[1995-08-20-IWA-King of the Death Matches] Cactus Jack vs Terry Funk (No Rope Barbed Wire Exploding Boards & Ring Time Bomb Death)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The finals of the King of the Death Matches tournament. Both are already pretty bandaged up from previous matches. Not a good match, but I didn't expect one either. Famous for the incredibly anti-climatic closing with an explosion that made the crowd start booing. This sees Cactus come back in to try to salvage something.

[El-P]

How many people bought their fisrt puro tape to see this match ?

I admit the IWA Death Match tournament was part of the first puro order I made in 1998. Along with a big joshi interpromotionnal show from 93, a Best of Onita and the two Super J Cup. I kinda miss those times.

 

Yeah, not exactly a good match, but legendary nonetheless.

[Ditch]

I maintain that I have no idea why so many people who watched this show continued to pimp it to puro newbies. Just a terrible show unless you're someone who gets way into the Severn match and/or are easily amused by hardcore.

[Tim Evans]

Best part of this was the song that played at the end and Cactus promo after the match with Tiger Jeet Singh. Onita name drop.

[funkdoc]

I maintain that I have no idea why so many people who watched this show continued to pimp it to puro newbies. Just a terrible show unless you're someone who gets way into the Severn match and/or are easily amused by hardcore.

I think it's pretty simple: for the same reason stuff like Ninja Scroll was among the first anime to really be promoted in the US.

 

Simply put, 90s audiences wanted blood, swearing, and tits. There was a huge backlash against "kiddie" pop culture of all sorts, and with that came a demand for this sort of "adult" material. There's also the idea that people want stuff from foreign countries to be "exotic", to offer a completely different experience from anything their own mainstream culture has...deathmatches and Super J Cups certainly fit that bill, don't they?

[PeteF3]

Not a good match, as both guys have little left after working 2 deathmatches already, and it features a very Borat-looking Tiger Jeet Singh performing the most needless run-in in the history of wrestling. But it's not terrible either. The "explosion" is pretty hilarious to watch, as is Funk's "I'm just as confused as you are, folks" reaction to the laughing crowd. Both guys step it up a bit to try to make up for it, but only partially succeed. Crowd sort of shits over things again at the finish, with nobody really sure if the match ended or not. A pretty vital historical document, as whether the show is good or not, it was a puroresu gateway drug for a lot of people just as the first Super J-Cup was.

[El-P]

Best part of this was the song that played at the end

 

Yeah, what was that song anyway ? Always wondered. Shazam won't work...

 

I forgot how insane some of these bumps were. The fall from the ladder at the end straight into the wires is just ridiculous.

 

The one good deathmatch of the show was Cactus vs Nakamaki earlier on.

 

It was not the first time IWA Japan fucked up an explosion match, though, there are those hilarious "explosions" in the 94.11.13 Terry Funk & Hiroshi Ono vs. Nobutaka Araya & Shoji Nakamaki match, which are pretty much lousy fireworks coming down the ring in the most pathetic way. Poor Terry Funk...

[Zenjo]

The first time I ever watched this I felt like I'd seen it vicariously through the book. Many years later and I can't remember either that well so let's see...

 

For a while this was a decent enough Death Match. They had a strong rivalry and Foley did bleed a disgusting amount. All of the skin on his face had been covered in red. Then there's this WTF run-in from Tiger Jeet Singh. Followed by a big countdown before the ring spectacularly does not explode. To round things off a horrendously botched finish. A match for its time and place.