 seconds with a Schoolboy on Kei.

FREEDOMS would run two shows on October 31, 2021 at the Hiroshima Industrial East Hall with the first show being a "West Japan vs. East Japan" set matches with the FREEDOMS wrestlers besides Yuya Susumu representing East Japan as this show would have an announced crowd for 125 fans for it. The main event would be Yuya Susumu and Kenshin Chikano of West Japan would defeat Toru Sugiura and Rekka when Chinako would get the win at 12 minutes, 33 seconds after knocking Rekka out with a Buzzsaw Kick. The semi-main event would see the Unchain team representing East Japan as Jun Kasai, Kenji Fukimoto, and Kamui would defeat West Japan's Takumi Tsukamoto, Yoju, and Tessho when Kasai would roll up Tessho at 10 minutes, 32 seconds with a Samson Clutch. The ERE team would also represent East Japan as Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki would defeat East Japan's Ven Vert Jack, Yousei Esterella, Seiki, and El Faruko when Jack would finish off Faruko at 10 minutes, 50 seconds with the Violento Breaker. Daisuke Masaoka and Tomoya Hirata would defeat Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei at 7 minutes, 8 seconds when Masaoka would roll up Kei with a cradle. The opening match would see West Japan's Rey Paloma and Takeshi Okada defeat Dragon Libre and Takahiro Katori when Paloma would pick up the win at 7 minutes, 54 seconds aftrer using the Backslide to get the win over Libre.

The next show later that night in the same building in Hiroshima would announce a crowd of 364 fans for the Jun Kasai Hiroshima Death Match Carnival show. The opening match would be Violento Jack and Masashi Takeda defeating Jun Kasai and Daisuke Masaoka in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match when Jack would get the win at 18 minutes, 12 seconds over Masaoka. Toru Sugiura, Yuya Susumu, and Tomoya Hirata would defeat Mammoth Sasaki, Tatsuhito Takaiawa, and Takahiro Katori when Hirata would pick up the win at 14 minutes, 45 seconds after hitting Katori with a German Suplex. GENTARO, Kamui, and Takeshi Okada would defeat Takumi Tsukamoto, Yoju, and Devil Magician when Okada would make Yoju tap out at 13 minutes, 34 seconds with an Ankle Hold in a Junkyard Death Match. Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki would defeat Takashi Sasaki and Kenji Fukimoto at 11 minutes, 34 seconds in a Hardcore Match after Sakuda would hid a Diving Senton on a Ladder and Chair to score the win over Fukimoto. Ven Vert Jack would defeat Yousei Esterella at 8 minutes, 41 seconds with a Drago Bomb. The opening match would have Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Rey Paloma defeat Kenshin Chikano, Dragon Libre, and Rekka at 7 minutes, 45 seconds when Paloma would roll Libre up with a Backslide for the win.

FREEDOMS would run a house show on November 3, 2021 at the Aichi Kariya City Industrial Promotion Center Aioi Hall where they would draw an announced crowd of 307 fans for the show. The main event would be Jun Kasai, Toru Sugiura, Daisuke Masaoka, and Tomoya Hirata defeating Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, Toshiuyki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki when Sugiura would pick up the win at 17 minutes, 18 seconds in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Tornado Death Match after delivering an elbow breaking a light tube across Ueki's body for the pinfall victory. The semi-main event would see old tag partners reunite as Mammoth Sasaki and Kamui would defeat Takashi Sasaki and Rina Yamashita when Kamui would roll Yamashita up at 13 minutes, 30 seconds with a Kamui Clutch. Kenji Fukimoto would defeat Yusaku Ito at 11 minutes, 12 seconds with a Package Piledriver on a barbed wire board in a Weapons Death Match. Tatsuhito Takaiwa and GENTARO would reform their tag team on this show as well as they would defeat Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei at 11 minutes, 23 seconds when Takaiwa would put away Kei with a Death Valley Bomb. Aichi based wrestler Kengo Takai would appear as he would defeat Dragon Libre at 8 minutes, 36 seconds with the Hofbuster. The opening match would be Bakuyen Mask who is Toru Sugiura under the mask teaming taking the spot of Yuya Susumu who was out due to tonsilitis as he would team up with Rekka and Takahiro Katori to defeat the team of Takaya Shibayama, Michio Kageyama, and Konaka Pale One when Bakuyen would get the pinfall at 8 minutes, 45 seconds after nailing Konaka with a Shonan Wind to get the pinfall victory.

FREEDOMS announced the lineup for their November 17th Korakuen Hall show. The main event will be Jun Kasai and Daisuke Masaoka facing off against one another in a Death Match with the winner getting a shot Violento Jack's title on Christmas. The semi-main event will be Toru Sugiura taking on Tomoya Hirata in a Death Match in what will most likely see Sugiura and Hirata become a tag team after the match. Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, Takayuki Ueki, and Orca Uto will take on the FREEDOMS team of Takashi Sasaki, Mammoth Sasaki, Takahiro Katori, and Dragon Libre in a Hardcore Match. Tatsuhito Takaiwa will defend the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Yuya Susumu in a match they have been building up for the last month. Kamui and Kenji Fukimoto team up to take on Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei and the opening match will see GENTARO and Leo Isaka teaming up against Kengo and Rekka.

Megumi Kudo appeared for the first time in public following the passing of her husband Hido as she attended the ZERO1 October 30, 2021 show at the Tokyo Tower Special Ring. Kudo and Shinjiro Otani came to the ring as a ten bell salute for Hido took place with Kudo holding a framed picture of Hido. An emotional Kudo got on the mic and stated that Hido's last match took place in ZERO1 so she felt that this promotion was the best for it to officially be considered his retirement ceremony. Kudo thanked the fans for their support as well as FMW-E and Big Japan who also held a 10 bell memorial service for him. Click here to watch Megumi Kudo speaking to the crowd about Hido's passing from 10/30/21.

Later this month marks the 23rd anniversary of this website. I think it might be the longest running fan website for professional wrestling that is regularly updated as far as I know at least. My FMW fandom started one year prior when I got a bunch of FMW compilations along with other promotions in November 1997. The first match I saw was Atsushi Onita vs. Mr. Pogo in a Exploding Ring Death Match from August 22, 1993. Before there was gifs or video clips on the internet all you had to do was just go off the description of what other people were saying unless you bought this stuff for your stuff. There was a bunch of other matches I watched over the next week on that compilation. I saw Hayabusa for the first time wrestle Sabu, I saw W*ING and their crappy fire death match with Mr. Pogo and Mitsuhiro Matsunaga, I saw the IWA Japan Bath House Death Match, and I saw the Exploding Pool Death Match.

All of this had me interested for more so I kept purchasing videos. I was already a big fan, but it wasn't until I saw the ending of Megumi Kudo vs. Shark Tsuchiya from April 29, 1997 and the emotion and passion of what she had gone through after her match before she went to the hospital made me love FMW forever after that. That passion had me posting on AOL message boards all the time about it to where I became "the FMW guy". After a couple of months of just talking about it with others, I decided to begin collecting as much information as I could for those that I was talking to so I started the website on AOL and had the most recent results, a Hayabusa and Team No Respect biography, the latest news, and my tape collection. I was only given limited space back then, so sadly I had to delete my news updates at a certain so I could have more space to write the newer updates, so sadly the earliest my news update goes back is only August 1999.

It's funny as I got to meet some fans at the show that were telling me how they were big fans of this website and they were actually younger than this site itself. I know a lot of people will know me now for the History of FMW series on YouTube since obviously more people are going to be hanging around YouTube than googling FMW websites and finding this one, but no matter what other projects I am doing, this website will always be my baby. As long as I care enough to continue to write and talk about FMW, I am still going to be working on this website, as it has been 23 years, but I still have the passion in me to continue doing this and hopefully if you are reading this, you continue to enjoy what I provide and keep coming back.

Added: 10/27

FMW-E would run their fourth show "Sky High" on October 24, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market drawing an announced crowd of 450 fans for the show. This show will not air on ZAIKO like the previous three shows. There were two cameras recording the show. One was FMW-E's camera crew and one another was for a TV station. I would imagine the FMW-E side will end up posting a good amount of the matches on YouTube as the week go by. The TV station I would imagine will end up airing clips on a show on the station in the next month or so.

The main event would be Atsushi Onita and Sanshiro Takagi teaming up to take on Mr. Pogo and Abdullah Kobayashi in a No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Exploding Chair Exploding Landmine Jado Rocket Death Match. This is the first "No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Death Match" since October 9, 2017 right before Onita's retirement which was promoted as the last time they would be doing the no ropes exploding barbed wire gimmick. Since the creation of FMW-E they have just used exploding barbed wire wrapped around the ropes which saves time, but looks a lot cheaper. The previous show the exploding barbed wire did not even end up exploding though so they decided for this show to bring back taking the ropes down and putting up the exploding barbed wire in its place.

The big appeal to this match was the Jado Rocket which would be the first time they were doing it in the Tokyo/Yokohama region with fans there live to see it. They had taped off the one section of the building to allow the Jado Rocket to have a straight shot towards the corner turnbuckle. Right before the main event, they realized they had a huge though as there electricity to set the rocket off was not working. This caused the main event to delay as HASEGAWA in a panic starting asking fans in the crowd if they knew anything about electricity with one fan raising his hand and helping them to eventually fix the issues. They ended up having to just start the main event before they would get the electricity issues fixed.

Onita would be the first one to be thrown through the exploding barbed wire by both Pogo and Kobayashi. Pogo would then take an exploding chair and nail Takagi with it but Onita would turn on the exploding barbed wire bat and nail Pogo over the back with it. Onita would then spit red mist in Kobayashi's face as Takagi would give Kobayashi a stunner and he would fall backward into the exploding barbed wire. Onita would then get Kobayashi in the corner and try to turn on the Jado Rocket and of course the Jado Rocket would not launch so he and Takagi would hit Kobayashi with barbed wire bats before Onita would hit Kobayashi with a DDT and get the win at 16 minutes, 26 seconds with the Big Japan team of Kankuro Hoshino, Hideyoshi Kamitani, and Akira Hyodo and hitting the ring and attacking Onita. They would get word that the electricity had been restored so Kobayashi would ask for a rematch right then and there.

Onita and the other FMW-E wrestlers in the ring would celebrate and do the Onita Theater before Onita would agree to re-start the match. Onita would get Kobayashi in the corner and hit the Jado Rocket button and the count down would begin as the rocket would launch from the entrance to the turnbuckle with Kobayashi by it as this was the first time I have seen the rocket used that actually looked like it would do damage with so much explosions flying everywhere and the wrestlers not being totally shielded by it. Kobayashi would fall straight down to the mat and Onita would cover him to get the win again at 2 minutes, 26 seconds as others would throw water in the ring at both their bodies due to the sparks that most likely had hit them in the process of the rocket. Hideyoshi Kamitani would then get on the mic and declare war between Big Japan and FMW-E with Onita accepting his request. Click here for highlights of Atsushi Onita/Sanshiro Takagi vs. Mr. Pogo/Abdullah Kobayashi from the FMW-E 10/24/21 show.

The beginning of the FMW-E vs. Big Japan feud would start in the semi-main event as the FMW-E team of Raijin Yaguchi, Ricky Fuji, and The Shooter would take on the Big Japan team of Hideyoshi Kamitani, Kankuro Hoshino, and Akira Hyodo in a Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat Falls Count Anywhere Death Match with Kamitani pinning Shooter at 10 minutes, 15 seconds after hitting him with an Exploding Barbed wire Bat shot. The three 1st Round Jado Princess Tournament matches saw Akane Fujita defeat Thekla at 12 minutes, 28 seconds after Fujita would turn on the exploding bat and Thekla would give the bat a superkick causing a huge explosion knocking Thekla out as Fujita would cover her to advance. Risa Sera would defeat Rydeen Hagane at 6 minutes, 32 seconds in Exploding Bat Death Match with Sera hitting her with the bat to get the pin. The first tournament match would see Suzu Suzuki defeat Madeline at 11 minutes, 10 seconds after Suzuki would turn on the exploding bat, but Madeline would roll her up but Suzuki would reverse it for the win. The opening match would be Mr. Atomic and Monster Leather defeat the A-Team of Daisaku Shimoda and HASEGAWA in the first Exploding Barbed wire Death Match for an opening match as they would set up one side of the ring with exploding barbed wire with Leather getting the win at 12 minutes, 4 seconds after throwing HASEGAWA into the exploding barbed wire for the win.

Atsushi Onita's next match will be on October 31, 2021 at the Trenton, New Jersey Thunder Ball Park against Matt Tremont. Nothing new has been officially announced as far as gimmicks for the match. Currently it is still a Exploding Barbed wire and Double Landmine Death Match. The ropes will remain in the ring with the exploding barbed wire being placed over it. There will be two sides of the exploding landmines outside the ring. There will also be an Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat and most likely an exploding chair as well.  There has been talk of bringing the Jado Rocket for the match as like I mentioned last update, this match will need as much explosions as they can get, and it would get over with the crowd more than any other explosion. Onita when asked about bringing the Jado Rocket on Twitter said "Lets do it!" and he is going to be the one behind bringing all the explosions to the show, but nothing about the Jado Rocket has still been announced and probably would not until the day of the show anyway.

FREEDOMS would return to Shin-Kiba 1st Ring on October 10, 2021 and announce a crowd of 157 fans which would be another sell out for the amount of people they allowed in the building. The main event would be a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match between Toru Sugiura, Daisuke Masaoka, and Tomoya Hirata against ERE's Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki.

This match would end up having Jack pick Masaoka up over his head, but Masaoka would come down and deliver a double knee drop to Jack with him escaping to the outside as Masaoka would then come off the turnbuckle and deliver a moonsault on Jack on the outside. Sugiura and Sakuda would face off in the ring with Sakuda trying to deliver a Sakauchi to Sugiura, but Hirata would come from behind and deliver a German Suplex to Sakuda instead. Ueki would then hit the ring with light tubes and charge at Hirata, but Hirata would deliver a lariat breaking those light tubes across Ueki. Sugiura would then place another stack light tubes on Sakuda and deliver a running elbow breaking them across him and get the pinfall at 14 minutes, 52 seconds win over Sakuda. Sugiura would then get on the mic and ask Hirata to form a tag team but Hirata would respond by stating that he thinks he could beat Sugiura at this point with Sugiura getting upset and a singles match would be made for the November 17th Korakuen Hall show. Masaoka would then get on the mic and challenge Jack for the King of Freedom World Title with Kasai hitting the ring and wanting a title shot as well so a Kasai vs. Masaoka match would be made for the November 17th Korakuen Hall show with the winner getting a shot at Jack for the title at the Christmas Death Match show.

The semi-main event would be Jun Kasai and Rina Yamashita taking on Masashi Takeda and Orca Uto in a Saw Ladder and Fork Board Death Match. Takeda would not take much time grabbing Yamashita and throwing her right into the fork board. Takeda would then pull out a chair with Yamashita grabbing it from him, but she would end up being met with a Takeda punch through the chair into her face. Uto would then come in and go for a clothesline with Yamashita ducking it and delivering a German Suplex to him. Kasai and Yamashita would then take the Ladder with saws on it and hit Takeda on the apron with it causing him to fly to the outside followed by hitting Uto with it in the ring. Yamashita would then take Kasai's goggles and hit her own Pearl Harbor Splash followed by Kasai finishing Uto at 13 minutes, 21 seconds with a Reverse Tiger Driver.

Yuya Susumu would team up with Kengo and Leo Isaka as they would defeat Takashi Sasaki, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, and Takahiro Katori when Susumu would hit his own Death Valley Bomb in front of Takaiwa on Katori to pick up the win at 15 minutes, 26 seconds as this seems to setup Susumu vs. Takaiwa in a singles match down the line possibly on November 17th at Korakuen Hall. Mammoth Sasaki would defeat the once again masked Dragon Libre at 7 minutes, 57 seconds in a Hardcore Match as Mammoth would use the Camel Clutch with a Chair as it seems like he is adapting that submission move as a new finisher of his. The opening match would have GENTARO, Kenji Fukimoto, and Kamui defeat Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Rekka when Kamui would pick up the win at 9 minutes, 15 seconds after rolling Rekka up with a Kamui Clutch. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 10/10/21 show.

The annual Jun Kasai promoted Bloody Halloween show in Osaka would take place on October 17, 2021 at the Osaka Active Square Daito as they would announce a crowd of 256 fans for the show. Minoru Fujita having just gotten out of the hospital a couple of days earlier due to his recent bout with COVID to let the fans know he would be back in the ring after he is fully recovered. Fujita while on the mic would be loudly breathing while talking, so it will be a little while before he will be able to wrestle again.

The main event would be Jun Kasai, Toru Sugiura, and Tomoya Hirata taking on Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match. This match would Jack and Sugiura square off with strikes to one another as Sugiura would grab Jack by the leg and power lift him up before dropping him through the glass board. Kasai would then go up to the top and hit a Pearl Harbor Splash on Jack, but almost immediately afterwards Jack would grab Kasai by the arm and place him in the Mexican Stretch with Sugiura making the save for his partner. Hirata would then come in and hit Ueki with a Firemans Carry and then nail Takeda with a clothesline, but then Jack would pick up Kasai and hit him with an Amatlan and then place him once again in the Mexican Stretch with this time Kasai having to tap out at 19 minutes, 4 seconds for the ERE win.

The semi-main event would be Daisuke Masaoka and Kamui taking on Toshiyuki Sakuda and Orca Uto in a Double Board Tornado Death Match as Masaoka would climb up to the top and toss Uto a light tube with him catching it, and then getting nailed with a drop kick by Masaoka breaking the light tube across his body. Uto would get up and pick up a light tube of his own, but Kamui would grab it from him and smash it over his head. Kamui would then bring in a ladder and climb it up with Uto going up as well, but Masaoka would come over as Kamui would headbutt Uto and Masaoka would powerbomb him off the ladder. Kamui would then finish the job by delivering a Swanton off the ladder and get the win at 14 minutes, 58 seconds over Uto.

Kenji Fukimoto and Rina Yamashita would defeat Gunso and Mataro Aoki in a DOVE Style Hardcore Match with Fukimoto getting the win at 12 minutes, 26 seconds after hitting Aoki with a Package Piledriver. Naoki Tanizaki would defeat Takahiro Katori at 10 minutes, 37 seconds with a Implant. Takashi Sasaki, GENTARO, and Dyna Mido defeating Mammoth Sasaki, Dragon Libre, and Idea when Sasaki would put away Libre at 10 minutes, 22 seconds with a D-Geist. The opening match would see Yuya Susumu and Kengo defeat Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei when Susumu would get the win over Kei at 8 minutes, 14 seconds with a Small Package. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 10/17/21 Bloody Halloween show.

FREEDOMS and 2AW would hold their joint show at 2AW's home building in the Chiba 2AW Square on October 24, 2021 announcing a crowd of 78 fans for the show. The main event would have Jun Kasai defeating Tatsuya Hanami in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match at 15 minutes, 14 seconds with a Reverse Tiger Driver. The semi-main event would also see the FREEDOMS team win after Takashi Sasaki and Mammoth Sasaki would defeat THE Andrew King Takuma and Naka Shunma in a Hardcore Match when Mammoth would put Shuma away at 14 minutes, 2 seconds with the 29 Years Old. The 2AW team's big win would see Ayato Yoshida, Shu Asakawa, and Kaji Tomato, and Tank Nagai defeat Toru Sugiura, Yuya Susumu, Kenji Fukimoto, and Takahiro Katori when Nagai would put away Katori at 13 minutes, 35 seconds with the Sirius Black. The FREEDOMS team would of Daisuke Masaoka, GENTARO, and Tomoya Hirata would beat Kengo Mashimo, Kunio Toshima, and Daiju Wakamatsu when Hirata would get the win at 12 minutes, 9 seconds over Wakamatsu. Violento Jack would finish off Ayumu Honda at 9 minutes, 34 seconds with the Amatalan. The opening match would see Kyu Mogami and Chicharito Shoki defeat Kamui and Dragon Libre when Mogami would get the win at 8 minutes, 14 seconds when he would place the Chickenwing to get the submission victory over Libre.

The next FREEDOMS show will take place on October 28, 2021 at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring with the main event of Jun Kasai and Tomoya Hirata taking on Toru Sugiura and Daisuke Masaoka in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, and Orca Uto will go up against Takashi Sasaki, Mammoth Sasaki, and Dragon Libre in a Hardcore Match. The Takaiwa/Susumu feud will continue as Tatsuhito Takaiwa and Leo Isaka will go up against Yuya Susumu and Takahiro Katori with the singles match most likely being announced for Korakuen afterwards. Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki will take on GENTARO and Rekka in a tag match. The opening match will see Kenji Fukimoto, Kamui, and Rina Yamashita teaming up to take on Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Kengo.

FREEDOMS will then hold back to back shows on October 31, 2021 at the Hiroshima Industrial East Building. The first show will obviously be the lesser attended show as Toru Sugiura and Rekka will team up to take on Yuya Susumu and Kenshin Chikano in the main event. The semi-main event will be Jun Kasai, Kamui, and Kenji Fukimoto going up against Takumi Tsukamoto and Hiroshima based talented Yoju and Tessho. Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki will team up to take on more local talent as they will take on Van Vert Negro, Yousei Estrella, Seiki, and El Faruko. Daisuke Masaoka and Tomoya Hirata will team up to take on Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei. The opening match will see Dragon Libre and Takahiro Katori take on more wrestlers based out of Hiroshima in Rey Paloma and Takeshi Okada.

The evening show on October 31, 2021 at the Hiroshima Industrial Hall East Building will be a Jun Kasai promoted show with the main event of Jun Kasai and Daisuke Masaoka taking on Violento Jack and Masashi Takeda in a Death Match. The semi-main event will be Toru Sugiura, Yuya Susumu, and Tomoya Hirata taking on Mammoth Sasaki, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, and Takahiro Katori. GENTARO, Kamui, and Takeshi Okada will team up to take on Takumi Tsukamoto, Devil Magician, and Yoju. Takashi Sasaki and Kenji Fukimoto will face off against Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki in a Hardcore Match. Van Vert Negro will take on Yousei Esterella. The opening match will be Kenshin Chikano, Dragon Libre, and Rekka taking on Rey Paloma, Brahman Shu, and Brahman Kei.

The A-Team ran their October 17, 2021 for their first non Kitasenju show of the year as they instead ran at the Saitama Entertainment Magic Box announcing a crowd of 100 fans. The main event would be Tomohiko Hashimoto, Takumi Sakurai, and Grand Masaru defeating Daisaku Shimoda, Bryan Ishizaka, and Kosaku Tonozaki when Sakurai would pin Tonozaki at 18 minutes, 37 seconds with a Moonsault. They would announce afterwards that Kosaku Tonozaki would be joining the A-Team promotion full time leaving his local Hitachi Pro company. The semi-main event would be TORU defeating Joji Otani at 23 minutes, 24 seconds with a Brainbuster. Iori Sugawara and Hashinosuke would defeat Keita Murota and Jin when Hashinosuke would pick up the win over Jin at 16 minutes, 12 seconds with a Stardust Press. MIKAMI would defeat Gajo, Kenya Maeda, and Masahiro Sase in a 4 Way Match when MIKAMI would put away Maeda at 8 minutes, 47 seconds with the 450 Splash. The opening match would have HASEGAWA defeat Raiden at 8 minutes, 18 seconds with a Diving Foot Stomp.

Hideo Takayama better known as Hido passed away on October 17, 2021 in his home of Chiba City, Chiba. His wife Megumi Kudo made the announcement on October 21, 2021 stating that the decision was made to keep everything private until after the funeral which was held on October 20, 2021. Kudo stated that Hido had been dealing with medical treatment for some time but no official reason for his death was given. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga who as far as I know was the only wrestler to attend the private funeral stated all he can say is that the reason was not COVID.

Hido's liver disease issues has been well documented for many years though. Hido was a very well known drinker during his professional wrestling days and ended up suffering liver disease at least as of 2005 if not earlier that he kept private. The first sign that Hido's liver issues were a severe issue for him was in November 2006 when he would end up having to take off pretty much the entire year of 2007 to do deal with his health. Hido would come back off and on to the ring until 2013 when he just simply could not wrestle anymore. He pretty much stayed private for the rest of his life other than going to Mitsuhiro Matsunaga's steak house restaurant in June 2019 and allowing the picture he took with Matsunaga to be put on the internet. Hido much like his former W*ING partner Hideki Hosaka would pass away just days before his birthday as he would die at 51 just two days before his 52nd birthday. The only comment his long time partner Kintaro Kanemura would say about Hido was that with Hido and Hosaka now gone, it was now up to him to keep the W*ING legacy alive. Click here for my Hido Career Retrospective Obituary.

Added: 10/6

The Dark Side of the Ring episode based on the story of FMW entitled "Blood & Wire: Onita's FMW" aired on VICE TV on September 30, 2021.

This was something I had been contacted about by show runner Evan Husney back in May 2020 and we had about an hour conversation on what this show should cover, as he just had a general idea of FMW, but he really wanted the insane footage of exploding barbed wire and exploding rings shown on national television for the first time. 

We also talked about the Shoichi Arai's last few months as he wanted that story to be a focus of the show towards the end. I have always felt the ending for FMW was fit for a TV documentary with everything that happened, so I did want to help out as much as possible and help make this episode as good of an episode as possible.

I threw out that I had known Shoichi Arai's daughter Rika and Hayabusa's daughter Ayane for years and I was asked to reach out to both of them, as they both would be good interviews and representation of their fathers for the show.

We talked wrestlers with the thought of wanting a wrestler's perspective of the last night of FMW going bankrupt with many different loan sharks going into the FMW office. I brought up Mr. Gannosuke and Ricky Fuji, but Ricky was decided on because he spoke English a lot better than Gannosuke and I also was not even sure Gannosuke was even there that last night of FMW. I have since found out Gannosuke got out of the hospital that day, and went to the FMW office to let Arai who was not picking up his phone know he was out of the hospital, and was oblivious on what had happened with Arai until he saw all the outsiders invading the office trying to take what they could get.

Evan and two camera men came to my house in October 2020 with the idea of me appearing on the show, as well as giving a "historian's point of view" on the show, telling the story of FMW. There were other angles they were possibly interested in doing, so there were a set of questions about VHS Tape Trading in the 1990s, so while I answered and told my story about that, I knew that this was never going to make air as there was not enough time for a side story.

I had asked about the possibility of two episodes with one episode on Onita's FMW and the other on Hayabusa's FMW which would include the Arai story. Apparently Evan was lucky to get one episode, as Vice did not really want to do this episode, feeling there was not enough connection with the audience since it was based out of Japan and many years ago. The show did end up doing its lowest rating in history drawing 126,000 views the night of the show, so even though everything did end up getting squeezed, I am sure from their point of view, Vice came away feeling they were correct on this.

I was interviewed for three hours and told them the story of FMW the best I could. Telling them the entire Arai last day of FMW story with no notes in front of me, due to it being so detailed, was incredibly difficult, and I remember being mentally fried after that for the rest of the interview. They came back the next day, and did introduction shots, and interviewed my wife about my FMW fandom, which that's the footage I would like to see the most of the two days, although I am sure it won't see the light of day ever.

I got word about a month or so afterwards that Atsushi Onita would be interviewed for the show, and I kind of had a hunch, at that point my interview was not going to make the show with how much time was going to be rightfully dedicated to Onita and since 75% of the interview I had with them, a lot of what I went over with the would not be needed because they had the man himself there to tell those same stories that I told them.

The beginning of this year I began to get contacted by researchers from Vice in regards to information, pictures, video, who owns what of FMW, etc. So I spent many hours doing even more research to help out the research department. So I had my finger prints on many different aspects of this episode. I got notified a week prior to the show, that I would not end up appearing on it, which was still disappointing to hear even though I had mentally prepared myself for that news. I was told I would be given a "creative consult" credit which did appear at the end of the show, as Evan said to the story they used in this episode was my story of FMW.

The episode starts talking about Atsushi Onita and him learning about Giant Baba through a comic book called Giant Typhoon which is where Onita found out about pro-wrestling and how awesome it was. It went into New Japan and All Japan and talked about Onita being a top All Japan Jr. Heavyweight for the promotion.

Terry Funk was then introduced and they talked about Onita being told he had to job to the promoter in the Dominican Republic which pissed Onita off, they left out that Onita stiffed him during the match, and as a result they had a bunch of guys beat the crap out of Onita. This lead to Onita going over and living at Terry's Double Cross Ranch. Terry was the star of the episode.

Onita talked about going to Memphis and doing the third concession stand brawl and somewhere in there a woman kicked him the face with her shoe and he began to bleed which made him feel that hardcore wrestling triggers the excitement in people and it was a revelation to him. They then talked about Onita's injuring his knee which shattered his kneecap.

They quickly cut to the Atsushi Onita vs. Masashi Aoyagi "Wrestler vs. Karate" series and Onita talks about the clash in fans as their first match on July 2, 1989 was at a karate show, but many pro-wrestling fans attended resulting in the conflict between the two fan bases which gave him the confidence that FMW could work.

Onita then told a story about as a kid he got hurt being around barbed one time and knew the fans would know how dangerous and scary it is. They showed clips of the first barbed wire death match which was the only time FMW used as real barbed wire as you could get with Onita getting badly cut up during the match, resulting in them going to a not as sharp, but still sharp type of barbed wire.

They had Mick Foley who admitted to them prior to the interview he was mostly in IWA Japan and only had two FMW matches tell a story about seeing Megumi Kudo get burnt really bad during her retirement match. He did misremember this stating he saw her and then had his main event match, but Kudo was the last match on the show that night, so he probably saw her, but over time figured he was in the main event since his match had Onita in it.

Next was the introduction of Ricky Fuji who watching him go over FMW at the beginning gave me very happy flash backs to my times of going over and just spending hours talking to him at his Gym as he told stories on the show the exact way he would tell me stories.

Sabu was next going over that he was not specifically invited to FMW, but Onita wanted The Sheik for their 1991 Tag Team Tournament and he could bring anyone he wanted to be as his partner and he chose Sabu. They went over the details of the Fire Death Match since they had both Onita and Sabu. The story told on the show was because Onita kept wanting to top himself, the truth is that W*ING had just recently stolen the "crazy death match promotion" title from FMW after Matsunaga had dived off the balcony and had his head set on fire by Pogo, so FMW was countering by having the Fire Death Match which they did not really know what they were doing, and too much kerosene on the ropes. Sabu makes a interesting comment at the end that he could not be mad at Onita because he gave him life, which is something similar to Shoichi Arai's feelings towards Onita and why he allowed Onita to walk all over him until Arai decided to side with the current locker room over Onita in November 1998.

They then talked about Atsushi Onita vs. Terry Funk at Kawasaki Stadium. At this point, it became clear to me that Jericho was pretty much what my role for the show would have been as the person just going over all the details. Which I figured would be the case with him as narrator, but not as a talking head.

The talk of Hayabusa began with the introduction of Ayane Ezaki. Onita mentions that Hayabusa was not the right guy for death matches, which is true, as Hayabusa never wanted to be a death match wrestler, and when Arai took over with Hayabusa under the impression he would have the most influence, he wanted the promotion to be rid of all death matches, and be a promotion based on good traditional matches. The issues with that though, are you still the W*ING wrestlers who were death match based, and it was one thing to take orders from Onita who is a bigger name than you and the boss, but to take orders from Hayabusa of where the direction was going to go without him having proven himself to them other. The other issue was traditional wrestling with no one of really superstar name value would die outside of Tokyo for house shows which it did at first with Hayabusa not having been established to the fan base.

I did find it interesting that when Onita is screaming at Hayabusa in the locker room, he is telling Hayabusa to not let him return to the ring, which Hayabusa wishes he could have had that power when Onita decided to come back.

They would then go over Shoichi Arai. The detail missing to that was Onita wanted FMW to just close down feeling there was no point in FMW to go on without him. His step father who owned apart of the company told him that it would be a bad look if Onita just closed FMW down, and to ask someone else to take it over. He asked Hideki Takahashi who eventually would run Super Battle FMW in 2015, but he would say no. So Onita would tell Arai that if he did not take the company over, FMW would be force to close down. Arai not wanting to lose his own job and many other wrestlers job would agree to take the company over. Onita would make money off this transaction by lending Arai money that Arai would have to give to him to buy the essentials (ring, belts, the machines to make posters, etc.) from Onita with then Arai having to pay Onita back the money that was loaned to him. Adding that Onita took almost all the money that was made from his retirement show, the new FMW would begin in debt right away.

Around this part of the episode as they start to cover the New FMW the details start to become incorrect although it's not commonly to where many people are going to notice/care. They state Onita comes back less than a year after his retirement. I guess you can say technically since Onita appeared at the March 96 Sapporo show since Hayabusa was out of action, but he did not come out of retirement until December 1996.

Then Onita straight out lies and says he wanted to come back as a heel. Onita wanted to be the top face again and when booker Go Ito was pressed with the issue of Onita and Hayabusa sharing the top face position, he turned Onita heel and had him form ZEN. Onita hated this so much and complained so loudly, that Go Ito then turned Onita back face after less than 3 months and had Onita's ZEN team and Hayabusa's FMW team both be faces feud with the heel Team No Respect in 1998.

Onita states when they were in Tokyo he was the heel, and Hayabusa was the face. They only faced off against each other in any capacity in Tokyo once and that was the match that they turned Onita face in afterwards. Unless he is just simply stating/remembering that the fans in Tokyo are the more smart fans would boo Onita for coming out of retirement too soon, and the house show fans outside of Tokyo that are more casual fans would cheer Onita just based on name value and if they really cared that Onita came out of retirement too soon, they just would not come to the show.

