Reputation Suicide: NSBW's Self-Inflicted Plunge Into The Abyss

                              (Written by jom)

     Modern MMA in Japan does not exist without professional wrestling. The JMMA boom of the 1990s and 2000s was built from the ground up by former professional wrestlers, most of whom were trained in the Gotch and Robinson styles of catch wrestling. In the wake of NJPW's Different Style Fights of the '70s and the UWF's nascent shoot stylings of the '80s, these wrestlers found themselves interested in applying their training and philosophies to actual combat, birthing organizations such as Shooto, RINGS, Shootboxing, and Pancrase. Just as the early '90s served as a fertile breeding ground for Japanese independent wrestling groups, that same period saw fervent development in JMMA, signaling even more prosperous times to come in the near future.

    In 1994, Masashi Aoyagi saw the incoming JMMA wave, and decided he would catch a ride. Thus was born "New Stage Battle as Wrestling," also known by the direct translations of New Fighting Wrestling & Shin Kakuto. NSBW was an organization planned to transcend the boundaries of professional wrestling and establish itself as the country's pinnacle of combat sports. NSBW, however, did not do this. NSBW didn't even last a full calendar year. Every step along the path to immortality was just another step onto a rake. Every major move only served to hurt the promotion rather than help it. By the end of its life, most wrestlers weren't even sure what the point of it all actually was. NSBW was the most doomed organization in Japanese wrestling and Japanese MMA history. It's worth looking at why. 

I. Wayward Souls

     A discussion of NSBW can't begin without a discussion of Oriental Pro Wrestling. Oriental Pro was the second attempt at an independent group by Ryuma Go & Masahiko Takasugi, two of the three men responsible for the very first independent promotion, Pioneer Senshi. Like Pioneer, Oriental Pro, while innovative and influential in its own right, was never much of a success financially. By December 1993, the company was in dire straits, as Go had already left the group behind and Takasugi's desire to freelance wasn't particularly a secret. When young aces Hiroshi Itakura and Kazuhiko Matsuzaki faced off in a dojo match to decide the company's fate, everyone already knew what the result would be. Oriental Pro's roster of rookies pledged to follow Itakura wherever he went next.

    That landing location appeared almost immediately. Even a month before the dojo match, Itakura had already publicly declared his intentions to join Masashi Aoyagi's karate dojo Seishin Kaikan as a representative wrestler. Around the same time as the dojo match, Aoyagi announced an upcoming Seishin Kaikan produce show, with Aoyagi booking himself against Itakura in the main event and populating the undercard with the former Oriental Pro roster. Aoyagi also hinted at something larger coming soon, as news broke that Aoyagi was not planning to re-sign his contract with New Japan and would instead be forming his own organization.

    According to some of the people involved in NSBW, Aoyagi wasn't the only one planning to leave New Japan for the new group. Akitoshi Saito was also strongly considering joining his mentor in the new organization, but seemingly decided at the last second to stick with New Japan instead. As such, Aoyagi would be leading the venture without him, signing on Oriental Pro representative Takeshi Tamao to be in charge of the new group's office. For the stranded Oriental Pro workers, this promotion appeared to be the oasis they had been looking for. It wouldn't retain that image for very long.

II. Identity Crisis

    On January 28th, 1994, Masashi Aoyagi formally announced the creation of New Stage Battle as Wrestling, and immediately declared Pancrase as its enemy. The impromptu press conference for NSBW's initial announcement, along with the more formal press conference four days later to reveal its logo and roster (a combination of Oriental Pro workers, Aoyagi's karate trainees, and a handful of young martial artists), contained a litany of statements from Aoyagi that left reporters confused as to what, exactly, Aoyagi was planning to promote. While NSBW was referred to explicitly as a wrestling company, it was talked about alongside shoot organizations such as Pancrase and Shooto. Aoyagi mentioned in passing that he planned to send some of NSBW's roster to participate in the Towa Cup, an openweight karate tournament happening in a few days (whether or not he actually sent anyone I don't know). He even floated the idea to reporters of doing away with a wrestling ring entirely, and instead running shows with an octagon-shaped cage. To many onlookers, NSBW appeared to be setting itself up as a full contact shootfighting organization.

    Many of the pro wrestlers were just as confused as the reporters. While they had heard that NSBW would be leaning more towards shoot style, the majority of ex-Oriental wrestlers had been left in the dark regarding how far Aoyagi planned to take it. Some of them took this as their sign to bow out on the project and try their luck at finding work elsewhere, but the majority felt that they had no other option. They had pledged to stick with Itakura, and Itakura, at least for now, planned on sticking with Aoyagi, so the rookies stayed as well. 

    As the first show approached, however, Aoyagi decided that he wasn't done confusing his roster or the reporters, as he signed up to appear on the WWF's Japan Mania Tour. Publications such as Shu Pro were quick to point out the conflict of interest in Aoyagi, a man trying to present his new organization as the toughest and most legit fighting group in the country, working a tour for the WWF, the Sports Entertainment company. Aoyagi's explanation for this wasn't much of anything either, as he simply stated that he had no reason to reject the opportunity. For the wrestlers, this felt like another sharp left turn on the path towards understanding what Aoyagi expected of them. In hindsight, it was the least confusing development these wrestlers would have to deal with over the next few months.

