Original subtitles

With death-defying stunts and bloodshed,

Japan's Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling burst into life in 1989,

led by revolutionary pioneer, Atsushi Onita.

Onita and his promotion, they were pioneers.

In the late 1980s, the WWE was relatively homogenized.

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

Onita will, will bleed to death.

Every night, he bleeds to death.

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

But Onita has something inside. Like a fighting spirit.

FMW will soar!

By putting himself and his wrestlers

in increasingly dangerous situations,

Onita filled stadiums with die-hard fans,

and became a global icon of hardcore wrestling.

As much as they were known for the brutality,

it was really the imagination that made that company click.

A no-rope barbed wire match.

They go to the exploding barbed wire, the exploding ring.

And then the electrified pool.

It just got crazier, and crazier, and crazier.

You've gotta be just nuttier than a fruitcake

to get into one of those matches.

It got too hot, everybody ran.

And everybody's saying, "Get out of here!"

The promotion's meteoric rise was followed by a spectacular crash

that left its top star paralyzed and its new CEO dead.

Some place the blame for FMW's tragic downfall on its founder,

who sacrificed everything for fame and fortune.

Some of my dad's fans say that he killed my father.

Did he run over some people? I'm sure he did.

But it was necessary to be Atsushi Onita.

Superstar.

I am Atsushi Onita.

Yeah. Nice to meet you.

There was a comic book called Giant Typhoon, based on Giant Baba.

When I read it I thought, "Wow! Pro wrestling is awesome.

How amazing that a Japanese person can fight in Madison Square Garden."

I thought, "Pro wrestling is the only way for me to see the world."

Japan's wrestling culture

was popularized by Giant Baba's All Japan Pro Wrestling,

and Antonio Inoki's New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Both championed an authentic, hard-hitting style.

When Texan brawlers Terry and Dory Funk came to perform,

their over-the-top western personas captivated Japanese audiences.

The Funks, Dory and Terry, were extremely popular

in Japan back then.

They were adored.

For some reason, the people took to me in Japan.

Meaner than a rattlesnake, tougher than shoe leather.

More dangerous than a hollow-eyed scorpion.

Middle-aged and crazy. Crazy like a fox.

Do you know who that is? That is me.

-The best there ever was. -Oh, my God!

-And the best there ever will be. -We've got a new champion!

Terry Funk.

All right, ask me some questions.

Terry Funk is one of the most loved performers in Japanese history.

And he worked All Japan, New Japan.

An all-time great.

My name is Chris Jericho and I worked for two tours in FMW.

Onita was a guy that started out in, I think it was All Japan,

and he was a high flyer.

A young disciple of Giant Baba,

Onita rose through the ranks of All Japan's dojo system

before being sent to America to further his craft

and learn from the styles of the west.

Japanese wrestlers were sent to the different territories

to further learn their trade. It was almost like an apprenticeship.

My name is Mick Foley. The king of the death match.

For a few years, I was the American Onita.

And that was a huge, huge compliment.

Well, Terry told me that Onita was sent to Amarillo.

Onita was very drawn to Terry's style.

He'd watch me in barbed wire matches.

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

be like Terry Funk, and what a horrible thing to wanna be.

He wanted to be an idiot, too.

There is a community of wrestlers and we talk amongst each other.

So I trusted Terry the most.

A mighty fine tractor ride here on the Double Cross Ranch.

When Onita arrived in Amarillo,

he was recovering from injuries suffered in the Dominican Republic.

After refusing to lose to an opponent he deemed inferior,

Onita was taught a painful lesson by the promoter.

He didn't agree with what they wanted to do with him and they beat him up.

But it wasn't one guy. It was all of them. Rat Packed him.

I was ganged up on. Terry took me under his wing.

What was your first impression of Onita?

Nuts.

I spoke Japanese like he spoke English.

He spoke English like I spoke Japanese.

We both were lost. But we got along.

I was there for him, I really was.

And I bought him a used car.

And I got him a job and sent him on the road.

The Japanese team of Mr. Onita and Masa Fuchi...