Onita states this as jealousy. Hayabusa saw it as not a fair competition and that Onita just came back and just because he was Onita, who was also not the draw he was before his retirement, and not willing to work a full time schedule anymore, that he would could just walk right up and take away what Hayabusa and company had been building for a year and a half. I do think Onita didn't feel it was personal with Hayabusa, because even though he didn't like Hayabusa as much as say Masato Tanaka, after Onita came back not only did he make the call to get Giant Baba to bring in Hayabusa to work for All Japan, but he also paid for Hayabusa's honeymoon to Guam in Spring 1997 after he had came out of retirement.

They ask Sabu about Arai wanting to do away with Death Matches which Sabu was not there in 1995-1996, so he would only know the generalization of the New FMW not doing as many death matches. Like I mentioned, it was Hayabusa that did not want to do death matches, but even though I would say Hayabusa was always Arai's number one priority in wanting to be happy even when he couldn't because of Onita, he did really respect Mitsuhiro Matsunaga and considered the W*ING point of view and the fact that the promotion was losing money so quickly without doing death matches, they they began allowing W*ING and Megumi Kudo even to begin doing them on the undercard after just one month. Hayabusa being out for most of 1996 allowed for the death matches to return back to the main event. 1997 with Onita back would continue to have death matches be the main event matches while Hayabusa vs. Gannosuke tag matches would semi-main event.

The problem is that in 1997 even with death matches on many of the main events, Onita on top for whatever show he wanted to be on, and Hayabusa on the show as well, the house shows still lost money to the point where Arai to keep everything afloat and everyone paid, did not pay taxes in 1997 because he could not afford it. That right there was the sign that FMW was going to die, it was just a matter of when. 1998 saw FMW want to put Hayabusa back in the main event picture, and Onita threw a fit. FMW was then offered millions of dollars to join DirecTV. Arai felt this was the saving grace that FMW needed as the direction they were going on long term, he knew was bad. The problem was though that DirecTV required a lot of money for FMW to spend on equipment to be able to air live Pay-Per-Views. They also wanted the promotion to change into the Entertainment Direction because the companies whole slogan was about bringing American Entertainment to Japan. WWF was hot at the time, and it was not being done in Japan. Hayabusa was on board with this change, knowing it would get FMW away from being a death match promotion which he wanted when Onita was retired, and wanted it gone even more now that Onita was back and his biggest rival for his "face of the promotion" spot.

They go over Kodo Fuyuki's WEW style of booking. They mention that Arai pretty much had Fuyuki become the boss of the promotion, which again is a half truth, as Kodo Fuyuki would tell you differently with how much he felt Arai was always interfering with his booking decisions. It's not mentioned that Entertainment Wrestling was already in place because of DirecTV, before Fuyuki became booker. Go Ito was still the booker. Arai says that Go Ito quit because of Entertainment Wrestling booking being much more difficult with a writing team, scripted promos, love story angles, etc. Fuyuki says that Go Ito quit because something happened between him and Arai and they were no longer close, and Ito no longer could handle Arai interfering with the booking decisions. I think the real reason in a combo of their opinions, with Fuyuki's reason probably being a bigger reason.

They talk about Onita and Fuyuki's issues being the reason that Arai decided to have Onita leave. Fuyuki was not booker at that time. He was not even there when they told Onita to leave. The final straw reason that Onita was asked to leave FMW was because with Hayabusa becoming the face of FMW and it looking like he would be the semi-main event wrestler going forward a counter to what 1997 had been. Onita decided to get a sponsor and start up his own promotion USO where it would be FMW with all the FMW wrestlers besides Hayabusa through out the card with him on top. The FMW wrestlers did not want to do this, and they decided to all meet together at the FMW office and tell Onita to leave FMW. Onita right away made himself the babyface in the situation, by acting like they could have just been up front with him, and not have to all get together like this.

They then cut to the Hayabusa being paralyzed and state that FMW never recovered from that. The truth is, FMW should have closed one year prior in late 2000. Hayabusa's double elbow surgery and needing to be out from November 2000 to May 2001 is what killed the promotion. There are aspects that helped that be the case. DirecTV closing down and SkyPerfecTV not paying them nearly as much was a big reason. The Entertainment style did not catch on, but the death blow was 6 months of disastrous house shows as soon as Hayabusa stopped appearing on them in 2000. Tetsuhiro Kuroda tried to be the guy for 6 months, and he tried and was a great performer, but they bled money during this time period. Even when Hayabusa came back, there were some hits, but still more misses financially than prior to him taking time off even, and they were never were going to recover from that 6 month period with how much money they lost. Then the injury happened and it became even more obvious with no possible light at the end of the tunnel anymore.

Arai was stubborn though, and did not want to admit defeat and make it seem like he could not do it without Onita, and kept borrowing from loan sharks to pay other loan sharks the debts he owed while trying to find someone else to buy the company from him. This lead to the FMW going bankrupt part of the show. Rika talks about Arai's mother telling him to not use house money. Arai did everything he could to keep FMW alive. He used his personal money, he borrowed money from his parents. Many people lost a lot of money because of Arai keeping FMW alive for that one extra year. Onita brings up about Arai going to loan sharks instead of going to Onita to ask to borrow money. That would be like asking your ex spouse for money. Arai was keeping FMW alive to not look like a failure to Onita, so going to Onita for money, was not an option, and even if Arai had borrowed millions from him, the end result of FMW closing down would have eventually happened anyway, he just would have owed Onita. They used a Sabu clip saying he hung himself in a school yard, but it was actually a very big park.

Rika talked about the loan sharks taking the Arai house as debt owed to them, which it something I did learn for the first time, even after multiple conversations with her through out the years. Onita then begins to talk about Arai failing at business, followed by Rika stating Onita used her dad, which she would most likely gain that opinion based off reading Arai's autobiography where is very negative about Onita. Onita who got some negative reaction with how he talked about Arai here stating you just don't pay if you owe them, which is simply not that easy when you owe so much money, to so many different organizations, and there's a reason that Arai had to hide with an FMW sponsor for three months. Onita mentions that Arai losing his family probably had something to do with his decision, which I believe losing Rika did play a part in it, but not talked about was the guilt he felt about Hayabusa getting paralyzed and then FMW closing down and Hayabusa no longer having the insurance to pay for his hospital bills, which would eat a hole in Hayabusa's bank account that would leave him severely financially strain.

Hayabusa's death is brought up, and then they talk about Hayabusa walking and Mick Foley referencing him walking to the ring in front of some of the top wrestlers. The clip they show is from 2002 when Hayabusa actually walks for the first time at Korakuen Hall at a WMF show. The clip Mick Foley is referencing though is the 2015 clip that went viral showing Hayabusa walk up the stairs into the ring in front of Keiji Muto, Genichiro Tenryu, Kenta Kobashi, and Tatsumi Fujinami that aired on Nippon TV. Nippon TV is so strict with their copyright and after this clip got so popular, they took it down and do not want it back on YouTube. It took me months to find it again, and I used the clips for the History of FMW going over the year 2015, but I had to be very careful, and heavily edit it to make sure it would stay up. Vice could not even get this clip under the fair use legal grounds they got for everything else on the show, so they used this clip instead, and I have not seen anyone else notice or mention it.

Towards the end, they had Foley talking about FMW being a spectacle, as that it was a big piece of history, and still something borrowed from to this today. Onita talked about how he feels like his hardcore wrestling has spread across the world. Terry was asked if he could say anything to Onita, what would he say and gives the double middle fingers before laughing and saying he loves Onita. Onita would then close the show by saying there's only one Inoki, one Hulk Hogan, one Giant Baba, and one Atsushi Onita.

Here's the truth about FMW. It was never meant to live forever. Lightning in a bottle happened with Atsushi Onita that allowed a number three company to finally be a legitimate success in Japan. Onita was hurting, had almost died, and was tired of running his own company. He was ready to be done and shut FMW down and move on. He got another year of huge business because of his one year retirement tour which makes Onita's FMW look much more of success more than what the overall 6 year product was, and don't get me wrong, it was an overall success, even though Onita's FMW was in debt at the very end following his retirement because of high pay days to him and other top wrestlers. That version is the only version of FMW that could have possibly survived what was to become the Japanese economy in later end of the 90's and through out the first decade of the 2000s, and that would require for Onita to continue to go at the same rate he was going from 1989 to 1995 in FMW which he could not do long term all the time.

Any other version of FMW was not going to survive the black hole of recession. Not the way Hayabusa wanted to do it, obviously not the way Fuyuki wanted to do it, and not the way Atsushi Onita wanted to do it. Onita having come out of retirement and doing death matches still would have lead to FMW eventually closing down in the 2000s. Yes, Fuyuki's booking of FMW probably sped up the death, as did DirecTV closing down, but the death was going to come regardless the path they were going in 1997, so I understand trying something different to stay alive while also getting paid millions of dollars to do it.

Obviously, the problem despite having a lot of good matches during this period, a lot of the stuff was bad, and the company received a negative stigma that dug them a hole to where when bad luck struck like losing DirecTV and Hayabusa needing six months off to come back for five months and then become paralyzed, there was no way to get out despite Arai doing everything he can. The only thing that could have saved FMW was to have a sponsor that was willing to lose millions of dollars to keep FMW going like Big Japan was lucky enough to find. Arai in his book says he was so close to getting one of those, but Fuyuki responded by saying that sponsor was shady and it would have fallen apart in no time anyway. FMW was just never built to live through a 10 year recession sadly.

My personal opinion about the show though was that it was good. They gave the Onita era of FMW thirty minutes, and the Hayabusa era got fifteen minutes which is what I expected. I do feel the Hayabusa stuff was rushed, but there's only so much time on the show, and it's hard when he's not around to talk for himself. Terry was great in this episode. Onita was Onita. I did find it interesting see him talk about topics like Hayabusa and Arai who both were not his biggest fans, and how it came off negatively to some fans. Despite getting cut off the show, I am proud that I was able to help with it in many different ways, for what will probably be the only English FMW TV documentary to be made.

FMW-E announced the full lineup of their October 24th "Sky High" show at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market. It was announced that this show would have the return of the No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire which Onita has not done since October 9, 2017 in Odaiba right before his retirement in what was promoted as the last no ropes exploding barbed wire death. Onita's group has since just used exploding barbed wire around the ropes, although at the last show against Mr. Pogo, the barbed wire failed to go off. The intention is to have the No Ropes Barbed wire be put for the entire show as it just takes so long to put up that they feel they might as well just use it for the entire show.

The main event is going to be Atsushi Onita and Sanshiro Takagi against Shadow WX as Mr. Pogo and Abdullah Kobayashi in a No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Jado Rocket Death Match. Onita has used the Jado Rocket twice before once in 2016 and once in 2020. The July 2016 one was in a second level building where they set the rocket off from the second floor and it flew down into the turnbuckle causing a huge explosion, although the explosion was impressive, it was obvious it was not going to do damage to anyone. The second one was done on August 2020 one was outside at an Amusement Park with no fans around with Onita being tied to a metal stage struss and they set the rocket off with the rocket going more in a straight line hitting above Onita again to where it's obvious it did no damage to anyone. This one will be interesting because the building is just one level, so the rocket will need to shoot at a straight level again into the turnbuckle, but unless they clear a very wide path of fans which they might simply just have to do, this one on paper seems a lot more tricky than the previous two when it comes to safety. I actually hope that they bring both the No Ropes Barbed wire and the Jado Rocket for the New Jersey Stadium show, as the rocket set from the second level at the stadium would get over really big with the crowd, more so than even the landmines.

The semi-main event on the show will be a FMW vs. Big Japan match as Raijin Yaguchi looks to become a regular for the promotion, although not in the main events with Onita any longer. Yaguchi will team up with Ricky Fuji and someone in a black mask once again going by the name The Shooter as they will take on the Big Japan team of Hideyoshi Kamitani, Kankuro Hoshino, and Akira Hyodo in a Falls Count Anywhere Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat Death Match. There will be three Princess Explosion matches as apparently Akane Fujita not being to compete and having to forfeit to Madeleine on the September show will not count, as both will end up being in 1st round matches of the tournament although against different opponents. Suzu Suzuki will now take on Madeleine, Risa Sera will go up against Rydeen Hagane, and Akane Fujita will go up against Tekura with all three being exploding barbed wire baseball bat death matches. The opening match will be Daisaku Shimoda and HASEGAWA going up against Monster Leather and Mr. Atomic in what is built as a one side no rope exploding barbed wire death match, which might be the first time a no rope exploding barbed wire death match will open a show.

FREEDOMS would hold their 12th Anniversary show on October 3, 2021 at Korakuen Hall announcing a crowd of 508 fans. At first glance it looked like a really good number, but looking back, they were able to draw better for last years anniversary show at 543, although Sugiura vs. Sasaki is going to just be a bigger drawing match than Violento Jack vs. Tomoya Hirata. I would still consider this show a success though with Hirata not having been fully built up by any means being able to be thrown out there in a main event title match and still draw a decent number, and probably better than what next months November Korakuen show will do. This show was also the first Korakuen Hall show put on by FREEDOMS to not air on Samurai TV since the November 2020 Korakuen Hall show as NicoNico ended up doing a live feed of the show instead.

The main event of Violento Jack taking on Tomoya Hirata in a King of Freedom World Championship Glass Board Death Match was to help get Hirata over as credible contender one day and possible future star of the promotion, and knock out a Korakuen Hall show main event in a new match without anyone else of name value losing to Jack who at the very least will continue to hold on to the title until Christmas.

Hirata would end up being the first one thrown into a glass board in the corner early on by Jack. Jack would then place the other glass board on a stack of chairs and place Hirata under it while going up to the top, but Hirata would roll out and go up to the top and powerslam Jack through the second glass board instead. Hirata would then hit Jack with a German Suplex and cover him with Jack kicking out. Hirata would then go up to the top for a moonsault, but Jack would get his knees up. Jack would then pull out a bottle of tequila and smash it over Hirata's head and then place him in the Mexican Stretch with Hirata having to tap out at 21 minutes, 47 seconds to give Jack his second successful title defense.

The semi-main event would be Jun Kasai and Takashi Sasaki taking on Toru Sugiura and Daisuke Masaoka in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Weapons Death Match. Masaoka would end up getting on top of a ladder that would have light tubes attached to it and drop it down on Kasai's body, followed by Sugiura hitting a Reverse Tiger Driver on Kasai, and then place a chair with light tubes attached to it to Kasai, and go for a running elbow, but he would be met with Kasai taking the chair and just throwing it at Sugiura's head with the light tubes shattering with Sugiura no selling. Kasai and Sugiura would exchange strikes to one another, with Kasai giving Sugiura a head butt, and then a punch knocking Sugiura down. Kasai would then follow that up by hitting a Pearl Harbor Splash on Sugiura, but Masaoka would manage to make the save for him. Sasaki though would then take care of Masaoka with a D-Geist as Kasai would nail Sugiura with a Cross-Arm Stimulation Piledriver on the razor board to cover him and get the win over Sugiura at 18 minutes, 46 seconds as it seems like the shine of Sugiura's 21 month title run is completely off him at this point.

Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki would defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against Mammoth Sasaki and Takahiro Katori as Katori and Ueki would both go up to the top turnbuckle with Mammoth coming over and powerbombing his partner Katori at the same time that Katori would end up superplexing Ueki off the top turnbuckle. Katori would then get on Mammoth's back as Mammoth would splash Ueki as they would both lay on top of Ueki with Sakuda making the save for his partner. Katori would then go up to the top for a frog splash, but he would come down on Ueki's knees followed by Ueki hitting Katori with a facebuster. Ueki would then place Katori's head inside an animal cage and place a concrete block on top of the cage cage, and take another block and smash it causing both blocks to explode down on Katori's head. Ueki would then pick Katori up and nail him with a Death Valley Bomb and cover him to get the win at 18 minutes, 28 seconds to successfully defend the tag team titles for the second time for the ERE team.

Masashi Takeda would take on the now mask less Dragon Libre who after having his mask ripped off at the September 16th Shin-Kiba show now seems to be going without the mask going forward. This would be a Hardcore Match with like I said would happen last week, Takeda just destroying, bloody, and torturing Libre until putting away Libre at 9 minutes, 48 seconds with a Face Attack. GENTARO, Yuya Susumu, and Kengo would defeat Kenji Fukimoto, Kamui, and Rina Yamashita when Susumu would make Kamui tap out at 9 minutes, 19 seconds to the Cross Facelock. The opening match would have Kumamoto based wrestlers Vent Vert Jack and Vent Vert Negro who are two very talented high flying independent wrestlers team up with Yo-sei*Estella take on and defeat Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Rekka when Negro would get the win at 8 minutes, 53 seconds after hitting a Diving Seont on Kei to get the upset win. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 10/3/21 Korakuen Hall show.

FREEDOMS announced the lineup for their upcoming Shin-Kiba 1st Ring show on October 10, 2021. The main event will be Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki taking on Toru Sugiura, Daisuke Masaoka, and Tomoya Hirata in a Death Match as it looks like they are going to go with Jack vs. Masaoka for the November Korakuen Hall show before going with Jack vs. Kasai at the Christmas Korakuen show. The semi-main event will be Jun Kasai and Rina Yamashita taking on Masashi Takeda and Orca Uto in a Death Match. Takashi Sasaki, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, and Takahiro Katori will take on Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Leo Isaka. Mammoth Sasaki will face off against Dragon Libre in a singles match and the opening match will be GENTARO, Kenji Fukimoto, and Kamui taking on Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Rekka.

Jun Kasai's annual Bloody Halloween show will take place on October 17, 2021 at the Osaka Active Square Daito. The main event will be Jun Kasai, Toru Sugiura, and Tomoya Hirata taking on ERE's Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Death Match. The semi-main event will be Daisuke Masaoka and Kamui going up against Toshiyuki Sakuda and Orca Uto in a Death Match. Kenji Fukimoto and Rina Yamashita will team up as they take on the returning Gunso and his old friend Mataro Aoki. Naoki Tanizaki will face off against Takahiro Katori. Takashi Sasaki, GENTARO, and Dyna Mido will have a comedy match with Mammoth Sasaki, Dragon Libre, and Idea. The opening match will see Yuya Susumu and Kengo going up against Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei.

Although Minoru Fujita has never officially stated he has tested positive for COVID, all signs are pointing to that being the reason that he will be out for an extended period of time. He has just gone on the record stating he is sick. Fujita competed for the Colega Pro promotion for three straight days in Osaka from September 6th through September 8th with his last opponent being Ryoji Sai who now runs the promotion. Fujita was suppose to work the September 9th show, but was force to cancel with no explanation, but gave an apology. It would be later revealed that a wide spread outbreak had taken place at the Colega promotion, with many people upset with how the promotion handled their safety measurements during a pandemic. FREEDOMS then announced that Fujita would not be competing for their September 16th Shin-Kiba show because of Fujita coming in close contact with someone that had tested positive.

Fujita would then tweet on October 1st stating that he did not believe he would be able to make any of his October bookings and that he would be doing a Twitcast broadcast for his fans later that night to just show his status. Fujita would show in the video him at the hospital with nose tubes inserted in him to help him breath. Fujita stated he went into the ICU on September 20th due to not feeling like he could breathe. He has since been moved to the general ward and has been able to relax and that's why he was able to make the video and show his condition to his fans. Fujita stated it is intention to return to the ring, but you can take this for however you like as he knows wrestlers do not usually look like this. Fujita has not given any update since the October 1st video.

Added: 9/28

Atsushi Onita returned to Kawasaki Stadium for the first time in a year for DDT's big Peter Pan show on August 21, 2021. Onita had made his return to Kawasaki Stadium after a 18 year absence from the building back in August 2020 after a 18 year absence as he participated for the Hard Hit's promotion running a wrestling show in the building for the first time since 2004. Onita had requested that he open the show to allow time for his technicians to work on setting up the exploding barbed wire bat, so that it would not halt the show as it is typically done during intermission before the main event to give his crew time.

This match was setup back in 2020 as Atsushi Onita was having special exploding bat matches in different locations all through out Tokyo every couple of months for DDT. For his August 27, 2020 match at the Nerima Toshimaen Amusement Park, the heel team has Japanese comedian Kuro-chan on their side with Onita wanting Kuro-chan in the match with Kuro-chan refused. Kuro-chan would then end up interfering with Onita bringing him in the match and Onita would end up getting the pin over him for the win. That lead to Onita facing off against Kuro-chan in a singles match on December 23, 2020 at the Solomachi Skytree Tower with Kuro-chan having help from the backup he brought to the match to get the pin over Onita in a singles match for the first time in over three years. Onita would vow for revenge against Kuro-chan which would set this match up as Onita would team up with Sanshiro Takagi, Akito, and Maki Itoh to take on Kuro-chan, Super Sasadango Machine, Tetsuhiro Kuroda, and Hikari Noa in a Exploding Bat Death Match.

The match would start with Onita going after Kuro-chan to the outside and hitting him with a weak looking bell shot. They would get back in the ring with Onita turning on the exploding bat but Kuro-chan would end up grabbing Noa to shield himself as Sasadango would come in and hit Onita as Kuroda would take the bat from him and give it to Kuro-chan would nail Onita with it and cover him but Takagi would manage to make the save. Kuro-chan would then get on top of Onita and begin slapping him as Noa would end up turning on the exploding bat and nailing Takagi with it. Onita would get up and grab Kuroda as his Akito and Itoh would setup a table as Onita would end up piledriving Kuroda through it with the table barely breaking. Maki Itoh would then turn on the exploding bat and pick it and go to nail Noa with it, but she would duck and pick up her own exploding bat as they would swing and hit each others bats with the explosion knocking them both down. Onita and Kuro-chan would then get back in the ring with Kuro-chan picking up a chair so Onita would simply just pick up the exploding bat and activate it although Kuro-chan would go for the chair shot first but be met with a low blow from Itoh as Onita would nail the chair he was holding with the exploding bat and then cover Kuro-chan to get the win at 9 minutes, 35 seconds to finally close the Onita/Kuro-chan feud. Onita and Takagi would take him to the back and pour water over his head as Kuro-chan would beg for forgiveness. Click here to watch Atsushi Onita, Sanshiro Takagi, Akito, and Maki Itoh vs. Kuro-chan, Super Sasadango Machine, Tetsuhiro Kuroda, and Hikari Noah from August 21, 2021 at Kawasaki Stadium.

Atsushi Onita would then return to Kawasaki Stadium the next night for Hard Hit's return to the building on August 22, 2021 for Hikaru Sato's 21.5 Anniversary show. The team of Atsushi Onita, Naoshi, and their Mystery Partner Yoshitatsu would end up defeating Hideki "Shrek" Sekine, Takuya Wada, and Takahiro Tababa in a Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat Death Match with Onita getting the win at 11 minutes, 31 seconds after nailing Tababa with the bat and pinning him. Onita afterwards would challenge Hikaru Sato to a future match for the promotion.

FMW-E ran their third show entitled "Battle Royal" on September 12, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market on September 12, 2021 with an announced crowd of 400 fans which announced wise is down from the 425 that they announced for the first show. The main event would be Atsushi Onita taking on Shadow WX going by his new Mr. Pogo persona in a Exploding Barbed wire although the exploding barbed wire would not actually go off during the match, Exploding Landmines, and Exploding Baseball Bat and Exploding Chair Death Match.

Pogo would end up spitting red mist in Onita's face and then do the old Pogo sickle through Onita's back spot before throwing Onita to the apron and turning on the exploding barbed wire bat and nail him with the bat before kicking him down the apron and sending him into the exploding land mines. Onita would get back in the ring but just be hit over the head with the exploding chair and cover him but Onita would kick out. Pogo would turn the exploding bat back on but Onita would get up and spit red mist in his face and smash him over the back with the exploding bat and cover him to get the win at 13 minutes, 45 seconds for yet another Onita win over the Mr. Pogo name. Abdullah Kobayashi would then come to the ring upset that Onita had changed the main event on him as it was originally suppose to be a tag team match with Onita and Suzu Suzuki taking on Abdullah Kobayashi and Risa Sera, but Onita would counter that he made the right booking decision changing the main event. Kobayashi would then push Onita in the corner and he would awkwardly stand there as Shadow WX would then spit another fireball at him with his jacket catching on fire with HASEGAWA others would come over and pour water on him as Onita would cut a promo about coming to America to have an Explosion Match on October 31st.

Abdullah Kobayashi and Risa Sera's match would be moved to the semi-main event due to the booking decision as they instead would take on Isami Kodaka and Suzu Suzuki in a Exploding Barbed wire Bat Death Match. Suzuki would end up turning on the exploding bat but before she could hit Sera with it, Kobayashi would end up turning it off. Kobayashi would then come in and knock both Kodaka and Suzuki down and deliver a double elbow drop on them before picking them up as Sera would turn on the exploding bat as Kobayashi would hold both of them with Sera nailing both of them with the exploding bat with Sera covering Suzuki and getting the win at 13 minutes, 11 seconds as Kobayashi and Sera would cut a promo afterwards showing their frustration at Onita pushing them down the card with Kobayashi stating he would confront Onita about this.

The Explosion Princess Tournament would begin on the show, but only one of the two scheduled matches would take place as it would be announced prior to the show that Akane Fujita would not be available to participate and Madeleine would win their scheduled match by forfeit and advance to the semi-finals. The one tournament on the show would be Miss Mongol taking on Ann Cham in a Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat Death Match. Cham would turn on the exploding bat but Mongol would duck her swing and and back drop her and then pick up the bat and nail her with it and pin her at 14 minutes, 1 second to advance to the semi-finals.

Another Hideki Hosaka Memorial was held to allow the more home based fans of the promotion in Yokohama a chance to honor Hosaka as well as be able to donate to his family following his passing. Raijin Yaguchi who has not worked with Atsushi Onita since Onita's 2017 retirement participated on this show as Onita, Yaguchi, and Hosaka were a regular team through out 2012 to 2017. The Hideki Hosaka Memorial Match was originally suppose to be a 6 man match but was turned into a 9 Man Battle Royal with Atsushi Onita, Ricky Fuji, Mammoth Sasaki, Kazuki Enosawa, Yuichi Taniguchi, Raijin Yaguchi, HASEGAWA, and Pandita. Raijin Yaguchi would end up picking up the win at 6 minutes, 16 seconds after last eliminating HASEGAWA and Pandita. The opening match would see Yuichi Taniguchi, Naoshi Sano, and Takumi Sakurai defeat Monster Leather, Mr. Atomic, and Toshiya Kawarai when Sano pinned Kawarai at 8 minutes, 7 seconds with a Gannosuke Clutch. This show ended up airing 2 weeks after the show originally took place compared to the first two shows that were live broadcasts. The price for the shows going forward seems to be $20 dollars compared to the first show that was $10 dollars. I saw a little bit more talk of people buying this show compared to the August Osaka show, but nothing compared to the first show in July which most likely no show will ever come close to touching as far as buys go. Onita had stated that 60% of the buys for the first show took place in the United States. Click here to watch highlights of the FMW-E 9/12/21 show.

The only match announced so far for the next FMW-E show for October 24, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market is going to be Atsushi Onita and Sanshiro Takagi teaming up to take on Mr. Pogo and Abdullah Kobayashi in what will most likely be another exploding barbed wire, landmines death match.

The joint FMW-E/H2O show will take place on October 31, 2021 at the Trenton Thunder Ball Park in New Jersey. This will be similar to the GCW shows in Japan last year where FREEDOMS pretty much did all the leg work to get the show off the ground, but GCW sending its wrestlers and being the reason the show drew obviously got a good deal of the cut of the profits. Matt Tremont's H2O promotion did most of the heavy lifting to secure the building that will allow the types of explosives that Onita has requested, but Onita will be making a good percentage of the profits with him being the key draw of the show. Tremont was able to book the Trenton Thunder Ball Park which has about 6,150 seats with a good majority of the tickets being sold within the first 24 hours and the first two rows of the front being sold out immediately.

Tremont has stated that he has came out of retirement to have this match which Atsushi Onita has wanted to do since the 1990's. This is mostly correct, but Onita in the 90's and 2000's goal was to have an exploding ring death match for the first time in America and this show will not have that. This will have Atsushi Onita taking on Matt Tremont in a Exploding Barbed wire (barbed wire wrapped around the ropes), exploding landmines (the exploding barbed wire boards outside the ring), and the exploding baseball bat and most likely the exploding chair as well. This will be what the FMW-E promotion has been doing for all their shows. This crew has not put together an exploding ring before, and there has been no announcement or any sign that it would be an exploding ring match. Like I mentioned last update, Onita's explosive technician crew will be flown in for the show as well all the explosives from Japan will be coming with them.

The only other FMW-E wrestler announced so far coming to the show will be HASEGAWA who will be coming in with the explosive crew. The only other match announced so far will be a Hideki Hosaka Memorial Battle Royal. This match will probably be a mix of H2O and any of the FMW-E wrestlers that would be appearing on the show would participate in. The rest of the matches would be H2O matches. The only draw back to holding the show outside in the stadium is it being late October in New Jersey so the weather could possibly be rather uncomfortable depending on the day. The averages around this time are around the mid 40s to mid 50s. The show will also have a late start of 8 pm so it will be dark already at the start of the show, so there won't even be any sun out to start the show. I have purchased a second row ticket and look forward to the trip itself and getting to see a bunch of people there as well as my first actual explosion death match live.

Jun Kasai would promote his Osaka Death Match Carnival show on August 22, 2021 at the Osaka Active Square Daito announcing a crowd of 292 fans for the show. The main event would be Masashi Takeda taking on Daisuke Masaoka in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Fork Board Death Match.

Takeda would try to powerbomb Daisuke Masaoka onto the fork board, but Masaoka would manage to get away and drop kick Takeda sending him into the fork board instead. Masaoka would then suplex Takeda on a stack of light tubes, followed by going up to the top and hitting him with a Rokkura Kai Knee Drop and cover Takeda, but only get a two count. Masaoka would then take Takeda up to the top and look for a Spanish Fly, but Takeda would block it and then get down on the behind Masaoka and place a stack of light tubes across the back of his arms and deliver a powerbomb to him off the turnbuckle breaking the light tube against him. Takeda would then set up another stack of light tubes and deliver a kick breaking it across Masaoka and then follow that up with a Reverse U Crash to get the win at 15 minutes, 17 seconds over Masaoka as Takeda once again defeats Masaoka with his title match against Violento Jack coming up the following week.

The semi-main event would be Jun Kasai and Kamui taking on Violento Jack and Toshiyuki Sakuda in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. Kasai would end up powerbombing Sakuda and then go up to the top turnbuckle and hit a Pearl Harbor Splash on him, and then hold onto Sakuda as Kamui would deliver a Swanton Bomb onto him and cover him, but Jack would manage to make the save for his partner. Kamui would then climb up a ladder with Jack coming over and beginning to shake it, before climbing it up as well and superplexing Kamui off of the ladder, which would then lead to Sakuda delivering a Senton with a light tube off the ladder to get the pin over Kamui at 18 minutes, 2 seconds for the ERE win.

Mammoth Sasaki and Shigehiro Irie would team up to take on Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata when Irie putting Hirata away at 13 minutes, 40 seconds with the Beast Bomber. Gunso and Naoki Tanizaki would defeat Minoru Fujita and Kenji Fukimoto at 10 minutes, 53 seconds with Gunso putting his former Unchain partner away with the Jorge Clutch. Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Kenshin Chikano would defeat Takashi Sasaki, Guruken Mask, and Takahiro Katori when Susumu would make Katori tap out at 14 minutes, 34 seconds with the Cross Facelock. The opening match would see GENTARO, Osaka based wrestler Idea, and Rekka defeat Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and other Osaka based wrestler Dyna Mido when GENTARO would pick up the win at 8 minutes, 24 seconds after pinning Mido with the Delfin Clutch for the Osaka audience. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 8/22/21 show.

Jun Kasai promoted his Tokyo Death Match Carnival Volume 2 on August 30, 2021 at Tokyo's Korakuen Hall announcing a crowd of 659 fans which is actually less than the July Korakuen Hall show which marks the first time that has happened since they started doing July and August Korakuen Hall shows in 2017 as the August show is typically the biggest or second biggest show behind the Christmas show for the year. The main event would be Violento Jack defending his King of Freedom World Championship against Masashi Takeda in a 4 Corner Weapons Death Match.

The match would start with Takeda grabbing a stack of light tubes and just tossing them right at Jack as he was entering the ring. Takeda would take Jack into the corner and manage to Spider German Suplex into the first glass board set up on a stack of chairs. They would then fight on the apron with Jack picking Takeda up and hit a rolling fireman's carry sending Takeda through the other glass board to the outside on a stack of chairs. They would get back in the ring with Jack grabbing a stack of light tubes and charging at Takeda but Takeda would move out of the way and deliver a back hand breaking the stack of light tubes across Jack's head and then hit a Package Piledriver on Jack on another stack of light tubes and cover him for a two count. Takeda would then go for a Reverse U Crash, but Jack would counter and hit him with the move instead. Jack would then pick Takeda up and deliver a Package Piledriver which would finish him off to get the win at 20 minutes, 15 seconds to get the win and to defend the King of Freedom World Championship for the first time. Afterwards, Takashi Sasaki, Jun Kasai, Toru Sugiura would come to the ring and want to become the next challenger for the title before Tomoya Hirata would appear as well, which would get a surprise reaction from the crowd as he would throw his name in the hat of wanting to be Jack's next challenger for the October Korakuen Hall show.