III. Reality Check

    Following the conclusion of NSBW's first show on February 18th, Aoyagi held a press conference with Satoru Sayama, the former Tiger Mask and founder of Shooto, to announce that the two organizations would be working together for a "full-scale conflict" between their fighters. For many of the reporters there, the actual intended content of the press conference was less interesting than the fact that Sayama would be appearing at a wrestling show for the first time in nearly 10 years, along with what many assumed would be the end goal of this alliance, a match between Aoyagi and Sayama (which both men agreed sounded like a good idea, leading Aoyagi to say it would "probably" happen later in the year).

    For NSBW's roster, this announcement of "NSBW vs. Shooto" fights was a nightmare scenario, one that only a few seemed to grasp. As one former employee explained, in a pre-PRIDE world, many people just couldn't understand the gap in fighting ability between pro wrestlers and MMA fighters, and most assumed the wrestlers would at least have some chance. NSBW's roster also attempted to level the playing field just the tiniest bit, sending a handful of the former Oriental Pro workers to a boxing gym for training, which the wrestlers promptly abandoned as they had zero interest in learning boxing. With the first fight between boxer-turned-wrestler Jun Kikawada and rising Shooto star Yuki Nakai booked for NSBW's next show, all anyone could do is hope that the NSBW wrestlers would put in a good fight.

    187 seconds.

    187 seconds is the combined runtime of all four fights to occur between NSBW and Shooto. Kikawada's 27 second tap-out set the tone for what would be a slaughter, as NSBW's chosen fighters were completely outmatched in every way against the Shooto fighters. To call the proposed "conflict" a failure on NSBW's part would be an understatement. This was a misstep of nuclear proportions, where over the span of a single week NSBW's reputation was ripped apart and burned to a crisp. The Shooto disaster would remain a dark cloud hanging over NSBW's head for the rest of its life, and, to this day, is probably the thing people remember the most about it. It was pro wrestling's first attempt at proving its strength against MMA, and it couldn't have gone any worse.

    It was also, in my opinion, only the second worst decision made by Masashi Aoyagi. The worst of them all would come a month later. 

IV. Phantom President

    On the same show where Yuki Nakai demolished Jun Kikawada, SAW practitioner and former RINGS fighter Koichiro Kimura made an appearance backstage to challenge Aoyagi to a match. In Kimura's own account of events years later, he said that he only joined for the opportunity to wrestle Aoyagi. NSBW chose to use their hot new prospect immediately, and the match between Aoyagi and Kimura would be set for April 4th, main eventing in Korakuen Hall to start NSBW's second tour, "Phoenix Championship '94."

    Nobody seems to really enjoy talking about what happened in that match.

    Aoyagi, in an interview later on, would only state that there was a "difference in direction" between the two. Kimura gave more details on what led to the affair, stating that Aoyagi invited Kimura into his locker room 30 minutes before the match and told him something that made Kimura so angry, he forced everyone else out of the room and cursed Aoyagi out before deciding "Fine, I'm going with it." One other NSBW wrestler recalled that the Kimura/Aoyagi match is where wrestling in NSBW "stopped being fun."

    The end result of the "match" was Koichiro Kimura winning via referee stoppage on a kneebar after three rounds of domination. Aoyagi seemed to protest the ruling at first before congratulating Kimura on the win, only to then announce that NSBW would be "temporarily disbanding." This, however, was not true, at least according to the NSBW offices. As soon as publications started to report on this announcement, Tamao made a statement that NSBW would be operating as usual, and that the statement had been a mistake made by "wrestler" Masashi Aoyagi. While Aoyagi had indeed only been a wrestler on paper, he was also already established as the figurehead of the company and the man behind the idea, in the same way Tenryu was positioned as top dog in relation to WAR's actual president, Masatomo Takei. Calling Aoyagi just a roster member seemed to publicly imply that Aoyagi had overstepped, and Aoyagi would return that gesture in due time.

    Aoyagi and Kimura faced off one more time, 19 days later. This match was less eventful than the last, but once again resulted in Kimura's victory, and led to Aoyagi declaring that if he lost to Kimura one more time, he would retire on the spot. That third match would never happen. Starting in May, Aoyagi began to refuse all NSBW bookings. Aoyagi spent that month wrestling for the WWF, only willing to appear at ringside for that month's NSBW Korakuen show, where Itakura practically begged Aoyagi in a post-match promo to "take care of the company." In June, Aoyagi vanished from the public eye outright.

    Aoyagi finally reappeared for the promotion in July, working three shows before skipping the tour's final event to appear in FMW. Those July shows ended up being Aoyagi's final appearances in general. Soon, members of the "Aoyagi Faction" in NSBW followed suit, with Shigekazu Tajiri, Yuichi Fukaya, and Yoshiro Ito all leaving the company to follow Aoyagi. Koichiro Kimura personally invited Aoyagi to appear one last time, at the September 24th Korakuen event, for one last "grudge settlement" match between the two. Aoyagi never responded. After Kimura's match on the show (the only NSBW show to receive a video release), Kimura took the mic and declared to the audience "You are all witnesses. Masashi Aoyagi has run away from NSBW. He will never come back."

    Most people seemed to know at that point that it was over.

V. Wasted Time

    NSBW lasted less than two months after that final Korakuen show. Attendance had been down (or, more accurately, had never been particularly up), and wrestlers were less interested than ever in appearing for the group. Even as NSBW worked out a deal with WAR and Kimura brought in some of his SAW trainees, it seemed nothing could prevent what many were viewing as inevitable.

