Grimmas Posted September 12, 2014 Report Share Posted September 12, 2014 Discuss here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrisZ Posted September 15, 2014 Report Share Posted September 15, 2014 Onita was definitely one of the most charismatic wrestlers of his generation Japan or anywhere and was smart enough to helped create a style in Japan that they rarely had seen before that in taking the elements of Memphis & WWC to start up FMW. Onita was great at what he did in the ring and when it came to business you can't deny he was a tremendous draw. Onita also became a cult hero to the fans over here and I remember a lot of fans in the mid 90's trying their best to find whatever FMW tapes they could find from whomever they could get it from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted September 15, 2014 Report Share Posted September 15, 2014 I could see him sneaking into my Top 100. One of the greatest spectacle workers ever, and I'm big on spectacles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted September 24, 2014 Report Share Posted September 24, 2014 Onita will be in my top 50, probably comfortably so. Some stuff worth checking out. A Matt D-style holistic look at his career would be fascinating, by the way. SINGLES Atsushi Onita vs Ryuma Go (04/30/89, Pioneer) Atsushi Onita vs Masaji Aoyagi (06/02/89, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Masaji Aoyagi (10/06/89, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Masanobu Kurisu (02/12/90, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Mr. Pogo (11/05/90, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Tarzan Goto (02/26/91, FMW) - My personal favorite singles match of Onita's career! Atsushi Onita vs Tarzan Goto (09/23/91, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Terry Funk (05/05/93, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Genichiro Tenryu (05/05/94, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Great Sasuke (10/30/94, Michinoku Pro) Atsushi Onita vs Hayabusa (05/05/95, FMW) Atsushi Onita vs Masa Chono (04/10/99, NJPW) TAGS Atsushi Onita & Masa Fuchi vs Jerry Lawler & Bill Dundee (08/01/81, Memphis) Atsushi Onita & Masa Fuchi vs Ricky Morton & Eddie Gilbert (09/04/81, Memphis) Atsushi Onita & Dick Murdoch vs Masanobu Kurisu & Jos Le Duc (12/04/89, FMW) Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto vs Masanobu Kurisu & Dragon Master (04/01/90, FMW) - My favorite tag match of Onita's career! Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto vs Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara (03/02/94, WAR) Atsushi Onita & Masato Tanaka vs Yukihiro Kanemura & Shoji Nakamaki (03/07/99, Onita Pro) MULTI-MANS Atsushi Onita, Masa Fuchi & Tojo Yamamoto vs Roy Rogers, Rick & Robert Gibson (09/05/81, Memphis) Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto & El Hijo del Santo vs Negro Casas, Horace Bouler & Tim Patterson (05/17/92, WWA) Atsushi Onita, Sambo Asako & Shigeo Okumura vs Genichiro Tenryu, Shoji Nakamaki & Ichiro Yaguchi (05/13/99, Onita Pro) Atsushi Onita, Sambo Asako & Shigeo Okumura vs Genichiro Tenryu, Nobutaka Araya & Shoji Nakamaki (06/20/99, WAR) Atsushi Onita, Shigeo Okumura, Sambo Asako & Mitsunobo Kikuzawa vs Genichiro Tenryu, Shoji Nakamaki, Ichiro Yaguchi & Hiroshi Ono (06/27/99, Onita Pro) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 I think the argument could be made that Onita has done more damage to professional wrestling than anyone not named Russo or Bischoff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillThompson Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 How so? Never heard that claim before, but it;s one that has me interested in the reasoning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 In addition to being thoroughly morally and aesthetically repugnant in its own right, the style Onita pioneered had the effect of killing the classic brawling style. As the FMW style trickled down to places like ECW and the joshi promotions, brawls turned into stunt shows centered around tables and chairs and barbed wire and thumbtacks. These days, brawling is mostly dead, but the stunt spots remain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 What style are you referring to? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Childs Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 In addition to being thoroughly morally and aesthetically repugnant in its own right, the style Onita pioneered had the effect of killing the classic brawling style. As the FMW style trickled down to places like ECW and the joshi promotions, brawls turned into stunt shows centered around tables and chairs and barbed wire and thumbtacks. These days, brawling is mostly dead, but the stunt spots remain. But Onita produced some great classic brawls and was really smart about incorporating weapons and other crazy shit to create spectacle. Why should he be blamed if other people took that style and fucked it up? How's his style more "morally repugnant" than All Japan's, which utterly destroyed the bodies of its top workers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 When dealing with a virtual universe in which all ills are settled by violence, it seems a bit rich to talk about "moral repugnance". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteF3 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Even taking this argument at face value (and while I don't necessarily agree with it I can see where it's coming from), I'd argue Foley did more damage than Onita anyway. Foley was a far greater, more wide-reaching influence on the U.S. than Onita was for Japan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 In the case of both Onita and Foley, lesser guys copied the more sensationalist aspects of their act without realizing none of it would have worked without their innate charisma and understanding of who they were and what they were doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 What style are you referring to? The hardcore/deathmatch style. But Onita produced some great classic brawls and was really smart about incorporating weapons and other crazy shit to create spectacle. Why should he be blamed if other people took that style and fucked it up? How's his style more "morally repugnant" than All Japan's, which utterly destroyed the bodies of its top workers? The "crazy shit" in those "classic brawls" makes me physically ill. I honestly have no idea how anyone could find people being mutilated to that degree entertaining. And the All Japan style absolutely took a tremendous physical toll, but if you want to compare the two styles in terms of physical destruction/drug addiction/early death, the arrow's pointing strongly in the other direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 There are definitely exceptions, but I feel like most of the violence in FMW was merely implied. Onita showed up bandaged all the time to suggest that he was constantly wounded and we saw things that would be barbaric if they were legit for sure. But they weren't. They absolutely crossed the line occasionally, but to me, that happened more with guys like Honma and Yamakawa than it did Onita. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 I know this isn't the point of this discussion, but if we're looking at negative impacts I always thought Foley's was a lot more pronounced with the unprotected head shots and psychotic bumps rather than unnecessary gore, which I'll fully acknowledge is personally beyond unwatchable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteF3 Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 The best Onita matches--yes, there's gore--but they're more about how the wrestlers go about trying to avoid said gore and their reactions to it, rather than violence for the sake of violence. The real shitty torture-porn stuff is something I generally lay at the feet of guys like Mr. Pogo. No, there's absolutely no enjoyment to watching him carve guys up with a sickle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pol Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 What style are you referring to? The hardcore/deathmatch style. But Onita produced some great classic brawls and was really smart about incorporating weapons and other crazy shit to create spectacle. Why should he be blamed if other people took that style and fucked it up? How's his style more "morally repugnant" than All Japan's, which utterly destroyed the bodies of its top workers? The "crazy shit" in those "classic brawls" makes me physically ill. I honestly have no idea how anyone could find people being mutilated to that degree entertaining. And the All Japan style absolutely took a tremendous physical toll, but if you want to compare the two styles in terms of physical destruction/drug addiction/early death, the arrow's pointing strongly in the other direction. Is it? I'm genuinely ignorant here, but I would have thought that far more guys have seen long-term ill effects as a result of simply taking a ton of hard bumps/shots to the head than from working bloody deathmatches. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Childs Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 It just seems absurd to lay everything bad that's ever happened around death matches on Onita. It has nothing to do with his quality as a worker. Lots of guys in lots of styles have wrecked their bodies on the altar of pro wrestling. Why zero in on Onita as particularly repugnant? If you don't like him aestehtically, that's fine. But why try to puff it up into something more? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted September 29, 2014 Report Share Posted September 29, 2014 It just seems absurd to lay everything bad that's ever happened around death matches on Onita. It has nothing to do with his quality as a worker. Lots of guys in lots of styles have wrecked their bodies on the altar of pro wrestling. Why zero in on Onita as particularly repugnant? If you don't like him aestehtically, that's fine. But why try to puff it up into something more? It's picking and choosing what thing about wrestling people are gonna get all on their moral high horse about, haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted September 29, 2014 Report Share Posted September 29, 2014 Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto vs Masanobu Kurisu & Dragon Master (04/01/90, FMW) - My favorite tag match of Onita's career! I watched this last week and thought it was really great. I have to ask though: does Dragon Master have any other performances on that sort of level? It just blows my mind that that's the same guy from WCW a month earlier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted September 29, 2014 Report Share Posted September 29, 2014 He does not, but Onita has a way of elevating subpar guys around him in tag matches by virtue of creating such a chaotic atmosphere. If a guy is a decent brawler or is even willing to try to be one, he can probably have a good tag match with or against Onita, even if he doesn't have much else in his favor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteF3 Posted September 29, 2014 Report Share Posted September 29, 2014 I just watched Onita drag something semi-watchable out of Leon Spinks, for Christ's sake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbrujo138 Posted September 29, 2014 Report Share Posted September 29, 2014 By no means am I participating on the poll (I'm a newcomer and,sadly enough don't have the time) but I find the "slippery slope" argument against Onita (big fan) silly. Onita gets blamed for the stupid, break your neck/mutilate yourself, match without reason. I will present two, hopefully valid argumetents against it. Argument no 1: Foley claimed in an interview in Power Slam way back in 1995 that he would rather work FMW than AJPW/random puro fed because missing some flesh and bleeding was better than taking the bumps in the other promotions, I would infer from this that working death matches was better than the suplex heavy style. Shaky evidence since I tossed all my Power Slam magazines away and can't quate him exactly. Argument no 2 If we are blaming Onita for popularazing a style of wrestling we might as well start blaming the first wrestler who bladed to add some heat to his match, because that is what Onita did, If you check out the two macthes that i link below you can see that the spectacle is the center of the action not the "stupid fall down on milion lightubes shit". I have a hard time seeing a 100 greatest wrestler list without Onita on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted September 30, 2014 Report Share Posted September 30, 2014 Loss, have you seen any of Onita's matches from 92 with The Sheik? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted September 30, 2014 Report Share Posted September 30, 2014 I haven't, but I do have them on my to-watch list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.thumb.jpg.00c68798e2502c92a7da65280cf7def4.jpg)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.