The semi-main event would be Jun Kasai taking on Takayuki Ueki in a Barefoot Thumbtacks Death Match. Kasai would go up to the top for a Pearl Harbor Splash, but Ueki would move out of the way, and as Ueki would get up to charge at Kasai with a stack of light tubes in his hands, he would be met with a drop kick from Kasai which would break the light tubes across him. Kasai would then bring out the container with thumbtacks and go for an enziguri, but miss it and land on the thumbtacks instead. Ueki would then make the mistake of trying to dive onto Kasai as he would move out of the way and Ueki would land on them instead. They would both get up with Ueki delivering a jaw breaker to Kasai, with his own knees landing on the thumbtacks, before hitting a DDT which would send Kasai head first into the thumbtacks. Ueki would then hit Kasai with a Death Valley Bomb on the thumbtacks and cover him but Kasai would manage to kick out. Kasai would then end up fighting back through the pain and take off his pants and hit a Reverse Tiger Driver sending Ueki into the thumbtacks as he would cover him and for the win at 15 minutes, 17 seconds in a gimmick match that Kasai has gone on record as hating to do because of how much the thumbtacks getting stuck to their feet actually hurts and limits their movement, but it just looks like a comedy spot to the fan watching and isn't taken as serious by how much it actually hurts the wrestler.

The newest member of the ERE would make his debut for FREEDOMS as Orca Uto who left Big Japan in 2020 would join the group teaming with Toshiyuki Sakuda as they would defeat Takashi Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka in a Construction Death Match with Sakuda getting the win at 10 minutes, 1 second with his Sakauchi over Masaoka.

Toru Sugiura, Tomoya Hirata, and Dragon Libre would defeat Minoru Fujita, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita in a Hardcore Match after Hirata would end up picking up the win at 12 minutes, 9 seconds after pinning Fukimoto with a German Suplex. Tatsuhito Takaiwa would successfully defend the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title after putting Rekka away at 11 minutes, 16 seconds after nailing him with a Death Valley Bomb off the turnbuckle to successfully defend the title for the second time. The opening match would see GENTARO, Yuya Susumu, and Kengo defeat Mammoth Sasaki, Kamui, and Takahiro Katori when GENTARO would get the pinfall at 10 minutes, 8 seconds after rolling Katori up with an inside cradle for the win. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 8/30/21 Korakuen Hall show.

FREEDOMS would return to the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring on September 16, 2021 for Takashi Sasaki's 25th Anniversary with the show drawing a sell out crowd of 159 fans for the show. The main event would be Sasaki's 25th Anniversary Match as it would be Takashi Sasaki teaming up with Jun Kasai to take on Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match with the winner of the fall getting a shot at the King of Freedom World Championship at the next Korakuen Hall show.

Takashi Sasaki would end up laying Hirata down during the match and place a light tube next to his head and kick it breaking it across Hirata's head with Sugiura having to make the save for his partner. Sasaki would then take a LED light and turn it on and try to knee that into Hirata, but Hirata would move out of the way and pick up Sasaki and instead drop Sasaki on the light breaking it across his back. Hirata would then nail Sasaki with a German Suplex and follow that up by hitting his first Moonsault on Sasaki to get the win over Sasaki at 23 minutes, 38 seconds to earn himself a shot at the King of Freedom World Championship against Violento Jack on October 3rd with Jack coming to the ring and holding the belt up high in front of Hirata.

The semi-main event would be Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, and Takayuki Ueki defeating Unchain's Kenji Fukimoto, Kamui, and Rina Yamashita in a Junkyard Death Match with Fujita originally suppose to be in the match for the Unchain team, but having to be removed after coming in close contact with someone that tested positive for COVID. The ERE team would end up picking up the win after Jack would end up making Yamashita tap out at 14 minutes, 46 seconds after making her tap out to the Mexican Stretch.

Mammoth Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka would team up to take on Toshiyuki Sakuda and Orca Uto in a Hardcore Match. Mammoth would end up taking a ladder and smash it over both Uto and Sakuda's head before just handing them the ladder and rushing into it which would knock them both down. Uto would counter by kicking Mammoth low and hitting him with a clothesline followed by Sakuda taking a chair and smashing it over Masaoka's head and charge at Masaoka, but Masaoka would end up out of nowhere roll Sakuda up with a Tornado Clutch at 11 minutes, 28 seconds to pick up the win over Sakuda to avenge the pinfall loss at Korakuen Hall.
Tatsuhito Takaiwa would also defeat Takahiro Katori at 9 minutes, 5 seconds with a Death Valley Bomb and the opening match would be Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Rekka defeating GENTARO, Dragon Libre, and Leo Isaka with Kengo getting the win at 10 minutes, 10 seconds after making Libre tap out to the STF. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 9/16/21 show.

FREEDOMS would return to the Yokohama Radiant Hall on September 25, 2021 where they would announce a crowd of 112 fans for the show. The main event would be Violento Jack and Orca Uto taking on Takashi Sasaki and Tomoya Hirata to help setup the Jack vs. Hirata match scheduled for October 3rd at Korakuen Hall. Violento Jack would end up setting Hirata up on the top turnbuckle, but he would end up kicking Jack down and then deliver a flying drop kick to Jack, and follow that up with a German Suplex, but Jack would get up and nail Hirata with a lariat as Uto would come in and look to hook Hirata's arm for a possible Tiger Suplex, but Hirata would flip him over instead. Hirata would then go up to the top and nail Uto with a Moonsault and cover him and get the win at 17 minutes, 14 seconds to help build up Hirata as Jack would again get right next to him and show off the King of Freedom World Championship.

The semi-main event would be Jun Kasai teaming up with Kamui and Kenji Fukimoto taking on Toru Sugiura, Daisuke Masaoka, and Dragon Libre in a Hardcore Match which would see Libre get his mask torn off early and bloodied. Kasai would then deliver a German Suplex on Masaoka on a ladder before trying to hit a Reverse Tiger Driver on him when the bloody Libre would come off the top rope with a flying drop kick nailing Kasai in the back. Sugiura would then place the ladder over Kasai's body as Libre would nail a Frog Splash on him. Libre would then charge at Kasai, but be met with a boot to the face and then a piledriver as Kasai would go up to the top and hit a Pearl Harbor Splash on Libre and cover him for the 14 minutes, 36 seconds win for the Unchain team.

Mammoth Sasaki would team up with Tatsuhito Takaiwa and Takahiro Katori to take on Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki with Katori managing to superplex Ueki off the top turnbuckle followed by Mammoth grabbing his partner Katori and powerbombing him onto Ueki before Mammoth would grab Ueki and nail him with the 29 Years Old and cover him to get the win at 12 minutes, 56 seconds with Mammoth challenging Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki for the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles for October 3rd at Korakuen Hall with Takahiro Katori as his partner with the ERE team accepting.

Kengo replacing Minoru Fujita would team up with Rina Yamashita would defeat Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei as Yamashita would counter the Nobody's Pefect and get the pin over Kei with the Gotai Manzoku which translates into "Perfect" for the win. Yuya Susumu and Shuichi Katsumara would pick up the win over GENTARO and Rekka with Katsumara getting Rekka to tap out at 11 minutes, 44 seconds to the Ninja Chalk in the opening match. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 9/25/21 show.

FREEDOMS will hold their 12th Anniversary show on October 3, 2021 at Korakuen Hall. The main event will be Violento Jack defending his King of Freedom World Championship against Tomoya Hirata in a Death Match in what almost certainly be a successful title defense for Jack here, but will also move up Hirata in the eyes as fans as more than just an opening match guy since he made his debut 4 years ago. The show will probably take a hit financially, but now is the time with 50% still only being allowed in the building anyway. Jun Kasai and Takashi Sasaki will take on Toru Sugiura and Daisuke Masaoka will be the semi-main event in a Death Match in what be the match that leads to what the main event of the November Korakuen Hall show will be. Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki will defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against Mammoth Sasaki and Takahiro Katori. Masashi Takeda will destroy Dragon Libre in a Hardcore Match. The opening match will be Kamui, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita taking on GENTARO, Yuya Susumu, and Kengo.

The A-Team returned back to their home of the Tokyo Kitansenju White Studio and announced 50 fans for their show on August 22, 2021. The main event saw Tatsuhito Takaiwa successfully defend his WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title for a third time after defeating HASEGAWA at 17 minutes, 39 seconds with a Death Valley Bomb. Daisaku Shimoda and Iori Sugawara defeated Raiden and Hashinosuke when Shimoda pinned Hashinosuke at 17 minutes, 37 seconds with a Backdrop to become the WEW Tag Team Champions. Hashinosuke was subbing for Joji Otani who was a last minute scratch from the show. Super Tiger would defend his WEW Heavyweight Title after defeating Kosaku Tonosaki at 13 minutes, 48 seconds with a Tombstone Piledriver to defend the title for the third time. MIKAMI, Hirosi Yamato, and TORU would defeat Takumi Sakurai, Bryan Ishizaka, and Hashinosuke when TORU would get the win at 13 minutes, 2 seconds putting Sakurai away with a Frankensteiner. Gajo would defeat Jin at 13 minutes, 22 seconds after making him tap out to a Backbreaker. The opening match would see Tomohiko Hashimoto and Masahiro Sase defeat Raito Shimizu and Kenya Maeda when Sase would pin Maeda at 8 minutes, 49 seconds with a Diving Body Press for the win.

The next months A-Team show would take place on September 26, 2021 at the Tokyo Kitasenju Whito Studio announcing 50 fans again. The main event would be HASEGAWA and Masahiro Sase defeating Takumi Sakurai and Jin in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Barbed wire Board Death Match with HASEGAWA pinning Jin at 24 minutes, 48 seconds with a diving foot stomp on both the barbed wire board and some light tubes to get the victory. Tatsuhito Takaiwa would defeat MIKAMI at 18 minutes, 42 seconds after finishing him off with a Death Valley Bomb to successfully defend the title for the fourth time. It will be interesting to see Takaiwa will end up losing the belt to as MIKAMI is the only one in the promotion with the status that Takaiwa would even allow himself to lose to. Tomohiko Hashimoto and Gajo would defeat Daisaku Shimoda and Iori Sugawara to win the WEW Tag Team Titles after Gajo would pin Sugawara at 14 minutes, 12 seconds after hitting him with a Diving Body Press. Hashimoto now becomes a 9 time WEW Tag Team Champion. Super Tiger would make short work of Chikara and defeat him at 5 minutes, 44 seconds to defend the WEW Heavyweight Title for the fourth time after putting him away with a Tombstone Piledriver. Raiden, Joji Otani, and Grand Masaru would defeat TORU, Rion Mizuki, and Akiyori Takizawa when Raiden would pinned Takizawa at 11 minutes, 52 seconds with a Tiger Driver. The opening match would have Bryan Ishizaka and Hashinosuke defeat Kosaku Tonozaki and Kenya Maeda with Hashinosuke pinning Maeda at 16 minutes, 34 seconds after getting the win with a Swanton Bomb.

Kintaro Kanemura appeared for Big Japan Pro-Wrestling on September 20, 2021 at the Sapporo Chateraise Gateaux Kingdom for the first time for the promotion in over 13 years.

Kintaro Kanemura started working for Big Japan at the start of 2000 while being a contracted FMW wrestler. Kanemura did not want to give up his very financial beneficial contract he had with FMW, but he wanted to go back to working the style of Death Matches he was not getting to work in FMW. Fuyuki gave him permission, but stated if he missed one FMW show because of this arrangement, his contract would be terminated. Kanemura continued to work through Big Japan regularly as FMW folded although Kanemura ended up needing to work with ZERO-ONE through his friend with Masato Tanaka to make the money he was use to while in FMW as he was never going to get that in Big Japan.

Kanemura because he already had name value coming into Big Japan and had made friends with all the wrestlers was given much power. He was able to get his Apache Army members who were not going to make a living working for his promotion booked regularly in Big Japan for years. This included Takashi Sasaki who had became one of the top stars in Big Japan having even won their Death Match Title so it was a win win working relationship for everyone.

That was until January 20, 2008 at a joint Big Japan and Kaientai Dojo show at the Chiba Blue Field. Kanemura showed up to the building still drunk from drinking sake all night. He noticed the young female Big Japan e-newsletter worker backstage and in front of all the wrestlers began to touch her and speak to her inappropriately in front of the wrestlers backstage.

The woman went to Big Japan President Eiji Tosaka and told her about the incident. Tosaka did not want to do anything about it though. She threatened to go public with his response being that if she went public, then everyone would lose. The woman stated she could not continue work with Kanemura still there going unpunished.

The woman ended up going to Big Japan Blogger Murakami who ended up going public with the story on February 16, 2008 which would result in both of them getting fired the next day. Murakami still having access to the Big Japan blog would post that the woman would be going to the Chiba Police about the incident although that never ended up actually happening.

The story was beginning to pick up as Big Japan tried to do damage control and sent out Ryuji Ito and Jaki Numazawa to try and do PR at a press conference. They stated that Kintaro Kanemura had been suspended from Big Japan and that the reason they were waiting to make this announcement was they wanted all the details before making such a decision which Murakami the blogger would state was simply not true.

The story would be picked up by mainstream news outlets which would cause Big Japan to announce that Kintaro Kanemura would be banned from the promotion for good. Kintaro Kanemura's Apache Army would also announce that it would be shutting down although they would start back up 4 months later with Takashi Sasaki in charge.

Eiji Tosaka would announce due to his lack of punishment originally for the Kanemura incident he would be stepping down as booker of Big Japan with Shadow WX taking over for him. Shadow would need help though as he could not commit all his time to booking every show due to wrestling on all the shows and Tosaka would end up helping him with the booking. Shadow would then end up booking himself as Big Japan Death Match Champion three months later while booker with the idea of having a 7 month reign as champion before giving the belt to the young upstart Yuko Miyamoto at the end of the year, and then would state he just could not find the time to book while as champion even with Tosaka's help and Tosaka would end up taking back over officially as booker in September 2008.

Kintaro Kanemura would be radioactive for a month with all promotions until Masao Orihara would decide to book Kanemura for his Mobius promotion which would eventually get Kanemura back in the door to be booked by most every promotion he had previously worked for although nowhere near the same amount of bookings that he was getting prior to the incident and he was never allowed in Big Japan nor Takashi Sasaki's Apache Army. Kanemura though would end up showing up at the end of an Apache Army show in May 2009 though which their sponsor would pull out of as a result forcing Sasaki to find another sponsor which would result in the creation of FREEDOMS.

Kanemura would never be charged for the incident, but instead would end up paying the woman a settlement. Kanemura would ask to meet with the woman privately after the settlement which she would agree to, and the two would talk with Kanemura apologizing to her with the woman accepting it and stating she forgave Kanemura.

Kanemura would remain banned from Big Japan for the rest of his career but would get permission to have Daisuke Sekimoto who is a long time friend of Kanemura to wrestle at his retirement show on December 27, 2016 at Korakuen Hall.

Kanemura's appearance in Big Japan would be surprise as Ryuji Yamakawa who lives in the Sapporo area now would first come out to the ring at the start of the show before announcing Kintaro Kanemura with Kanemura coming to the ring with cain and a Big Japan t-shirt. Eiji Tosaka would also come into the ring and Kanemura, Yamakawa, and Tosaka would all do the Team No Respect Brief Brother Dance together.

Kanemura afterwards would state that he had been invited as a guest from the promotion and hung out backstage mostly with Daisuke Sekimoto, Ryota Hama, and Kazuki Hashimoto. Sekimoto had asked Kanemura for a cigarette as Kanemura has been a notable heavy smoker for his entire career with Kanemura stating he had to give it up due to his health issues over the past couple of years. Kanemura thanked Big Japan for having him as it brought back many memories. Click here to watch Kintaro Kanemura's return in Big Japan from 9/20/21.

Last week I was able to complete the History of FMW podcast after completing the 50th episode. I do plan on doing a "Untold Stories" episode in a couple of months as I do want to go to back and go over some stuff that I missed as I have learned a lot of new stuff about FMW and all of the FMW centered episodes were recorded in 2017-2018. I wanted to talk about the history of the show here as it was something that I spent god knows how much time on over the last four years creating it.

The show started after I got back from the CZW "Once in a Lifetime" show with Onita vs. Tremont in August 2017. Steven Ayy messaged me wanting to do a interview with me talking about me going over the show in New Jersey,  but also wanted to talk about me covering FMW for as long as I have on this website. It was only my second recorded interview at the time and the first one about myself, so I am sure it's not that great. I never went back to listen to it and Steven ended up later posting it as History of FMW Episode 0, but I never bothered to turn it into a video, although I think it can still be found online

After doing the show, Steven came up with the idea of doing a weekly show where we just go over every year of FMW for his podcast station and his YouTube channel. The first would be about all the FMW wrestlers before the beginning of FMW, and when he sent me the questions, it was huge challenge for me, as it required a lot of detail and I really did not consider myself an expert to any Pre-FMW information and just kind of knew the basics. So I had to cram and try and find as much information as I could in about 24 hours. Of course, it's 4 years later and this first episode is always the most watched episode by far because it's the first one, and everyone watches/listens in order and a lot just never end up clicking another episode, so of course the most challenging episode for me knowledge wise to show I knew what I was talking about with most of the details that we go over are about stuff that I just was not familiar with as I was either too young or not alive at the time even for a lot of it, and there is just not the outlets to do research for me to do like there is for stuff that happened in the 1990s.

We continued doing the show and I remember really enjoying doing Volume 7 where we went over the first half of 1992 as I loved FMW during that time period and had so much knowledge on it that wasn't commonly known, and I really felt like the show was starting to get good. Of course, the very next episode. I felt like it was the worst episode as I just did not feel like I offered much information, and it was such a run of the mill show to me and the shortest show we did as a result.

We continued on until Volume 17 where Steven stated he no longer wanted to host it on his YouTube channel. I had thought about the idea of doing clips for the show knowing I had everything on a hard drive, but just left it as a thought because of how much time I knew I would be committing to if I started doing it. Steven taking it off his YouTube though, I just felt the show would eventually just vanish if it were to just be a podcast only after awhile and I didn't want that as I felt like we had a show you could go back and watch since it wasn't a "what happened last week" kind of show like most podcasts are so this stuff does not become outdated like most shows.

I decided to go all in and put video clips to the episodes with my first one being for History of FMW Volume 2 which ended up taking up the entire day, but still it only took a day. In comparison for Volume 50, it ended up taking me over a month to just put the clips to the audio. Around this time, the podcast was also moved to the "Death Match Radio" channel and it would be with a bunch of other shows, mostly going over the current American Death Match scene. The channel had an audience for sure, but I don't think really that much of the fan base really cared about a Japanese Wrestling history show. The channel ended up vanishing after a couple of months though, so despite the YouTube videos with clips being added on consumed a lot of my life, I am glad that I did it to have a place for people to still watch it, as otherwise I feel the show would have been lost to time like all the other shows on that channel.

My personal two favorite episodes of the whole series was History of FMW Volume 26 and 27. Going over late 2001 and early 2002. They were incredibly hard to make, especially early 2002 going over FMW's bankruptcy for nearly an hour and having to fill clips for something so big that had no footage to go along with it. I went to bed with headaches for three nights in a row working on that episode, but those are the episodes I am most proud of and would recommend those shows over the first set of episodes any day.

After FMW closed, the show did have an issue as it became harder for Steven to formulate questions. I would end up going into more details of the matches themselves that we were covering to. Steven also began to just simply not have time anymore and ended up leaving the show. He suggested to me two other people to take over for him. One ended getting in some controversy and pissed off a lot of people and ended up deciding to never be seen by internet wrestling fans again, and the other would end up give up podcasting by the end of the year, so I feel like I made the right choice going with my wife Amanda to take over for Steven as the host.

There was some definite issues though going with someone that did not have too much information about what I was going over. We did two live shows going over 2005 and 2006 and her just sitting there listening to me talk for hours was not going to work long term, so I changed it starting with the 2007 episode that we would just tape her questions beforehand and then I would pretty much simply review everything with much more detail based by myself on the shows and give any extra knowledge I had.

The format of the show was much different, but I never really heard any negativity about the changes. The show did become much harder to edit though as now not only did I have edit all the video aspects of the show like usual, but being a taped show, meant I had to edit with the audio a lot more, and my brain is so much different when it knows I am being taped and can go back and re-do things compared to one take, so recording the show became much more difficult than it had been previously.

A lot of people just figured we would end the show after the FMW closing down episode, but I really wanted to continue the show as I felt it needed to go to at least me talking about Hayabusa's passing in 2016. I decided to go all in and go up to 50 episodes where I would finish going over 2020 with the thought that I was finish the episode by the end of 2020. That was me not considering the burn out I would face with the show. Spending so much time on the shows, got it to where I wanted to take longer breaks before starting back up the next episode knowing that it was going to consume so much time in my life, and my plan of finishing Volume 50 going over the year 2020 and releasing it in December 2020 ended up getting pushed back to September 2021 instead.

I talk about it on the last show, but if I were to do Volumes 51 and 52 and go over 2021 and 2022, it would not be until 2023 as I at the very least need a year plus break from doing these style of shows at this point. I also just feel the last episode had a great closing, so I would really have to be itching to come back and do them again if I do.

The only thing especially working on the later episodes, the self doubt of not knowing if anyone even really cares about me going over recent years of course sets in, but since finishing Volume 50 last week, I must say I have been very surprised at how much feedback I have gotten with so many people saying they have watched every episode. I really do appreciate the kind words from everyone, as they are what keep me going from doing all of this at this point, so thank you to everyone who watched and enjoyed the series, it really means a lot.

Added: 8/19

FMW-E would run their second show on August 15, 2021 at the Osaka Tsurumi Green Forest Hana Exhibition Park entitled "BURN OUT" where they would announce a crowd of 750 fans for the outside show.

The fear would be that it would rain through out the show, as Hiroshima which is about 4 hours away, was dealing with horrible flooding. FMW-E had stated they would run the show regardless in the rain outdoors, but they lucked out and everything had cleared out by the day of the show in Osaka. They would announce a crowd of 750 fans for this show.

The show once again aired on ZAIKO although was double the price as the previous show at 2200 yen, but there were not technical issues for this one like there was for the July show. Like I mentioned in my last update, I did not even expect them to live stream this show since it was in Osaka three hours away and outside, so I will give them a pass on this being double the price, and I think the September show will be the tell on if the shows going forward will be in the 10 dollar range like the first or the 20 dollar range like the second one. It is obvious by feedback that this show did nowhere near the buys that the first show did as there was very little talk about it compared to the first one by people online, but it also did not help that the show started at 3:30 am Eastern Standard Time compared to the first show starting at 11:30 pm Eastern Standard Time.

The main event would an Exploding Barbed wire, Exploding Landmines Barricade, Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat, Exploding Table, and Exploding Chair Death Match. It would be Atsushi Onita, Takeshi Okada, and HASEGAWA would take on Shadow WX making his debut under the Mr. Pogo name, Masashi Aoyagi, and Isami Kodaka with Devil Magician in their corner. Aoyagi was the announced mystery opponent as it once again revised the Onita vs. Aoyagi feud that is now 32 years in, but despite the long history between the two, Aoyagi barely played any notable factor in this match with limited interactions with Onita as it was more centered around Onita vs. Shadow WX.

Shadow would blow a Pogo like fireball at Onita, but Onita would be prepared this time and block it with a chair before smashing Shadow over the head with the chair and both would end up going into the exploding barbed wire together. Aoyagi would wear a mask during the match would begin laying kicks to Okada before delivering a high kick to him which is impressive considering Aoyagi's age and the motorcycle accident he went through a couple of years ago.

Onita would turn on the exploding bat and end up hitting Devil Magician with it and then piledrive Kodaka through the exploding table. Onita and Shadow would then begin to brawl on the apron trying to knock one another down into the exploding landmine barricades when Kodaka would get up and drop kick both of them as they both would end up falling into the landmines.

Kodaka in the ring would then grab both Okada and HASEGAWA and run them into the exploding barbed wire and then when Onita would get back in the ring he would be hit with the exploding bat by Kodaka with Onita kicking out when Kodaka would cover him. Onita would then charge at Kodaka who would move out of the way with Onita going into the exploding barbed wire again. Kodaka would then grab a hold of Onita as Shadow would smash an exploding chair over Onita's head and cover Onita to get the win at 13 minutes, 6 seconds in only Onita's second pinfall loss since coming back out of his latest retirement in 2018. Click  here to watch highlights of the main event from the FMW-E 8/15/21 show.

The semi-main event on the show would be an Osaka based match with the former Asian Cougar going by Kuuga and Andy Wu defeating Magnitude Kishiwada and Yoshihiro Horaguchi when Wu picking up the win at 13 minutes, 2 seconds after hitting a Running Knee on Horaguchi for the win. Magnitude Kishiwada was one of two former FMW wrestler besides Onita to compete on this show. The FREEDOMS team of Daisuke Masaoka and Kamui who are both based out of the Osaka region would defeat Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei when Kamui would hit a Swanton Bomb to get the win at 7 minutes, 28 seconds over Kei. The other former FMW wrestler Drake Morimatsu would team up with Sae as they would lose to Ranmaru and Momoka Hanzono when Hanzono would get the pinfall at 12 minutes, 12 seconds after rolling Sae up with a cradle. Tomohiko Hashimoto and Maku Donaruto would defeat Naoshi Sano and Raito Shimizu when Donaruto would get the win at 10 minutes, 59 seconds with a Seijoui over Shimizu. An Actwres girl'Z Offer Match would have SAKI defeat Yuko Sakurai at 7 minutes, 52 seconds with a Brainbuster. The opening match would be a SHI-EN Offer Match with Yosuke Takii defeated Tetsuya Goto at 6 minutes, 6 seconds after making him tap out to a Single Leg Crab hold.

Atsushi Onita announced that starting on September 12th at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market show there will be a 8 woman explosion tournament to crown the Explosion Princess. There will be two first round matches on September 12th followed by the other two first round tournament matches on October 24th. The semi-finals of the tournament will then take place on November 21st and then the finals will take place in December on December 19th. The September through November shows have all been announced for the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market. A location for the December 19th show has currently not been announced. The eight women that will participate in the tournament will be Suzu Suzuki who is an 18 year old Ice Ribbon wrestler and will be the ace of this division, Ice Ribbon's Risa Sera, Gatoh Move's An Chamu, Ice Ribbon's Akane Fujita, Diana's Madeline, Pure-J's Rydeen Hagane, Ice Ribbon's Thekla, and FMW-E's Miss Mongol. The actual matches for the tournament have not been announced, but I would assume they would just be exploding bat matches since they will be midcard matches on the show and are not going to be on the card to take away from the main events on the shows.

FMW-E has announced two matches for their third show on September 12, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetable Market. The main event will be Atsushi Onita teaming up with Ice Ribbon's Suzu Suzuki to take on Abdullah Kobayashi and Risa Sera in so far what has been announced as an Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bats and Exploding Landmine Death Match as they are going to bring back the landmines despite what happened with all the smoke back in July. Onita and Kobayashi will be renewing their feud here as Onita was upset at Kobayashi for his team losing and then losing their bat but getting out of there without his personal mo-ped being blown up. This match will also serve to promote Suzu Suzuki and Risa Sera as the two top girls in what will be FMW-E's women's division. The other match on the show will be an Hideki Hosaka Memorial Match as Onita will wrestle the first of two matches on the show here and team up with Ricky Fuji and Pandita as they will go up against Raijin Yaguchi, Mammoth Sasaki making his FMW-E debut and was Hosaka's tag partner for 8 months in FMW in 2000 as well as Kazuki Enosawa who formerly went by Kizarasu Clown and worked some Super Battle FMW with Hosaka back in 2017.  8/20 update: 9/12 main event has been changed to Atsushi Onita vs. Mr. Pogo (Shadow WX).

The notable name here is Raijin Yaguchi who has not worked with Onita since his 2017 retirement show after working together pretty much nonstop from 1999 to 2017 as I was told years ago that Onita does not have many actual friends in the business, but Yaguchi is one of them. Onita, Yaguchi, and Hosaka worked a ton together though from 2011 to 2017 as part of the Jado Army so if there is any issues between Yaguchi he would easily put them aside to honor Hosaka although there might simply be no issue between Onita and Yaguchi as Yaguchi is 58 years old now and might just not want to be in anymore death matches at this point. The first two matches in the 1st round of the Explosion Princess will also take place, but the matches have not been announced yet.

Hideki Hosaka's funeral was held on August 7, 2021 with family and friends being invited. Those in the wrestling business that attended were Atsushi Onita, Ricky Fuji, Mammoth Sasaki, Rie Nakamura, Miss Mongol, and Pandita. Atsushi Onita and Rie Nakamura also came to the ring on August 15th in Osaka with Onita holding a framed picture of Onita as there was a 10 bell salute in memory of the life of Hideki Hosaka.

Atsushi Onita did a interview about Hideki Hosaka's passing on August 8, 2021 one day after attending his funeral. Onita stated that Hosaka was like a younger brother to him. At first, Hosaka came from W*ING as a Pogo Army member and he was the one who ate the Thunder Fire Powerbomb the most. Onita said he saw Hosaka taking Onita's move every day and realized what a great wrestler and person he was. Hosaka became a companion to him about 8 years ago as he began teaming up with him regularly in ZERO1. Onita stated his best memory of Hosaka was in August 2017 he lowered the rank of his ticket to be able to get Hosaka a plane ticket to sit with him. Then they celebrate Hosaka's birthday on August 5, 2017 while there with an American fan (Anthony Mossow) who had prepared a cake for him. Hosaka looked so happy and drank five glasses of beer that night. Onita stated he will never forget Hosaka's smile that night. Onita also indicated that he intends to supporting "Hosaka AID" for Hosaka's family and will carry out fund raising activities as well as box office revenue sales of good with the money going to his family.

Atsushi Onita and Matt Tremont's feud has officially started back up. As mentioned before in the previous update, when Tremont did a video with his wife telling him he needed to address Onita calling him out for a match and he ignored, it was very apparent that a match would take place between the two. The plan actually goes back to at least June when FMW-E announced plans on running a show in America as Onita wanted to have a decisive one on one singles match with Tremont that did not happen back in 2017. Tremont did a promo announcing that he would be coming out of retirement after a year to wrestle Atsushi Onita on October 31, 2021 with no venue yet announced as Onita has stated he has had issues finding a building that will allow the type of explosive match they want to do, although Onita obviously is sure at this point they will find one to allow the date to be officially announced.

The back story of these two goes back years as Tremont who was an Onita fan had been calling out Onita for years on social media wanting a match. Onita deciding he wanted to have an explosive match in America finally before retiring in October 2017 would agree to a match with Matt Tremont for August 5, 2017 in CZW with the agreement being that Onita would go there, and that Tremont would go to Japan in October 2017 for two shows and have an actual No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Death Match against Onita while in Japan. Onita would be disappointed in the several factors with the trip including the travel to get there and then CZW using John Zandig to make the exploding barbed wire bats with more gun powder than actual explosives being used.

Onita not wanting to beat Tremont since he wanted to protect Tremont with him going to Japan, and he wasn't going to lose to Tremont, so they decided on having the singles match turning into  6 man between Onita's Jado Army and CZW after about 10 minutes with neither Onita/Tremont getting a pin nor being pinned to protect their Japan matches. The issue though was one of the two shows that was suppose to have the two face off against each other in tag death matches October 2017 in Japan ended up getting cancelled due to low ticket sales. The sponsor Masahiro Sase felt that since Tremont was not established and and a draw in Japan he the whole Onita vs. Tremont aspect of the match ended up getting phased down to where it became a 10 man No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Death Match as they threw DJ Hyde and Chainsaw Tony in the match as well with  Onita and Tremont ended up having limited interactions in the match other than Onita sending Tremont into the exploding barbed wire as the match was more focused on Onita being injured with getting hit with a double exploding barbed wire bat shot and sponsor Sase getting the big win in the match. Just moments after the match any focus on Tremont or any of the foreigners would be gone, as they would just leave and the focus would be put on Onita taking on Kazuyuki Fujita for Onita's upcoming retirement match at Korakuen Hall later in the month.

Although it did not work out how many people planned as many American fans still make fun of the decision to turn the match into a 6 man and incorrectly feel Onita screwed over CZW financially in the process which was not the case, the one thing that did come away from it was Onita really respecting Matt Tremont. Onita would come out of retirement in 2018 and just two months later return to America to team up with Tremont in Philadelphia. Onita afterwards would state that he would want to work all over the world after the match including coming back to America to finally have a real explosion match. Just two months after that though Onita would decide to get double knee replacement surgery and then just a couple of months after that COVID would force a two week quarantine period after returning from America, and then Tremont due to his body breaking down would retire in October 2020. Onita wanting to have the explosive match in America that he always wanted, would reach out to Tremont about finally having that singles match in an explosive match and the angle would be setup that this time it would be Onita calling out Tremont to have the match with him in a call back to how things were originally setup between the two.

It has been announced that it will be a combined FMW-E and Matt Tremont's H20 promotion show. Although no location has been announced, it would most likely end up being in New Jersey. Almost every show the promotion has ran has been in Williamstown, New Jersey although one would think they would probably need to find a bigger building for the type of explosives they are expecting to use or else they would have just announced the Williamstown, New Jersey location for the show with the date. H20 will also be wrestling two other shows on October 29th and October 30th with Tremont coming back and wrestling on those although those do not have locations announced either, one would assume those shows would be in New Jersey as well as the promotion has not left New Jersey since 2018.