    On November 16, 1994, NSBW ran the final show of their "DD Spirits '94" tour in the Matsusaka City General Gymnasium in Matsusaka, Mie. They reported to Shu Pro an attendance of nearly three thousand people, but, having seen enough photos from the show, I just can't say I buy that number. NSBW ran this show as a special "all card Barbed Wire Cage Deathmatch" event, where every match on the show happened surrounded by a barbed wire cage. Reportedly, the only person to actually utilize the cage in a match was Hideo Takayama, better known as BADBOY Hido. Every other match was worked as if the cage never existed at all.

    After the show, Hiroshi Itakura told the audience that he would be leaving NSBW, which many understood to mean he would be joining WAR. Kimura shook hands with Itakura before taking the mic and claiming that NSBW had another tour booked for December. While some on the roster did believe Kimura when he said this, many of the wrestlers could already feel that those December shows would never come to pass.

    The final instance of NSBW existing in any sort of manner would occur on a Shooto show on January 21, 1995. In the second fight on the card, SAW fighter and NSBW wrestler Shingo Shigeta was announced as representing the promotion, before being completely pummeled and losing in a minute to Shooto's debuting trainee, Enson Inoue. Weirdly, it makes complete sense to me that NSBW's final mark on the world of combat sports was one of their guys being fed to Shooto's most famous fighter in his debut. It's the most appropriate way for that story to end.

    You tend to find mixed feelings from NSBW guys regarding their former home. Referee Matsui, for example, looks at NSBW somewhat nostalgically as the company where he made his debut. Certainly, the one thing you can give the promotion credit for is that it debuted some awesome wrestlers, ranging from SAW's Shingo Shigeta and Fumio Akiyama, to Oriental Pro trainee Masahiko Kochi, to the former boxer Hiroshi Osumi, later known as FMW's Shinjuku Same.

    However, the majority of interviews I've found from former NSBW wrestlers make me think they'd rather not remember those days. As said by Keisuke Yamada, "it was a complete waste of a year. I gained a lot before then in Oriental Pro, and I gained a lot after in IWA Japan. I gained nothing in NSBW."

ZERO FANS: The Wrestling Show Nobody Attended

                              (Written by jom)

     I am distressed by fanless wrestling shows. It's certainly ironic for me to feel that way, considering a lot of the stuff covered on here has had attendance numbers closer to the size of the average American household than to an actual wrestling show, but there's just something about an entirely hollow arena that perturbs me. Like many who share my sentiment, my disdain was born from the COVID era, where every TV product committed themselves to filming matches in ghost towns, or worse, with LED screens for people. It was an awful time then, and it's usually an awful time now whenever companies make the baffling decision to do it on purpose.

    There are, of course, exceptions. Empty Arena matches are cool. There's a freedom in them that you wouldn't get with an audience, and the intentions there feel fleshed-out enough to make it work as a one-off. Similarly, matches like the Backyard Brawl series from XGF work because the "arenas" are weird dingy warehouses or dirty parking lots. For the environment, the complete absence of people feels fitting, save for maybe a homeless smack addict here or there.

    The biggest exception of them all has neither of these excuses, though. On November 26th, 2006, the uber shindie Shitamachi Pro ran their third ever show, and not a fan was in sight. They weren't running the show in an abandoned trap house. They weren't planning on using the empty arena to their advantage. It was business as usual, which begs the question: what kind of explanation could they have for me to consider this the biggest exemption from my fanless show hatred?

    And that's the thing: there was no explanation. They didn't plan an empty arena show. There was no coordination or theming or grand scheme at play. It had no excuse, because it had no intentions of being a fanless wrestling event.

    Zero fans turned up to watch the show. 

Tarzan Goto's Professional Wrestling

     There are a couple of dates you could pick for the start of the Tarzan Goto Indie Revolution. An easy one is April 23rd, 1995, the day that he and his Shin FMW compatriots left FMW proper. Skipping ahead a few years, November 9th, 1999 stands out as a strong option, the day Goto opened the Indie Wrestler Training School in Sagamihara. For my money, I'd place the revolution's start on June 17th, 1997, the date of the first proper Shin FMW show where Goto wrestled in every single match. It was one of those grand statements of intent that Goto was always great at, and felt like the beginning of a legacy of rookie development, as well as the first instance of Goto creating a place for less known indie workers to prosper.

    Regardless of the exact day, it's undeniable that by the mid-2000s, the Goto Sphere of Influence was in full swing. Wrestlers from the sphere were spread all across the indies, and at least three different arenas had been built just for Goto's wrestling. The most recent of these, Asakusa Indies Arena (a combination wrestling arena and hot pot restaurant), was hosting wrestling on a nearly-daily basis, giving the more obsessive indie fans a chance to watch Goto's finest wrestlers while chowing down on Goto's finest chanko. Many of the wrestlers working in Asakusa were from Goto's own dojo, or at least had spent enough time working there to get a few training sessions under their belt, creating a smaller-scale indie scene almost entirely exclusive to the Asakusa arena.

    One of the groups regularly running in Asakusa, maybe the strangest of them all thus far, was Shitamachi Pro.

