[1989-07-02-VKA Martial Arts Festival] Atsushi Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi

[Ma Stump Puller]

This feels like the kind of wrestling that Onita was always one of the best at; causing disruptions whenever he'd go, shaking things up and not being afraid to piss a ton of people off in the process. They do a good job making him seem like a legit complete outsider against the polished martial artist in Aoyagi, eating a quick and easy knockdown at the very start to set up his desperation to keep in the match by any means necessary via going right into dirty clinches, threatening to stomp the shit out of his opponent while he's trying to clean break, just all of the effective heel shit that a man like Onita would've learned from already a decade+ of refined wrestling wisdom. He knows how to push the buttons just enough to work Aoyagi's buddies at ringside (the crowd to boot) to get them more and more pissed off at this washed up retired jackass trying to get his fame back to the point where they're just ready to run in and cause chaos, something which at MULTIPLE occasions almost becomes reality and at some points overspills into actually happening.

I can't say that the actual bulk of the action is especially amazing from a purely technical standpoint; the takedowns look real hokey, there's really no stand-up work asides from a lot of messy limb throwing/flailing (with maybe a couple of unpolished clinches) the few submissions that are applied as well don't look the greatest execution wise (though Onita applies a pretty good facelock in the first half). This is forgivable because the match isn't going for polish, it's going for the pure spectacle factor in its entirety. You aren't watching this for the epic knockdowns or the creative submissions, you're watching it because Onita's being a shithead and Aoyagi is the hometown hero ready to beat his ass for a good 20 minutes, a match built off the premise of violence rather than the parts of the whole. Granted said parts are still relatively good though. Crazy real brawl happens in the middle half when Onita smacks Aoyagi with a chair on the outside which ends up having the guy legit punched in the face by one of Aoyagi's buddies. There's a huge scuffle and it takes multiple agonisingly long minutes to break it up then to restore the match, creating legit confusion in the heated crowd as to what's going on. I absolutely loved the fact that as soon as the match actually restarted Onita scumbag as he is goes right into another dirty clinch to throw clearly illegal headbutts before choking the shit out of the Karate lad on his side of the ring lol. This gives them the chance to get Aoyagi blading for some classic Southern colour to really get the intensity up, helped by Onita's almost feral antics at this point as he just lays into his opponent with as many headbutts as he can muster.

He eventually decides to go full crazy by assaulting the ref directly with punches (which while not uncommon here, was something Onita was prepared to do in more sneaky ways like indirectly pushing him over earlier on) out of pure frustration due to not being able to get that definitive big victory despite taking a painful beating, ultimately losing his patience with not just Aoyagi but the hostile crowd to boot by throwing out the entire thing. Post-match he very quickly scarpers out while his buddies throw hands, Aoyagi gets the symbolic victory post-match by being the only guy involved to be capable of staying inside the ring without getting chased down with fists; it's definitely built to be inconclusive given the feud to come, however, so one expects that this is for sure not a conclusive end.

Is this absolutely clunky in execution? Sure, this is pretty dang messy on many occasions. The magic here is as I've said Onita is a perfect outsider heel: a Funk-lite contender that really communicates his mounting frustrations with the unstoppable brick wall that is Masashi Aoyagi though his escalating intensity and his selling, both forming a brilliant combo that serves to make the crowbar karateka seem like the coolest fucker to ever live with every explosive rush of strikes thrown: draining away at Onita's body but also his sanity to boot, he comes into this a polished competitor willing to sprawl and wrestle in a clash of styles and literally runs out looking like a desperate man looking for a equally desperate way-out. In a way, perhaps, it marks the end of the polished & clean AJPW Onita and the true beginning of his grimy roots as an supreme disrupter, giving him a out to his now conclusively failed past and a clear direction towards his future with no way for him to ever go back to being a generic Jr babyface with this lingering in the background. Onita running from the tradition of the ring and into the violent sprawling Korakuen crowd is the gesture needed to finally commit the exorcism required to make that part of him melt away completely, assisted by the beatings provided by a all-too eager opponent and audience.

An absolute masterclass in how exploiting a hostile atmosphere and taking complete advantage of it can make or break a match; lesser men would've capitulated to the pressure, maybe even tried to do some shitty Curtain Call "sign of respect" post-match gesture to avoid the real risks involved like personal scrutiny (and to a lesser extent, getting punched in the face). Onita was thankfully never that man, and we're all the more better off for it.