The FMW-E part of the show to me means that it would include Onita bringing his pyrotechnic guys that have been setting up the first two FMW-E shows explosions and any wrestler that has connections with Onita (Ricky Fuji, Tomohiko Hashimoto, HASEGAWA, Onryo) who would be willing to deal with the the two week quarantine after coming back could show up if they wanted to. I would expect the match to be an exploding barbed wire where they have been wrapping it around the ropes, the exploding table, possibly the exploding chair, and the exploding barbed wire bats they use in Japan. I don't think they will be able to get away with having the landmine barricades they have been using for any building inside New Jersey and you run the risk of it being too cold if you run a show outside in New Jersey on Halloween as Onita has stated that his contact in the states (most likely Tremont or someone working with H20) has been looking for a building that will allow all the explosives although they have been dealing with the Fire Service act and the different restrictions allowed in each building. I also plan on attending this show like I did for the 2017 show.

Jun Kasai would promote his Shin-Kiba Death Match Carnival on July 25, 2021 and announce a sell out of 159 fans at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring. The main event would be a UNCHAIN vs. ERE Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match with the winning team getting to host the August 11th Shin-Kiba show which has been a UNCHAIN tradition since 2016. The match would have the UNCHAIN team of Jun Kasai, Minoru Fujita, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita going up against ERE's Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki. The first elimination would see Jack eliminate Yamashita at 7 minutes, 52 seconds after nailing her with a Violento Breaker. Fujita would even things up afte rolling Sakuda up at 9 minutes, 52 seconds with a Samson Clutch for the elimination. Masashi Takeda would then end up tossing Fujita out over the top rope at 11 minutes, 30 seconds but then Takeda would eliminate his own partner Jack after tossing him over the top rope at 13 minutes, 54 seconds to even things up. Kasai and Ueki would then square off with Ueki diving off the top with a light tube to break it over Kasai, but Kasai would move out of the way and then bring in a board with forks attached to it into the ring. Kasai would then nail Ueki with a Reverse Tiger Driver on the forks and then clothesline him, but they would both go over the top rope onto the apron. Ueki would then grab Kasai and run him head first into a stack of light tubes in the turnbuckle causing both of them to fall to the apron for the double elimination. This would leave just Takeda and Fukimoto with Takeda nailing Fukimoto with a knee to a light tube breaking it over him and then finish Fukimoto with a Reverse U Crash on a stack of light tubes for the final elimination at 20 minutes, 6 seconds for the ERE win. This would result in the usual August 11th Unchain Night to become ERE Night.

The semi-main event would Barbed wire Board Broken Can Board Death Match between Daisuke Masaoka against Kamui. Kamui would end up sending Masaoka into a barbed wire board and then begin smashing it with a chair before climbing up a ladder and dive off it, but Masaoka would move out of the way. Masaoka would then follow that up and nail Kamui with a Rokkura Kai at 10 minutes, 11 seconds for the Masaoka win. Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata would defeat Mammoth Sasaki and Takahiro Katori when Hirata would pin Katori at 11 minutes, 34 seconds with a German Suplex. Yuya Susumu and Kengo would get the win over Takashi Sasaki and Dragon Libre when Susumu would make Libre tap out at 15 minutes, 32 seconds to a Crossface. The opening match would see Tatsuhito Takaiwa and GENTARO defeat Brahman Kei and Rekka when GENTARO would pick up the win at 9 minutes, 37 seconds after pinning Kei. Click here to watch to watch highlights of FREEDOMS 7/25/21 show.

Dragon World Order also known as dWo ran by FREEDOMS wrestler Dragon Libre became the new-sub promotion for the group as he promoted the debut show and did well enough to announce a crowd of 93 fans on July 31, 2021 at the Yokohama Radiant Hall for a two match show. The main event had Takashi Sasaki and his Mystery Partner be revealed to be Tomoya Hirata with the Dragon Libre mask going by the name Shin (New) Dragon Libre as they would take on Dragon Libre and former A-Team wrestler Akira Jo with Hirata and Libre starting off with some exchanges before Sasaki would come in and square off against Libre as both Libre and Jo would end up laying Sasaki out with kicks. Hirata would get tagged back in and nail Libre with a brainbuster and then follow that up by hitting him with a German Suplex to cover Libre at 17 minutes, 29 seconds to get the win. The other match on the show would be an Ice Ribbon match with Hamuko Hoshi and Suzu Suzuki defeating Tsukushi Haruka and Nao Ishikawa when Suzuki would pin Ishikawa at 9 minutes, 39 seconds with a German Suplex as well. Click here to watch highlights of Dragon Libre's dWo 7/31/21 show.

FREEDOMS would then run at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring once again on August 11, 2021 drawing an announced sell out crowd of 163 fans for the ERE Night. ERE would get to book the show and they would book all four members of the group in the main event as Violento Jack would face off against Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ukei in a 4 Way Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. Jack would end up setting up Takeda on the top turnbuckle with Takeda sliding down and setting up to try and hit Jack with a powerbomb when Sakuda would come over and grab Jack and hit him with a Slice Bread # 2. Takeda would then place light tubes in the ring and pour tobasco sauce on them and grab Sakuda and hit him with a Reverse U Crash sending him into the ligh ttubes. Takeda would then grab Jack and place light tubes behind his neck as he would deliver a Dragon Suplex but Sakuda would come off the top rope and hit a Canadian Destroyer on him. Sakuda would then toss light tubes at Takeda with him catching them, and be met with a spear Ueki out of nowhere as Ueki would pick up Sakuda and look to drop him on another stack light tubes, but Sakuda would instead turn that into a Sakauchi on Ueki followed by delivering a Swanton Bomb with a light tube on Ueki to cover him and get the pin at 18 minutes, 47 seconds for the Sakuda win.

The semi-main event would be a Hardcore Match as Toru Sugiura and Mammoth Sasaki would team up to take on Daisuke Masaoka and his Mystery Partner who would be revealed as Chris Brookes making his FREEDOMS debut. Sugiura and Mammoth would hit a Double Mammoth Home Run on Masaoka and then Mammoth would go to pick up Sugiura and drop him on Masaoka when Brookes would end up kicking Mammoth's leg causing him to drop Sugiura like he was giving his partner a brainbuster instead as Mammoth would hold his in knee pain followed by Brookes grabbing a plastic container and smash it over Mammoth's head as he lay on the mat. Brookes would then go up to the top, but Sugiura would get up and look to suplex him off of it as Masaoka would come over and grab Sugiura and powerbomb him followed by plasting another plastic container over Sugiura's body as Brookes would end up hitting a Diving Senton breaking the container over Sugiura. Masaoka would then go up to the top for a Rokkura Kai bur Sugiura would move out of the way and roll him up and then grab Masaoka and hit him with a Swift Driver to cover him to get the win for 15 minutes, 52 seconds for the former Mammoth Busters tag team.

There would be a 10 Man Battle Royal with all regular FREEDOMS wrestlers as it this would be a Reverse Battle Royal with the wrestlers wanting to get out as the last one left would get a public shaming and ERE punishment. The rules were that you could leave the Battle Royal if you scored a pin, submission, or threw someone out over the top. Rekka would be the first one out after pinning Tatsuhito Takaiwa at 1 minutes, 56 seconds. Takaiwa would then get to leave after hitting GENTARO with a Death Valley Bomb and pinning him at 3 minutes, 25 seconds for the right to exit. GENTARO would then pin Tomoya Hirata at 4 minutes, 50 seconds after pinning him with a Flying Headscissors. Takashi Sasaki would get to leave at 6 minutes, 5 seconds after throwing Kengo over the top rope. Yuya Susumu would leave following making Dragon Libre tap out at 6 minutes, 35 seconds with a Cross Face. Kengo would exit after tossing Brahman Shu over the top rope at 7 minutes, 16 seconds. Brahman Kei and Brahman Shu would both get to leave after rolling up Libre with Nobody's Perfect at 9 minutes, 20 seconds and Kei pinning him. This would leave Tomoya Hirata and Dragon Libre along as Hirata would pin Libre at 11 minutes, 2 seconds as Libre would have to be dealt the ERE punishment for losing. The punishment was for everyone to do their signature moves to Libre but when Ueki would come out to do his to Libre he would counter and deliver a German Suplex to Ueki followed by Takaiwa nailing Ueki with a Death Valley Bomb.

Kenji Fukimoto and Rina Yamashita would face off against fellow Unchain members Minoru Fujita and Kamui in a Tables Match with Yamashita getting the win at 10 minutes, 37 seconds after sending Fujita through the table. The opening match would be Jun Kasai being humiliated by ERE as they would book him in the opening match against Takahiro Katori with Katori giving Kasai the offense and kicking him out of the ring and delivering a tope to the outside on him. Kasai would fight back and begin headbutting Katori busting him open but Katori would again show Kasai his Fighting Spirit and knock Kasai down and deliver a Mad Splash to him and cover him for a two count. Kasai would be done with the games at that point and hit Katori with a Reverse Tiger Driver and follow that up with a powerbomb and then place Katori in a Modified Crab Hold to get Katori to tap out at 9 minutes, 6 seconds for the Kasai opening match win. Click here to watching highlights of the FREEDOMS "ERE Night" 8/11/21 show.

FREEDOMS announced the lineup for the Jun Kasai promoted Osaka Death Match Carnival on August 22, 2021 at the Osaka Active Square Daito. The main event will be Masashi Takeda taking on Daisuke Masaoka in a Death Match which will be a rematch of their November 10, 2020 Korakuen Hall main event match which was one of the best FREEDOMS matches of the year last year. The semi-main event will be Violento Jack and Toshiyuki Sakuda taking on Jun Kasai and Kamui in a Death Match. Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata team up to take on Mammoth Sasaki and Shigehiro Irie who is making his FREEDOMS debut. Kenji Fukimoto and Minoru Fujita will team up to take on two mystery opponents in a Hardcore Match. Takashi Sasaki, Takahiro Katori, and Dragon Libre will go up against Yuya Susumu, Kenog, and Kenshin Chikano. The opening match will be GENTARO, Rekka, and Idea taking on Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Dyna Mido.

A couple of notes on some upcoming FREEDOMS shows. September 15th at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring will be the Takashi Sasaki 25th Anniversary show. They will then have their 12th Anniversary show on October 3rd at Korakuen Hall which FREEDOMS is about to be around longer than FMW was (12 years and 4 months) at the start of 2022. They have also announced the biggest show in the promotions history as they will run on May 2, 2022 at the Yokohama Budokan which is right now standing subsitute for the Yokohama Bunka Gym that closed down year. This building though seats around 3,000 compared to the 5,000 that the Bunka Gym held but it will still be the biggest building that FREEDOMS will ever run in their entire 12 year history.

A new book released by Kazuhiro Kojima called *W*ING Shooting Star Legend" was released on August 7, 2021 with that date being chosen to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of W*ING promoting their first show on that date in 1991. Kazuhiro Kojima was a reporter for Pro-Wrestling Weekly covering the happenings for W*ING back then. The book goes over how the promotion got started and originally was World Martial Arts Union W*ING before breaking off by Mickey Ibaragi in December 1991. How the promotion borrowed 100,000 yen from All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling to start off to help Ibaragi pay an exceptional guarantee to Mil Mascaras to appear on the re-start show at Korakuen Hall in December. It talks about how W*ING gathered a bunch of unknown wrestlers at the time that didn't have physique or the physical ability of those in the major promotions however still created a fan base that loves them. Akitoshi Saito, Mitsuhiro Matsunaga, Yukihiro Kanemura, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa who was a former W*ING trainee, Mickey Ibaragi, ring announcer Takuji Oho, referee Kazuhiro Hatayama, Rossy Ogawa who was the General Manager of All Japan Women's Public Relations and others were interviewed for the book. I will be getting this book next month and wil work on translating it although I am currently working on Mitsuhiro Matsunaga's 1998 among other projects so it will be a little while before I get to it.

To help promote the book an event was held on August 17, 2021 at the Shosen Book Tower in Akihabara, Tokyo with the plan of Mickey Ibaragi and Kazuhiro Kojima. Ibaragi would end up cancelling though due to a low grade fever and heavy rain going at the time so they would end up announcing a mystery guest to appear at the event instead that would end up being Yukihiro Kanemura. The over crowded fan base filled the area and did not know Ibaragi was not going to appear, but were okay as soon as "Danger Zone" began to play and Kanemura came out as his replacement. Kanemura talked about the legendary Fire Death Match on October 31, 1993 in Odawara among other topics. Ibaragi did apologize for not making the show and stated it was not because of COVID that he did not show up and that he plans on attending another one of these in the Fall.

One of the biggest secrets having to do with FMW over the years that has remained a secret was finally told on August 10, 2021 on Mr. Gannosuke's YouTube channel. That is about why Tarzan Goto, Mr. Gannosuke, and Flying Kid Ichihara left FMW just weeks prior to the big Atsushi Onita Retirement Show on May 5, 1995 at Kawasaki Stadium which was suppose to have Onita vs. Goto in the main event. Mr. Gannosuke told the story that the real reason for the departure was because on April 20, 1995 in Niigata a closed door meeting took place with the FMW male locker room was held with the one exception being Tarzan Goto who was not invited. Onita in the meeting told the FMW wrestlers that starting on May 6, 1995 that Tarzan Goto was not going be the ace of FMW which was the thought by many as instead Hayabusa was going to be put in that spot. Gannosuke was furious that his mentor Tarzan Goto was not only not told in advance of this, but he was not even allowed in the meeting where Onita told everyone else the future plans of the company. Gannosuke went to Goto right away and told him everything that had transpired without his knowledge.

A meeting was setup the next day on April 21, 1995 at a hotel in Tokyo hours before what was suppose to be Onita's last Korakuen Hall show. The meeting included future President Shoichi Arai as well as FMW office employee Hideki Takahashi, Tarzan Goto, Mr. Gannosuke, Katsutoshi Niiyama, and Flying Kid Ichihara who were all of Goto's loyal students. The three hour meeting ended with a frustrated Gannosuke going "I will quit. I am not going to Korakuen Hall. I am returning to Saitama." with Goto responding "If you quit, then I quit." and Gannosuke, Goto, and Ichihara all decided to leave FMW that day with Niiyama deciding to stay although he would end up leaving FMW two years later to follow Goto. Gannosuke denies any rumors that IWA Japan had already made Goto and company an offer to jump to screw up the Kawasaki Stadium show stating they never made an offer until after the group had already walked away from FMW. Gannosuke stated when he said he was quitting FMW and going back to Saitama, he meant he thought he was quitting professional wrestling at that moment but he is glad that he decided to stay in professional wrestling.

Gannosuke stated that both and Goto did not leave because they were upset that Hayabusa was going to become the new ace of the promotion, but just how it was handled. Gannosuke ended up calling Hayabusa who had returned to Japan from his 18 month Mexico/USA expedition the day before Gannosuke quit and was staying at a hotel in the mean time waiting to prepare for the Kawasaki Stadium show in two weeks, but he had gone so long without seeing his girlfriend/future wife Harumi that he had bailed on staying at the hotel that FMW had provided and was staying with her instead. Gannosuke ended up calling the hotel seeing if Hayabusa being a student of Goto as well would leave FMW with them out of loyalty to their teacher, but Hayabusa was not in his room when Gannosuke called so they decided to leave without him.

Mr. Gannosuke does address what was in Shoichi Arai's book about how he thought that Tarzan Goto left stating Onita had came up with an idea of Tarzan Goto portraying Shoko Asahara who looks very much like Tarzan Goto of the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist organization that were responsible for the death of 13 people after the group released a binary chemical weapon sarin on five subway trains in the Tokyo Subway which ended up injuring 6,000 people. Gannosuke originally stated when he read that in Arai's book he laughed out loud in a "what the hell" type shock but stated that he feels Arai came up with the story in his book after Goto began doing something of a tease that he was the leader of a outsider cult when his Real FMW (Gannosuke, Ichihara) group invaded Big Japan in July 1995 although there was nothing actually said in reference to Aum Shinrikyo at anytime. So it was a you connect the dots yourself situation, but we are not actually saying anything about it so you can't get offended. They also were only around for two shows so nothing really got be built up before they were back to just working IWA Japan. Gannosuke said if the reason behind the group leaving was based on the Aum Shinrikyo gimmick then that story would never actually be revealed. So in reality, Shoichi Arai took a little bit of truth that happened somewhere else and made up the rest as to try and help sell books.

Following this Mr. Gannosuke was asked why he did always he would keep this story to his grave only to tell it on his YouTube channel. Gannosuke stated he had never said he would take it to his grave, only Goto had said that. I did a interview with Mr. Gannosuke back in 2017 where I asked him about this and he stated he could not tell me because he was taking it to his grave, so he definitely did say it, but I also read a Tarzan Goto interview in 2015 where he said it as well so they both did use that phrase. I also talked to Gannosuke about the Hayabusa part where he did not take the phone call because he was at his girlfriend's house after 18 months which is Hayabusa's version of the story. Gannosuke in the interview told me that Hayabusa was wrong, and that he spoke with him and Hayabusa declined the offer to leave FMW. Granted it might just be a translation error between him and me, or he might have remembered wrong back then, but Gannosuke is now saying the Hayabusa version of the story stating that FMW might have changed forever if Hayabusa had answered the call and decided to leave FMW with them.

Reading a bunch of Hayabusa memoirs over the last year, I am pretty certain that would not have happened. Hayabusa did not share the same amount of respect for Tarzan Goto. He thought of Goto as a literal demon when it came to training him and does not share the same affection for him that Gannosuke had. Another reason would be because Hayabusa was focused on becoming the ace of FMW and went to live in Florida to bulk up with Mike Awesome as his trainer with Hayabusa's plan being that the new FMW without Onita would be based around Hayabusa against Mike Awesome and Mr. Gannosuke in great matches. Victor Quinones who tried to get Hayabusa to quit FMW and join IWA Japan to become their ace in late 1994 stated that Hayabusa could not be the ace as long as Tarzan Goto was still there as Hayabusa saw him as more of an obstacle that he needed to get around to become the ace. Hayabusa also in the interview I posted last update stated that he didn't like that him and Masato Tanaka get a bad rep for training at the FMW Dojo under Tarzan Goto but didn't come to Goto/the FMW Dojo defense but just said that he did so much training in Mexico it's not fair to just classify him just because he was trained the basics by Goto.

My speculation is hearing that Onita held the locker room meeting on April 20, 1995 where Onita announced to the locker room that Goto was to not be the ace of the promotion which happened to be the same day that Hayabusa arrived back in Japan with Shoichi Arai picking him up and them having a discussion of what the New FMW was going to be. Arai had always been high on Hayabusa since a month into his debut in FMW in 1991 seeing him with limitless potential and Arai is the one behind Hayabusa becoming the ace of the promotion.

I would have to believe that while in the taxi where Arai and Hayabusa were talking about the plans of the future with the notion that Hayabusa would be the ace and not Goto which lead to Arai calling Onita to have that meeting with the wrestlers without Goto. Onita and Goto were on bad terms at that point, as Goto was upset that Onita had cancelled a WAR booking against Tenryu a month earlier because WAR and FMW were no longer working together and Onita didn't want Goto losing to Tenryu so soon before he was to fight Onita on his retirement show. I think that conflict went into Onita's decision on how to hold the locker room meeting which ultimately was a positive and negative for what Hayabusa wanted as he wanted Goto out, but he did not want Gannosuke to leave also as Gannosuke was a part of his plans for the future of the promotion. Onita had previously stated that he thought that the reason Goto left FMW was because he was upset that he was not going to be the ace of the promotion following that locker room meeting, not because of him not being invited to the meeting.

Gannosuke would ultimately become miserable by 1996 following Goto's Real FMW group leaving IWA Japan due to them not being able afford them anymore as they were going through a financial crisis. Gannosuke was only getting booked by Tokyo Pro by the Fall 1996 and was more interested in what was going on in FMW then his own matches. Gannosuke would ask Goto if he could leave the group with Goto agreeing and Gannosuke would get in touch with Go Ito about coming in as a heel to feud with Hayabusa starting in 1997. Kodo Fuyuki would try to get Tarzan Goto to come back to FMW for the May 5, 1999 at the Yokohama Bunka Gym show with Goto putting Fuyuki over in the main event, but Goto would end up declining that offer and would end up never working for FMW again.

Added: 8/2

Hideki Hosaka passed away today on August 2, 2021 at 3:32 am Japanese Standard Time. Hosaka had began to go in and out of consciousness following his bout with Stage IV cancer before ultimately passing away. Hosaka had been diagnosed colon cancer on September 14, 2019 but because it not been caught early enough, it had spread to his liver which the spreading to another part in his body which is why it was considered Stage IV and why he only would have a 14% chance of surviving the next five years. What makes it even sadder is that at the time of his death, his colon cancer had began to improve, but it was the liver cancer which was from the cancer spreading that ended his life. He had gotten a surgery on June 25, 2021 which Hosaka said was to help him live as long as possible, and then wrote on June 27, 2021 that he was back home from the surgery and responded to everybody's messages to him, but then did not post anything on social media again. It was said he was still conscious as of August 1st but that he started going in and out that day before passing away during the night.

Hideki Hosaka leaves his wife, daughter, and many friends, family members, and fans that cared about him. He also sadly is another member of the FMW Family to pass away. Atsushi Onita, Mr. Gannosuke, Kintaro Kanemura, Mammoth Sasaki, Ricky Fuji, Nanjyo Hayato, and Battle Ranger have all posted their thoughts and expressed their sadness over Hosaka who is someone they had known for nearly 30 years and from every person that I know as well as my interactions with him was a really good person. I wrote a Memorial Obituary going over his career and telling some stories of Hosaka's early days that are not well known at http://fmwwrestling.us/Hosaka.html

Added: 7/20

FMW-E would hold their debut show on July 4, 2021 entitled "Independence Day" at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetable Market. They announced a crowd of 425 fans for the show which was a legitimate sell out due to the COVID conditions.

The main event was Atsushi Onita teaming up with Ricky Fuji and Minoru Fujita taking on Abdullah Kobayashi, Yuko Miyamoto, and Onryo in a Exploding Barbed wire, Landmines, Double Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bats, and Exploding Table Death Match. The exploding barbed wire used in the match was wrapped around the ropes so it does seem like the No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire that had been used in tons of Onita matches from 1992 to 2017 seems like it is actually gone for good. Onita had stated that this match would be the first landmine death match since his Landmine Death Match with Mr. Pogo going on May 6, 1991 in Osaka although the barricade outside the ring with barbed and explosions were used numerous times FMW after that match. The Exploding Table gimmick was the only weapon in this match making its debut.

Onita would go after Kobayashi right away before Kobayashi would end up sending Onita into the exploding barbed wire. Onryo would then turn on the exploding bats Kobayashi and Miyamoto would both hit Onita with two bats at the same time which is only the second time Onita has done that spot before as the first time it happened to him on October 9, 2017 the powers of the two bats together were so strong it messed up his shoulder. This time the spot did not seem to effect Onita and he was able to continue on like normal as he would fight with Kobayashi on the apron as Kobayashi would tease powerbombing Onita off the apron onto the landmines, but Onita would end up spitting red mist in Kobayashi's face instead and then tease hitting a DDT on him before just dropping Kobayashi into the exploding barricade landmine. Onita would end up also eventually falling down off the apron into the barricade as well but after the explosives had already been set off.

These explosives would be so powerful for the inside building that smoke would end up covering the entire building as typically when using these type of powerful explosives the show is either outside or the building is much bigger. Most fans in attendance live would be unable to see the ring at this point and the two of the ZAIKO cameras went dead according following blast leaving only one that just focused on Abdullah Kobayashi laying outside the ring with smoke covering the building after the exploding landmine barricade spot which would result in the streaming audience not be able to watch the rest of the match pretty much and would just be able to hear what was going on until the end.

The Samurai TV camera which use nicer camera equipment were at the show to film highlights and were able to capture the ring and show Onita piledrive Onryo through the exploding table in another impressive explosion which the ZAIKO cameras missed. Onryo after the show would state he felt like he died from the exploding table as Onita would take a moment before covering him to get the win at 16 minutes, 59 seconds for the Onita team victory.

Onita would do his mic work with the crowd when Shadow WX would appear for the first time at a wrestling show since his last MLW show back on December 15, 2019 and challenge Onita at the next FMW-E show in Osaka on August 15th before attacking Onita and getting on the apron and shooting a fireball at him with the fire engulfing Onita's jacket in an impressive spot with the ring boys having to pour water on Onita immediately. The ZAIKO stream would mess this up as well as they would actually right off after Shadow had originally screwed up the fireball spot and barely any fire had came out before he would end up doing the impressive fireball which the streaming audience would miss.

Due to the show taking place in a smallish building (it looks like a parking lot garage from the outside) that is located in a neighborhood the fire department was called due to so much smoke coming out of the sides of the building. FMW-E had actually notified the fire department prior to the show to let them know in advance of what was going to happen, but because of the phone calls from the neighbors, the fire department as well as police department both ended up showing up to check on what was going on right as the show was about to end.

Prior to the show, there was a bet between Atsushi Onita and Abdullah Kobayashi with the stakes being that if Onita's team won then Kobayashi's moped that he drove to the show would be blown up, and if Kobayashi's team won then Onita's jacket would be blown up. It was a bait and switch and very similar to the Hayabusa vs. Mr. Gannosuke April 29, 1997 Hair vs. Mask Match which I would not be surprised if Onita was behind the idea of that match back then where Hayabusa won but in the end he got his mask ripped off and Gannosuke walked away still with hair. Kobayashi ended up crawling away after Shadow WX showed up and lit Onita's jacket on fire so despite Onita's team winning his jacket ended up getting burnt instead and Kobayashi would get to keep moped. Onita afterwards did bring up Kobayashi's moped not getting blown up on Twitter as he would call Kobayashi a bastard for running away with Kobayashi responding with a picture of himself smiling on his moped to troll Onita.

The semi-main event of the show was a Genderless 3 Way Coin Tossing Bunkhouse Death Match. This match which was originally going to be a women's match was changed to a Genderless Match. There was talks of independent wrestler Asuka working the show, but that never came to be instead it was Miss Mongol taking on Nene∞D.a.i and a Mystery Opponent that turned out to be Drew Parker who was doing commentary on the English side for the show. With Parker being in the match, Michelle Cain who is a British super fan and has lived in Japan for a decade took over commentary for him in the match. The sole purpose of this match was to try and get people to donate money to decide what weapons would be used although most likely all the weapons were going to be used regardless and this match ended up dragging as Parker was still dealing with injuries from the previous Big Japan show the night before although he would end up getting the win at 18 minutes, 45 seconds with a Diving Swanton Bomb on D.a.i on a barbed wire board for the win.

Kikutaro and Gabaiji-chan took faced off against Brahman Shu and Kei in a No Contest at 14 minutes, 39 seconds when both teams to decided to attack the referee causing him to throw the match out. Yuichi Taniguchi, HASEGAWA, and Naoshi Sano defeated Monster Leather who was Yoshihisa Hamano who has been doing the Leatherface gimmick for Onita shows the last couple of years although for some reason this show they had him use the Monster Leather name which Tomohiko Hashimoto used at the beginning of the Super Battle FMW promotion in 2015 and he would team up with WWS wrestler Mr. Atomic, and low level indie wrestler Toshiya Kawarai with HASEGAWA getting the win over Leather at 6 minutes, 8 seconds with a La Magistral. Yumehito Imanari opened the show defeating Buatsushi Futonita who also goes by the Fat Onita in a Fake Explosion comedy match. They did several Onita spots including a reinactment of Onita having to grab the exploding barbed wire to break the Scorpion Death Lock put on him by Riki Choshu from their July 30, 2000 Yokohama Arena Match as Imanari would get the win after using a Fake Exploding Bat to get the win at 9 minutes, 8 seconds over Futonita. Click here to watch highlights of the FMW-E 7/4/21 show.

Shadow WX who had been out of wrestling since 2013 due to health issues came back in December 2019 to start his MLW promotion which ran two shows. MLW was suppose to hold two more shows in May 2020 but due to COVID those shows were cancelled and there has not been anymore shows since with Shadow pretty much going back to inactive over the last year until Onita made the call to bring him into FMW-E. The reasoning being that Shadow WX is the closest wrestler to Mr. Pogo that is going to be willing to face Onita in a explosion match. Shadow WX worked with Mr. Pogo as his partner in Big Japan from 1997-1998 and has a similar build to him. Onita has even insited that Shadow WX transform into Mr. Pogo for the show so Shadow took pictures of him dressed in the Mr. Pogo face paint and attire and shooting a fireball like Pogo did.

The next FMW-E show will take place on August 15, 2021 at the Osaka Tsurumi Green Forest Hana Exhibition Park. The show will be outside and is scheduled to begin at 4:30 pm meaning the Onita match will probably be beginning around 6:30 pm when it will not be as hot. Jun Kasai made his debut in this park back in August 1998 and all he remembers from the match is how hot the ring mat was because of the powerful sun rays hitting it for hours. There has been no talk as of yet of ZAIKO streaming this show which was one of the first things talked about when the July 4th show took place. If it were to live stream then the show would begin at 3:30 AM Eastern Time compared to it starting at 11:00 PM Eastern Time for the first show. If I had to guess, I would say this show will probably not be streamed. They had audio issues during the first show, and taking all the equipment all the way to Osaka and have it all outside and hoping it goes better just does not seem like it will happen. I would think it would be taped and aired at a later time would be a possibility though.

The main event was announced for the August 15th FMW-E show and it will be Atsushi Onita teaming up with Takeshi Okada and HASEGAWA taking on Shadow WX going by the Mr. Pogo name, Isami Kodaka, and a Mystery Partner.

This match due to being outside will give them more reign when it comes to the explosion. They are going to have three exploding barricade landmines outside the ring, two exploding barbed wire bats, and the exploding table once again. They also mention there is suppose to be exploding barbed wire wrapped around the ropes despite the art graphic shown to display everything did not include that. They have stated that the exploding landmines will have three times more gunpowder used in them compared to the July 4th show as there will not be any issues of looking like a building is on fire by using them.

When it was originally reported that was going to take place at the Osaka Tsurumi Green Forest Hana Exhibition Park I made note that they were running this show outside to allow for more powerful explosives without any issues, but then after the July 4th show they threw a curve ball and announced that the Osaka show main event would instead be a Fire Death Match which is where the meaning behind Shadow blowing that fireball at Onita came from. The Osaka Tsurumi Green Forest Hana Exhibition Park is most used venue for fire death matches as Big Japan has had numerous ones there through out the years and FREEDOMS had their one there back in 2017 as well. This would also would have been Onita's first Fire Death Match since the disastrous FMW one back on May 6, 1992 where too much kerosene was used and the entire ring burnt down with The Sheik suffering severe burns from struggling to get out of the ring. Fire Death Matches can be unpredictable based off the wind and promotions have learned you can not have the ring be on fire the entire time due to the heat it creates inside the ring, and I have to imagine Onita just decided he would rather take advantage of the outside and use more extreme explosions than deal with fire ever again.

As far as the participants in the match this will be Onita's first time facing off against Shadow WX since Shadow had spent most of his career in Big Japan where Onita didn't visit until Shadow was already long gone, it will be the second time ever being in the same match against Isami Kodaka as the two worked have only worked Super Fireworks house show against one another in 6 man exploding bat match back on May 24, 2015, and then there is their Mystery Partner which FMW-E is saying will be "a man that knows Onita best". FMW-E had originally announced weeks earlier that when the main event would take place that Tomohiko Hashimoto who has worked against Onita numerous times would be in the main event match on Shadow's team, although now adding the mystery man who knows Onita best, it would be a disappointment for it to turn out to be Hashimoto although I don't think that is going to matter at all to them no matter who it is. (Update: Hashimoto has been announced for an undercard match on the show)

Atsushi Onita has been willing to do more interviews to branch out to the English/Spanish speaking fans in hopes of helping the FMW-E product grow bigger globally. He has conducted three interviews over the last month. The first one was with Liam Wyatt of Inside the Ropes which was pretty generic interview for a click bait website with ads popping up everywhere and you can tell he did not know very much about Onita and focused the interview on AEW questions. Onita in the interview stated that he saw the Britt Baker vs. Thunder Rosa match on AEW Dynamite and thought it was "cool" and the website took that and ran with that stating the Baker-Rosa match had influenced Onita starting the FMW-E promotion. Onita and the President Hidetaka Kaijiki had been in talks of breaking away from the Blasting Koshien sub-promotion and creating a new one for months and AEW had no influence on the creation of the promotion, just the backlash of the exploding ring match made Onita feel there was a foreign market they could make money off of with their explosion matches.

The second interview was done by Colette Arrand of FanFyte who at least is an Onita fan and had background information on him. In her interview, Onita mentions that at the CZW show back in 2017 he offered to bring his explosive engineers for the show with him, but CZW turned it down stating they would do it. That is where Onita took it to heart that the explosives they used in his match against Matt Tremont were so "cheap" although with the decision to have the show inside in a small building, they were not going to be able to do much when it came to explosives anyway, and the fire martial was on the look out at the show as well. Onita mentions to her the big difference between this FMW reincarnation is that it is the first FMW promotion that he is in charge of since the original FMW. He is forgetting he ran Onita FMW in 2002 which was a complete FMW nostalgia promotion ran by him for several months until the promotion became a money loser trying to run it anywhere else besides Korakuen Hall. The other FMW promotions just had him as a wrestler but he had no financial involvement with them besides being talent. She then mentioned about Jon Moxley using Onita's version of "Wild Thing" for a theme song with Onita saying he did not know that Moxley had started doing that and that Moxley had the spirit of the Jado and that he might face him in the ring one day.