The Asasuka Misfit Parade

    Started by Jiro Kurumashita in 2006, Shitamachi Pro was an immediate standout among the lineup of Asakusa promotions, mostly for how weird it was. The first show featured an offer match from Gatokunyan (the Ice Ribbon predecessor), a battle between Australian indie workers, and the debuts of Shitamachi regulars Kanabun and Kurumashita in incredibly weird and awfully worked matchups. Asakusa already had a couple "so bad it's good" companies appearing there irregularly, but none had ever been as trashy as Shitamachi. From the moment the main event ended with a pinfall count where the ref skipped the 1, a star was born.

    Shitamachi's next show was more of the same, including the debut of future ace Bakabon no Papa, Stalker The Great Otakuman's transformation into Asakusa Presley (a weird Elvis gimmick complete with an eyemask with eyes on it), and a big main event between Kurumashita and standout amateur scene freak The Bosconian. The show also drew a solid crowd of 50 people, a perfectly respectable number for the intimate environment of Asakusa. 

    At least, it was on the surface. The fact of the matter is almost the entire crowd were there for a company farewell party. In actuality, only one person had shown up in Asakusa with the intentions of watching Shitamachi Pro, and it just so happened that 49 other people had arrived and simply stuck around for the show.

    Still, Shitamachi's third show in November was set to be the biggest one yet, with sleaze scene top guy Dragon Soldier LAW on the card and a main event set to decide the first Shitamachi Openweight champion. If any show would ever draw in a crowd, it would be that one.

"What if no one comes?"

    The start of the day was business as usual. Ring announcer (and excellent source for this story) Wonderman arrived for the show at 6:00 PM, and began helping the rest of the crew finalize a schedule for the show. For the next hour and a half, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. Around 7:40 PM, cameraman Yoshino (as in Mutoha's Yoshino, and another great source for the story) arrived from filming that day's NEO show for highlights on a news broadcast. Yoshino was set to film this show as well, which he would then give to SamuraiTV in case they had any interest in including footage on Occupation Of The Indiez.

    It was around that time that the crew realized that nobody had showed up for the event yet. Everyone started to joke around about the situation, asking "well, what are we gonna do if nobody shows up?". Twenty minutes later, the clock struck 8:00 PM, the show's start time. Nothing had changed. The wrestlers and staff continued to joke around, guessing that people would start turning up shortly. Around 8:15 PM, everyone realized that their jokes may not have been too far from the truth. They waited even longer. Time ticked away.

    Finally, at 8:30 PM, Wonderman, Jiro Kurumashita, and Tarzan Goto began discussing what to do. As far as I'm aware, we've never gotten word on how their discussion went in terms of the finer details. What we do know, however, is that Tarzan Goto made the final call, both as on-site manager and the most senior official at the event. Goto's decision was to run the show regardless of whether any fans had arrived. Inspired by his empty arena match against Onita in 1990, Goto saw the potential held by Yoshino's camera, and decided it was worth running the show just for the sake of it being filmed. As reported in Weekly Pro, the only ones in the building were the wrestlers, the ring crew, ring announcer Wonderman, cameraman Yoshino, on-site manager Goto, the representatives of Mizukami Pro and Gatokunyan (there to discuss unrelated business with Goto), and a boiling pot.

You Wrestle, You're A Wrestler

    The events of the show itself were, surprisingly, very spirited. Tarzan Goto decided to stand ringside with Yoshino, which seemed to motivate all the Shitamachi workers to do their best regardless of the lack of fans. For most of the show, Goto and Yoshino yucked it up, cracking jokes about the wrestlers and the circumstances. Goto mentioned that fans had said before they only wanted to see "a little bit" of Shitamachi, and Yoshino responded that they seemingly didn't want to see any bit of it. It's the kind of thing that makes me wish I actually tried on Duolingo, so I could understand more of what they're saying than just the captioned stuff. 

    Notable happenings of the show included Dragon Soldier LAW's burial by the newly-debuted "Executioner" (Shitamachi's Undertaker), a referee thinking that the English word "four" meant "five" in Japanese (which made Goto nearly die laughing), and Kurumashita becoming the first Shitamachi Openweight champ in a 21-minute match, winning after hitting Bakabon no Papa with seven backdrops in a row. Even if not a single fan was in the building, everyone in Shitamachi Pro put on the kind of show only they could, and the show only happened because of the man running the building. As Wonderman put it, "it's a decision only Goto could make."

Shitamachi Revolution

    The impact of the show was almost immediate. Wonderman sent a fax release of the show's results to Mobile Gong (a now defunct wrestling magazine and website), only for a Mobile Gong reporter to call him right after to confirm whether the details of the show were correct. Gong and Weekly Pro soon published the results, and Shitamachi became the talk of the town as the first genuine "no customers" show in Japanese wrestling history. The footage aired on Occupation a few weeks later, finally giving people visual proof of the complete absence of fans and causing interest in Shitamachi to explode. It was, as Goto had predicted, Yoshino's camera that had made running the show worth it.

    While attendance numbers didn't skyrocket following this show, they certainly began to climb. Most of that had to do with the popularity of the fanless show, but a solid chunk came from the sixth event on April 8th, 2007. A few months before then, DDT had ran an angle where Kota Ibushi asked for special stipulations to his new contract before re-signing with the company. One of these requests was the ability to work a date for Shitamachi. While this was just a one-off joke, Jiro Kurumashita decided to take a chance on it, contacting Ibushi and DDT to ask if they had any interest in actually having Ibushi work Shitamachi. Both said yes, and Ibushi main evented the sixth show, going to a 15 minute draw against Asakusa Presley before working an impromptu ten man tag. For this show, Shitamachi drew 60 fans, a number they would hover around on every show for the next two years.

