Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling
Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, better known by its initials FMW, was a Japanese professional wrestling promotion founded in the late 1980s by Atsushi Ōnita (often spelled Ohnita). It specialized in hardcore wrestling, involving weapons such as barbed wire, fire and explosives, and often portrayed Ōnita as the hero of the organization.
In 1991, Ōnita had the first ever barbed wire, exploding ring match with Tarzan Goto. This match started a revolution between the small "garbage wrestling" organizations of Japan. From there, Onita recruited some of garbage´s best, like Mr. Pogo, Mitsuhiro Matsunaga, Leatherface and Kintaro Kanemura. In 1995 Ōnita wrestled his retirement match with young talent Hayabusa in an exploding ring, barbed wire steel cage match. This match started a revolution in FMW, called Neo FMW, where stars Masato Tanaka, The Gladiator and Riki Fuji took part in high-flying matches. Hayabusa became the central star of the promotion, winning its belt several times, and battling most of the FMW roster. However, under new FMW president Shoichi Arai, the promotion began to falter.
In 2001, in a match against Mammoth Sasaki, Hayabusa attempted an Asai moonsault—one of his signature moves—but botched and fell directly on his neck, breaking it and paralysing himself. He retired, but actually regained some control over his legs a year later. By the end of 2001, Arai owed about a million dollars to influential organizations in Japan. Realizing that the promotion was going nowhere, he decided to finally close its doors. FMW came to an end with a final show on February 15, 2002, in which Atsushi Ōnita, the founder 13 years erlier, returned and addressed the crowd.