The third interview was done by Alex Gimenez a Spanish reporter for Solo Wrestling who has good knowledge of Onita. This interview was conducted after the FMW-E July 4th show. Onita states in that he was happy with the online sales for the stream of the show and that most of the buys came from the United States. Onita did admit that there were a lot of troubles with the live stream due to the internet connection not being stable and audio equipment not being connected which again does not help the case of a stream taking place this month for outside show taking place in Osaka. Onita also mentioned that two of the cameras cut off during the main event after the explosions which is why the one was left just focusing on Kobayashi on the ground and missing everything else. Onita would then be asked if there was any progress about FMW-E running a show in the United States with Onita stating that there has not been but that he is going to continue moving forward.

If a FMW-E show is to take place in the United States this Fall like Onita has wanted and that is a big if with not only finding the building to be able to have the match Onita wants, but also being able to have other members of the FMW-E roster come in for a show in America when there is still a two week quarantine that takes place when everyone returns back to Japan from America, the show will most likely be focused around Onita vs. Matt Tremont. I had mentioned last update that the only reason for Onita to want to come to America would be either to face off against Matt Tremont who is retired or Jon Moxley to set something up with AEW for next year. The Moxley thing seemed unlikely just because I don't see him working an FMW-E show in America although I do see Onita vs. Moxley as a possibility for an AEW PPV in 2022.

Onita has continued to call out Tremont for the past couple of months wanting a match with Tremont. This is actually taken from the fact that Tremont called out Onita wanting a match with him for years on social media before Onita finally responded. Tremont who retired in 2020 had not responded to any of his comments, but Tremont's H2O promotion aired a clip of Tremont's wife telling Tremont that he needs to at least respond to Onita before Tremont would just ignore her and walk away. Whether an FMW-E show actually happens this year or not, it looks like the build for an Onita vs. Tremont singles match has begun.

Onita has also stated that one week in August will be special for him. The first being the FMW-E show on August 15th at the Osaka Green Forest Park as he will be facing off against Mr. Pogo (Shadow WX) in a Landmines Death Match in Osaka 30 years later. Onita says although the show is taking place the Green Forest Park that it is close to where the original match with Pogo took place on May 6, 1991 at the Osaka Expo Festival Park but that it is close by (20 minutes drive) and then one week later he will be returning to the old Kawasaki Stadium on August 21st for the DDT "Peter Pan" show as Onita's first time at Kawasaki Stadium was also 30 years ago as he faced off against Tarzan Goto on September 23, 1991 in the beginning of the legacy of FMW at Kawasaki Stadium.

The match will be a dark match using a different ring on the field than the rest of the show will use. The match is still just listed as a "Current Blast" match just meaning there will be explosives but no details. The match is going to be a dark match in a different ring to allow them to do their explosion match and have time to clear everything out of the way to allow the rest of the show to take place normally in the other ring. The match will be Atsushi Onita, Sanshiro Takagi, Akito, and Maki Itoh taking on Kuro-chan, Muscle Sakai as Super Sasadango Machine, Hikari Noa, and Tetsuhiro Kuroda who is competing in his 9th Kawasaki Stadium match and first since 2004.

This is the continuation of the Onita vs. Japanese comedian Kuro-chan feud that started back on August 27, 2020 at the Toshimaen Amusement Park when Onita requested that Kuro-chan take part in the match that was about to take place and Kuro-chan would refuse and just stay around to watch the match. Onita would then hit Kuro-chan with a cone during the match, so Kuro-chan would get him back by pressing the button for a Jado Rocket to come and hit Onita. Onita would get him back by hitting Kuro-chan with an exploding bat and cover him to get the win even though Kuro-chan was originally not in the match. This would lead to a singles match between Onita and Kuro-chan on December 23, 2020 at the Solomachi Sky Tree Garden where Shinya Aoki would end up hitting Onita with an exploding bat and Kuro-chan would come over and get the singles over Onita. The feud has been on pause that match in December, but this looks to be possibily the conclusion to it.

FREEDOMS would return to Shin-Kiba on June 18, 2021 and announce a crowd of 156 fans for the show. The main event would be a Fluorescent Light Tubes Weapons Death Match with Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, and Takashi Sasaki taking on Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki. Ueki would pull out an umbrella with various weapons attached to it, but as Sakuda would go to toss Kasai into it, it would be reverse and Sakuda would go into the umbrella instead. Kasai would then pick up Ueki and hit him with a One Winged Angel on the umbrella. Jack and Sugiura would then face off with Jack nailing Sugiura with a suplex and Sugiura coming back with a running elbow but as he would cover him, Jack would put Sugiura in the Mexican Stretch with Sugiura getting out and nailing Jack with a Swift Driver to get the pinfall at 21 minutes, 13 seconds for the FREEDOMS win. After the match, Kasai would challenge Sakuda and Ueki for the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles with Sasaki being his partner for the July 5th Korakuen Hall show.

The semi-main event would Masashi Takeda taking on Kamui in a Double Hell Board which would be a barbed wire board and fork board Death Match. Takeda would climb up a ladder and dive off of it onto the outside on the barbed wire board over Kamui's body. They would end up getting back in the ring and Kamui would grab Takeda and climb up the ladder and drop him off the ladder onto the fork board. Kamui would then place bottled cans over Takeda's body and go up to the top and go for a Swanton Bomb but Takeda would get the bottle cans up in the air for Kamui to receive the impact instead followed by Takeda finishing Kamui off with a Reverse U Crash on the fork board for the win at 13 minutes, 32 seconds as Takeda would step on Kamui's throat while flipping him off and then see Rina Yamashita at ringside and flip her off as well before leaving.

Mammoth Sasaki, Daisuke Masaoka, and Tomoya Hirata would defeat Minoru Fujita, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita when Masaoka getting the win over Fujita at 10 minutes, 52 seconds with a Tornado Clutch. Brahman GEN, Brahman Kei, and Dragon Libre would get the win over Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Alejandro despite Kei accidentally throwing powder in GEN's face, he would still recover to hit Susumu with a Back Drop to get the win at 9 minutes, 42 seconds with GEN announcing that he would be dropping the Brahman GEN gimick going forward and going back to GENTARO with Kei shaking his hand and giving him his blessing. The opening match would see Tatsuhito Takaiwa defeat 2AW's Daiju Wakamatsu at 9 minutes, 39 seconds with a Death Valley Bomb for the win. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 6/18/21 show.

Toru Sugiura would promote his own FREEDOMS show on June 20, 2021 at his old stomping ground the Nagoya Sportiva Arena where they would announce a crowd of 50 fans. The main event would be Violento Jack and Toshiyuki Sakuda defeating Toru Sugiura and Daisuke Masaoka in a Weapons Tornado Death Match when Jack would make Masaoka tap out at 14 minutes, 56 seconds with the Mexican Stretch. Jun Kasai would defeat Nagoya based wrestler Yusaku Ito in the semi-main event at 11 minutes, 6 seconds with the Pearl Harbor Splash. Rekka would get the win over Dragon Libre at 8 minutes, 54 seconds with a Golden Kamuy and the opening match would have Nagoya based wrestler Takaya Shibayama defeat Darkness Crow at 7 minutes, 40 seconds with a Brainbuster.

FREEDOMS and 2AW would continue to run their joint shows with this one taking place on June 27, 2021 at the Chiba 2AW Square drawing an announced 68 fans for the show. The main event would see the 2AW team of Shu Asakwa, Kaji Tomato, Ayato Yoshida, and Tank Nagai defeat the FREEDOMS team of Toru Sugiura, Daisuke Masaoka, Yuya Susumu, and Tomoya Hirata when Asakawa would pick up the win at 16 minutes, 43 seconds with a White Knuckle Ride over Hirata. The semi-main event would be Jun Kasai and Kenji Fukimoto defeating 2AW's Kengo Mashimo and Tatsuya Hanami with Kasai picking up the win at 11 minutes, 43 seconds with a Reverse Tiger Driver on Hamani. THE Andrew King Takuma and Taylor Adams would defeat Takashi Sasaki and Dragon Libre with Adams getting the pin at 10 minutes, 38 seconds with the Kiwi Bomb over Libre. GENTARO and Ricky Fuji's match would end at 10 minutes, 19 seconds after both would end up being counted out. Violento Jack would make short work of Chicharito Shoki at 7 minutes with the Violent Breaker. The opening match would see Mammoth Sasaki, Kamui, and Takahiro Katori defeating Daiju Wakamtsu, Takuro Niki, and Naka Shuma when Mammoth would put away Wakamatsu at 8 minutes, 23 seconds with the 29 Years Old as both FREEDOMS and 2AW would end the night going 3-3 for the show.

The first Jun Kasai promoted Death Match Carnival took place on July 5, 2021 at Korakuen Hall with an announced crowd of 703 fans for the show which is the biggest pandemic number at Korakuen Hall for the promotion surpassing the Christmas Death Match show which was at 668 fans although the fact that many tickets bought for the May 2nd Korakuen Hall show that was cancelled transferred to this show also probably was a factor in the show doing so well. I usually say going by traditionally standard of a Korakuen Hall that the closest measurement is to multiply the number by two to see where the number typically put it which would make this show in the 1400 range making it the third biggest FREEDOMS Korakuen Hall show behind Kasai's 20th Anniversary show in August 2018 and the Christmas Death Match show in 2019.

The main event would be Toru Sugiura defending the King of Freedom World Championship against Violento Jack in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match. Jack would work on Sugiura's elbow right away by sending it into the light tubes before cutting it open. Sugiura would come back and pick up Jack and drop him onto the first glass board but Jack would come back and suplex Sugiura off the turnbuckle through the second glass board. Jack would then nail a Package Piledriver off the apron on a stack of chairs with light tubes before hitting his own running elbow on a stack of light tubes against Sugiura with Sugiura kicking out. Jack would then nail Sugiura with the Amatalan with Sugiura kicking out before Jack would just end up putting him in the Mexican Stretch and Sugiura would be force to tap out at 21 minutes, 4 seconds as Violento Jack would become the King of Freedom World Championship for the third time and ending Toru Sugiura's reign as champion of 21 months.

Takeda would come out afterwards looking to celebrate with his fellow ERE member before smashing a light tube over Jack's head and challenge him for a title match on August 30th at Korakuen Hall. I would think the booking logic would be that you want to get the title on Takeda but after him losing twice last year to Sugiura you couldn't have Sugiura lose to him so you give the belt to Jack as a transition champion for Takeda which would eventually lead to Takeda defending the title against Jun Kasai at the Christmas Death Match show.

Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki would defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against Jun Kasai and Takashi Sasaki in a Weapons Death Match. The ending of this match would have Ueki placing a barbed wire board over Kasai's head as he would place a concrete block over it and then go up to the top with another concrete block and land it over the board on Kasai's head as Ueki would pin Kasai at 19 minutes, 21 seconds to defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles for the 1st time. Ueki would challenge Jun Kasai to a singles match at the next Death Carnival show on August 30th with Kasai accepting.

Masashi Takeda and Rina Yamashita would start with Yamashita smashing a chair over Takeda's head with him returning the favor back to her although she would get up right away. Takeda would eventually place Yamashita on a fork board and somersault dive off the top onto her although he would get some of the forks in his back as well before hitting her with a Uranage on the board. Yamashita would come back and drop Takeda head first into the forks, but Takeda would fight back and eventually put Yamashita away at 11 minutes, 19 seconds with a Reverse U Crash on the fork board for the win.

Other matches saw Tatsuhito Takaiwa defend his UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title for the first time defeating his partner GENTARO at 13 minutes, 51 seconds with a lariat to get the win. Daisuke Masaoka and Kamui would defeat Mammoth Sasaki and Takahiro Katori as well as Yuya Susumu and Kengo in a Three Way Tag Team Match as Masaoka would get the win at 8 minutes, 32 seconds with the Trance Rave on Katori. The opening match had Tomoya Hirata, Dragon Libre, and Rekka defeat Tomoya Hirata, Kenji Fukimoto, and Brahman Kei when Hirata put away Kei at 6 minutes, 15 seconds with a German Suplex. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 7/5/21 Korakuen Hall show.

FREEDOMS would run their first show at the Tokyo Ueno Park Outdoor Stage on July 10, 2021 where they would announce a crowd of 208 fans for the show. This location has been used by Big Japan numerous times over the years and fans usally come away very entertained and wet although with COVID spraying fans with water everywhere is going to be prohibited. The final match was a Battle Royal with Takashi Sasaki looking like he won before Dragon Libre would show up and get tossed over the top rope himself at 10 minutes, 13 seconds for the Sasaki victory. The scheduled main event was Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki defeating Jun Kasai, Minoru Fujita, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita with Jack getting the win at 16 minutes, 1 second with a Amatalan. Tatsuhito Takaiwa would put away Tomoya Hirata at 10 minutes, 32 seconds with a Death Valley Bomb. Toru Sugiura, Takashi Sasaki, and Yuya Susumu would defeat Dragon Libre, Rekka, and Takahiro Katori with Sugiura nailing Libre with a Right Elbow at 14 minutes, 15 seconds to get his first win since losing the title. There was a Takashi Sasaki impersonation contest with Yuya Susumu getting the best score of 9.5 besting Dragon Libre who scored a 2, Rekka who scored a 3, Toru Sugiura who scored a 1, and Takashi Sasaki himself who was DQ'd and got a 0. The opening match would see GENTARO and Alejandro defeat Mammoth Sasaki and Kamui with GENTARO getting the win with a Ground Cobra at 9 minutes, 32 seconds to defeat Kamui. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 7/10/21 show

FREEDOMS then returned to Shizuoka Twin Messe on July 18, 2021 where they would announce a crowd of 207 fans with Takashi Sasaki stating that the show was a legit sell out under the circumstances and the show was a better success this year than last as last years show not only dealt with COVID issues but also there was a horrible rainstorm that caused huge traffic issues and fans that had tickets for the show ended up not being able to make it as this years show enjoyed beautiful sunshine. The main event was Violento Jack and Takayuki Ueki defeating Jun Kasai and Daisuke Masaoka when Jack would pin his old tag partner Masaoka in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match at 15 minutes, 46 seconds after nailing him with a Amatalan on a Light Tube to get the win. ERE would get another win the semi-main event as Masashi Takeda and Toshiyuki Sakuda would defeat Toru Sugiura and Tomoya Hirata after Takeda would nail Hirata with a Reverse U Crash to get the win at 12 minutes, 47 seconds in a Weapons Death Match. GENTARO would face off against Hideki "Shrek" Sekine in a Wrestling vs. MMA Fight as it would end up going to a time limit draw after 3 rounds of 3 minutes. The Unchain team of Minoru Fujita, Kenji Fukimoto, Kamui, and Rina Yamashita would defeat Takashi Sasaki, Mammoth Sasaki, Yuya Susumu, and Takahiro Katori after Fukimoto would end up putting Katori away at 13 minutes, 14 seconds with a Package Piledriver. The opening match would see Kengo and Yusaku Ito defeat Dragon Libre and Rekka when Kengo would put away Libre at 7 minutes, 41 seconds with a Brainbuster for the win.

The next show will be a Jun Kasai promoted and booked show on July 25, 2021 at the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring as the main event will be Unchain taking on ERE with Jun Kasai, Minoru Fujita, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita going up against Violento Jack, Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Single Elimination Death Match. The semi-main event will also be a Death Match as Daisuke Masaoka will go up against Kamui who he teamed with earlier this month in a Death Match. Toru Sugiura looks to be taking a back seat for a little while without the title as he will team up with Tomoya Hirata against Mammoth Sasaki and Takahiro Katori. Takashi Sasaki and Dragon Libre will team up to take on Yuya Susumu and Kengo and the opening match will be Tatsuhito Takaiwa and GENTARO against Rekka and Brahman Kei. Jun Kasai has announced that this show has already sold out and no more tickets will be put on sale for it.

The A-Team ran their monthly show at the Tokyo Kitasenju White Studio and announced their usual 50 fans for the show. The main event saw Tatsuhito Takaiwa defend the WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title against Takumi Sakurai at 16 minutes, 19 seconds after hitting him with a Death Valley Bomb off the turnbuckle to successfully defend the title for the second time. Afterwards, HASEGAWA would come to the ring and challenge Takaiwa for a WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title at the next show on August 22nd. The semi-main event had Raiden and Joji Otani continue their reign of terror for the promotion as they defeated Hitachi Pro's Konosaku Tonosaki and Kento DiCaprio when Raiden rolled up DiCaprio at 17 minutes, 12 seconds with a cradle to successfully defend the titles for the second time. Daisaku Shimoda made Hitoshi tap out at 12 minutes, 22 seconds with a Sharpshooter. TORU and HASEGAWA defeated Bryan Ishizaka and Hasinosuke when HASEGAWA nailed a Diving Foot Stomp on Hashinosuke at 15 minutes, 9 seconds to get the win. MIKAMI defeated Gajo at 5 minutes, 43 seconds with a Rolling Schoolboy. The opening match had Tomohiko Hashimoto, Iori Sugawara, and Tatsuhiko Nakagawa defeating Super Tiger, Raito Shimizu, and Kenya Maeda when Sugawara would pick up the win at 12 minutes, 46 seconds with a Crescent Tale over Maeda.

Last year I posted on the news section about how I spoke with Mitsuhiro Matsunaga about why he left FMW about a year following Onita's retirement during the Hayabusa era of the promotion. He had made mention to me about how he did not get along with Hayabusa or Masato Tanaka to the point and he became so stressed that he started to lose weight and became sickly until he gave his notice that he was going to leave the promotion.

I am currently going through Mitsuhiro Matsunaga's book that was released in 1998 and he dedicates a chapter to his issues with the New FMW. He states that right away there were issues with Hayabusa as right after the May 5, 1995 show at Kawasaki Stadium he meets with Hayabusa and Hayabusa asks him why is he still with the promotion and not leaving to join IWA Japan.

Hayabusa knowing he was going to become the face of the New FMW wanted to move FMW away from the direction of death matches as Hayabusa was more of a fan of traditional style wrestling and felt the promotion should be more based on what he brought to the table as far as wrestling style as well knowing that they were not going to be able to do outdo what Onita was able to do with FMW as far as death matches and it was best to just start completely over as a traditional style promotion. The problem with that was you still had the W*ING wrestlers that had very little interaction with Hayabusa as most of them had came in while he was in Mexico so they saw this guy they barely knew trying to change the style of the promotion that they were brought in for and that best fit them.

Matsunaga stated to Hayabusa that he didn't believe any independent promotion could be successful as a non-death match promotion (Ryuma Go's Pioneer Senshei was killed by the success of Onita's FMW and Kendo Nagasaki's NOW never took off before eventually being morphed into Big Japan) but he saw the potential in what a futuristic worker Hayabusa could be and if anyone could do it, it would be him and if the New FMW promotion were to take off then Matsunaga would agree to part ways with FMW and go somewhere else.

Matsunaga felt that Hayabusa saw him as a road block to FMW staying the "death match" route with Onita retiring and Goto having left the month prior who Hayabusa really did see as the big road block when it came to being the face of the promotion. The New FMW's first tour under Hayabusa did horrible for their house shows so Matsunaga not only stayed but also called in and brought in Super Leather as the promotion would continue to have death matches to help due to the possibility that the New FMW was going to die a quick death. The promotion did improve during August-September for the Grand Slam Tournament although Matsunaga would state that his death matches during that tour were a big reason that the shows did well even though the Hayabusa matches were on top.

Hayabusa then got injured with Matsunaga feeling that he had the wrong approach of killing his body by doing all these incredible highflying moves while bulking up to make sure he was a heavyweight in front of these house show fans feeling like it would get attention in the magazines of how incredible Hayabusa and word of mouth would spread and the house show market would improve. Matsunaga felt that was a incorrect philosophy because house show fans there are going to go to the shows anyway, but the only way to attract house show fans in rural areas were if you had a star on the show like an Antonio Inoki, Giant Baba, and Atsushi Onita.

I feel Matsunaga is somewhat correct that new fans were not going to come because of word of mouth that someone new is doing all these cool new moves, but I do feel that Hayabusa's 1995 sacrifice wasn't for nothing as after a couple of years the "this guy is doing cool moves" was able to be apart of the total package that eventually became Hayabusa being the only house show draw for the FMW promotion during the Entertainment Pro-Wrestling era. So much so that when Hayabusa was out injured in late 2000-early 2001 with double reconstructive elbow surgery that him not being on the house shows was really what killed FMW and Shoichi Arai ultimately sacrificed his life to keep it going for another year in hopes of a miracle that not only didn't happen, the exact opposite took place with Hayabusa's career ending by keeping it going. I will continue to work on Matsunaga's book as it's an interesting read for me as I love reading different thoughts and opinions from people that were there and give a different perceptive when it comes to Hayabusa especially at the beginning of his run.

I also was able to translate an interview that Hayabusa and Masato Tanaka did for Monthly Gong Magazine. The interview was done on December 23, 2014 and the magazine came out in January 2015.

This magazine was actually the return of Gong Magazine as Weekly Gong was a very popular magazine that took some iconic FMW photos in the 90's and was the main competitor of Pro-Wrestling Weekly Magazine which has always been the number one magazine in Japan. Gong originally started out as a monthly magazine in December 1969 until becoming a weekly magazine in 1984 to compete with Pro-Wrestling Weekly that had also became a weekly magazine a year prior. Weekly Gong lasted until March 2007 before closing down due to the decline in popularity of wrestling and also magazines as their long time rival Pro-Wrestling Weekly has continued to survive but sometimes just barely. This magazine was the return as a monthly magazine format where it would be more interviews and close ups of wrestling more so than the recent events that occurred in wrestling although this magazine failed to catch on and stopped publication again in October 2016.

This interview is interesting as it's Hayabusa and Tanaka just sitting around and the interviewer at least in the interview itself barely says anything as it's more Hayabusa and Tanaka just bouncing from topic to topic themselves for the most part. Hayabusa when he originally wrote in his Blog following the interview was wondering how it the interview would be edited because of just how much bouncing around they did. They talk about their Dojo days, Hayabusa talks about where the negativity of his feelings about Onita started, they talk about going abroad, they tell stories, and some stories are told by both Hayabusa and Tanaka of Hayabusa as a young boy that show that he was probably a little too open with his body when he was younger. You can check it out by clicking at http://fmwwrestling.us/HayabusaTanaka.html

Added: 6/17

Atsushi Onita and Hidetaka Kaijiki held a press conference on May 6, 2021 to announce the creation of the "FMW-E" promotion. The first and only show currently announced to take place will be on July 4, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetables Market. Kaijiki who is a co-representative for the Fukuoka City based Kofu-Field company in which they specialize in building sports facilities in Japan as well as the company that created the sport "Jorkyball" (which is pretty much 2 on 2 soccer in a handball size room) will be the main sponsor for the promotion. Kaijiki had been a main sponsor for the DDT sub-promotion Blasting Koshien promotion which was based around Onita and explosions for the last 18 months, but they have decided to break away from the DDT promotion to create this promotion.

Onita stated that the idea of the promotion came to him in March after AEW tried to run an Exploding Barbed wire Exploding Ring Death Match and the explosions were a huge disappointment. Onita stated many people from overseas messaged him on Twitter stating that they wanted Onita to show what a real explosion can look like. Onita and Kaijiki began talking about creating the new promotion with a big focus on appealing to overseas fans with explosions feeling there was definitely a market that could help make a successful promotion.

They decided together to use the "FMW" name feeling that name would stand out most to foreign fans than any other promotion name they came up, and because of not legally being able to use the "Frontier Martial-arts Wrestling" name they added an "E" at the end as the promotion will be called Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling Explosion or "FMW-E".

The big selling point for this promotion is to stream the shows across the world. It will live stream on Zaiko at https://fmw-e.zaiko.io/_item/339736 at 12:00 Noon Japanese Standard Time on July 4th meaning it will start at 11:00 pm Eastern Standard Time the night of July 3rd. The stream will be available for the following week and will be 1,000 Yen meaning around $10.00.

Onita has stated that the stream price is much cheaper than usual to try and allow a wider audience to be able to watch the show. He also stated that currently 60% of the streaming buys has come from overseas so far. They will also have an English speaking commentator in Drew Parker as well as a Chinese speaking commentator.

Tickets for the show have already sold out the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit Market. The building usually fits about 750 people or so had 200 tickets go on sale which sold out rather fast. They ended up putting another 25 or so which also sold out. The plan was to put out another 25 tickets which would put the live attendance at about 250 people in the building for the show.

This promotion is also not shy about asking for any type of sponsorships and supporters that they can get. They have four different types of advertising on their banner and the official pamphlet with deals ranging from 300 dollars to 2,500 dollars. You can also own pay for your message to be displayed on the screen during the live stream show on Zaiko with the prices ranging from 10 dollars to 100 dollars with how big you want your font size to appear on the screen.

They also announced for the 4 way women's match on the show which has since turned into a three way genderless match that viewers can tip during the show to specify what weapon they want to be used during the match as they will have six weapons to choose from in a barbed wire bat, barbed wire board, a folding chair, a ladder, a bamboo sword, and a whip.

The big selling point of this promotion will obviously be the explosions as Onita has always made sure that the explosions he has used are very impressive looking as he looks to make them even more powerful for this match. He has announced that the main event of the show will be a No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire which will be the first time that Onita will be participating in one of those matches since October 9, 2017 as well as an Exploding Barbed wire Baseball Bat, Exploding Barricades outside the ring, and for the first time ever an Exploding Table which the table is usually used for Onita to piledrive someone through it, so that will be interesting to see how they can use it for this match.

Atsushi Onita when announcing the promotion ended up receiving messages from three different wrestlers wanting to participate. Ricky Fuji, Minoru Fujita, and Abdullah Kobayashi. Ricky Fuji having been apart of FMW since 1990 and pretty much every off shoot promotion of was a no brainer although he has only wrestled in one exploding barbed wire death match his entire career and that wasn't even for any FMW promotion as it was for Pro-Wrestling Nightmare. Minoru Fujita who has only wrestled in one No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Death Match and that was the last one back in October 2017 which he did not take any bumps into, and Abdullah Kobayashi who stated that he only lives 9 minutes from the Yokohama Fruit Market and he can just drive his moped there and won't need any travel reimbursement like all the other wrestlers.

Onita and Kobayashi ended up getting into a war of words on Twitter after Kobayashi mentioned his moped and as a result a stipulation was added to the match that if Kobayashi's team loses the match then they will end up blowing up his moped so that he would end up having to walk home where as if Onita's team loses then his leather jacket would end up being exploded. This is also not the only leather jacket Onita has had as he auctioned off his other one back in 2016 to a fan so there is no long term significance for this jacket.

Atsushi Onita ended up appearing for a Niigata Pro show on May 23, 2021 at the Niigata Sun Village Shibata where he teamed with Great Kojika and Shigeno Shima defeated Abdullah Kobayashi, Hikaru Sato, and Masao Inoue when Shima would pin Inoue at 17 minutes, 34 seconds in a Bunkhouse Death Match. Onita ended up fighting with Kobayashi outside the ring most of the match to establish the feud between the two going into the FMW-E show on July 4th. Onita would end up having a scare though as Hikaru Sato would end up testing positive for COVID after the show on top of it coming out of the show. Onita felt "dull" and his body was not the same afterwards so he took a COVID test and tested negative for it.

FMW-E would then announce the full lineup of the show with Onita teaming up with Minoru Fujita and Ricky Fuji going up against Abdullah Kobayashi, Yuko Miyamoto, and Onryo in the Exploding Barbed wire, Exploding Barricade, Exploding Barbed wire Bat, and Exploding Table Death Match. The original 4 way women's match has been re-named a genderless three way match as Miss Mongol will face off against Nene ∞ D.a.i and a Mystery Opponent. The only wrestler that has expressed interest in the show that has not been announced is Asuka so I would take a guess that she is the most likely candidate for the match. There will be a comedy match with Kikutaro and Gabai Ji-chan taking on Brahman Shu and Brahman Kei. Long time Onita follower Yuichi Taniguchi will team up with another long time Onita follower Naoshi Sano as well as HASEGAWA as they take on Monster Leather who most likely will be Tomohiko Hashimoto revising his Super Battle FMW gimmick, WWS wrestler Mr. Atomic, and Toshiya Kawarai. The opening match will be DDT's Yumeto Imanari in a comedy match against Fat Onita in a Fake Explosion Match.

Atsushi Onita then announced that he has been looking to have an FMW-E show booked in the United States sometime this Fall. He has asked a friend in the United States to investigate legal matters and select the best venue candidates, but he has told Onita he is having a difficult time with the rest. Each state has a different Fire Service Act is different in each state, and restrictions are different depending on the venue. They are coming across the issues that most independents end up dealing with when they try to put together a show with any type of explosions. Onita stated he has always wanted to show American fans his type of explosion match as he was disappointed in the CZW show back in 2017 but I understood stating their low budget to be able to do it, as well as being disappointed in AEW's explosions in March as even though he was not involved in that, he felt responsible because he had been apart of the video package beforehand and so many fans came away disappointed with that match.

Keep in mind that Japan is urging people to not travel out of the country especially after their COVID numbers skyrocketed for them last month to around 6,500 cases a week although the number has dropped recently to about 2,300 cases a week. In comparison, the USA which have very much relaxed on the rules because of the decline numbers are still at about 14,000 new cases a week, so Japan has highly discouraged anyone traveling to another country and coming back, so the chances that Onita and any other wrestler from Japan that would attend this show would have to quarantine for 14 days before being allowed to wrestle again, which was the deciding factor back in March for Onita not attending the AEW show.

The big question also is what is going to try and be the selling point to this show other than the explosives. Onita has recently called out wanting Matt Tremont to face him once again after their singles match in CZW turned into a 6 man match back in August 2017 which then lead to Tremont going to Japan in October 2017 and having a 10 man exploding barbed wire match with neither Onita or Tremont ever pinning one another in each match. Besides the whole Tremont living in the US, a big issue with him facing Onita is that he just recently retired in October 2020. Obviously, breaking a retirement vow is no big deal to Onita, but there has not been indication that Tremont is willing to come back so soon. If Onita were to get a FMW-E show booked in the Northeast especially in the New Jersey/Philadelphia region, the push to get Tremont to come out of retirement and face Onita in an Explosive Match will only get louder.

The other person that could help draw the show facing Onita would be Jon Moxley. Moxley having recently changed his AEW theme song to Onita's Wild Thing obviously wants to have a match with Onita. I would imagine getting Moxley against Onita in some type of tag explosion match would not only be a dream for Moxley, but also would probably lead to something down the road with AEW once again trying to get Onita to face Moxley on their show as everything points to Moxley being the main person trying to get Onita in AEW back in March for the exploding ring match. If the show were to take place in Florida, I would imagine Moxley would end up being the biggest outside talent that they would look to bring in for the show to help draw whichever venue they end up booking, if they are ever able to end up booking anything and have the type of exploding match that Onita has so badly wanted to have in the United States for so long.

Onita also recently said in a interview that he wanted to do explosion death match in FMW where they would run on the United Stated USS Independence Aircraft Carrier Ship off of Yokosuka but a sexual harassment incident on the ship ended up getting the show cancelled.

Just because Atsushi Onita has broken away from DDT to create FMW-E pretty much ending the Blasting Koshien sub-promotion, it does not mean that Onita and DDT President Sanshiro Takagi are going to stop working together at least for now. Onita and Takagi who have been working together on and off since 1999 when Atsushi Onita needed midcard matches to fill out his Onita Pro shows began working with the very small at the time DDT promotion to be able to have a complete show will work together on August 21, 2021 when DDT will be running their big show of the year "Peter Pan 2021" at Kawasaki Stadium. I have talked about it in past updates, but Kawasaki Stadium which was a baseball stadium that could hold over 50,000 people for a wrestling event ended up being torn down with just the baseball field itself being left for amateur games to take place with fans sitting down in folding chairs. The baseball field was then reconfigured to an American Football field to allow amateur football and soccer games to take place.

When I went to Kawasaki Stadium in 2011, I was able to just walk right up to the where kids were practicing American Football at the time as there was no ticket booth or entrance to the building back then. A sponsor Fujitsu ended up buying the property and renaming it "Fujitsu Stadium Kawasaki" and re-building it into a stadium where you have to pay to enter and built two sets of bleachers that has been reported to fit 2,700 people and professional American Football in Japan would take place in the building. Atsushi Onita tried to get the Stadium book for his retirement show in October 2017, but the building was too busy booked up from the American Football games that time of the year to be able to host the show and a frustrated Onita just decided to run at Korakuen Hall instead. Then the Pandemic hit last year and no professional games were taking place in the location. Hard Hit was able to book the stadium for very cheap on August 29, 2020 and run two shows, one during the day and one at night. Neither show had an attendance announced as there were so few fans for the small independent promotion that the fans were able to just sit on the field next to the ring and watch the matches. Atsushi Onita did appear for the first time since 2002 at Kawasaki Stadium and had a 6 man Exploding Barbed wire Bat Death Match on the night show.