After Onita recovers from his injuries,

he and fellow protégé, Masa Fuchi, travel to Memphis Tennessee

to battle in the infamous Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl.

Into the concession stand after tearing down a partition!

The origin of Hardcore Wrestling for me was in Tennessee.

Slams Onita! Totally covered by that big fan!

The audience gets into it more than a normal wrestling match.

Onita, pulling himself over the counter.

One time, the audience got too excited.

A young woman kicked me in the face with her heels.

The second she kicked me,

I had a huge gash and blood was gushing from my nose.

I realized hardcore wrestling triggers people's excitement.

That was a revelation for me.

With an improved skill set

and a willingness to inject thrilling violence into his matches,

Onita makes a return to All Japan Pro Wrestling.

On the cusp of main event stardom,

a freak accident results in a devastating injury.

When I landed,

I saw the bone sticking out of my knee through the skin.

My kneecap was shattered.

They told me there would be no coming back.

I was totally lost. So lost, I couldn't see which way to go.

The injury permanently hinders Onita's athleticism,

instantly ending his dreams of becoming a high flying star.

He was limited, as an athlete. He realized his future in wrestling

lay in the powers of perseverance and imagination.

What do you do in your early 30s,

when your whole career is gone? He created something new.

After years of working odd jobs,

Onita's thirst for stardom drives him to devise a bold stunt.

He publicly challenges real-life karate champion, Masahi Aoyagi,

to compete in a groundbreaking series of brutal matches,

pitting wrestler against martial artist.

To bring people in, you need some kind of attraction.

Rather than a match, the fans started clashing in the stands.

This chaos makes pro wrestling compelling.

Building upon the violence Onita was exposed to in America,

their rivalry makes headlines and draws massive crowds.

That gave me the confidence that FMW could work. We could do it.

By the time Onita claims victory in their final bout,

his Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling promotion is officially born.

FMW had a really good thing going. They gave you a full course meal.

You got technical wrestling, flying wrestling, incredible women.

But the hallmark was the blood and guts.

It was like a buffet of brutality.

People get bored with just one thing.

An important thing in entertainment is to always push further.

The thinking that goes behind replacing ropes with barbed wire

is, the audience comes first.

We care about them far more than the safety of the people doing this.

Real injuries are not a bad thing. They're encouraged.

And they are impossible to avoid.

When I was a kid, I went to a place that had barbed wire.

I got hurt. I learned that barbed wire is scary.

I knew the audience would have the same impression.

How would you describe a typical FMW hardcore match?

-What are the things you'd see in it? -A lot of guys that'd go to no end,

to self-annihilation of their bodies

to have a better match than what the opposition did.

The wire isn't enough.

We'll have to rig up electrical shocks to it.

Like, this was, this was, this was insane!

I wanted to do things others wouldn't do.

Things Baba or Inoki wouldn't think of doing, I definitely wanted to do.

To compete with Japan's two major promotions,

FMW uses increasingly dangerous stunts, with legitimate bloodshed.

At one show, a female wrestler got hit with a fireball.

And her outfit, it burned the fabric into her skin.

I'm getting ready to do my match

and I hear these almost otherworldly sounds of suffering.

Tears streaming down her face, sobs like I have never heard.

We talk about a price, that's really, really steep.

And I had to clear my mind and go about with my main match.

Onita's roster includes like-minded performers Tarzan Goto,

Mr. Pogo, Masado Tanaka, The Gladiator aka Mike Awesome,

as well as up and coming talent with North American experience.

People wanna see the action. To see something different.

Hi, this is Ricky Fuji from FMW.

They'd never seen the crowd fighting each other right beside.

Boom, boom, and they're bloody.

And they're, "Oh, my God, oh my God, oh my God."

That's why it worked. Excitement.

A guy called Ricky Fuji, who had spent time in Calgary,

was able to bring some guys over to FMW.

My first FMW match was the main event.

A 20-year-old Chris Jericho in the main event

against a karate expert who just beat the shit out of me.

They'd kick you as hard as they could,

'cause that's all they knew.

"What am I doing here?"

So I was never invited.

