[1992-08-02-W*ING-One Night Soul] Mr Pogo vs Mitsuhiro Matsunaga (Fire Death)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

I'm curious what FLIK thinks of this. Definitely a crazy match, memorable enough spots to be on a set like this.

[FLIK]

Never seen oddly enough.

 

I've seen the March 92 match that set this up with the famous "Matsunaga gets his head set on fire" spot which I actually liked as a match even aside from the crazy ending, i've seen their FMW fire match from a few years later which isn't the greatest but is cool as a spectacle and i've seen their Flaming Barbed Wire Coffin match from BJW which I liked too but yup, have not seen this one.

[Tim Evans]

I thought this kinda sucked. Way too much laying around, shitty pogo piledrivers, ref bumps and a inside cradle for a finish? I thought these fire matches ended when you set your opponent on fire? And what was the point of the fireworks going off every couple minutes in the guys faces. The end angle was good though with a nice cameo by American Eagle Danny Davis.

[shoe]

I really don't know what to make of this. I don't think I like this. It was a cool visual.

[Kevin Ridge]

Cool visual at first but the match itself was pretty awful. Referees sure have a lot of guts to be out there. There is a lot of teasing about putting each other into the fire but match went way too long. The small package pinfall didn't really fit the match either.

[WingedEagle]

Fire and pyro here do not look like any kind of joke. Everybody ducks for the explosions -- perhaps they should've had this a bit more under control. But I guess that would defeat the purpose. Matsunaga bumps to the outside through the fire & pyro and this looks purely diabolical. Pogo Pogo and Quinones (?) split afterwards. Hope the crowd can't understand Quinones because he is not saying nice things. Pogo turns on him w/ cane. No way to possibly rate this as a match, but its something to see for what was going on in various parts of the world.

[PeteF3]

This felt like it lasted about 7 hours. Pogo is just so fucking awful--shitty offense and Matsunaga takes the brunt of literally every spot involving fire. Matsunaga gets his ass kicked the entire match but wins on a flash pin and Pogo sells afterward like he's just wrestled a 2-hour ironman match, I guess because they need Victor Quinones to abuse him afterward. Pogo turns babyface and brawls with the gaijin.

 

The MegaPowers, this ain't. Still, Matsunaga was W*ING's top star and I think this was the beginning of a relationship with FMW (he had jumped at some point), so he needed to be recorded here somehow. Sadly, outside of the interpromotional stuff, the STOP THE MATSUNAGA Zero-One run in 2005 is probably the post-2000 puro product I'm most interested in seeing, if we get a Yearbook that far out.

[...TG]

The unfortunate referee looks like Ted Tanabe, the chubby ref from Michinoku Pro. And poor Matsunaga had a nasty burn on his lower back right after the first fire bump - this couldn't have been fun for anyone involved.

[garretta]

There was actually some psychology to this, if you can believe it. The fire was supposed to work like a cage, a weapon designed to keep the participants inside. At least that's what I thought, but then why did each man throw their opponent clear out of the ring several times? In other words, this whole mess was confusing and dangerous, and other than the fact that Pogo wrestled matches like this as a matter of routine I wonder why they booked it. It got so dangerous that the referees had to come into the ring with water at least twice to throw water on the flames so they wouldn't go too far out of control.

 

I think the fireworks were supposed to add to the flames at regular intervals, which is why you heard the ring announcer counting in Japanese.

 

Thank God no one was actually burned alive, although Matsunaga was close a few times when Pogo almost pushed him into the fire. Under these circumstances, I can't really complain about the quality of the match, because I think it's a miracle that they were able to have a match at all.

 

Quinones' part of the postmatch took too long and was too brutal. I guess Pogo was supposed to be slow to respond because of the match he'd just had, but Quinones really looked like an experienced tough guy slapping Pogo around like that, which I'm sure wasn't the intention at all. Things picked up once Pogo got the upper hand, and really got good once Pogo began his brawl with the Headhunters and the other wrestlers.

 

Is the Danny Davis Tim talked about above the same one that was also in SMW at the time? I know he had some experience over in Japan, but I thought that it was with one of the more traditional promotions.

[dawho5]

I thought the psychology of the match was solid enough with the cycle of beat on opponent leading to try to throw into the fire, then back to beating on the opponent.  I liked the countdowns to the big electrical bursts as well, broke up the repetitiveness of the match.  Mostly this repetitiveness was due to Pogo's lack of any real offense.  It went on at least 5 minutes too long though.  And Matsunaga took way too much of the punishment.  The ending is one of the dumbest endings I've ever seen.  Pogo hits the ref so he can call Quinones in, but there are 3 more refs outside!  Which is 100% clear when Pogo gets caught in an inside cradle and caught for the 3 that one of those refs counts. 

Matsunaga did have some nasty burns and there was this WTF Pogo spot where he just wanders into the electrical shower area face-first during the countdown and then is surprised when he walks into it.

[uchubaco]

I am reading Matsunagas book that was translated by Bahu. According to Matsunaga this Match had a ton of stuff planned but Pogo was with a HUGE hangover so that was the reason it was so lacking.