[1999-10-17-BJW] Tomoaki Honma vs Shadow WX (Light Bulb and Barbed Wire Board Death)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This maximalist approach to death matches has played to mixed results for me thus far, but this I liked. I think I like Shadow WX almost as much as I like Honma or Yamakawa. He's not as good as they are, but he knows how to work these matches. What put this over the top was Honma's selling. This works better for me than Honma-Yamakawa because of the contrast in the styles. These two looks like they're in a war zone by the end of this, with all of the blood stains. Underneath all the flash, they're doing a pretty conventional babyface-heel formula match with Honma overcoming the odds and making a big comeback at the end but not quite getting the job done. The new death match style was what made this interesting, but that wrestling center is what makes this great. I don't know what it says that they are getting this stuff over as FMW scales back quite a bit, but it makes for an interesting narrative.

[Tim Evans]

This isn't a style I particularly like and I'm not a big fan of Homna but I appreciate this. Like the Yamakawa match, this was worked more like a weapons match than a grab and blade match like most deathmatches. Homna takes insane bumps on powerbombs and WX even takes some bumps. Good match.

[JKWebb]

http://placetobenation.com/countdown-top-500-matches-of-the-90s-350-301/

 

#328

 

Parts of this looked crazy. Most of it looked very painful. The entire match was violent (of course). For me, there's just not anything I get out of this. You can see them posing to wait for a chair shot, and sometimes it seems like they're just walking around waiting for the next spot to happen. I don't know. No offense to anyone else who would enjoy this, because I think I would have thought it was nuts as a teenager. But my age now, and where I'm at, I didn't really get it. I'll add the only version I found was 12 minutes and clipped.

[soup23]

This was a great death match to me. The gravity was there for the weapons and each competitor gave sympathetic moments. I am not as down on Yamakawa as Charles but I do agree that this is probably the top death match we have seen from 1999 and a great lead in to the highs of BJW of 2000. ****1/4 (8.4)

[PeteF3]

Well-done for the most part but also overdone, as I checked out about 3/4 of the way through after a few near-falls too many. Honma carries this as aside from his punches and a few bumps I wasn't impressed with WX at all and didn't really feel like he earned his win.