It was completely luck.

I'm Sabu. I was in FMW for three years,

New Japan for a year, and then an independent.

There goes Sabu! Did you see that? For the love of God!

My uncle was The Sheik, and he was a great guy.

He was a mean guy, and he was a nice guy.

Onita and Tarzan Goto, they were young boys

when The Sheik and Abdullah were in Japan in the '70s and '80s.

Every time they came, they took care of those guys.

Years later, Onita starts a company,

and he calls up The Sheik. "Tag team tournament.

Come and bring anybody you want."

"I'll bring my nephew."

And he could've chosen anybody, but he chose me.

-What's it like to work with wire? -Oh, it sucks.

My first barbed wire match, I wound up in hospital.

I was in there all night long getting stitches.

After that, never again. It took too long.

So I started crazy glueing my cuts and taping them.

I basically taped and glued up all the boys, too.

A single barb can do a lot of damage in a hurry, and it has.

There are some gaping wounds.

I mean, Sabu really paid the price, with a roadmap of scars.

Makes me look like, you know, like a, like a preschooler.

FMW's wrestlers sacrificed their bodies on a nightly basis,

but none connect with the crowd

quite like the promotion's founder and star, Atsushi Onita.

Onita had an ability to allow people to feel his pain

and see themselves in him.

Some people can't connect with a larger than life superhero.

They can connect with somebody who looks like they do,

who is limited, physically, but not limited of will.

Everyday I spilled my juice, I spilled my blood.

It was rough.

There's man against man, man against himself,

and now man against the wire, man against flames.

You're putting on a show,

doing what you love, but facing fear on a nightly basis.

And you have to tackle it.

You have to earn their respect, and embrace it wholeheartedly.

If even one person is in the stands, we will never let FMW go under!

The whole end of his match would be crying in front of the fans.

The meaning was he had given it his all, and he was crying,

because the fans had stood behind him.

And they played Joan Jett's version of Wild Thing.

And everybody would get up and crowd around the ringside

as he poured water on his head and cried.

And, dude, it got over so huge.

In the ambulance, he thinks, "Okay, what's next?"

That's what I heard, yeah.

Using explosions, matches at the harbor,

fights in pool and such.

These are all my ideas.

So if he could think it, he was going to do it.

And I think there was a reasonably good chance

that he was going to die in that ring.

In Onita's pursuit to consistently top himself,

a tag team match with Tarzan Goto

vs Sabu and his 65-year-old uncle, The Sheik, goes terribly wrong.

Where did the fire match idea come from?

I don't know.

I assume Puerto Rico, 'cause they had one, and Onita wanted to top it.

I figured, they know what they're doing.

They know, it would be safe.

Wow, that's taking things outside of your own hands

and trusting the environment someone else has created.

I'm not happy with that,

and I've seen a lot of people get burned, literally.

It got too hot way too fast.

If it was a building, I'd have jumped off it.

The flames kept going higher and higher.

We were losing more and more air around the ring.

There was an FMW logo. It melted in our hands.

It melted in our elbows, hands and knees.

You couldn't hear nothing, you couldn't breathe. It was a roar.

I jumped out, turned around, threw a bucket of water.

Then Tarzan Goto got out.

I also knew I had to get out, and escaped.

I regret to say that only The Sheik missed his chance to escape.

We couldn't help him.

When I saw The Sheik left behind, the ring was surrounded by fire.

It was impossible to rescue him.

He went out the other side.

He got burned pretty bad.

The Sheik had burns to 60 percent of his body.

My uncle carried on wrestling Onita outside of the ring.

I was trying to throw water on my uncle.

I threw a bucket of water on him and the skin on his back came off.

It was a terrible experience.

Were you angry at all with Onita or anybody else about the danger?

I was just angry that it was bad. The plan was bad.

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

Riding high with an expanding fanbase and sold-out shows,

Onita revels in his newfound stardom.

He started as a scrappy underdog, and he became the king.

And was treated as such.

And he had sticky fingers. He took all the money.

My success had, shall we say side effects.

What changed? I got a big head.

