Last Saturday I went to my second wrestling event in Japan, once again held in a countryside suburb of Hirosaki. I put together this short video from footage I shot at the show. The video is focused on the pleasant first part of the show, rather than the disturbing events after the intermission (more on that a little later).

Follow up:

Kate looking excited before the big show, despite this ominous diagram on our tickets.


The show was an inter-promotional event with wrestlers from the Zero1-Max, WMF (Wrestling Marvelous Future, possibly the IWA and Michinoku pro-wrestling companies. There might have been more groups than just those present, but there are just so many different promotions in Japan that it's all far too confusing for me to understand. The event was clearly being heavily promoted as you could barely take five steps anywhere in Hirosaki without seeing a poster for it. Despite the onslaught of advertising, the turnout seemed pretty low to me. Perhaps the popularity of pro-wrestling isn't what it once was in Japan, or maybe there was something about the card that turned people off. Even the Tsugaru-ben Taikai (in which I famously starred as "The Tree") must have drawn at least twice as big a crowd, and I didn't even have to do a single neckbreaker, spinebuster or moonsault.




The venue was larger than the one I went to in Onoe, but not by much. The ring also bore the same ad for VAAM energy drinks.


We bought cheap standing room only tickets, but thanks to the nice fringe benefits of being gaijin (or perhaps just because of our stunning good looks), we were quickly ushered to the twice as expensive ringside seats by a really nice English speaking wrestler who I believe is named Sam. He told me that before he retired he once wrestled Bret Hart, so a little research on Google reveals that he may be Isamu Teranishi, though I can't say for sure. We chatted a bit about Bret Hart's career ending stroke and other wrestling topics that were way over Kate's head.



As with every event in Japan, the show began with an opening ceremony. It was nice to see that the scary zombie and oversexed heel wrestlers standing side by side and politely bowing to the crowd. One notable absentee however was Mister Pogo, half of the show's headline act. Perhaps his limo hadn't arrived yet.


Kate and I both really enjoyed the last show we went to that was put on by the family friendly Michinoku Pro-wrestling promotion. Judging from some of the scary faces on the poster for that night's show I was a little worried that this event might be a little less Kate friendly than the one we saw in Onoe. The poster mentioned that wrestlers from Michinoku would be there, so it didn't seem likely that it would be too scary of an event. Had I given the poster a more careful examination I might have noticed the diagram of a barbed wire ring in the top right corner and the words "No rope barbed wire spider net street fight double hell death match" written in Japanese. Still, even if I had noticed I wouldn't have expected anything too different from the numerous "hardcore" wrestling matches I've seen on TV over the years. Boy was I wrong.




Surprisingly the crowd seemed to be made up of equal parts women and men, both young and old with many small children in attendance as well. While I was pleased to be seated in a chair this time, it appears like at least one fan would have preferred sitting on the floor.



Though the crowd was likely under 100 people, the wrestlers really seemed to give it their all with lots of high spots and fast paced matches.




The combination of low light and fast action made taking non-blurry pictures a real challenge.



The REAL Val Venis, Chocoball Mukai high fives the fans at ringside. Do they know where those hands have been? A little research revealed that Chocoball once ran his own short lived, but one of a kind "Adult" wrestling promotion called the WWAV, and is also one of Japan's most famous male porn stars! Apparently he's thought of as a joke by most wrestling fans, but as a result of a run-in with the law that almost landed him in jail, he's now trying to improve his legitimacy within the wrestling world. Incidentally, there's a teacher at one of my schools that many of the other teachers call "Chocoball", a name that he clearly detests. I suspect that I now know why they won't tell me the meaning of his nickname.




If all that wasn't strange enough there was another surprising celebrity sighting that night... Al Pacino! Well not the real one, but that's the nickname the Hirosaki JET's long ago bestowed upon this former Indian restaurant owner. We later learned from Hugh that since closing Tandoor, he has gone on to make a name for himself as a TV personality on Aomori Television! Perhaps we weren't the only people that felt he has a face made for the entertainment biz.



Zombieman slithers into the ring much to the delight of the big haired girls in the front row. Sorry I don't know his real name, but I can't read the Kanji under his face on the poster.




Time for intermission. Hey what are Hakushi and Rasse doing to the ring ropes?



...and what are those boxes full of very dull barbed wire for?




Oh yeah, forgot about that diagram on the ticket.



Here's a nice shot of Zombieman hanging with a buddy of his. When Kate and I approached him for the photo at the top of this post, he turned and showed us a cool looking "Japanese ghost" tattoo that runs down his back. He was also more than happy to show us that it runs ALL the way down his back if you catch my drift.




Ricky Fuji's manager Sexy Honey looks quite cheerful even after being violated by her team's opponents.


Many of the wrestlers present that day were former members of the now defunct extreme wrestling league FMW, or Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling. From what I can tell, FMW was the Japanese equivalent to America's notorious ECW, except far more brutal. I'm not a fan of extreme wrestling, and I've only ever seen a few ECW matches on TV, but from what I can tell ECW has got nothing on the guys from FMW when it comes to stomach churning garbage wrestling. I'm sorry, but watching two old tubbies taking turns slowly carving into each other's bodies like if they were the world's worst tattoo artists is not my idea of a good time.