    Shitamachi continued to run shows on a regular basis until 2009, when the Asakusa Fight Club closed its doors. After an extended hiatus, Shitamachi returned as "Shin Shitamachi", and returned to running shows irregularly for the next three years. Many of the older characters began to cycle out, as new faces like Kunihiko Mitamega, Tsuneo Yoshie, and Kani KING took over the cards. Shin Shitamachi Pro ran their final show on July 15th, 2012, ending with Bakabon no Papa, now Shitamachi Openweight champion, defending the title against Kunihiko Mitamega. The show drew a reported 50 fans, a number Shitamachi could've never imagined would be legitimate back in 2006.

    If there's one overall lesson to learn from the story of Shitamachi Pro, I'm not exactly sure what it is. Maybe that funny doesn't equal money until it does? Always film everything in case it makes you famous? Bank on Kota Ibushi? I'm just not sure. The only thing I can say with certainty is that Shitamachi Pro's explosion in popularity proves something I've never doubted: always trust Tarzan Goto.

Ballad Of The Frontiersmen

                     (Written by jom)

     Watching early FMW tapes with friends has reminded me that FMW is probably the greatest promotion of all time. Hell, you can chop off everything that happened after Onita's FMW retirement match and it'd still comfortably sit near the top. Early FMW scratches an itch for me that nothing else from the era does, standing as one of the final bastions for weird gimmicky territory-esque brawling and shenanigans. It's also one of my favorite things to groupwatch, and everything I talk about here comes from the latest instance of me hopping into a voice call and shooting the shit with the buds. I hope you don't have a Tarzan Goto allergy, because if you do, fuck you!!! 

Tarzan Goto vs. Invader #4 (05/29/1991)

     1991 Tarzan Goto deserved a run in Puerto Rico. At least two or three weeks, enough time to get a tag with Carlos Colon and singles matches with TNT and Miguel Perez under his belt. Here he is stepping up to Invader #4 (Jose Estrada Jr.) and completely knocking it outta the park with a great little gem of a brawl. They're tied together with a bull rope and it really has no effect on the match itself, as neither man concerns themselves with the rope. All they care about is hitting each other in the face and chest real hard. Both guys are great punchers, and when they aren't punching, they're chopping, something they're equally great at. Mr. Pogo plays a great manager here too, cutting off a big Goto house of fire with interference and eating his comeuppance a few minutes later. All it takes is four minutes for these men to put together a well-told story, and Tarzan Goto comes out of it looking like a complete badass. Probably one of the best sub-five minute matches of all time, or at least one that speaks to my interests more than many others.

Sambo Asako & Ricky Fuji vs. Big Titan & The Gladiator (09/23/1991)

    Big Titan and Gladiator are such a great team of big ass white guys. They are so good at throwing people, which is a wonderful skill to have when you've been given free reign to throw people. They do a lot of throwing in this match, an Elimination Stretcher Street Fight against two of the biggest fan favorites of the era. Seeing Gladiator somehow pull off a nasty nasty powerbomb on the massive Sambo Asako is a sight to behold. Asako in general is a sight to behold here, hitting weird avalanche DDTs and throwing himself cannon ball-style onto both men on the outside. He also gets hit with one of the gnarliest bumps I have ever seen to start the match, which does a great job of setting the bar for how much his ass would get kicked. Ricky Fuji is really hot in 1991 and I get why he was the way he was after seeing him be so hot. The finish is something I saw happen a good bit in IWE and it fills me with joy to see FMW bring it back, as FMW was IWE's true spiritual successor. Can't go wrong with this one.

Tarzan Goto vs. Leon Spinks (03/25/1992)

    Realistically speaking, this is the most culturally relevant opponent Goto has ever faced, right? Onita and Tenryu are icons of wrestling in Japan, and his stints in Memphis let him face relevant names stateside like Snuka and Lawler, but Leon Spinks goes beyond all of that by quite a bit. Simply put, I could namedrop Snuka and Lawler to my dad and probably get a few words about each, but Spinks would get at least a paragraph. All of that is to say that Goto enters this match with the exact sort of reverence for Spinks' boxing abilities that he deserves. Goto completely controls the first half of the match, but he does so via pure pro wrestling, diving for single legs and drop toe holds while doing everything he can to avoid any jabs or hooks thrown his way. It's a fantastic display of Goto's ability to work to the situation, as well as how explosive he can be, lunging at Spinks with quick and impactful lariats to pulls off some great close down counts. Once Spinks finally gets rolling with the punches, it's lights out for Tarzan Goto, who takes the shots like a champ and sells like death, all while building to a desperate and bloody final stand. Onita, deservingly, gets most of the praise for the early FMW different style fights, but this feels like it could stand right alongside the Onita/Soos or Onita/Matsunagas of the world. Goto finds himself in the Different Style danger zone, and he never once flinches or backs down. What a fight.