I also got myself a four bedroom house.

And I owned five cars.

I was making about two million a year

at the peak of my success.

Onita's fortune is not only gained from violence in the ring,

but from ties with the nefarious underworld.

So the Yakuza, the Japanese mob,

how much were they a part of wrestling at the time?

They were in control of the arenas.

So the Yakuza were definitely there.

It's like a money laundering scheme,

holding shows that the mafia will sponsor and put on.

We would go out to dinner sometimes with sponsors,

and I would check out their pinkies.

And by and large, a lot of sponsors were missing their pinkies

because of the business they were in

where sections of the pinkies would be eliminated.

I wasn't comfortable with it,

but I accepted that was part of what made the scene possible.

They told us to avoid a certain section,

and I go, "There's not many people in that section, who cares?"

That was the mafia section. They had 10 people there

with 50 chairs empty 'cause they were scared of them.

I started fighting anyways, and they wouldn't move for us.

He's a mafia boss, we don't know that.

But later, we're in the dressing room getting bang, bang on the door.

They're looking for us.

I run down this hallway and I got trapped.

These Japanese guys are knocking me down.

And when I was down, I was getting boot fucked, kicked.

And then all of a sudden, Mike Awesome was there.

Mike Awesome, you know, the huge, monster heel.

Guys started getting flung off.

Mike Awesome saves my life.

I loved him after that.

In four short years,

Onita overcame his injury to build a promotion to rival his competitors.

To celebrate, Onita invites his mentor from America

to participate in FMW's most spectacular stunt to date.

A super-type time bomb will be today's explosion.

So they had an exploding ring death match.

And they were really smart in bringing in Terry Funk.

For him to come to FMW, it changed the perception of this company.

"Terry's here?"

The first time Terry Funk came to FMW,

I wanted to show him our success wasn't about money.

I wanted him to hear from a lot of people

that Onita is a success.

It was stadium full. About 30 to 40,000.

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

There's the idiots, it's the front row people.

"We're gonna have an exploding ring match tonight."

"Oh, I want a front row ticket!" Bullshit.

Did they show you where the explosives were gonna be?

Oh, hell no. I had no idea.

I went out to the damn ring.

I'm a glutton for a crowd being into a match, you know.

I was just out there ready to capture that crowd.

And we did.

Your whole body feels the people's cheers.

Standing in front of 50,000 spectators

I felt, like, "I am God."

So the siren starts going off.

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

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

And this thing is going down, 45 seconds, 30 seconds.

And Onita realizes that his hero,

the God of Japanese wrestling, is going to be exploded in this ring.

So he goes back in and tries to wake Funker up,

and he can't. And now it's 10 seconds.

So what does he do? He shields Terry Funk with his body.

And it's a bunch of concussion bombs and fireworks

and by the time it's done, you can't see anything.

The greatest babyface thing I've ever seen.

He covered Terry Funk to save him from the blast after he pinned him.

That's Onita.

What FMW did the best was create a spectacle.

Funk survived, thanks to Onita,

and they were carrying each other out, crying.

And Funk was great at it too, crying, crying.

It's a five-star match

because it had the drama and hooked you into it, to where you cared.

That's the real secret of wrestling.

That's what Onita knew how to do. He was a genius at it.

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

Well, hell no, I wasn't satisfied.

I never, never saw Onita after a match, either,

until I came back the next time.

I think he ran and hid.

FMW was at least the number three promotion in the country,

if not number two, depending on what was going on at the time.

He legit was one of the most popular performers in the country.

He did game shows.

TV drama or a singing show. Something like a talk show.

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

All the time, yeah.

He'd become such a big part of the culture.

I think Onita had bigger plans.

In just five short years after creating FMW,

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

He didn't wanna do it anymore. He'd had enough.

And you can fail and not have any money at all.

Or you can go out like he did with several million dollars, I'm sure.

Onita continues to headline shows for another full year,

while the promotion grooms a young wrestler

to become his future headlining successor.

Hayabusa!

Hayabusa was the heir apparent to Onita.

He was, the word that's coming is "elegant."