DDT now looks to run their big show of the year, so they most likely be using the bleacher seats as well as placing folding chairs on the field itself. There will be two rings set up on the field, one for Atsushi Onita's match and one for the rest of the DDT show. It has been announced that Onita's match will be an explosion match. The details of what kind of explosion has not been announced, as it could be an exploding ring match if DDT was willing to put the money into a non-main event match, but more than likely it is going to be a exploding barbed wire death match. Onita requested that the match be the first match on the show for the pre-show since it is going to take a lot of time to set up the ring and then be ready to have another match over in the other ring which will be placed right next to it. This guarantees that the explosive match will be more than an exploding barbed wire bat match, but the details will have to wait to come out on what exactly the match will be. Onita has requested that he get his revenge on TV comedian Kuro-chan on this show as Kuro-chan was able to defeat Onita in a singles match back on December 23, 2020 after several wrestlers helped him hit Onita with the exploding bat to get the win outside the Tokyo Solomachi Sky Tree Garden.

FREEDOMS ran apart of the annual Yokohama Pro-Wrestling Festival which takes place during Golden Week. They would run at the Yokohama Radiant Hall and announce a crowd of 150 fans for the show.

The main event would be Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, and Takashi Sasaki against Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Hardcore Match. Takashi would look to hit Sakuda with a D-Geist on a chair, but Sakuda would get away and use the chair to hit a Slice Bread # 2 followed by Sakuda trying for a Swanton Bomb off a ladder with Takashi moving out of the way as Sugiura would come in and deliver an elbow to Sakuda and Kasai would nail him with a Pearl Harbor Splash. Takashi would then nail Sakuda with a D-Geist with the other ERE members making the save. Takashi would then suplex Sakuda off the turnbuckle on a set of a chairs sticking up and then finish Sakuda off with a D-Geist on a ladder at 17 minutes, 17 seconds to get the FREEDOMS win.

The semi-main event would be Masashi Takeda taking on Kenji Fukimoto in a No DQ Match. They would smash street signs over their heads before Takeda would just take a chair with spikes on it and toss it at Fukimoto before pressing it up against his body before laying it over him as Takeda would go up to the top and dive off of it but Fukimoto would manage to turn it around as Takeda would go into the spikes instead. Fukimoto would then toss the spiked chair at Takeda and then setup a chair with forks on it, but Takeda would grab him and deliver a Reverse U-Crash on it an then place Fukimoto in a Front Choke at 8 minutes, 57 seconds for the submission win.

Kamui would then defend the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Tatsuhito Takaiwa in a match that was originally suppose to take place at the cancelled May 2nd Korakuen Hall show. Kamui would send Takaiwa over the top and deliver a running moonsault off the turnbuckle to the outside. They would get back up on the turnbuckle with Takaiwa suplexing Kamui and then deliver a powerbomb and try for one another one but that would get messed. Takaiwa would then take Kamui to the turnbuckle and hit a Death Valley Bomb off the top win at 15 minutes, 27 seconds to win the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title.

Other matches on the show would see Takahiro Katori return to FREEDOMS and team up with Dragon Libre as they would take on Mammoth Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka with Mammoth putting Libre away at 9 minutes, 55 seconds with a Mammoth Home Run. The opening match would have Minoru Fujita, Rina Yamashita, and Tomoya Hirata defeat Brahman GEN, Yuya Susumu, and Kengo with Hirata getting the win over GEN who has had a four year off and on feud going at 10 minutes, 28 seconds with a Backdrop. After the show, many of the participants of the Yokohama Pro-Wrestling Festival came to the ring including Dragon Libre wearing his dWo shirt for Dragon World Order which will be running a show on July 31st at the Yokohama Radiant Hall. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 5/5/21 show.

FREEDOMS would then return to the Sendai Miyagi PIT on May 16, 2021 and announce a crowd of 182 fans. The main event would be Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, Takashi Sasaki, and Kenji Fukimoto vs. Masashi Takeda, Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. Ueki would grab a stack of light tubes with Sugiura charging at him with the light tubes exploding over both. Jack would then pick Sugiura and drop him on his knees followed by Takeda kneeing a stack of light tubes breaking them over Sugiura. Ueki would then grab Sugiura and send him head first into another stack of light tubes. Ueki would try to drop Sugiura on more light tubes, but Sugiura would manage to escape and then suplex Ueki on those light tubes instead. Takashi would then grab a stack of light tubes and kick them breaking them across Ueki and Fukimoto would nail him with a Brainbuster as Kasai would set up a stack of light tubes over him and come down on them with a Pearl Harbor Splash. Sugiura would then take another stack of light tubes and break them with a running right elbow and cover him at 17 minutes, 58 seconds.

The semi-main event would be Tatsuhito Takaiwa defeating Aisawa # 1 at 12 minutes, 23 seconds with a Death Valley Bomb. Mammoth Sasaki would team up with Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita would defeat Brahman GEN. Brahman Kei, and Dragon Libre at 9 minutes, 56 seconds with Mammoth putting away Libre once again with the 29 Years Old for the win. Mammoth afterwards would state it was good to hear the FMW theme song (his theme song is a re-mix of the song) on the 19th Anniversary of FMW owner Shoichi Arai's passing. Yuya Susumu and Kengo would defeat Daisuke Masaoka and Kamui with Kengo picking up the win over Kamui at 11 minutes, 50 seconds after nailing him with a Frog Splash. The opening match would see Tomoya Hirata defeat Takahiro Katori at 7 minutes, 23 seconds with a German Suplex. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 5/16/21 show.

FREEDOMS next show would take place on May 27, 2021 for their return to Tokyo and they would announce a crowd of 164 fans which is a legit out of Shin-Kiba at this point as they were not allowing any one else in the building prior to the show.

The main event would what was originally suppose to main event Korakuen Hall on May 2nd as Toru Sugiura and Jun Kasai would take on ERE's Masashi Takeda and Violento Jack in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match. Takeda would end up sending Kasai in the corner to go through the first glass board, but Kasai would come back soon after and suplex Jack through the other glass board set up on a stack of chairs. Kasai would then go up to the top and hit a Pearl Harbor Splash on Jack followed by Sugiura hitting Jack with a right elbow but as he would begin to cover him, Jack would place Sugiura in the Mexican Stretch with Kasai trying to break the hold, but Takeda would come up from behind and begin to choke Kasai out as Sugiura would be force to tap at 21 minutes, 2 seconds for the ERE win. Afterwards, Violento Jack would challenge Toru Sugiura to a King of Freedom World Championship Death Match at the next Korakuen Hall show to take place on July 5th.

The semi-main event would be another match that was suppose to take place on May 2nd at Korakuen with Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita defending the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against ERE's Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki in a Scramble Tornado Weapons Death Match. Takashi Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka would team up to take on Unchain's Kamui and Kenji Fukimoto in a Hardcore Match with Masaoka picking up the win at 11 minutes, 59 seconds after putting Kamui away with a Tornado Clutch. Mammoth Sasaki and Tatsuhito Takaiwa would team up to defeat the young team of Tomoya Hirata and Takahiro Katori with Mammoth getting the win at 10 minutes, 27 seconds after putting Katori away with the 29 Years Old. The opening match would have Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Rekka defeat the team of Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and Dragon Libre with Susumu would put away Libre at 7 minutes, 6 seconds with a Kill Switch to get the win. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 5/27/21 show.

FREEDOMS will return to Shin-Kiba 1st Ring on June 18, 2021 with the main event of Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, and Takashi Sasaki taking on Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Weapons Death Match. The semi-main event will Masashi Takeda taking on Kamui in a Double Hell Board Death Match. Mammoth Sasaki, Daisuke Masaoka, and Tomoya Hirata will go up against Unchain's Minoru Fujita, Kenji Fukimoto, and Rina Yamashita. Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Alejandro will take on Brahman Kei, Brahman Gen, and Dragon Libre as Brahman Shu had recently made his return back to action after suffering a neck injury only to be diagnosed with COVID to put him back out of action. The opening match will be Tatsuhito Takaiwa taking on 2AW's Daiju Wakamatsu.

The next Korakuen Hall show will take place on July 5, 2021 which will be a Jun Kasai promoted Death Match Carnival Part 1 show with the main event of Toru Sugiura defending the King of Freedom World Championship. This will be an interesting result, as I not that long ago put on here I wrote that if Sugiura was to defend the title against Violento Jack for the May 2nd Korakuen Hall show, that I felt like Jack would be the one to finally end Sugiura's run as champion. Jack has a new fresh heel stigma to him by joining up with Masashi Takeda and ERE and also already lost to Sugiura when challenging for the title back on December 25, 2019 at Korakuen Hall. The only reason that comes up with Jack not winning the title is that Jun Kasai also has challenged Sugiura for the title on August 30th at Korakuen Hall. The August Death Match Carnival show is always a much bigger show than the July show. Sugiura vs. Kasai is the biggest match they can do at this point, but it was done in 2019 with Sugiura winning the belt, and then done again last August with Sugiura defending the belt against Kasai. Regardless, it is pretty certain that Sugiura will not still be champion after these two Death Match Carnival shows.

Violento Jack who was originally suppose to compete in the semi-finals and possible finals of the Death Match Survivor Tournament back on May 16th at Korakuen Hall is now looking at facing Drew Parker on June 28th at Korakuen Hall instead. The Big Japan April 26th was originally canceled because of the state of emergency declared just three days before the show was to take place. The state of emergency would actually get extended on May 13th, but it would be announced that buildings like Korakuen Hall could work with the promotions to insure safety and still run their shows. This allowed Big Japan to run what was suppose to be their April 26th show to take place at their next scheduled show on May 16th. The next show was suppose to be on June 13th and that is where Violento Jack was going to take on Drew Parker to see if he was going to advance to the finals that night.

An issue occurred though following Big Japan's last show of the tour on May 30th when Yuki Ishikawa who was in the main event ended up testing positive for COVID. Big Japan would cancel all their first half of June shows as a result including their June 13th Korakuen Hall show. After that it was announced that Great Kojika, Ryuji Ito, Yuya Aoki, Brahman Shu and Drew Parker had all also test positive for COVID and were having mild symptoms. Big Japan President Eiji Tosaka was not so lucky though and needed to be hospitalized which he has since been released from. Due to the June 13th show being cancelled they are now going to have the semi-finals of the tournament take place on June 24th in Shin-Kiba with the winners of the two matches competing in the finals of the tournament now scheduled for June 28th. The winner of the Death Match Survivor will go on to challenge Takumi Tsukamoto on July 23rd at Korakuen Hall for the Big Japan Death Match Heavyweight Title.

The A-Team would hold a show on May 16, 2021 at the Tokyo Kitasenju White Studio where they would draw an announce crowd of 50 fans. The main event would be Raiden and Joji Otani winning the WEW Tag Team Titles against the champions MIKAMI and HASEGAWA when Raiden would pin HASEGAWA at 23 minutes, 53 seconds with a Tiger Driver to walk away with the belts to end the show. The semi-main event would be Super Tiger and Hayato Mashita defeating Takumi Sakurai and Bryan Ishizaka when Tiger would make Sakurai tap out at 14 minutes, 18 seconds to a Fujiwara Armbar. Tomohiko Hashimoto, Daisuke Ikeda, and Daisaku Shimoda would defeat Kosaku Tonosaki, Kento DiCaprio, and Kenya Maeda with Hashimoto putting Maeda away at 18 minutes, 37 seconds with the XCT. Raito Shimizu would defeat Jin at 6 minutes, 4 seconds with a Raito Bottom. The opening match would have Raijin Yaguchi and Iori Sugawara defeat Gajo and Hashinosuke at 15 minutes, 19 seconds after Sugawara would nail Hashinosuke with a Buzz Saw Kick for the win.


The A-Team would return to the Tokyo Kitasenju White Studio on June 6, 2021 where they would announce a crowd of 50 fans. The main event would be Raiden and Joji Otani defending their WEW Tag Team Titles against Daisaku Shimoda and Gajo as Raiden would end up rolling Gajo up with a cradle to get the win at 17 minutes, 9 seconds for their first successful WEW Tag Team Titles defense. The semi-main event would be Tatsuhito Takaiwa defending one of his multiple Jr. Heavyweight belts as he would defeat Iori Sugawara at 15 minutes, 38 seconds with a Death Valley Bomb to successfully defend the WEW Jr. Heavyweight Title for the first time. Tomohiko Hashimoto, TORU, and Masahiro Sase would defeat Super Tiger, Hayato Mashita, and Raito Shimizu when Sase would get the win at 13 minutes, 27 seconds after nailing Shimizu with a Shining Wizard. HASEGAWA would defeat Jin at 10 minutes, 18 seconds with a Diving Foot Stomp. MIKAMI would put away Kosaku Tonosaki at 8 minutes, 49 seconds with a 450 Splash. The opening match would see Takumi Sakurai, Bryan Ishizaka, and Hashinosuke defeat Daisuke Ikeda, Kento DiCaprio, and Kenya Maeda with Sakurai putting away Maeda at 19 minutes, 18 seconds with a Lionsault for the win.

I recently finished getting the Jun Kasai book translate. It's an interesting book as I was able to learn a lot about him that I didn't really know as he has been pretty private about his life over the last 20 years. He does try and keep kayfabe here in a lot of ways, but then says some stuff in a read between the lines way or just flatly says he only lost to Masashi Takeda back in August 2018 because he was also the King of Freedom World Champion on top of being the Big Japan Death Match Heavyweight Champion because if he were to have lost to just the Big Japan champ it would have made him look lower than the Big Japan champion in fans eyes and he would not do something like that. He worked with a ghost writer as the first half of the book was him telling detailed stories about his life, but then the second half kind of focuses on specific matches for the most part which he only is able to give a little bit of detail of each as he even says in the book his memory is not what it was compared to 2009 even. I have been able to tell the same thing from speaking with Kintaro Kanemura and Mr. Gannosuke. Kanemura remembers so much from W*ING and how he got started 30 years ago, but barely remembers anything over the last decade. Mr. Gannosuke remembers a lot from his time in FMW, but after FMW closed down his memory is not as good as he really struggles to remember anything from WMF which he ran.

This project of getting the book translated took over a month of working on it every day. I want to translate more books, it just takes a lot of time. I have Kodo Fuyuki's widow Kaoru writing about the last year of his life lined up next. I have several other books I would like to get to down the road as well. I have also been working on Hayabusa's memoirs for over a year at this point. I will be putting together the last History of FMW coming up here in the next couple of months and that at least will free up some time to be able to work more on of these books. You can find the book at http://fmwwrestling.us/Kasai1.html and it will be put in the FMW Biographies section. Please understand there's going to be grammar errors due to the changes of languages as there were only so much I could catch and fix. Also, if you are to post it elsewhere, please give me credit as again, this was a very time consuming project.

Last update I went over the history of the reasons behind Onita Pro, Tarzan Goto-Ippa, and Mr. Pogo's WWS. All three promotions ended up becoming small Japanese independent promotions with their own style of death matches with other than a lot of Onita Pro making it on Samurai TV they all went unnoticed in regards to being reported. I have been able to accumulate most of the results of the promotions, but there is still some missing stuff from 2000-2001. I am just going to have to find the right magazines that include results of any those missing shows not included. You can find the page where I will be storing results of these three promotions which will include links to highlights of the shows if I have them at http://fmwwrestling.us/IndieResults.html as stated last update I would like to add more independent promotions that none of the internet data base have full results of, but these take a lot of time, and I already have so many other projects going on.

Added: 5/2

Blasting Koshien ran its first show of the year on May 2, 2021 at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit Market as they would announce a crowd of 161 fans for the show. The Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit Market has become kind of the home of this promotion as it allows such huge explosions during the matches that they can not have at Korakuen Hall or inside Shin-Kiba if they were to run there, but they also can still get the Tokyo fan base to come to the shows because it is so close. The Blasting Koshien Spring Tournament took place with Shunma Katsumata and MAO defeating Sanshiro Takagi and Yukio Naya with Katsumata and MAO advancing to the finals after MAO pinned Naya at 10 minutes, 18 seconds with a Cannon Ball 450 through a plastic case. The second first round match was Atsushi Onita and Yumehito Imanari taking on former fellow ZEN member Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Super Sasedango Machine with Kuroda picking up the win after hitting Imanari with the bat set on fire to get the pinfall over him at 4 minutes, 27 seconds in the upset.

The match had controversy as Shunma Katsumata and MAO had interfered for the Kuroda and Sasadango team hoping to eliminate the Onita team so they wouldn't have to face them in the finals. Onita complained to Takagi afterwards stating that if he did not reach the finals then half of the fans in attendance would not want to come back to the next Blasting Koshien show. Takagi agreed as Takagi announced that the finals would now be the winning teams of Tetsuhiro Kuroda, Super Sasadango Machine, Shunma Katsumata, and MAO going up against the losing teams of Atsushi Onita, Yumehito Imanari, Sanshiro Takagi, and Yukio Naya.

Onita ended up using a new weapon for this match as he was given a exploding spiked nail that he would use during the match. Takagi would end up getting on a bike during the match and crash into an exploding barbed wire bat swing from MAO. Onita would end up using the exploding spiked nails on Sasadango and cover him to get the win at 8 minutes, 8 seconds to give the Onita team the win and win the Blasting Koshien Spring Tag Team Tournament.

I have started a new project of trying to get the translations of every result of Atsushi Onita's Onita Pro, Tarzan Goto's Goto-Ippa, and Mr. Pogo's WWS shows as I will probably get around 90% of each of them complete by the time I finally complete. The issue with the 10% is trying to find the correct magazines that the results would be in as there is not many results of anything pre-2001 on the internet for any of these promotions. I am going to try my best to be able to complete all 100% of them. I had a similar goal to get all the FMW results translated and put on here back in 2002 and I was able to reach that goal in 2010. It took buying a whole bunch of Japanese magazines and spending hours upon hours of translating. I am having to do the same for these promotions as anything before August 2001 is not online. I am currently working on each promotion, but I wanted to share what I have the WWS results I have so far which spans from 2000 to 2012 and I will include links to clips from the Occupation of the Indies going over those shows. The link can be found at http://fmwwrestling.us/WWSResults.html. I should have the Onita Pro and Goto-Ippa results for the next update as I would also like to branch out and try other results of shows that are just simply not online like the early years of 666 and Pro-Wrestling Nightmare. I wanted to go over each promotion a little bit and the back story of how they found their origin.

The beginning of Atsushi Onita starting up his own promotion started while he was still in FMW in 1998. Onita had turned heel and started up ZEN following the September 28, 1997 Kawasaki Stadium show. This was to allow Hayabusa to regain his spot as the top face of the promotion which Onita had taken it from him following his return from retirement in December 1996. Onita hated being heel in FMW though. He felt that he should never be heel for the promotion he started. This resulted in Onita and ZEN turning face on December 22, 1997 just three months later although they would be more of a tweener group because they were not the top face group which was the Hayabusa lead FMW group. The group as the second face/tweener group did not work and they were disbanded after their May 5, 1998 show.

Onita took some time off shortly after following ZEN ending and in that time got in touch with a sponsor that wanted to start up a new promotion based on Onita since FMW was obviously want to go back to focusing on Hayabusa as the top face instead of Onita. Onita agreed to begin working for this promotion which would be called USO which would be a take off of Antonio Inoki's UFO promotion at the time. Onita's plan was to leave FMW and begin only working for the USO promotion that would include all the FMW wrestlers besides Hayabusa on the shows to fill out the cards. Onita essentially would be having a mirror FMW promotion except with him as the top wrestler once again in his Street Fight Death Matches and they would be competing against FMW which would be helping them fill out the cards. This finally lead Shoichi Arai and all the FMW wrestlers to meet with Atsushi Onita and not only state that they would not help USO, but that Atsushi Onita would no longer be associated with FMW after that and would never end up returning the promotion he started up. The first USO show on December 11, 1998 at Korakuen Hall would be a disappointment and the sponsor would pull out right away.

Onita would then find another sponsor as he had stopped wanting to put his own money when promoting shows as he had done that with FMW for 6 years and just wanted to worry about wrestling and getting paid to wrestle. The sponsor would call the promotion Onita Pro or "Onita Box Office" and the promotion would run from 1999 until 2001. The shows would be pretty much the same with low level independent wrestlers many of which were from DDT including Takashi Sasaki and GENTARO before there would be the standard wild and crazy Onita Street Fight main event. Onita would find a new sponsor in 2001 and Onita Pro would become Project X although following FMW's closure in February 2002 the sponsor would agree to change the name to Onita FMW and be based around a nostalgia of the early days of FMW with Onita although the nostalgia would quickly wear off once they would run outside Korakuen Hall and this sponsor would pull out.

He would begin working with the original Onita sponsor and bring the Onita Pro name in September 2002 and run until May 2005 when Onita would retire once again following graduating college. Onita would come back out of retirement with a new sponsor in 2008 where the shows again be about FMW nostalgia although in the small Shin-Kiba building and then eventually mostly working in the Shinjuku FACE in 2012 where he would feud with Satoru Sayama and Akebono. The last show so far was on July 13, 2019 which would see Onita come back to the ring for the first time in 5 months following his double knee replacement surgery.

Mr. Pogo's WWS which stands for World W*ING Sprit would begin under similar circumstances. Mr. Pogo became the first freelance wrestler in 1995 after FMW under Shoichi Arai could not pay Mr. Pogo or Mitsuhiro Matsunaga the type of money they were making while Onita was in charge of FMW as the promotion was going in a different direction and their value was not the same for the smaller FMW as it was for Onita's version. Matsunaga took the pay cut but then there issues with the younger wrestlers Hayabusa, Masato Tanaka, and W*ING Kanemura and he felt disrespected and left the promotion after 9 months following the pay cut.

Mr. Pogo on the other hand had a great relationship with Shoichi Arai and the fellow wrestlers. He just felt like he needed to make back the money back that the FMW pay cut effected him. Arai allowed Pogo out of his contract but he still felt associated with FMW and he had told Arai that he would not job to any promotion he worked for. There was an issue with Tenryu and WAR and Pogo not doing the job that made him decide to resign with FMW in the Spring 1996 in which he would turn face for the first time in the promotion. Not long after the face turn though, he would have a match with Terry Funk in a Double Hell Death Match that would see him fall out of the ring and break his neck in the process. Pogo would come back shortly after but would be very immobile. This would also be the same time that Atsushi Onita had decided to come out of retirement and came up with the storyline of Mr. Pogo begging Onita to come back and team with him in Pogo's retirement. This created an issue as Pogo did not want to retire.

They would come up an agreement that would allow Pogo out of his FMW contract once again, but this time he would be paid 6 months to just sit at home and not wrestlers. Pogo would find a job with Big Japan after 6 months and become their number one heel of the promotion. He would continue that role for a year until Onita would ask request he begin working for FMW as well again and because of his respect for Arai and Onita would begin working for both promotions. Onita who would be leaving FMW to start up the USO promotion would make the request to work his last FMW match against Mr. Pogo on November 20, 1998 at the Yokohama Bunka Gym. The problem with that though is that Big Japan would start their tour in Aomori on November 20, 1998. Pogo had a decision to make and he would choose the one FMW show due to his loyalty to Onita and Arai over Big Japan. Pogo's decision would result in Big Japan to stop booking him going forward. FMW phasing out of the death matches and no longer having Onita on the roster would also not book him.

Pogo would begin taking bookings for the smaller IWA Japan promotion in 1999 until deciding to start up his own promotion WWS. Pogo would create WWS in January 2000 which was originally going to be based out of Honjo City, Saitama because his sauna business was located there. The promotion would eventually moved to Gunma where Pogo had a restaurant and they would run around once a month with the promotion looking to be the definition of low independent wrestlers as they would include Cat Fight matches with barely clothed untrained wrestlers fighting, wrestlers adapting the Leatherface and Freddy Krueger gimmicks, and main event matches with Pogo where he and his opponents and the entire crowd would follow them brawling outside the building into other stores which would create the promotion a cult following. Pogo began to deal with health issues and the promotion would begin to run much less frequently including only one show their 10th Anniversary show from 2007 to 2011.

He would begin to feel better and promote more including running six WWS shows in 2014 with his last show for his promotion on November 23, 2014. Health issues would come back and his bad back would make it impossible for him to wrestle in his matches before he would end up passing away on June 23, 2017. WWS would run a Mr. Pogo Memorial show on November 12, 2017 with the thought it would be the last WWS show feeling they could not keep the promotion going with out Mr. Pogo. That decision would change shortly afterwards though as several people that Mr. Pogo had gotten started in WWS would decide to keep the business going in his memory including running a show on March 21, 2021 with Atsushi Onita in the main event.

Tarzan Goto and his need to start up his own promotion goes back to 1995 as well. Atsushi Onita had decided he would be retiring after May 5, 1995 and would be having his retirement match against Tarzan Goto in the biggest FMW match of all time. What happened next is a mystery and the people that know the answer are not telling. Tarzan Goto, Mr. Gannosuke, and Flying Kid Ichihara would decide to leave FMW.

There has been numerous rumors to Goto feeling like FMW would collapse under him, him being angry at Onita for trying to create a gimmick where Goto would have a gimmick based on the cult Aum Shinrikyo's leader Shoko Ashara who had recently committed bioterrorism killing 13 people by spreading Sarin across the Tokyo Subways. This was Shoichi Arai's guess on why Goto left in his book, but Mr. Gannosuke states that he busted out laughing after reading that. Gannosuke states that he never would have dreamed of leaving FMW before the day he did and then when he told Goto that he was quitting that Goto told him if he quit then he would join him. Gannosuke has told me he will take the reason he quit FMW that day to his grave. Ichihara would also join in and they would leave FMW together and form a group called the Real FMW.

They would mostly end up competing in IWA Japan where booker Victor Quinones would have him become the top promotion although IWA Japan would also begin to crumble around this time period. This would result in the Real FMW group beginning to work for the Tokyo Pro promotion until it would go under. The next plan would be for the group to begin working for the newly formed FFF promotion which would be based around Tarzan Goto and Kodo Fuyuki. A problem would occur though as FFF's main sponsor would end up having to close down his motorcycle store before the promotion would start which was where was the main funding for the promotion was to come from. This would result in the promotion closing down before ever holding their first ever show. They would still occupy Korakuen Hall the night and allow fans to buy merchandise, but no show would end up taking place.

This would be the final straw for Mr. Gannosuke as he was miserable going from struggling independent to struggling independent while his college friend Hayabusa had become the top wrestler for FMW. Mr. Gannosuke and Flying Kid Ichihara would leave Tarzan Goto's Real FMW group and rejoin FMW in January 1997. This would leave Tarzan Goto by himself. He would begin to get bookings for WAR and Big Japan, but he also create his own promotion Shin-FMW on June 17, 1997. The promotion would be based on smaller independent wrestlers as well as former FMW wrestlers Katsutoshi Niiyama who had just left FMW wanting to get out of the business full time and Ryo Miyake both of which Goto had trained in the FMW Dojo. Shin FMW would only run two tours in 1997 as they were financial losses resulting in Goto to pretty much focus on just wrestling for IWA Japan and SPWF until 1999.

Goto would then decide to take another shot promoting his own shows calling them "Tarzan Goto-Ippa" with the earliest show I can find on record in February 2000. The promotion would be based around Goto and the students he had helped train to become wrestlers or other low level independent workers looking for any work. He would start by mostly run one show a month in the gym where he was training wrestlers at the Saitama Kasukabe Indies Arena before transferring the promotion's home base to the Tokyo Asukusa Fight Club in 2006 which would also be a restaurant so the fans could be served food from a staff at a table while watching the wrestling going on. This concept of the promotion would go on until 2009.

Goto and Onita who in kayfabe decided to end any feud they had for one another that had to do with Goto leaving FMW would decide to form a tag team with one another. Goto looking to get in on the FMW nostalgia would change his promotion once again to Shin-FMW. Goto would also bring in former FMW wrestlers Mr. Pogo, Hisakatsu Oya, Ricky Fuji, and Super Leather to his shows until deciding to change the name of the promotion to Super FMW in June 2010 with the promotion deemphasizing on the FMW name because of the difficulty of bringing in FMW talent and instead would just turn Super FMW into a promotion for his students and lower level independent wrestlers. Super FMW under that structure would be a complete disaster at a Shin-Kiba 350 seat building level and Goto would have to move the promotion to 100 seat buildings before only running one Super FMW show a year in 2014 and 2015. Tarzan Goto would pretty much get out of the wrestling business although he would name the restaurant that he would start up the Super FMW restaurant and then ran two Shin-Kiba shows once again in December 2018 and December 2019 to very little awareness. Three different promotions, all probably being the definition of "indie sleaze" although all would find its own fan base and develop a cult following that is still thought of highly by the hardcore fans that followed them, no matter how many horrible matches they had to sit through to get to the main event which were always quite the experience live.

FREEDOMS would return to Korakuen Hall on March 23, 2021 and announce a crowd of 420 fans which comparing it to non-pandemic shows, you would  multiply it at 840 fans which would put it at the best attended Korakuen Hall show in March for the promotion. The main event would be Toru Sugiura once again facing off against a former Big Japan wrestler that recently left the promotion, this time in Takayuki Ueki in a Fluorescent Light Bridge Concrete Block Death Match for the King of Freedom World Championship.

Sugiura and Ueki would fight on the apron with next to the light tube bridge with Sugiura grabbing a concrete block and breaking it over Ueki's head with one another making him fall the outside as Sugiura would deliver a Tope Con Hilo through the light tube bridge to land on Ueki. They would get back in the ring with Ueki running Sugiura through a barbed wire board and then placing a light tube over Sugiura's head and just tossing another concrete block breaking it over Sugiura's head. Ueki would then try for a headbutt with the concrete block but Sugiura would move out of the way and then place a light tube on Ueki and hit a right elbow breaking it across Ueki as Sugiura would pick up the win at 25 minutes, 22 seconds to defend the title for the 9th time which is four more than the previous records.

The semi-main event would see Jun Kasai, Takashi Sasaki, and Mammoth Sasaki taking on ERE's Masashi Takeda, Violento Jack, and Toshiyuki Sakuda in a TLC Death Match. This would Mammoth's return to the Death Match style as he been in one since September 27, 2013 when he teamed with Atsushi Onita against Jun Kasai and Takashi Sasaki in a Weapons Death Match. Sasaki would delivering a a Fire Thunder to Takeda off the top through a table that would have broke cans attached to it. Sasaki would go for a lariat but would be met by one from Jack instead as Takeda would break a light tube across him and then Jack would place Sasaki in a Mexican Stretch to make him tap at 15 minutes, 46 seconds to give ERE the win.

Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita would defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against GENTARO and Tatsuhito Takaiwa's alter egos Brahman GEN and Brahman Ryu which would see Brahman Kei interfere and try to throw a suitcase at Fujita but Fujita would duck and the suitcase would hit GEN as Fujita would then roll him up with a Samson Clutch to get the win at 11 minutes, 22 seconds to defend the tag titles for the first time.

Kamui would defend the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Brahman Kei which would see Brahman Shu appear for the first time in months and throw powder in Kamui's eyes as the referee would be outside the ring allowing Kei to roll up Kamui with a Modified Cobra Twist to get the win at 9 minutes, 41 seconds to win the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title. Daisuke Masaoka and Kenji Fukimoto would defeat the team of Yuya Susumu and Kengo with Masaoka getting his win back from a earlier loss as he would get the pin over Kengo at 8 minutes, 1 second after nailing him with a Trance Rave. The opening match would be Tomoya Hirata and Dragon Libre defeating Alejandro and Rekka at 8 minutes, 6 seconds with Hirata picking up the win with a German Suplex. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 3/23/21 Korakuen Hall show.

FREEDOMS would hold a show on April 4, 2021 at the Osaka Active Square Daito. They would announce a crowd of 240 fans for the show. This show would be promoted by Kamui as most Osaka based shows are for the promotion. This was also the first FREEDOMS show to be available via purchase live on Twitch. The main event would be a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match with Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, and Daisuke Masaoka taking on Masashi Takeda, Violento Jack, and Toshiyuki Sakuda. The match would be a chaotic brawl with light tubes being broken everywhere with the side of Takeda's face getting cut open and Kasai sticking skewers in Sakuda's cheek in a gruesome spot. The ending would see Masaoka take Jack on the apron and look to send him through a table with cans on outside the ring when Jack would end up grabbing Masaoka instead and piledrive him through the table. Jack would then end up finishing Masaoka at 18 minutes, 47 seconds with the Amatlan to get the ERE win.

Brahman Kei would defend his UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Kamui with Shu by his side once again. Shu would end up getting in the ring and hit Kamui with a street sign as Kei would put on a Ultimo Dragon mask and look to hit an Asai DDT on Kamui, but instead he would send Kamui into Shu who would again him with again with a street sign as Kei would roll him up with a La Magistral for two. Kei would then charge at Kamui, but Kamui would out of nowhere end up rolling Kei up with the Kamui Clutch to get the win at 12 minutes, 22 seconds to win back the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title.

Rina Yamashita would face off against Takayuki Ueki in a Hardcore Match which would see Ueki dive at Yamashita, but Yamashita would move out of the way causing Ueki to fall to the outside. Yamashita would then take a ladder and toss it at Ueki's head with the ladder getting wrapped around his head as Yamashita would come off the top with a dropkick on the ladder. They would get back in the ring and Yamashita would charge at Ueki would deliver a drop toe hold sending her face first into a stack of chairs and then Ueki finish Yamashita off with a Death Valley Bomb on the stack of chairs at 12 minutes, 43 seconds for the win.

Other matches on the show saw Takashi Sasaki and Dragon Libre defeat TiiiDA and Idea with Libre rolling Idea up with a cradle at 13 minutes, 33 seconds for the win. Yuya Susumu and Tomoya Hirata would get the win over Shu Asakawa and Naka Shuma when Susumu would get Shuma to tap out at 12 minutes, 13 seconds in a FREEDOMS vs. 2AW match. The opening match would see Brahman GEN and Kenji Fukimoto defeat Mammoth Sasaki and Dyna Mido when GEN would get the win at 11 minutes, 2 seconds with a Back Drop over Mido. Click here for highlights of FREEDOMS 4/4/21 Osaka show.