Before this past weekend I had never heard of the wrestling terms "death match" or "garbage wrestling" before. Determined to find out more about what we witnessed, Kate and I did a little Googling once we recovered from the post-traumatic stress. Apparently the late Japanese wrestling legend Giant Baba coined the term "garbage wrestling" in order to put down the kind of matches that require no wrestling ability, and often involve no wrestling whatsoever. The match I saw that night certainly fit that definition and could have just as easily been a segment for MTV's old Jackass show. As was the case with the match we were subjected to, death matches are often done by over the hill wrestlers that are too slow and fat to do much else anymore, or by young hot heads looking for a quick way to make a name for themselves by being as extreme as possible. Hasn't anyone ever told these guys that they can save themselves the scars and concussions and just Do the Dew? I've also read that this style of wrestling has really begun to die out in the last few years, and is rarily done anymore. I guess Mister Pogo is going to have to find himself a new day job if things keep going the way they are.


One thing I didn't anticipate was how big of a difference there is watching these kind of matches on TV and seeing it happen in front of your eyes. Seeing blood spilled everywhere gave me a real sickening feeling that I haven't felt in a long time. Still I told myself that as bad as it looked, these guys are professionals and know how to make things look worse than they really are. Even after Kate ran to the ladies room when Pogo started scraping Gosaku's arm with an ice pick, I was confident that all safety precautions were being taken by the wrestlers to protect one another and the fans. Then Pogo pulled out the power drill from his bag of weapons and I wasn't so sure anymore. Around that time my new retired wrestler friend Sam sat down beside me, started to repeatedly mumble a certain obscene word that starts with the letter F, and told me that "This is not wrestling". I could only agree with his assessment, but still I sat and continued to watch the sad and disturbing S&M act unfold in front of me.


It wasn't until Pogo started to dig into his opponent with a sharp sickle that I too started to feel like running to the bathroom. After Pogo carelessly tossed the now bloodied sickle into the audience did I decide to follow Kate's example and got the Hell out of there. Fortunately all the senior citizens and small children in the community center were all able to dive out of the way in time, but had they not then I imagine Pogo would have wound up with more barbed wire than he bargained for. Hiding far back from the ring behind a solid concrete barrier I snapped this final blurry photo of Pogo wrapping Gosaku in the remnants of the barbed wire ropes before my camera's battery died. As a result I failed to capture any photos or video of the spectacular fireball Pogo then blew out of his mouth, or the flaming rag he used to light it which he then tossed into the crowd.




Giant Baba's shoe is one of many random items on display in Sapporo's famous Willy Wonka-esque Chocolate Factory. The photo behind it shows Baba standing next to the all time greatest wrestler in history, Classy Freddie Blassie.


It was surprising for me to learn that there were still things left in the world of pro-wrestling that could surprise and shock me. The sight of a wrestler wearing the "crimson mask" doesn't really disturb me much anymore. I can still remember the first time I saw a wrestler bleed in the ring. I must have been about 11 years old at the time of Wrestlemania 2 when Hulk Hogan spilled King Kong Bundy's blood all over the steel cage they were in. Like many fans of that era, I wrongly assumed that Bundy must have used blood capsules on his face when nobody was looking and wasn't overly disturbed by what I saw on TV. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned the ugly truth of "blading" (Also referred to as a ?blade job? or ?juicing?). Blood being spilled in a WWF wrestling ring was extremely rare back in those days and remained the case until the explosion of "hardcore wrestling" in the mid 90's.


While Kate and a few other ladies in attendance went running from ringside at the first sight of blood, the several kids in the audience just seemed to eat it all up with the other fans. I wonder if any of their parents feel any guilt about bringing them to such an event, but somehow I doubt it. I know I certainly felt bad that Kate's second wrestling experience wound up being something more violent and disturbing than an ECW fan's wet dream.


Considering there was only about 100 people in attendance, paying on average 30 bucks, even including overpriced merchandise sales they couldn't have made much more than $3000 US in revenue that night. Let's assume renting the gym, promotion, travel, barb wire and all other expenses came out to about $1000 US for the night. That only leaves $2000 to split between 12 wrestlers and about 7 or 8 supporting staffers. That means those guys in the ring couldn't have brought home much more than $100 each for the night. Even if the headline act got paid three times that much, it hardly seems worth slicing up ones arms for.


It was certainly a strange night to say the least. Who knew I would encounter a tattooed exhibitionist, S&M enthusiasts, Japan's most famous A.V. actor, and an infamous local restauranteur turned TV personality. As Kate and I left, Gosaku still covered in barbed wire lay in the ring surrounded by fans pounding on the mat in a show of support. Someone should really ask those hillbillies in the audience to stop encouraging that sort of behavior, or at the very least leave the kids at home when you go watch your no rope barbed wire spider net street fight double hell death matches. Anyway, if I see any more wrestling while in Japan I'll definitely pay much closer attention to what the poster has to say, and bring a raincoat just in case it gets bloody.