But he was also willing to do the extreme stuff.

Eiji Ezaki is his name, who later became Hayabusa.

We worked together quite a bit.

My second tour at Kawasaki Stadium was against Ezaki.

At the time, the big move that he did was Moonsault, which nobody did.

My father didn't start with a wrestler's body,

but he made up for it by training hard.

I am Ayane Ezaki. Hayabusa is my father.

My father was an exceptional person who did what he wanted.

So I think he fit right in with the hardcore wrestling group.

At FMW's sixth anniversary show, Onita's retirement match features

the effects and gore that made him an icon.

But his opponent is out of his element.

I felt bad about Hayabusa.

Sorry to say,

but I didn't think he was the right guy for death matches.

When you retire, you go through some kind of internal purification.

You look back and reflect.

Suddenly, the ring vanishes.

It's a sad thing.

Pro wrestling filled my heart for the first time.

Once in your lifetime, you had better do what you like wholeheartedly.

Never! Never!

Never allow me to return to the ring again! All right, Hayabusa?

Onita leaving FMW, that would create a huge hole

that I think would be next to impossible to fill,

just because of how synonymous with that company he was.

And vice versa. It'd be hard to see Onita anywhere other than FMW.

They're one and the same.

I told them I was leaving the world of wrestling.

I asked them who would take on the role of president?

An unlikely successor emerges to take the reins of FMW:

the promotion's ring announcer, Shoichi Arai.

"Sudden Impact, Lance Storm, Chris Jericho-ah!"

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

but wore a tuxedo that was too small for him.

We will now commence the next generation of explosives.

But then you hear Arai's the new general manager.

Like, really? Wow. Well, why not? He was probably at every show.

Onita retired, then after that, "Okay, you're the president." "What?"

He don't know what to do.

My dad was a really nice person. He was really pure.

So I didn't know why he was trying to get into that company.

I still don't understand.

My name is Shell. And Shoichi Arai is my dad.

Onita suddenly says that, "I'll give this company to you.

You can do whatever you want."

But he has no knowledge at all.

Excuse my language, but he gave jack shit to the ring announcer.

He didn't give nothing to him. I'll promise you, I'll swear to it.

Before, like when Onita was there in FMW,

everywhere, always packed the arena, many people.

New FMW started and just...

Little people.

Without Onita's star power, FMW popularity wanes.

Please support the new FMW!

After just one starring film role,

Onita realizes his appeal is limited when he's not wrestling.

In less than a year,

he unexpectedly returns to FMW to work for his former ring announcer.

I wanted to come back as a heel, a bad guy.

A clash between the old and the new FMW would be entertaining.

In Tokyo, they cheered Hayabusa and I was the heel.

But when in rural areas, the complete opposite phenomenon occurred.

I am well known and have a big name,

so the audience cheered me.

But strangely, this created a feeling of jealousy against me.

Tensions escalated at the arena and a growing rift emerged.

When Arai ran the company,

he wanted to move away from death matches, right?

Because they would air our stuff only on specials

because it was too violent.

To take FMW in a new direction,

Arai hires veteran Japanese star Hiromichi Fuyuki

to handle the creative direction.

That's when, like, something changed.

Arai always like, "Ask Fuyuki, ask Fuyuki."

Then Fuyuki would say, "Do this, do this, do this."

Fuyuki wants to do some entertainment style.

He had a belt called World Entertainment Wrestling,

like WWE, but WEW.

And they stopped death matches.

At the end they were performing urination, from different angles.

FMW was demeaned to pathetic stuff.

It's beyond me how that was entertainment!

The tug of war between Onita's vision and Fuyuki's new direction,

forces Arai to arrange a meeting with his top talent.

Three days before the meeting,

Arai told me it was a briefing for a video.

So he lied to me.

I arrived, the wrestlers lined up and he said, "Onita, please quit."

Yeah, Arai said, "Onita, please leave FMW."

We gotta do this with... Hayabusa.

I was kicked out of the place I created, you know?

While Hayabusa struggled to draw the crowds of his predecessor,

his style was winning new fans and realizing success for FMW.