The Shooter vs. The Sheik (04/23/1992)

    Hello to The Sheik! I truly love the old man Sheik run in FMW, such a fun time even if Sheik nearly burned to death halfway into it. Very few old man wrestlers have possessed such a powerful fluoride stare, eyes like a dead fish that shoot right through you and into something much darker. Sheik running through crowds with the spike pointed directly out in front of him had to be one of the most terrifying things to witness in 1990s Japan. The Shooter, little rookie Katsutoshi Niiyama, surely knew exactly what he was in for here. That's probably why he jumped Sheik before the bell and punched him in the face as much as he could before Sheik could even get his hands on the spike. This is a demonstration in inevitability, a proof that sometimes things have to happen and no amount of struggle can prevent fate. Shooter certainly puts that to the test with all his fighting, but at the end of the day, the Sheik will be covered in blood, and none of it will be his own. If you like stabbing, you'll love this one.

Tarzan Goto & Atsushi Onita vs. Grigory Verichev & Koba Kurtanidze (12/09/1991)

    Man, Tarzan Goto sure was fighting a lot of gold medalists during the early 90s. Four months before he would face olympic boxing gold medalist Spinks, here he is teaming with big man Onita against judo gold medalists Verichev and Koba. The soviet judokas are super interesting to me, both because they absolutely rule and because I've seen barely anyone ever talk about them. Around 2017, there was this massive push online for a greater reverence for Gary Albright, motivated by a few music videos, a larger push for UWFi footage, and other miscellaneous factors, and the end result was a resounding success. Honestly, if that same effort was put towards canonizing Verichev and Koba, I think it would go the exact same route (even if there's significantly less Koba footage). The two are grappling monsters, eating Goto and Onita alive with tons of throws where they make the stocky wrestlers look as light as feathers from how easily they're manhandled. Verichev stands with his willingness to eat big bumps and great counter-play abilities (including a gargantuan ippon on Goto onto the floor), but Kobe really brings it home in the ending stretch by hitting Goto with some of the scariest belly to belly suplexes I have ever seen, somehow turning each one into a neck drop halfway into the motion. Onita and Goto deliver all the usual fireworks, complete with amazing Goto headbutts and tons of Onita fire, and they never relent in their attempts to conquer the soviet judo forces with the spirit of pro wrestling. It may not be as climactic as the previously-discussed Spinks match, but it makes up for it by being sooooo god damn fun. Fantastic match from four fantastic wrestlers in a fantastic company. I fucking love FMW!!!

FIGHTING FOR FUTURE: The Indie Revolution That Never Was

                             (Written by jom)

     The indie scene of 1990s Japanese wrestling, like all booming industries, was a wild west. In the wake of SWS's closure, groups collapsed as quickly as they arrived, and wrestlers changed affiliations with the pace of machine gun fire. Hiroshi Itakura, for instance, started his 1994 as a member of Masashi Aoyagi's Seishin Kaikan karate dojo (exclusively as a wrestler, as far as I'm aware), moved to Aoyagi's new promotion Shin Kakuto, and then capped off his year by joining WAR when Shin Kakuto went belly-up. On the promoter's side of the equation, Tarzan Goto renamed his own company twice within a span of five months. These cases weren't anomalies - they were the norm. It was a time of changes and experimentation, a "do first and ask questions later" landscape where money marks were plentiful and everyone had a grudge.

    Looking across the decade, most promotions, regardless of how long they lasted, at least made it through the front door. False starts were exceedingly rare, and usually very dramatic whenever they did occur, such as with Mitsuteru Tokuda's JET'S debacle. Among those few face plants, however, none were more magnificent, or more publicized, as the complete failure of FFF. What started as a fascinating concept for uniting a divided field quickly turned into a prime example of just how tumultuous the business really was. 

The Genichiro Tenryu Haters Association

     Like most great stories from the 1990s indie scene, the groundwork was laid with years of simmering tensions. In September of 1994, Takashi Ishikawa left WAR, taking the first generation Arashi (Dunktane/Daikokubo Benkei) and manager Hiroshi Sakashita with him. While the reasons for their departure have never been elaborated on, it clearly wasn't on the best of terms, evident by the complete lack of cooperation between WAR and Ishikawa's new company, Tokyo Pro. However, Ishikawa (as far as I'm aware) never took any direct shots at Tenryu with his booking, and any unresolved beef was left to be mulled over behind closed doors.

    Things would change a year later, when WAR's longtime junior ace Masao Orihara was forcibly retired by WAR president Masatomo Takei, as a result of Orihara's lacking performances in his matches. Orihara took fellow junior stalwarts Shinobu Tamura and Hiroshi Itakura with him on the way out, and all three landed in Ishikawa's Tokyo Pro. Now Tokyo Pro had two major WAR workers that had left on bad terms, and it wouldn't be long before a third, even more important one, arrived on Takashi Ishikawa's front doorstep.

    At the end of WAR's Korakuen Hall show on October 28th, 1996, Hiromichi Fuyuki, one of the company's top stars, declared that he would be leaving the company, taking Fuyuki-gun stablemates Jado and Gedo with him. Their first stop as independent workers? Why, Tokyo Pro's Ryogoku show in December, of course. That took the tally up to 3 main event WAR defectors, along with the midcarder friends that had joined them. Clearly, Tokyo Pro had a plan, and everyone, especially Genichiro Tenryu, was paying attention.