FREEDOMS would return to Shin-Kiba on April 15, 2021 and an announce a crowd of 148 fans for the show. The main event would be a FREEDOMS vs. ERE Single Elimination Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. The FREEDOMS team would be Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, Mammoth Sasaki, and Daisuke Masaoka facing off against ERE's Masashi Takeda, Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki.

Takeda would try to smash a stack of light tubes over Mammoth's head while he was on the apron, but Mammoth would block the light tubes with his hands and then headbutt Takeda when Jack would come rushing over and drop kick the light tubes breaking them across Mammoth causing him to fall to the floor for the 9 minutes, 50 second elimination. Masaoka would then pick Ueki and drop him on concrete block followed by Kasai hitting a Pearl Harbor Splash on him followed by Kasai grabbing Sugiura and placing him over Ueki's body for the 13 minutes, 28 seconds elimination to tie it up. Jack would then nail Masaoka with a Dynastar for the 15 minutes, 32 second elimination to give the ERE advantage. Kasai and Takeda would then try to eliminate one another off the apron with Takeda spearing Kasai and they would both fall to the floor for the 20 minutes, 30 seconds double elimination. This would leave Sugiura as the final man for the FREEDOMS team as he would send Jack over the top to the apron with Sakuda charging at both them, when Sugiura would send Sakuda flying over the top knocking Jack off the apron to the floor for the 21 minutes, 57 seconds elimination leaving it to just be Sugiura and Sakuda. Sakuda would hit Sugiura with a Canadian Destroyer and go for a 450 Splash but Sugiura would move out of the way, and set up the light tubes on Sakuda and hit a running elbow breaking them across Sakuda for the win at 23 minutes, 46 seconds with Sugiura as the lone survivor. ERE would attack FREEDOMS after the match, but things would be settled moments later as the show would end with no new challenger coming up for Sugiura on May 2nd at Korakuen.

Jun Kasai instead afterwards would challenge Sugiura for a title shot at the Death Match Carnival which would presumably be the August 30th Korakuen Hall show. That would look to be where Sugiura's reign comes to an end as it would be like Masashi Takeda's run as Big Japan Death Match Heavyweight Champion where he beat Masaya Takahashi then defended the title again him successfully only to lose it to Takahashi nearly a year after the first defense. This would be the same situation as Sugiura defeated Kasai in October 2019 for the title then defeated him again to defend it in August 2020. The only question would be how long does Jun Kasai hold it as he has already had runs with the belt in 2016 and 2019.

The semi-main event would have Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita face off against Takashi Sasaki and Tomoya Hirata in a non title match. Sasaki would lift up Fujita up and hit him with a with a D-Geist, but Yamashita would make the save. Fujita would then throw Sasaki into the ref and roll him up with a Samson Clutch for the win at 13 minutes, 19 seconds as it would be announced that Fujita and Yamashita would next defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles on May 2nd at Korakuen Hall against Takayuki Ueki and Toshiyuki Sakuda.

The other matches on the show would see Brahman GEN and Brahman Ryu defeat Kamui and Dragon Libre when Ryu would nail Libre with a Death Valley Bomb to get the win at 12 minutes, 12 seconds with Takaiwa challenging Kamui for the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title on May 2nd at Korakuen Hall and then denounce himself as Brahman Ryu and hand back and announce he would be going back by his name Tatsuhito Takaiwa. Kenji Fukimoto would defeat Brahman Kei in a Hardcore Match at 7 minutes, 7 seconds after rolling him up with a cradle. The opening match would be Yuya Susumu and Kengo defeating Alejandro and Rekka with Susumu picking up the win at 9 minutes, 44 seconds after nailing him with the Front Crash. Click here for highlights of FREEDOMS 4/15/21 Shin-Kiba show.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared a third state of emergency of Tokyo as well as Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyogo on April 23, 2021 in the hopes to try and help the curb of the spread of the coronavirus before the Olympics are to be played this summer in Japan. This state of emergency will go until May 11th, although many believe the emergency will not be lifted on May 11th and will continue on for at least the rest of May.

This decision would force Takashi Sasaki to cancel the FREEDOMS May 2nd Korakuen Hall show. This is the second year in a row that the May Korakuen Hall show has been canceled. Big Japan also announced that the decision has resulted in their April 26th show would be canceled. Both promotions could still run the shows at the building, but would not allow to have fans there. The May 2nd show would not have been a Samurai TV broadcast so FREEDOMS would have been running the show to no profit other than the limited amount they would have made from NicoNico and from a future DVD release of the show. Like last year with all the cancellations, it was an easy decision for Sasaki as he is not going to have his wrestlers go through death matches for no financial gain. Big Japan's show would have aired on Samurai and the cancellation messes up their Death Match Survivor Tournament dates, but it was not worth it for Big Japan to run the show either.

The lineup for the May 2nd show that will not happen was suppose to be Toru Sugiura and Jun Kasai teaming up to take on Masashi Takeda and Violento Jack in a Death Match. Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita were to defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki. Takashi Sasak was to face off against Kenji Fukimoto in a Death Match in a match that does not look like it will happen anytime soon now. Kamui would have defended the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title on Tatsuhito Takaiwa in a match that will just happen three days later now. Mammoth Sasaki and Tomoya Hirata were to team up against Daisuke Masaoka and Takahiro Katori with the opening match of Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Rekka against Brahman GEN, Brahman Kei, and Dragon Libre.

FREEDOMS does luck out that Yokohama does not have a state of emergency placed on it even though it is only about a 30 minute drive to Shin-Kiba. FREEDOMS will run at the Yokohama Radiant Hall for the annual Golden Week show in Yokohama as this show will take place on May 5, 2021. The main event will be Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, and Takashi Sasaki taking on Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Hardcore Match. Masashi Takeda will face off against Kenji Fukimoto in a No DQ Match. Kamui will now defend the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Tatsuhito Takaiwa on this show instead of at Korakuen Hall. Minoru Fujita, Rina Yamashita, and Tomoya Hirata will go up against Yuya Susumu, Brahman GEN, and Kengo. The opening match will be Mammoth Sasaki and Dragon Libre going up against Daisuke Masaoka and Takahiro Katori.

FREEDOMS will then run on May 16, 2021 at the Sendai Miyagi PIT with a main event of Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, Takashi Sasaki, and Kenji Fukimoto taking on Masashi Takeda, Violento Jack, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a Death Match. There seems to be a little bit of timing conflict with Masashi Takeda. Due to Big Japan canceling their April 26th show they have pushed the scheduled main event of Ryuji Ito and Masashi Takeda to take place at their next Korakuen Hall show on May 16th. Takeda lucks out that the show begins at the very early start time of 11:30 am. That should mean the show should be finished by 2:30 at the least. Takeda after what will surely be a bloody death match will need to shower and get dressed as soon as possible and hop on a subway train as the train will take about 2 hours and 30 minutes to get to Sendai meaning Takeda will probably be arriving in the building by the time the FREEDOMS show has already started with it starting at 5:30 pm. Other matches on this show will be Mammoth Sasaki teaming with the tag team champions Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita against Brahman GEN, Brahman Kei, and Dragon Libre. Tatsuhito Takaiwa will go up against Aisawa # 1 in what might turn into a UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title match if Takaiwa has the belt by that point. Daisuke Masaoka and Kamui will team up to take on Yuya Susumu and Kengo and the opening match will be Tomoya Hirata and Takahiro Katori.

FREEDOMS will then run at Shin-Kiba on May 27, 2021 with the hope that the state of emergency has been lifted although the 666 promotion was able to still run at Shin-Kiba on May 1st as the Shin-Kiba is not as governed by the rules with it being out of the way warehouse essentially compared to Korakuen Hall being in the heart of Tokyo in a multi-use building. The main event will be the originally scheduled Korakuen Hall main event as Toru Sugiura and Jun Kasai will take on Masashi Takeda and Violento Jack in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match. Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita will also defend their King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against their scheduled Korakuen Hall opponents in Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki. Takashi Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka will team up to take on Kamui and Kenji Fukimoto. The veteran team of Mammoth Sasaki and Tatsuhito Takaiwa will go up against the young boy team of Tomoya Hirata and Takahiro Katori. The opening match will be Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Rekka taking on Brahman GEN, Brahman Kei, and Dragon Libre.

Tomohiko Hashimoto's 20th Anniversary show would end up taking place on April 4, 2021 at the Nara Prefectural Covention Center where they would announce a crowd of 350 fans for the show. The main event would be Hashimoto's 20th Anniversary Special Match as he would team with fellow A-Team wrestlers HASEGAWA and Raiden as they would take on Tatsumi Fujinami, Koji Kanemoto, and Minoru Tanaka with Fujiwara putting on the Dragon Sleeper to Raiden at 18 minutes, 28 seconds to get the submission victory. The semi-main event would be Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Super Tiger would defeat Daisuke Ikeda and Gajo with Fujiwara made Gajo tap out at 14 minutes, 58 seconds with the Wakigatame. MIKAMI and Nobutaka Moribe would defeat LEONA and UTAMARO when MIKAMI would get the win at 11 minutes, 41 seconds with a School Boy on UTAMARO. Masahiro Sase wuld defeat Magic Killer # 1 at 13 minutes, 7 seconds with a Diving Body Press in a Barbed wire Board Weapons Death Match. Brother YASSHI and Shoichi Uchida would get the win over Takumi Sakurai and Bryan Ishizaka at 12 minutes, 48 seconds when YASSHI would get the pinfall over Sakurai with a Diving Headbutt. Daisaku Shimoda, Iori Sugawara, and Joji Otani would defeat Keiichi Sato, Gamelas, and Takeshi Mabayu when Shimoda would pick up the win at 10 minutes, 37 seconds with a Pileriver. The opening match would see Bambi defeat Makoto at 7 minutes, 34 seconds with a Lariat in the women's match.

The A-Team would then return to Tokyo on April 11th at the Kitasenju White Studio whre they would announce a crowd of 50 fans with the main event of Raiden and Joji Otani defeating Takumi Sakurai and Bryan Ishizaka when Raiden pinned Sakurai at 19 minutes, 25 seconds with a Tiger Driver to become the number one contenders for the WEW Tag Team Titles. The WEW Tag Team Title match would be the semi-main event as MIKAMI and HASEGAWA would defend their titles for the fourth time after going 22 minutes, 16 seconds with Super Tiger and Hayato Mashita before both teams would get counted out. Gajo and Nobutaka Moribe who would announce he was leaving the promotion after this show would defeat Daisuke Ikeda and Hashinosuke when Gajo would get the win at 11 minutes, 47 seconds over Hashinosuke with a Diving Body Press. Tomohiko Hashimoto, Gamelas, and Jin would defeat TORU, Maholova, and Raito Shimizu when Gamelas would get the win at 13 minutes, 55 seconds with a Cragle over Shimizu. The opening match would see Daisaku Shimoda and Iori Sugawara would defeat Kosaku Tonosaki and Kento DiCaprio when Sugawara wouldd get the win at 11 minutes, 23 seconds with a Crescent Tale over DiCaprio.

About three years ago I was able to collect every FMW VHS tape. I had picked up a bunch in the early 2000's and did not think too much about it. I started full on collecting them in 2015 and was able to pick up the last two in May 2018 which were the FMW Anus Explosion and FMW 5/5/00 Back Draft tapes, which ironically now I see all the time and then there are some I picked up at the beginning and I have not seen available since. This got me into collecting non FMW VHS tapes the last couple of years. I have picked up several W*ING tapes including the 10/31/93 Fire Death Match which was something I spent a lot of time searching for as the W*ING tapes can be hard to find because of their scarcity. I also have collected Big Japan, WAR, IWA Japan, Michinoku Pro, All Japan, and the first two NOAH shows as well. All of the covers are for sale in DVD format in my video collection part of the site. I really would like to start an instagram going over each of these tapes and the rarity of them these days and what they are going for. I just need to find the time before starting up another project. Happy FMW Day on May 5th everyone!

Added: 3/20

Atsushi Onita was made an offer to appear in the United States for the third time in the last three and a half years. It would have been to attend AEW's Revolution Pay-Per-View on March 7th in Jacksonville, Florida where he would "witness" the No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Exploding Ring Death Match between Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley in the main event.

Onita told reporters "AEW has just been created, but it is an organization that is trying to compete with the worlds largest organization WWE, and it can be considered a major promotion. I would have been honored to do it. Originally, I wanted to go to it and see it with my own eyes, but I turned down in honor of Mr. Pogo's in-laws as this year is the 30th anniversary of our Landmine Death Match. What kind of explosion will AEW show?  I am looking forward to it. I would like to pay tribute to AEW for having a explosion match in the United States as by it being there then it is recognized by the whole world. Once the corona virus calms down, I would like to go to AEW and do an explosion match or maybe AEW wrestlers can come to Japan and have an explosion match against me."

Onita was force to turn down the offer because of the corona virus resulting in a two week quarantine period once he got back to Japan which the earliest would have been March 9th in Japan. That would have resulted in him having to miss his next two upcoming appearances. The first being with Miss Mongol at Toudoukan in Tokyo on March 20th where he will discuss the true story of FMW to the fans attending which he could have just easily rescheduled the next time he is in Tokyo, but he also has been booked for the next WWS show on March 21st in Gunma which he felt he could not no show due to loyalty to Mr. Pogo.

Onita did end up getting paid to appear on a video package made by AEW where Onita talks about the explosions as well as the barbed wire cutting your skin. They ended up showing video of the first no ropes exploding barbed wire death match between Atsushi Onita and Tarzan Goto on August 4, 1990 in Shiodome. This match had the weakest explosions ever put on by FMW, but because it was the first time people did not have anything to compare it to and it helped FMW become a successful enough promotion that it could continue on after the first year as well as helped Onita become a celebrity in Japan. They followed it up on the next show against Mr. Pogo on May 6, 1991 in Osaka with much more powerful explosions for a Landmine Death Match and never looked back after that.

I had figured they had done some research as I have posted numerous times about who owns the FMW library through out the years on many different sites to where they would have known that it would be pretty much impossible to get clearance on video of FMW other than the first year of the promotion which is owned by Mickey Ibaragi of W*ING as he is someone that is easy enough to get a hold of, at least easier than the other options and that is why they chose to use the Onita vs. Goto footage. This was a discussion in my History of FMW Facebook group which lead to member Paul of the group to ask Ibaragi about it which he stated he did not know anything about it, and that they must have just aired the footage without getting his permission first. This would make it seem that they used this specific match in the video package to hype the match knowing that the explosions they were going to use were not going to be anywhere near as powerful as FMW used for any of their matches besides the Goto match from 1990.

The Exploding Barbed wire that AEW used for the Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley ended up being that of the Onita vs. Goto Shiodome match. There were people that were critical of the lack of explosions during it, but overall it did not cause too much critique by the fans watching at the time. The match itself was good although Britt Baker vs. Thunder Rose would end up capturing the magic of a Japanese Death Match from the 1990's better than Omega and Moxley did but although there had been rumors the day of the show they announced that they would also be having an exploding ring death match as well. Kenny Omega ended up defeating Jon Moxley with interference and then laid him out and handcuffed him before leaving for the ring to explode.

This was a call back to the Atsushi Onita vs. Terry Funk match on May 5, 1993 where Funk was still laying in the ring was the count down for the first ever ring explosion would take place with Onita covering Funk's body as the ring would explode. FMW had the benefit of this being taped as the ring explosion was actually not that impressive as it was just fire going up in the air and actually resulted in some fans laughing while in attendance. The pictures that came out were much more impressive and FMW were to able to edit it and slow it down and put music to it right afterwards to make up for the lack of explosion. Eddie Kingston who is a huge FMW fan himself ended up being the one to play Onita for this as he rushed to the ring and covered his body over Moxley. I would have to imagine that spot was what Onita originally was going to be brought in for. The explosion then took place and it was the least impressive exploding ring to take place. Sparklers came out of the ring which reminded me of the Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs. Mr. Pogo Fire Death Match from August 2, 1992 where sparklers were used and then a small smoke bottom would burst to everybody's disappointment. Everyone that saw it including those in AEW have admitted the explosion was a total failure. So much so that AEW on their Wednesday Night Dynamite show would try to make it seem like Kenny Omega had made the bomb himself so poorly on purpose to make Moxley and Kingston look bad by selling it at all as they tried to make it seem the bomb was a dud on purpose. The sports podcast I listen to which barely ever talks about wrestling even talked about how bad it looked and that they have seen better pyro at the club than that.

It's disappointing as it probably eliminates any chance of there ever being another Exploding Ring Death Match as to bring it back would mean they would have relive the first one again from the public as I would have to imagine this officially killed exploding ring gimmick in U.S. which it had been dead since 2001 in Japan anyway as it has not been done since FMW closed down. It does leave to wonder why AEW who never even really promoted it as being an exploding ring match until the day of ended up even having it done knowing it was going to look like that. I can not imagine money would be the issue as  IWA Japan ended up spending $20,000 dollars on their exploding ring for their King of the Death Match Tournament on August 20, 1995 between Cactus Jack and Terry Funk and although it is considered one of the worst exploding rings I would still consider it better than the AEW one by a little bit. FMW for their 2001 Kawasaki Stadium show when they had just gone through the worst 6 month financial stretch in the history of the company which was the beginning of their death still ended up putting together an impressive exploding ring using lots of gun powder and it is considered one of the better exploding rings.

Onita commented on the lack of the explosion afterwards stating that "it was a shame for Kenny but if the corona virus calms down, I would come to AEW and deliver a real explosion match in the United States in memory of Mr. Pogo."

This would be my list of the best actual explosions to take place in an exploding ring match between 1993 and 2021 in the United States and Japan. Obviously this does not have to do with the matches themselves as Onita vs. Kanemura was by far not the best match, but they put the most explosives into it.  You can watch the YouTube links I have included by their names. 1 and 2 are pretty clear for me. 3-6 was a little difficult ranking them with one another as they are all good explosions and are close with one another. 7-8 done by XPW are right on that line as I would consider the 2002 one good but the 2001 not so good. 9-11 are the disappointing ones although number 11 was put on by the small SPWF promotion so I would not consider it a disappointment based off expectations. 12-13 are obviously the worst ones that are considered total failures by all involved.

1) Atsushi Onita vs. W*ING Kanemura 9/28/97
2) Atsushi Onita vs. Hayabusa 5/5/95
3) Atsushi Onita vs. The Great Sasuke 10/30/94
4) Hayabusa & The Great Sasuke vs. Mr. Gannosuke & Tetsuhiro Kuroda 5/5/01
5) Atsushi Onita vs. Mr. Pogo 8/22/93
6) Hayabusa & Masato Tanaka vs. Terry Funk & Mr. Pogo 5/5/96
7) Angel vs. Supreme 7/20/02
8) Vic Grimes vs. Supreme 10/13/01
9) Atsushi Onita vs. Terry Funk 5/5/93
10) Great Nita vs. Great Muta 8/28/99
11) Tarzan Goto & Ichiro Yaguchi vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu & Masahiko Kochi 5/30/99
12) Cactus Jack vs. Terry Funk 8/20/95
13) Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley 3/7/21

Atsushi Onita and Miss Mongol held their FMW Truth talk event on March 20, 2021 at Toudoukan. The event was based on Onita telling the true story about the creation of FMW although multiple people that attended brought up that they barely talked brought up during that FMW was barely mentioned. The only real story about FMW's creation that Onita mentioned was that he had no money when it started, but he was happy at the beginning and chasing his dream is all that mattered to him back then. Onita did tell a story about how once Giant Baba called the FMW office (I am guessing 1997 in regards to Hayabusa working for All Japan) and Shoichi Arai picked up the phone and thought someone was pranking him pretending to be Baba. Mongol talked about going to Puerto Rico by herself with her own money as the FMW women division was pretty much finished and she was looking to get booked through Victor Quinones in IWA Puerto Rico. Onita told a story about one time someone got into an argument at a bar with The Gladiator and they got into an altercation which ended up with The Gladiator throwing him out of the bar into a bicycle parking lot outside. Onita also talked about the AEW explosion match earlier in the month and how he was invited by AEW to attend but he would have to miss this event and he said he chose Toudoukan over AEW to get a pop from the crowd. He stated he got 20,000 messages on Twitter from fans stating they wanted to see Onita in an explosion match in AEW. Onita then stated he would like to have an explosion death match for the whole world to be able to see it on the internet and that he has already secured a site in the Fukuoka Prefecture for this summer. They ended up taking pictures with all the fans while wearing masks and Onita touching elbows instead of shaking anyone's hand because of the virus.

Following the WWS show the next show Onita will take part in will be for Pro-Wrestling Gold on April 4th at the Sendai Miyagi PIT and then he will return back to the DDT sub-promotion Blasting Koshien on May 2nd at the Yokohama Tsurumi Fruit Market which will be the first show for the group since November.

FREEDOMS would hold their first Korakuen Hall show of the year on February 9, 2021 and an announce a crowd of 447 fans for the show. The main event would be Toru Sugiura defending his King of Freedom World Championship against Toshiyuki Sakuda in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match. Sugiura would early on break the first glass board with a running dive into the corner smashing it over Sakuda's body, but Sakuda would come back and hit his Sakauchi followed by setting up Sugiura in the corner and hitting a Canadian Destroyer off the turnbuckle sending Sugiura into the other glass board. Sakuda would then hit another Sakauchi on a stack of light tubes but Sugiura's head would end up getting busted open bouncing off the glass causing a huge gash in Sugiura's head which would lead to them having to go home early. Sakuda would charge at Sugiura with light tubes, but Sugiura would break them across Sakuda with an elbow and then hit a running elbow with another stack of light tubes and cover Sakuda to get the win at 11 minutes, 18 seconds for the win to defend the King of Freedom World Championship for the 8th time. They had to finish the match a faster about 6 minutes faster than expected because of the fear of the match needing to be stopped because of how much Sugiura's head was bleeding due to the cut, but they would follow that up after bandaging Sugiura by making him stay in the ring as Ueki would come to the ring to challenge him for the title at the next Korakuen Hall show on March 23rd with Sugiura accepting. Masashi Takeda would end up hitting the ring and attacking Sugiura before getting on the mic and proclaiming his new heel group of himself, Sakuda, and Ueki will be called ERE which stands for "Empire Ruler Ends". This ended with Unchain and FREEDOMS becoming an alliance once again to do battle against ERE. This is the second time that they have agreed to team up to do battle against another group as they aligned on June 30, 2013 to do battle against Atsushi Onita's Jado Army after Mammoth Sasaki had turned on FREEDOMS that night. Following the match, Sugiura's night end up getting worse as he was taken to the hospital to get stitched up and ended up dropping and breaking his cell phone in the process.

The semi-main event would Jun Kasai and Kenji Fukimoto taking on Masashi Takeda and Takayuki Ueki in a Razor Cross Board Death Match. Kasai and Fukimoto would enter the ring and Takeda would toss light tubes at him with Takeda drop kicking them and breaking the light tubes across Kasai. Kasai early on would end up going through the razor cross board causing a huge gash in his back early on. Takeda would then place pigeon spikes over Kasai's front and deliver a running knee into them in the corner. Ueki would then try for a diving headbutt but Kasai would move out of the way and hit Takeda with a lariat before hitting a Pearl Harbor Splash followed by Fukimoto delivering a Package Piledriver on Ueki and cover him but Takeda would make the save and Ueki would get up and dive at Fukimoto with a headbutt and then place concrete blocks over Fukimoto and begin hammering them breaking them over Fukimoto. Takeda would then come over and lay Kasai out out with a punch followed by Ueki hitting a diving headbutt while holding a concrete block while laying a broken barbed wire board on Fukimoto at 13 minutes, 28 seconds to pick up the win and setup Ueki as the next challenger.

Mammoth Sasaki and Violento Jack would defend their King of Freedom Tag Team Titles against Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita in a Tornado Tag Team Match. Mammoth and Jack would end up bringing in ladder but Yamashita would manage to suplex Jack off of it, but he would immediately get up and kick Yamashita in the head and pick her up and drop her on his knees. Mammoth and Jack would then begin chopping Yamashita before charging at her with Yamashita moving out of the way and Mammoth and Jack would end clotheslining each other. Mammoth would then go for a chokeslam on Yamashita but she would manage to send fling Mammoth across the ring and then punch him down low which by Fujita rolling him up with a Samson Clutch for the win at 10 minutes, 12 seconds to win the King of Freedom Tag Team Titles ending Mammoth and Jack's reign at two years and one month in their twelfth defense of the titles which was a tied record with Mammoth and Sugiura's run that lasted 14 months. Click here for highlights of FREEDOMS 2/9/21 Korakuen Hall show.

Other matches on the show saw Takashi Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka defeat Yuya Susumu and Kengo when Masaoka would put Kengo away at 10 minutes, 22 seconds with a Tornado Clutch. Kamui would defeat Tomoya Hirata at 10 minutes, 59 seconds with a Yurikamome. The opening match saw GENTARO and Dragon Libre defeat Brahman Ryu and Brahman Kei when GENTARO would pin Kei at 7 minutes, 57 seconds with a German Suplex.

FREEDOMS and 2AW have agreed to have a working relationship with one another that will see them work joint shows together at 2AW's home building 2AW Square. The first show of this series took place on February 21, 2021 drawing 62 fans. The main event was Toru Sugiura, Daisuke Masaoka, and Tomoya Hirata picking up the win over the 2AW team of Kengo Mashimo, Tatsuya Hanami, and Kunio Toshima when Hirata picked up the win over Hanami at 13 minutes, 50 seconds with a German Suplex. 2AW would get their big win on the show although not cleanly as Ayato Yoshida and Tank Nagai would defeat Jun Kasai and Kenji Fukimoto when at 11 minutes, 1 seconds the referee would end up disqualifying Fukimoto. Kamui would successfully defend his UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Kaji Tomato after pinning him at 12 minutes, 6 seconds with a Kamui Clutch. Violento Jack would easily put away Daiju Wakamatsu at 10 minutes, 23 seconds after making him tap out to the Mexican Stretch. Takashi Sasaki would win a singles match against Ayumu Honda at 9 minutes, 1 second after making him tap out to the Scorpion Death Match. The opening match would see 2AW get its only pin on the show as Ricky Fuji, Shu Asakawa, and Chicharito Shoki would defeat GENTARO, Yuya Susumu, and Dragon Libre with Ricky getting the win at 9 minutes, 55 seconds after pinning GENTARO with the 9999 DDT.

FREEDOMS returned to the Yokohama Radiant Hall for their annual February show in Yokohama on February 27, 2021 as they would announce a crowd of 125 fans for the show. The main event would be Unchain's Jun Kasai, Minoru Fujita, and Rina Yamashita taking on ERE's Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki in a non death match. Takeda would grab a hold of Yamashita, but she would move out of way while Ueki was charging with a lariat and would up accidentally hitting Takeda instead. Takeda would get upset by this and begin fighting with Ueki while Sakuda would grab Yamashita causing Takeda and Ueki to try for a clothesline but again Yamashita would move out of the way and they would both end up hitting accidentally hitting Sakuda. Yamashita would then lay Ueki out and Kasai would climb up to the top and hit a Pearl Harbor Splash on him followed by a Yamashita coming off the top rope on him. Sakuda though would jump off the top and hit a hurricanrana on Fujita which would then be followed by Ueki hitting a Death Valley Bomb on Yamashita before getting the win at 18 minutes, 21 seconds to get the win with his Saluting Headbutt off the top rope to pick up the win over Yamashita for the ERE victory. Click here for highlights of FREEDOMS 2/27/21 Yokohama Radiant Hall show.

Other matches on the show would be Yuya Susumu and Kengo defeating Toru Sugiura and Daisuke Masaoka after Kengo would get the upset win over Masaoka at 14 minutes, 12 seconds with a Brainbuster as Masaoka's decline booking wise would continue. Takashi Sasaki and Tomoya Hirata would defeat Kamui and Kenji Fukimoto when Sasaki would finish off Fukimoto at 12 minutes, 45 seconds with a D-Geist. The Brahmans of Brahman GEN, Brahman Ryu, and Brahman Kei would defeat Mammoth Sasaki, Violento Jack, and Dragon Libre would get the win after Jack would accidentally end up hitting Libre with a lariat followed by GENTARO pinning Libre at 10 minutes, 47 seconds to get the win. The opening match would be Alejandro defeating Rekka at 8 minutes, 57 seconds with a La Magistral.

FREEDOMS would return to Shin-Kiba on March 4, 2021 drawing an announced crowd of 134 fans for the show. The main event would be ERE's Masashi Takeda, Toshiyuki Sakuda, and Takayuki Ueki taking on Toru Sugiura, Jun Kasai, and Daisuke Masaoka in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match. Sugiura would go for a running elbow to a light tube on Ueki but he would move out of the way and then just smash that light tube over Sugiura's head followed by Sakuda hitting an Asai DDT on Sugiura. Ueki would then climb up to the top and Sugiura would get up and go up as well when Violento Jack would appear and attack Sugiura and laying him out with a uranage on a light tube followed by Ueki hitting a diving head butt and then finish Sugiura off with a Death Valley Bomb on a chair to get the win at 16 minutes, 5 seconds as Jack would officially join Takeda's ERE heel group.

The semi-main event would Brahman Gen, Brahman Ryu, and Brahman Kei defeating Minoru Fujita, Rina Yamashita, and Kamui with Kei throwing powder in Kamui's eyes resulting in GENTARO rolling up him with a Front Cradle to get the pin at 12 minutes, 30 seconds with GENTARO afterwards nominating Brahman Kei for a UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title shot against Kamui at the next Korakuen Hall show as well as nominating himself and Takaiwa to challenge Fujita and Yamashita for the tag titles at Korakuen Hall.

Mammoth Sasaki and Violento Jack would take on Yuya Susumu and Kengo as Mammoth and Jack would tease once again accidentally running into each other with a lariat but this time stop just short of each other. Mammoth would then go over and Susumu while Jack would chop Kengo but when Mammoth would go for an Awesome Bomb he would get a lariat from Jack who would turn on Mammoth and begin attacking him as the referee would call for the bell at 9 minutes, 34 seconds and disqualify Jack with Jack just walking away and ending his two year tag team with him. Takashi Sasaki defeated Rekka at 8 minutes, 56 seconds with a D-Geist as Rekka will be starting up his own promotion called Grace Pro so this was a FREEDOMS vs. Grace match. The opening match had Kenji Fukimoto and Alejandro defeating Dragon Libre and Tomoya Hirata with Fukimoto putting Libre away at 9 minutes, 56 seconds with a Package Piledriver. Click here for highlights of FREEDOMS 3/4/21 Shin-Kiba show.

FREEDOMS will return to Korakuen Hall on March 23rd with the main event of Toru Sugiura taking on Takayuki Ueki in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match for the King of Freedom World Champion. Mammoth Sasaki will have his first death match in nearly 8 years as he teams up with Jun Kasai and Takashi Sasaki to take on ERE's Masashi Takeda, Violento Jack, and Toshiyuki Sakuda in a TLC Death Match. Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita will defend their King of Freedom Tag Team Titles for the first time against Brahman Ryu and Gen which are Tatsuhito Takaiwa and GENTARO doing the Brahman Brothers gimmick. Kamui will defend the UWA Jr. Heavyweight Title against Brahman Kei as he looks to go singles while his brother is out with cervical neck damage. Daisuke Masaoka looks to get revenge as he teams up with Kenji Fukimoto to go up against Yuya Susumu and Kengo. The opening match will be Tomoya Hirata and Dragon Libre taking on Alejandro and Rekka. Last update I mentioned I felt Toshiyuki Sakuda had a chance to win the title just because Sugiura was running out of challengers. I would be shocked though if Ueki were to win the title on this show, although if this leads to Violento Jack challenging Sugiura for the May 2nd Korakuen Hall show I would suspect Jack would end up being the one to end Sugiura's long title run.

The whole beginning purpose of the promotion FREEDOMS after Takashi Sasaki had disbanded his Apache Army was for there to be a home for certain wrestlers like Mammoth Sasaki and Hi69 to have a home to when they came back from injury but it would allow all wrestlers to get whatever bookings they wanted to take to make as much money as they could knowing that FREEDOMS was going to start off as a very small promotion. FREEDOMS began to grow through out the years the only restriction they ended up making was not having be booked for Big Japan to allow them to be seen as a seperate promotion from Big Japan due to it being similar and FREEDOMS feeling that fans were not going to attend a FREEDOMS show if they could just go to a Big Japan show and see the FREEDOMS wrestlers. FREEDOMS and Big Japan continued to have a good relationship and eventually begin allowing talent exchanges again as Fukimoto would begin working for Big Japan and Kasai would begin working their big show of the year every year and now Violento Jack has began working for their Death Match Survivor Tournament. The only tricky thing about FREEDOMS now allowing their talent to work elsewhere is they are more protective of their guys when it comes to jobbing. Jun Kasai has taken advantage of the freedom that FREEDOMS has and is willing to wrestle wherever they allow him with the only exception is that he is not going to job unless it's for him to drop a title. He has made regular appearances for Wrestle-1, DDT, 666, and a handful joshi promotions with only taking one pinfall loss and that was to drop the DDT Extreme Title to Daisuke Sasaki at the Saitama Super Arena for DDT's 20th Anniversary meaning he got paid very well for that show. Jun Kasai has began appearing for All Japan at the start of this year and won their GAORA TV Title right away by beating Yoshitatsu on January 3rd at Korakuen Hall although in a Ladder Match so that Yoshitatsu would not actually be pinned by Kasai either. Kasai defended the title later in the month on January 24th at Korakuen Hall by defeating Black Menso~re.