Until tragedy struck on October 22, 2001.

He did a second rope Moonsault and his foot slipped,

and he went backwards and landed on his forehead.

Before, if he missed something, he'd always get up.

But this time we're watching... He never gets up.

Hayabusa...

Hayabusa?

Hayabusa?

Hayabusa?

I stepped in the ring.

Hayabusa, he's like my brother.

He can talk. But he can't move.

He didn't die, he was paralyzed. I'd rather have died.

President Arai is running up to him and they brought a stretcher.

Terrible injury to happen to just a great guy,

a great, great performer, and a legit kind of future legend.

All the boxes that needed checking, he had it.

My father was depressed right after the injury.

He couldn't wrestle anymore. Pro wrestling, the job he loved.

And he worried about the future.

His career was cut short in his prime.

And I think, with his career went the future of FMW.

They never really found somebody to replace Hayabusa.

Beyond being an emotional blow to FMW and its fans,

Hayabusa's injury also sets in motion a financial disaster.

Without their star,

Arai struggles to keep his fledgling company afloat.

Arai said, "Wait, please wait, please wait."

I never got paid.

I remember that my mom say, "Don't steal house money."

What did that mean?

Was he using the family money to help pay for the business?

Oh, yes.

Instead of asking me for help, he borrowed from loan sharks.

Arai was probably too proud to ask me.

He owed money from the Yakuza and he couldn't pay them back.

His phone was ringing all the time.

My mom was panicked, and she screamed.

So I thought, it's not a good thing.

My mom and dad, like, they divorced.

I think he was really suffering.

And, I didn't realize 'cause I was too young.

My last match, we didn't get paid.

He said he'd send it to me. And he killed himself the next day.

Hung himself in a schoolyard.

When you borrow money from the Japanese mafia,

even if you kill yourself, they'll get it from your family.

That wasn't the end. They said he was selfish, a coward,

because now his family owes that money, and they'll get it.

Arai's death triggers a life insurance payment,

but it's sadly not enough to cover his family's newly inherited debt.

They came my home suddenly, and they changed the key

and they changed everything, and we couldn't get in our house anymore.

My picture, my video, my memories was all in that house, but it's gone.

I don't have anything.

I don't wanna talk ill of the dead,

but Arai failed in business.

I am still here. I survived somehow.

I feel a little bit that Onita used my dad.

A lot of people say that he was too kind.

And too pure. That's why he's gone.

Things went bad and his family left.

The shock of it all is probably

what made him hang himself.

I don't think it was the Yakuza or the loan sharks that killed him.

You can get away from debts, tell them you can't pay.

It was more of an emotional thing for Arai.

Over a decade later, FMW briefly rises from the ashes

with Onita in the ring and Hayabusa acting as an executive producer.

But less than a year later, tragedy strikes again

when Hayabusa collapses at home and dies at the age of 47.

Hayabusa's dedication to pro wrestling was amazing.

He never let his injury stop him from taking on new challenges.

Even after he got injured,

when he was going through rehabilitation,

he kept a brave face.

He did walk again.

I mean, it's one of the most gut-wrenching things you see

when he's surrounded by members of wrestling royalty

from several different promotions.

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

when Hayabusa walks to the ring.

FMW was the wild wild west of professional wrestling.

I mean, it was in the east, geographically,

but it was this lawless, wild frontier.

If you could think it, you could do it.

The spectacle always came first.

And it was a big part of wrestling history,

and something that's still borrowed from to this day.

Actually, I think I created real hardcore wrestling.

And I think that I spread it around the world.

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

ECW was formed from FMW.

Onita, basically, built a promotion around himself.

An undersized, underdog wrestler, and made it a huge success.

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

Is there any reason that you wanna flip him off?

No, hell, no. I love him.

Hulk Hogan is Hulk Hogan, no one can replace him.

Hulk Hogan is Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki is Antonio Inoki.

Giant Baba is Giant Baba.

Onita Atsushi can only be Onita. One generation, no successor.

Subtitles translated by: Shivam Iyuno-SDI Group