Schemers Commence Scheming

    One more defection took place between the exits of the Orihara faction and Fuyuki-gun, albeit one that people took the least notice of at the time. In early 1996, Akio Sato left WAR to join the struggling IWA Japan. Sato had been both a solid hand midcarder and the booker of WAR for two years at that point, following the end of his tenure as the WWF's far east liaison. Like Ishikawa's exit, the reasons for Sato's departure from WAR have never been explained, but may have been closer to a "just business" situation than anything beef-related. In IWA, Sato took charge as the managing director, working to breath new life into a company that had been struggling financially since the day it opened. However, Sato seemed to have greater ambitions than what IWA could allow, and around the same time as Fuyuki's departure from WAR, Sato announced his own departure from IWA, poaching the company's top heel acts in Tarzan Goto, Mr. Gannosuke, and Flying Kid Ichihara, collectively known as "Shin FMW".

    Less than a week later, Akio Sato held a press conference with Tokyo Pro president Keitaro Ishizawa, where he announced his intentions to cooperate with Ishizawa "as a person" (clearly stating he would avoid taking a position within Tokyo Pro), while also declaring his goal of "unifying" the indie landscape, which Ishizawa explained as creating a "last bastion" for independent wrestling in the face of heavy financial losses across the industry. Ishizawa also discussed the prospects of having both Tarzan Goto and Hiromichi Fuyuki on future shows, as both had been involved in very public departures within the last week, and stated that the two shared Sato's vision, with Sato acting as a coordinator between all of these individuals regarding the idea. 

    Takashi Ishikawa was quickly brought into the fold, as well as Yoji Anjo, who had become a major player in Tokyo Pro with his Golden Cups stable. It was decided that the next Tokyo Pro show in Ryogoku would be the group's final event, leaving the stage open for Sato and Ishizawa's revolutionary new project.

Tokyo Pro is Dead, Long Live FFF

    The Tokyo Pro Ryogoku show on December 7th was, generally speaking, a mess. Less than seven thousand people showed up to watch Takashi Ishikawa get "injured" (more on that later) in Fuyuki-gun's indie debut match, cutting it drastically short, before then witnessing Yoji Anjo angrily give up his position as on-screen TPW president after the main event, leaving Tokyo Pro fans incredibly confused as the curtain closed on the promotion.

    Only a few days later, Akio Sato, Keitaro Ishizawa, Hiromichi Fuyuki, Tarzan Goto, Yoji Anjo, and Masao Orihara held a press conference to formally announce the new organization that Tokyo Pro would be absorbed into, named "FIGHTING FOR FUTURE", or FFF for short. Ishizawa clarified that all of Tokyo Pro's previous wrestlers would be part of the new FFF group (including regular foreigner Abdullah The Butcher), with the notable exceptions of Hikaru Kawabata, Shigeo Okumura, Daikokubo Benkei, and Takashi Ishikawa, who had all chosen to not sign the new contracts. Ishikawa's absence especially seemed to set off red flags for some, which Ishizawa tried to downplay by stating that the group would still be involved in the "union" that FFF would be establishing. FFF's schedule for January was also provided, with the "SCRAMBLE" debut show in Korakuen Hall on the 10th and twelve shows to follow as part of the "STRAIGHT" series. In all, the press conference seemed to make clear that FFF was set to be a new top dog on the indies, with a consistent schedule, big stars, and a goal with the greater good of the scene in mind.

    Genichiro Tenryu had something to say about all that.

Thunderstruck

    Only six days after Tokyo Pro's final show in Ryogoku, WAR ran its own event in the same venue (with four thousand more fans in attendance), where two matches of particular interest to this story would take place. In the show's main event, Genichiro Tenryu defeated Nobuhiko Takada, the figurehead and top star of UWFi. Takada's involvement in the show was a strong example of UWFi's penchant for playing both sides of the fence, as the company had top stars working with both WAR and FFF. That's more of an interesting tidbit than anything serious, but it's something I thought was worth mentioning.

    The much more shocking story to come out of WAR's Ryogoku event was the presence of Takashi Ishikawa's Tokyo Pro forces, as Ishikawa, Benkei, Kawabata, and Okumura all appeared on the show in matches and a backstage angle after Tenryu's match. The fact that Ishikawa was in fine working condition only six days after a leg injury bad enough to abruptly end Fuyuki-gun's indie debut isn't lost on me, although I'll refrain from making any statements regarding the validity of the injury. A few days after the event, Ishikawa held a press conference to clearly announce that all ties between himself and the FFF crew were cut, and that his New Tokyo Pro group would be working alongside WAR and the PWF.

    But what was the PWF? The PWF, simply put, was Tenryu's most direct shot at FFF and what it stood for, made official around the same time as WAR's Ryogoku show. The Pro Wrestling Federation was Tenryu's new conglomeration of indie groups, including IWA Japan (who were especially happy to help Tenryu considering Sato's betrayal and the Shin FMW poaching), BJW, Kitao Dojo, WYF, and Samurai Project, all of whom pledged to cooperate exclusively between each other. In one move, Tenryu had cut off FFF from the rest of the major independents, dooming it to exist on its own island. Sure, the indies still had smaller companies to align with, but how many of those groups would willingly oppose the PWF? At best, FFF would be able to bring in the occasional freelancer, a far cry from their "unify the indies" mantra.

    Still, even without any notable promotions to join together with, FFF had a strong core roster, that lower indie freelance talent pool to take from, a vision that everyone on top agreed to, and the money to make it all happen. I mean, considering all these big talks of extensive January touring and saving the indies from financial turmoil, they had to at least have the money, right? Right???