This would setup Jun Kasai defending the title on March 18th at Shin-Kiba in what would be a one match show in Shin-Kiba but still draw an announced 150 fans for Kasai to defend the title against Shuji Ishikawa in the very first death match in All Japan. Ishikawa who is one of the bookers in All Japan so it was his call to bring Kasai in and do this match was also a former Big Japan Death Match Heavyweight Champion as well as having previously defeated Kasai in a great death match back on December 25, 2011 in FREEDOMS. The match would be a Glass Board Razor Cross Board Barbed wire Board TLC Death Match as Kasai early on would dive off the top rope to the outside sending Ishikawa through a table. Kasai would then begin smashing the razor cross board over Ishikawa's head and then try to Reverse Tiger Driver Ishikawa on the razor cross board but Ishikawa would pick him up and slam Kasai on the razors instead. Ishikawa would then place a glass board on a stack of chairs and take Kasai on the ramp and deliver a running powerbomb sending Kasai into the glass board. Ishikawa would then swing a stack of light tubes at Kasai but Kasai would duck it and clothesline the light tubes into Ishikawa. Kasai would then take the other glass board and place it under Ishikawa and look to deliver a Pearl Harbor Splash off a ladder but Ishikawa would get up and climb the ladder only for Kasai to knock him down sending him into the glass board. Kasai would then hit that Pearl Harbor Splash off the ladder only for Ishikawa to get up and hit Kasai with a Fire Thunder and then knee a stack of light tubes into Kasai and deliver a Giant Slam to get the pin at 28 minutes, 41 seconds to win the GAORA TV Title ending Kasai's two and a half month reign in a great match. Click here for highlights of Jun Kasai vs. Shuji Ishikawa 3/18/21.

Nanjyo Hayato's Phenix Pro ran its first show on February 13, 2021 at the Tokyo Kame Dojo Arena with no fans attending. The idea behind the show was to broadcast the show live on Twitch for 3,000 yen (30 dollars) to make up for the fact there would be no gate. The promotion was based around FMW nostalgia much like when he started up FFF back in 2011 where he mixed FMW along with Osaka Pro. The first FFF show was very FMW heavy but after it was a financial failure by the third show the promotion was almost entirely made up of Osaka based wrestlers instead of FMW wrestlers. Ten years later there's even fewer FMW wrestlers still working so he was able to only book a FMW main event and have Ricky Fuji in the undercard. No results were ever posted due to wanting fans to still be able to buy the Twitch stream for several days after the show had happened in a way of getting some purchases afterwards. The only result that ended up coming out was the main event of Masato Tanaka and Koji Nakagawa defeating Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Nanjyo Hayato when Tanaka would end up pinning Nanjyo with a Sliding D. After the main event, all four wrestlers along with Ricky Fuji took FMW questions while still in the ring from fans watching the event live. They have announced that the DVD of the show will be released in April. Nothing about another show taking place.

The A-Team held their first show of 2021 at the Tokyo Kitasenju Theater drawing their standard 50 fans for the show. The main event would see Super Tiger defend his WEW Heavyweight Title for the first time defeating Daisaku Shimoda at 12 minutes, 22 seconds after finishing him off with an Atomic Tiger Bomb for the win. Nobutaka Moribe would defend his WEW Jr. Heavyweight against CHANGO and defeat him with the Maromita at 20 minutes, 8 seconds to defend the title for the third time. MIKAMI and HASEGAWA would also defend their WEW Tag Team Titles after defeating MIKAMI's former partner Rion Mizuki as well as Iori Sugawara with HASEGAWA picking up the win over Sugawara at 18 minutes, 18 seconds with a Seaside Boyz for their second title defense. Tomohiko Hashimoto and Joji Otani would end up defeating Takumi Sakurai and Bryan Ishizaka with Otani picking up the win over Sakurai at 15 minutes, 59 seconds with a Sliding D. Gajo and Chikara would defeat Daisuke Ikeda and Raito Shimizu when Gajo would hit Shimizu with a lariat to get the win at 14 minutes, 4 seconds to set him up as the next contender for the WEW Heavyweight Title. Hashinosuke would open the show defeating Kosaku Tonosaki at 7 minutes, 6 seconds with a Swanton Bomb.

The A-Team would then return on March 14, 2021 to the Tokyo Kitasenju White Studio announcing a crowd of 50 fans for the show. The main event would see Super Tiger once again defend the WEW Heavyweight Title by defeating former champion Gajo at 8 minutes, 41 seconds with a Shiden to defend the title for the second time. MIKAMI and HASEGAWA would defend their WEW Tag Team Titles in the semi-main event against Daisuke Ikeda and Keiichi Sato when MIKAMI would roll up Sato at 18 minutes, 37 seconds with a School Boy to defend their titles for the third time. Tatsuhito Takaiwa would end the nearly 15 month reign of Nobutaka Moribe as WEW Jr. Heavyweight after pinning him at 13 minutes, 22 seconds to become the new WEW Jr. Heavyweight Champion. Takumi Sakurai would defeat disgraced former Guts World wrestler Joji Otani at 14 minutes, 52 seconds with a Moonsault. Kosaku Tonosaki and Hitachi Pro's Kento DiCaprio would defeat Bryan Ishizaka and Hashinosuke when Tonosaki would get the win at 13 minutes, 19 seconds with a Brainbuster on Hashinosuke. The opening match would see Tomohiko Hashimoto, Daisaku Shimoda, and Masahiro Sase defeat Hayato Mashita, Iori Sugawara, and Raito Shimizu when Shimoda would pick up the win at 12 minutes, 42 seconds with a Piledriver over Shimizu to open up the show.

ZERO1 will be returning to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on March 27th and held a press conference announcing the lineup. LLPW-X's Shinobu Kandori will be appearing on the show as she will team up with Kyoko Inoue to take on Jaguar Yokota and Dump Matsumoto. Megumi Kudo attended the press conference and Kudo and Kandori ended up meeting face to face in public for the first time since their last match against one another in FMW. Kudo stated as a former female professional wrestler she has a special feeling for the women wrestlers especially for all the legends in this match gathered. Megumi Kudo and Shinobu Kandori had one of the better rivalries towards the end of Kudo's career at the end of 1996 to March 1997.

Their feud would start when Shark Tsuchiya who was Kudo's long time rival started bringing LLPW's Eagle Sawai with her and joined up with her. Kudo would have issues that the LLPW wrestler was now appearing in FMW and Kandori who was feuding with Sawai in LLPW was upset that Tsuchiya was now appearing for her promotion with Kandori being the aggressive one at a press conference talking down to Kudo about the FMW women with Kudo talking right back to her with Arai having to make sure that Kudo would no go after her. They would end up having their first match on December 11, 1996 with Kandori getting the win after choking Kudo out and then spitting water in Kudo's face as disrespect. Kudo would not appreciate that and end up jumping Kandori in the locker room afterwards. This would setup their next match on January 5, 1997 at Korakuen Hall for LLPW in a Street Fight in one of Kudo's craziest matches as they would brawl all over the building before fighting in the balcony with Kandori trying to throw Kudo off with the referee having to stop the match and reward the win to Kandori once again in fear of Kudo falling from the balcony. Their third match would take place at the Sapporo Nakajima Sports Center on March 14, 1997 for FMW in a No Ropes Barbed wire Death Match with Kudo dripping blood all over her face during the match before finally putting Kandori away with the Kudo Driver ending their feud with Kudo and Kandori shaking hands out of respect. They would end up teaming one time on April 7, 1997 for LLPW at Korakuen Hall as they along with Michiko Omukai and Kaori Nakayama would defeat the source of their original problems with one another in Shark Tsuchiya, Eagle Sawai, Sayori Okino, and Miss Mongol with Omukai pinning Nakayama and Kudo and Kandori celebrating with one another.

Last time I showed off the Hayabusa collection I wanted to show some more stuff I have been able to collect through out the years. I was recently able to pick up the purple plush Hayabusa although a little faded to go with the blue and green plush Hayabusa dolls that I picked up from Toudoukan back in 2010 back when Hayabusa merchandise did not instantly sell out after being posted on the website in seconds. I still am looking for the red and white ones as they are very rarely available. Through the years I have also been able to pick up the 2001 FMW figure line which consisted of Kodo Fuyuki, Tetsuhiro Kuroda, and Kintaro Kanemura. All are considered pretty rare especially the Kanemura which usually goes for over $100 dollars whenever put up for sale online. Those were the only three FMW figures created by Shotgun Toys at the time as it sometimes confused that an Onryo FMW one was made by them when it was actually before Onryo joined FMW in 2000 as that figure was made back in 1999 when Onryo was still with Wrestle Yume Factory. I also have been able to collect an Onita figure based off his New Japan and then I also recently added a Jun Kasai figure that the company Grape Brian made for FREEDOMS as Kasai becomes the first wrestler in FREEDOMS to have a figure made for him while in the company. Kasai had previously had a figure made of him back in 2001 when he was in Big Japan which includes him apart of a rare 2 pack figure with John Zandig during the Big Japan vs. CZW feud that was going on at the time. Next update I will post what I have been able to add to my VHS collection over the last couple of months.

Added: 2/8

Atsushi Onita who now lives in Kanizaki, Saga will come into Tokyo every month or so for wrestling business. He skipped January but came in the first week of February to wrestle at the Giant Baba Memorial show at Korakuen Hall, participate in a talk event with Masa Fuchi, and he stopped by Mitsuhiro Matsunaga's Mr. Danger Steakhouse in Sumida, Tokyo on February 4, 2021. Onita stated that he has been going to Matsunaga's steak house for 24 years meaning he first went to the restaurant when it opened in 1997.

Onita and Matsunaga have a unique relationship as they know each other going back to 1989 when they competed in the first ever Barbed wire Death Match in Japan back on December 10, 1989 at Korakuen Hall. Matsunaga was a karate student of Masashi Aoyagi at the time. Aoyagi's group ended up pulling out of FMW soon afterwards and worked for New Japan before Matsunaga would break away from Aoyagi and join Mickey Ibaragi's W*ING promotion. Matsunaga noticed there was an opening to be the top face of the promotion since Mr. Pogo the big name of the promotion was a heel. Matsunaga was willing to do anything to get recognized became the first person to jump off the balcony at Korakuen Hall and then let Mr. Pogo blow fire at his head and Matsunaga became Mr. Danger the number one face of the promotion.

Onita's FMW and W*ING with Pogo and Matsunaga were in direct competition until Onita offered Mr. Pogo and Matsunaga $120,000 dollars each to leave W*ING and join FMW. Pogo and Matsunaga formed the Pogo Army in what suppose to look like an invasion angle without them using the name W*ING since the promotion was still active despite struggling with the loss of their two biggest stars. Onita and Matsunaga headlined the Tokyo International Harumi Dome on December 8, 1993 and drew a sell out of 12,522 fans in a No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Explosive Corners Death Match with Onita winning. Matsunaga would turn face and team with Onita through the first half of 1994 but Matsunaga would turn heel after FMW would bring in Yukihiro Kanemura and with W*ING no longer being active they would re-start up the heel invasion angle this time using the W*ING name to go up against Onita.

Onita would end up retiring on May 5, 1995 and Hayabusa would be made the new face of the group. The W*ING group would turn face after Onita's retirement and even Matsunaga would end up teaming with Hayabusa until it was decided to turn the W*ING group back heel and feud with the New FMW under Hayabusa until Matsunaga would decide to leave FMW following the May 5, 1996 Kawasaki Stadium show. Matsunaga would cite that he did not like how Hayabusa and Masato Tanaka treated him and although he did not mention him by name as a reason fellow W*ING partner Kanemura was also having issues with Matsunaga and not sad to see Matsunaga leave FMW to join Big Japan in the Summer of 1996.

Atsushi Onita would out of retirement on December 11, 1996 and their paths would not cross again until 2002 when Onita would start up a nostalgia Onita FMW promotion where he would first face off against the W*ING team of Mr. Pogo and Mitsuhiro Matsunaga on the opposite side before teaming up with Matsunaga once again on the final Onita FMW show on August 11, 2002. Onita and Matsunaga would not meet again at a wrestling show until January 5, 2017 at a Super Battle FMW with Onita and Matsunaga doing a talk segment with them hinting that Matsunaga would come out of retirement to face Onita for his retirement later that year which was more of just a tease than anything. They both sadly would end up getting once again later that year after Mr. Pogo who was both their number one rival through out their careers would pass away on June 23, 2017. Onita and Matsunaga would attend the Mr. Pogo Farewell Ceremony on July 27, 2017 where they would both pray to a shrine of Mr. Pogo.

Onita and Matsunaga will always be linked together because of FMW and W*ING and it is nice to see despite being rivals for separate death match promotions that they have formed some what of a friendship over the years which includes Onita getting to have some delicious steak as well.

The 23rd Memorial for Giant Baba's passing took place on February 4, 2021 at Korakuen Hall. Atsushi Onita would appear as apart of the early 1980's team which would consist of him, Masa Fuchi, Great Kojika, and Shiro Koshinaka as they would face off against the late 1980's/early 1990's team of Tiger Mask II, Takao Omori, Arashi, and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi. Obviously Tiger Mask II was not the original Mitsuharu Misawa as it pretty certain that it was Kotaro Suzuki under the mask as Suzuki was originally booked for the opening match and then never ended up appearing on the show with Tiger Mask having a very similar build to Suzuki. Both teams would come out in their All Japan jackets with Arashi wearing his through out the match and The Great Kabuki would accompany the Onita early 80's team to the ring. Onita would square off against Tiger Mask II first and shake hands before Onita would end up taking him to the outside and throwing him into the guard rail and then bring him back in the ring and deliver a DDT before tagging Kojika. Onita would eventually end up just being tossed out of the ring by Tiger Mask II towards the ending but Fuchi would end up rolling Kikuchi up at 8 minutes, 55 seconds to get the win with an inside cradle in a match that did not have much of a chance to be good when the two youngest guys in the match were Tiger Mask II at 42 and Omori at 51, but then you add in the crowd not making any noise and it was a match better on paper than actually happening. Click here to watch Onita/Fuchi/Koshinaka/Kojika vs. Tiger Mask II, Omori, Arashi, and Kikuchi from 2/4/21

Backstage Omori and Kikuchi would be conducting a interview when Omori would state how he takes pride in being a disciple of Baba when Onita would overhear this and shout at Omori. Onita would state he was a real disciple of Baba as he was the first Baba student and took care of Baba the first ten years of his career which is only true if you don't count excursions that Onita had to take without Baba. Onita would walk away as Omori would state that he spent the first ten years of his career being a disciple of Baba with Onita overhearing that and shouting "that's not true!" which it probably isn't true unless Omori did it for four years before making his debut as he started wrestling in October 1992 and Baba died in January 1999. Omori and Kikuchi would finish the promo stating that Onita was not there in All Japan when they were, but he is still their senior so they will not make any negative comments about him.

Atsushi Onita and Masa Fuchi participated in a Talk Event on February 5, 2021 in Shinbashi, Minato-ku Tokyo at the Giant Baba Bar which is ran by a relative of the late Motoko Baba named Kimitoshi Ogata. They told old stories together including talking about becoming AWA Southern Tag Team Champions, Onita defeating Chavo Guerrero in Charlotte, North Carolina in March 1982 for the NWA International Jr. Heavyweight Title as well as going to Mexico together. Onita and Fuchi ended up becoming the 100th All Asian Tag Team Champions back on November 27, 2006 before losing the titles to Atsushi Aoki and Hikaru Sato on June 20, 2017. The All Asian Tag Titles were eventually sealed in August 2019 and replaced with newer belts. The old belts were given to Ogata the owner of the Giant Baba bar so he brought out the title belts out for Onita and Fuchi to hold while talking. Onita claims during the event that the belts started talking to him telling him "please bring me to the ring again" with Onita listening to them. Onita would end up walking out of the event with the title belts without permission. Onita apologized for stealing the title belts that night but did state he called Ogata the next day to let them know he had the belts and that they negotiated a lease for Onita to have the title belts for the time being. Onita stated that he will make these belts active once again as they will defended as the "True All Asian Tag Team Titles". No word on when they will be defended as Onita has not announced any future matches for the time being, but I would imagine it would be for All Japan's Korakuen Hall show on March 14th with Masa Fuchi as his partner possibly against Takao Omori and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi.

FREEDOMS held their first show of the year on January 2, 2021 at Shin-Kiba drawing an announced crowd of 157 fans for the show which is pretty much the standard max number with the spaced out seating restrictions in the building. The main non tournament match on the show was a New Years Special Champion Match as all the champions of the promotion in the King of Freedom Tag Team Champions Mammoth Sasaki and Violento Jack taking on King of Freedom World Champion Toru Sugiura and UWA Jr. Heavyweight Champion Kamui with Mammoth rolling Kamui up with a La Magistral at 13 minutes, 21 seconds for the win with all the wrestlers posing with the belts afterwards.

Other non-tournament matches were Takashi Sasaki, GENTARO, and Dragon Libre defeating Unchain's Jun Kasai, Masashi Takeda, and Rina Yamashita with Sasaki picking up the win at 12 minutes, 58 seconds with a Backslide on Yamashita. The Jr. Heavyweight team of Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Alejandro defeating Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei, and the newest Brahman Tatsuhito Takaiwa with Alejandro getting the win over Kei at 7 minutes 59 seconds as afterwards it would be announced that Brahman Shu would be out for an extended period of time with a cervical spine injury with Takaiwa replacing Shu in the team for the time being.

The first round tournament matches would open the show with Toshiyuki Sakuda taking on Tomoya Hirata with Sakuda throwing Hirata at the referee and then using a stable gun while the ref was down before rolling him up a Samson Clutch and then wait forever as the referee would finally count three at 6 minutes, 47 seconds for Masaoka to advance. The next tournament match would be Daisuke Masaoka going up against Kenji Fukimoto with Masaoka getting the win at 1 minutes, 23 seconds after rolling up Fukimoto up out of nowhere with a Tornado Clutch.

The main event of the show and the finals of the tournament would be Daisuke Masaoka taking on Toshiyuki Sakuda as Masaoka would nailing Sakuda with a flying drop kick and then go back up to the top and try for the Rokkua Kai but Sakuda would move out of the way and hit Masaoka with the Sakauchi to get the win at 14 minutes, 37 seconds and become the number contender for the King of Freedom World Championship. Sugiura would come to the ring and hold the title in Sakuda's face showing off how much taller he is than Sakuda and acting like Sakuda will be no match for Sugiura. Click here to watch highlights of FREEDOMS 1/2/21.

The next FREEDOMS show would take place on January 21, 2021 at the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring and draw 154 fans for this show as the card would have to be alternated due to Kamui and Dragon Libre coming in contact with someone with COVID as Kamui made mention that it was a student in his son's class that had and he would be pulling himself off the show as a result. The main event would be Toru Sugiura and Takashi Sasaki against Toshiyuki Sakuda and Takayuki Ueki in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match with Sakuda getting the win at 16 minutes, 22 seconds with a Sakauchi on Sasaki to build him up as a serious contender. After the match, Masashi Takeda would hit the ring and toss Sugiura out and state he was joining up with Sakuda and Ueki which means he was officially leaving the Unchain group after being a founder member with Kasai and Fukimoto nearly 9 years ago. Kasai and Fukimoto would hit the ring upset about Takeda joining the rival group but Takeda, Sakuda, and Ueki would leave the ring before they could do anything about it as they are now the top heel group although currently without a name.

Before leaving Unchain, Takeda would team up with Jun Kasai on last time in the semi-main event to take on fellow Unchain members in a Scramble Tornado Death Match as Kasai and Takeda would end up hitting Yamashita with a double uranage on broken pots and then Kasai with hit her with a One Winged Angel but Yamashita would manage to kick out. Kasai would then go for a Reverse Tiger Driver but Yamashita would manage to escape and then kick Kasai low as Fujita would come over and roll Kasai up with a Samson Clutch at 15 minutes, 6 seconds to get the win to setup Fujita and Yamashita as the number one contenders for the King of Freedom Tag Team Team Titles.

Other matches on the show would be Mammoth Sasaki, Violento Jack, and GENTARO teaming up to defeat Yuya Susumu, Kengo, and Tomoya Hirata when GENTARO would use a Flying Headscissors to get the win at 14 minutes, 1 seconds over Hirata and the opening match would be Kenji Fukimoto and Alejandro teaming up to take on Brahman Ryu who is Tatsuhito Takaiwa doing the Brahman gimmick along with Brahman Kei as Fukimoto would pick up the win at 9 minutes, 34 seconds after Fukimoto would end up putting Kei away with a Package Piledriver. Click here to watch highlights of the FREEDOMS 1/21/21 show.

FREEDOMS announced the lineup for their February 9, 2021 Korakuen Hall show which Samurai TV will be airing the show as it will be the first time in the promotions history that Samurai will be broadcasting a FREEDOMS Korakuen Hall show the first half of the year since the very first Korakuen Hall show put on by FREEDOMS on June 21, 2010. The main event will be Toru Sugiura defending the King of Freedom World Championship against Toshiyuki Sakuda in a Fluorescent Light Tubes Glass Board Death Match. I would think this is where Sugiura will be losing the title. I thought even before the Christmas Death Match that once Sugiura finally put away Takeda that he would lose to whoever he faced off against in February just because of the running out of challengers aspect. Adding in Takeda to his group and the show airing on Samurai TV makes me feel more confident that Sakuda will end up walking away as champion as part of an incentive to get him to leave Big Japan full time, but we will see.

The semi-main event will be Jun Kasai and Kenji Fukimoto taking on the new heel team of Masashi Takeda and Takayuki Ueki in a Razor Cross Board Death Match as the winning team of this match will probably tell the story of who will actually end up winning the main event later on. Mammoth Sasaki and Violento Jack will defend the King of Freedom Tag Team Championship against Minoru Fujita and Rina Yamashita in a Scramble Tornado Match. This seems like another title change happening as Mammoth and Jack have held the titles now for over two years and tied the record for title defenses at 11 set by Mammoth Sasaki and Toru Sugiura. There has not been a time where someone else not Mammoth Sasaki or Violento Jack have been a tag team champion since March 23, 2017. The reason that I would give Fujita and Yamashita the odds of winning the titles are because of not only just Yamashita getting quite over with her performances but also because Fujita and Yamashita already challenged for the titles back on August 31, 2020 and lost and rarely do you see a two successful title defenses against the same person/same team in the same title reign. Takashi Sasaki and Daisuke Masaoka will take on Yuya Susumu and Kengo who look to be a full time time tag team now, Kamui returns to action against Tomoya Hirata in a Hardcore Match, and the opening match will be GENTARO and Dragon Libre taking on Tatsuhito Takaiwa and Brahman Kei.

ZERO1 suffered some bad luck as their scheduled 20th Anniversary show at the Ryogoku Sumo Hall scheduled for March 14, 2021 has been postponed until next year. The issue was that due to the coronavirus the annual Sumo Tournament that was suppose to begin in Osaka this year was moved to Tokyo at Sumo Hall instead with the first day of the tournament being scheduled for March 14th which was the date ZERO1 had booked. This was also a decision made by the OSU Premium company who is sponsoring the show as ZERO1 at this point can not afford to run Sumo Hall by themselves and OSU Premium was looking to bring in some big name retired wrestlers for the show to put on "performances" like how they had Megumi Kudo and Shark Tsuchiya back on December 26, 2020 at the Shinjuku FACE.

Many did not think ZERO1 would be able to survive to March 2021 after their sponsor iFD who were the sponsors last year when they announced that they were going to do a Sumo Hall show ended up pulling out just under 5 months after buying the promotion due to the coronavirus but an IT company Daiki Holdings Group took over as the main sponsor to keep the promotion going with OSU Premium agreeing to help sponsor the Sumo Hall show. The switch over to Daiki Holdings has not been a smooth one as they do not have the money that ZERO1 has been use to under other sponsorship and as a result they have lost Kohei Sato, SUGI, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, Towa Iwasaki, RAICHO, and Ikuto Hidaka. The original plan for the main event of Ryogoku Sumo Hall 20th Anniversary was to have Masato Tanaka defend the World Heavyweight Championship against CIMA as Tanaka and CIMA were big names from 20 years and the people in charge interest in wrestling pretty much stops at around 20 years ago thus why they were chosen for the main event by them. CIMA will instead challenge for the title against Tanaka on May 30, 2021 at Korakuen Hall instead.

Nanjyo Hayato has announced that he will be starting up another promotion. This will be his third after starting up FFF which was originally supposed to be based around FMW nostalgia until the shows were financial losers and the promotion became more of a standard Osaka independent promotion. Nanjyo also runs Osaka Style Pro-Wrestling which is a promotion that includes Osaka independent wrestling that mirrors the old Osaka Pro promotion but will run in other cities like Tokyo.

This third promotion that he is starting up will be called Phenix Pro and the debut show will take place on February 13, 2021 at the Pure J Dojo which is also known as the Tokyo Kame Dojo Arena although I do not believe fans will be in attendance and the show instead will be broadcasted on Twitch with a charge fee to be able to watch it. The main event will be a FMW nostalgia match with Masato Tanaka teaming up with Koji Nakagawa as they will take on Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Nanjyo Hayato in a match that is straight out of a July 1995 FMW Korakuen Hall show. Ricky Fuji will also appear on the show although not in a FMW based match as he will team up with Shin Suzuki and they will go up against Hideo Toba and Shirasu Kid. After the main event, the old FMW wrestlers including Tanaka, Nakagawa, Kuroda, Nanjyo, and Ricky will all have a talk event and talk about their memories of FMW and tell stories to the twitch fans paying for the show. Both Tanaka and Ricky have tried to correct Nanjyo that the promotion should be called "Phoenix Pro" instead of "Phenix Pro" with Nanjyo responding they both mean the same thing, so it does not matter which just means to me that he misspelled the word and he's already too far in to go back and change the spelling.

Leon Spinks passed away on February 5, 2021 in Henderson, Nevada due to advanced prostate cancer at the age of 67.

Leon Spinks is one of two people along with Primo Carnera to hold both a boxing title and a wrestling title. That wrestling title at the time was FMW's WWA Martial Arts Heavyweight Title which was the top FMW heavyweight belt that would soon be replaced by the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Title.

Spinks started off boxing while in the marines which eventually lead to him winning the light heavyweight gold medal in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Spinks would go on to become a professional boxer and in just his 8th fight he would end up winning World Heavyweight Title on February 15, 1978 after defeating Muhammad Ali in a 15 round split decision in Las Vegas, Nevada. Spinks became the first person to beat Ali for the heavyweight title although only earned close to $300,000 for the fight. The Spinks vs. Ali rematch took place on September 15, 1978 in New Orleans, Louisiana at the Super Dome with Ali winning back the title in a 15 round decision with Spinks getting $3.5 million for that fight although never getting a rematch for the title again.

Spinks who was known to spend money on weed, cocaine, and nice cars although Spinks himself states that his lawyers are the ones that stole his money was in need of pay days in anyway he could get them. New Japan was willing to pay him to bring him due to him beating Ali and he would face off against Antonio Inoki at Ryogoku Sumo Hall on October 9, 1986 with Inoki getting the win. Spinks was still in need of money though as he went from 1988 to 1991 without having a boxing fight

Atsushi Onita's FMW promotion called in 1991 looking to bring in a boxer for Onita to face. FMW was based around Onita facing off against boxers and fighters of different styles against the Onita the wrestler to see who would win. Onita had already defeated karate fighter Masashi Aoyagi on October 10, 1989 and 1988 Olympic Judo Bronze Medalist Grigori Verichev on May 29, 1991. Onita's dream was to bring in a boxer and defeat him. Onita first wanted Mike Tyson but that was going to be impossible for multiple different reasons and never even made it to a phone call being made. Onita who had wanted to become the next Antonio Inoki in Japanese Wrestling then asked to bring in Spinks since Spinks had shown he was willing to be brought in to face Inoki five years earlier.

Spinks made his FMW debut in the World Strongest Tag Team Tournament making his debut on November 27, 1991 where he teamed with fellow American Rufus Blackborn to defeat the team of Atsushi Onita and Tarzan Goto with Spinks KO'ing Onita to setup a big show match between the two down the line. The Spinks team would come up short making the finals due to Spinks' partner Blackborn taking a couple of losses in their tournament matches to keep Spinks protected for the future match. Also, making their FMW debuts in that same tag team tournament would be The Sheik and Sabu as Onita also wanted to take turns between feuding with Spinks and The Sheik so that they could rotate being brought in on different tours.

Although whenever The Sheik and Spinks would be on the same tour together, they would sit with each other on the FMW heel bus together as they would end up connecting a friendship with one another on the long bus rides to shows. FMW would wait to bring back Spinks again until March 1992 where Spinks would end up getting his big FMW win by defeating Tarzan Goto on March 25, 1992 at Korakuen Hall after KO'ing him for the for the WWA Martial Arts Heavyweight Title. This was also probably the best FMW match of Spinks' career and that was because he was protected and only asked to go six minutes. Spinks winning the title setup for the big show match against Onita on May 24, 1992 at the Tokyo Ariake Coliseum in a cage match.

The show though would end up being the first unsuccessful big FMW stand alone show. FMW would announce 7,000 people in the 12,000 building, but only around 5,000 people would actually attend the show. Spinks just was not the draw that FMW was hoping. It did not help that it was the first inside big show for the promotion and thus they could not do any explosions like FMW had done for all their other big shows that were a success.

The match between Onita vs. Spinks would be in a regular cage match and the match would be horrible as Onita was not the type of wrestler who could carry Spinks to anything decent for over 8 minutes and they did not have the electricity of the crowd that Spinks vs. Goto had at Korakuen Hall two months earlier. Onita would end up defeating Spinks for the WWA Martial Arts Title and Spinks was pretty much done as far as a main event wrestler after the disappointing crowd and match.

Spinks still wanted to continue to work for FMW though as the pay was better than anything he was getting at the time, and money was something he was in need for. FMW's last ditch effort to keep Spinks in the main event picture was to ask his brother Michael Spinks to work for FMW and team with his brother but Michael refused. Spinks for the next year would only be brought in for big stadium shows to work midcard or semi-main event matches including working the Yokohama Stadium show on September 19, 1992 where he teamed with Brian Sayodill losing to Tarzan Goto and Grigori Verichev and then Kawasaki Stadium on May 5, 1993 losing to former Olympian Grigori Verichev on May 5, 1993 in a Judo vs. Boxer match on the show.

Spinks would come back for one more stadium show on August 22, 1993 losing to Katsuji Ueda another boxer in a sign that the company was done with Spinks. Spinks would be used the rest of the August 1993 tour including facing off against Terry Funk on August 26, 1993 with Spinks getting DQ'd then KO'ing Sabu for the win on August 28, 1993 at Korakuen Hall before facing off against beating younger wrestlers like Mr. Gannosuke and Onita Jr. the rest of the tour before defeating Sambo Asako on September 1, 1993 at the Sapporo Nakajima Sports Center in Spinks' final pro-wrestling match.

It was very apparent that Spinks was already suffering the beginning stages of dementia due to over 20 years of boxing and he was incapable of being able to remember much when it came to putting together a match. Mr. Gannosuke stated that it was known in the locker room that Spinks was struggling to work through matches because he would forget what he was suppose to do even though they were just 5 minute matches that were mostly just him punching. The FMW office were aware of Spinks' issues and decided to stop bringing him in after the August 1993 tour as his value was just not there anymore and it just was not worth paying to fly him in when all he was capable of was having 5 minute squashes with younger wrestlers that he was still having issues doing that.

Spinks would end up retiring from boxing in December 1995 at the age of 42 and would have one more wrestler vs. boxer match for All World Wrestling on February 27, 2000 in Kenosha, Wisconsin where he faced off against Rick Shaw going by his Bastion Booger gimmick who had wanted to get into FMW in 1991 himself. Spinks' money would continue to drain and he would find himself living in a homeless shelter after losing all his money. Spinks would get re-married in 2011 and would go on tour at conventions to try and help him get out of the huge debt he had accumulated. Spinks ended up suffering intestinal damage in 2014 after swallowing a piece of chicken bone which led to multiple surgeries before finding out in 2019 about his prostate cancer that ultimately took his life after spread to his bones. Atsushi Onita upon hearing about Spinks' passing stated he would pray for the soul of his long time rival and other FMW wrestlers commented that they will never forget his powerful punches that he gave to them.

I have continued to try to grow my Hayabusa figure collection through out the years. I have been able to collect every professionally released figure including all 4 Project Hayabusa's that were released in 2004, all 4 FMW released figures in 1998, the two HAO figures released by Project Hayabusa, two mini figures, and the two 12 inch INSPIRE figures that were released in 1999. I have also been lucky enough to get several custom made ones including a Funko Pop version, a blue and purple version of the HAO set, a custom Hasbro figure, and multiple different colored mini figures and FMW released figures. I would have never thought even just a couple of years that I would see this collection grow the way it has, but it just gives me so much joy each time to be able to add to it when I can. I also have been able to pick up a new purple plush doll although it is somewhat faded along with the green and blue ones I was able to pick up ten years ago. These are really rare as I very rarely have came across any, I will post them as well as some other stuff I have been able to pick up for my next update.

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