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

    As already mentioned, Tokyo Pro, up until its closure, had stayed deep in the red for some time. FFF, therefore, would be inheriting that debt, or at least one would assume that to be the case. Now, I've heard two different stories regarding how FFF planned to circumvent this debt, so I'll let you be the judge. The first, more realistic story, is that FFF had simply planned to rely on Ishizawa's own company outside of wrestling. Tokyo Pro had been doing the same thing, but Ishizawa and Sato were adamant that Ishizawa's company was doing much better this time around. The second story is that Ishizawa tried to force Yoji Anjo to shoulder the debt of Tokyo Pro by having him be the "president" of the company when it closed. While this story is significantly less believable, it's also much funnier, and I almost hope it's true.

    Regardless of which one actually happened, the truth of FFF's funds became apparent when news broke of Ishizawa asking UWFi's director Ken Suzuki for a 5 million yen loan. Wrestlers began to question Ishizawa about how much money he actually had available, only exasperated by Ishizawa repeatedly delaying the checks for Tokyo Pro's final event. In a meeting with the FFF roster, Ishizawa told them that the checks for the Ryogoku show would go out on the 9th, but this only led to wrestlers being even more concerned for FFF's future, and some of these wrestlers had hit their breaking point. On January 5th, Mr. Gannosuke and Flying Kid Ichihara appeared on FMW's first show of the year, rejoining the group and leaving FFF (and Tarzan Goto) behind. Other FFF members began putting out feelers with companies and former coworkers regarding where they could go once FFF failed, and these pleas only increased once it became known that FFF's debut show had barely sold any tickets. Still, FFF made no public statements, and the deposit on running Korakuen had been paid, so FFF SCRAMBLE was still on the table.

    That is, until two days before the show.

    On January 8th, 1997, FFF sent a fax to the Shu Pro magazine office, explaining that the FFF SCRAMBLE show would not be happening after all, and every scheduled event for January tour would also be cancelled. This announcement coming so close to the show date meant most people that had bought tickets didn't have time to hear the news. Not that it mattered, since, at least according to Shu Pro, only three people had bought a ticket ahead of time. Still, the fans that did arrive were greeted by FFF staff, offering ticket refunds as well as copies of the FFF SCRAMBLE poster and pamphlet. When one fan asked Yonezawa, FFF's front office manager, about why FFF couldn't run the show, Yonezawa responded that there was no one left to wrestle.

    To give Ishizawa a little credit, he did at least give everyone their checks for the Ryogoku show. All of those checks bounced and Ishizawa disappeared into the night, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

Who'll Fight for the Future Now?

    Following FFF's death (or whatever you would call it since it wasn't born in the first place), the roster dispersed across the indies. Crusher Takahashi joined back up with Ishikawa and New Tokyo Pro. Great Kabuki led Masao Orihara and Akihiko Masuda into IWA Japan, who were happy to have Kabuki as the new company president. Anjo and the Golden Cups formed KINGDOM with some of the former UWFi roster (yes, UWFi died in the middle of all of this). Masanobu Kurisu mostly stuck to his own promotion TEAM KURISU and IWA Kokusai. The entirety of Fuyuki-gun found a home in FMW, alongside their Shin FMW/FFF compatriots Gannosuke and Ichihara. Tarzan Goto and Ryo Miyake kept Shin FMW alive, both on the smaller indies and in WAR, where Goto and Tenryu engaged in a long feud over the next year. Shinobu Tamura and Hiroshi Itakura called it quits following FFF's death, but both would return as masked men in IWA Japan as part of Orihara's Mobius project. Akio Sato, disillusioned with the business, cut all ties with it and moved back to the United States with his family.

    FFF and its complete failure has raised a lot of interesting discussions over the years, but one that I saw on an old 2chan board years ago has always stuck with me: did FFF ever even matter in the first place? I mean, it's a cool concept, but was it ever going to revolutionize the industry like Ishizawa and Sato claimed? Even in the perfect universe where Tenryu never starts the PWF to counteract the company, FFF is still just the same Tokyo Pro roster as before, just with Fuyuki-gun and a snazzy new logo. What future was FFF fighting for? And did FFF dying stop us from ever knowing about it?

    Shu Pro, who seemed to take an incredible amount of glee in FFF's troubles (and who have been an incredible resource for this article), seemed to answer that very question themselves. In the January 28th issue of the magazine, immediately after the section covering FFF's demise, Shu Pro placed a full page article covering BJW's rising young star, Yoshihiro Tajiri. Tajiri, at this point, was only three years into his career, and had just faced Shinjiro Otani in the Tokyo Dome as part of the NJPW/BJW mini-war. It's a glowing piece, allowing Tajiri to relish in getting his first Dome appearance while also making him out to be the next big thing for the scene.

    Maybe it was just happenstance that the Tajiri article was placed next to the FFF article. Knowing Shu Pro in the 90s, there's a 50/50 shot it was meant to be any statement at all. Still, it answers the question for me. FFF would've been cool. I would've enjoyed it. But it wasn't needed. The scene was going to prosper without it, as evidenced by the fact that it did, indeed, prosper without it. There was no need to fight for the future. The future was coming anyways.

    But hey, that Fuyuki/Goto singles match would've kicked ass. Tenryu, you're on the shit list for that, buddy.