Search - FMW (Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling): King of the Death Match on DVD

Good taste of hardcore Japanese matches...

Chad Gould | St. Petersburg, FL United States | 12/08/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"One of the easiest ways in the US to get a taste of hardcore "garbage" Japanese wrestling. Not for the faint hearted - the best matches are the bloodiest. Painful matches include: a "Double Hell Barbed Wire Glass Crush Spider Net" deathmatchwith Cactus Jack vs. Kanemura, a "No Rope Exploding Double Hell Timebomb" deathmatch with Mr. Pogo, Terry Funk, Tanaka, and Hayabusa, and even a no-rope exploding barbed wire female wrestling match! As with the other FMW tapes, the announcers try to imitate Insane Clown Posse's funny wrestling tapes, and fail pretty miserably at it. The DVD is recommended since you can turn the announcers off, and you get one pretty good bonus match to boot.Note this is NOT the IWA "King of the Deathmatch" tournament that made Cactus Jack and Terry Funk famous."

Probably the best FMW DVD out there..

C. N Wells | TX | 12/03/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"First off this isn't the famous IWA Deathmatch tournament that had Cactus Jack Vs. Terry Funk in the finals, but from the FMW 7th Anniversy show from 96 (I think..). Except for the last 3, all the matches are MAJORLY and HORRIBLY clipped (about half the match) and the commentary is awful. Still the last 3 matches are some of the best Death matches you can find on DVD..

1. Bonus Match: Taka Michinoku Vs. Koji Nakagawa - Now were talking I.. Hey! Wha tha? They clipped everything?!! The Clipping totally messed up the pace of the match, more like a highlight reel - (DUD)
2. Jason da Terrible Vs. Nanjyo Hayato - Pretty neat spots early but it quickly becomes a typicaly quick RAW match (*1/2)
3. Mad Dog Nagayo Vs. Shark Tsuchiya - Womens Hardcore match, basically it's like seeing Mr. Pogo Vs. Cactus Jack in women's form. Typical bloody Garbage match but still OK. (**)
4. Mike Awesome, Horace Hogan & Hiskatsu Vs. The Headhunters & Leatherface - Kind of a letdown considering Awesome and the Headhunters (One of my favorite tag teams, imagine 2 Abdullah the Butchers doing moonsalts outside of the ring :-) are in it. (*1/2)

5. Cactus Jack Vs. W*ing Kanemura (Barbwire, Broken glass match) - Now the REAL DVD starts. Barbwired-Ropes on 2 sides of the ring, other sides have no ropes and boards of barbedwire/broken glass laying on the outside to fall on. Ouch! Kanemura shows he can hang with Cactus by taking some outlandish punishment and cactus, like always, seems to bring some fun originallity to a death match. (****1/2)

6. Megumi Kudo Vs. Combat Toyoda - (Women's Electrified Barbed Wire match) Best match on the DVD. This is Toyoda's retirment match against her ex-teammate/(and lover?) Kudo. The ropes are lined with barbedwire AND electrified. The last two moves are two of the NASTIEST! moves you'll ever see. With the storyline, match, aftermath AND seeing Onita cry it gets my only perfect Deathmatch rating ever :-) (*****)

7. Hayabusa & Masato Tanaka Vs. Terry Funk & "that crazy [...]" Mr. Pogo (Electricfied Barbedwire / Exploding Ring Deathmatch) - Terry Funk and Pogo don't think Hayabusa/Tanaka have the "heart" (balls) to represnt FMW so they challenge them to a ridiculouly crazy deathmatch. The ropes are electrified with more boards of barbed wire outside the ring. And of course Mr. Pogo and Terry Funk bring there own toys along. Oh, and the ring with explode in 15 min. Kind of a let down, but you definitly gets to see everything you'd thought you would, Fire, Blood, Knives, Terry Funk swinging and slipping around the ring... (****)"

The true originators of hardcore

leajtick@yahoo.co.uk | carlisle, uk | 12/26/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When I got this home I was a little disappointed to find that the disc is made up of 8 matches from the 5-5-96 show and tokyopop made no indication that it wasnt actually a tourney. Strange title considering IWA had the deathmatch tourney! Aside from that the matches are excellent and if you can withstand the dull and useless commentators you will find some highly entartaining and hardcore matches.Highlights include Mick Foley as you've never seen him before in a brutal double hell barbed wire glass crush spider net death match and another highlight is two women having one helluva wrestling contest in a ring surrounded by electricifed barbed-wire!A must for anyone who hasnt seen anything like this before and who wants to see how seriously the Japanese treat it as a sport instead of entertainment.Oh yeah, its region free as well so it will work on ALL dvd players!"

Great wrestling, no tournament.

leajtick@yahoo.co.uk | 12/09/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When I first purchased this DVD, I was under the impression that it was an uncut video of the King of the Death Match 2000 tournament, but instead, it was a montage of some of the most memorable FMW matches to date. Included in its allstar cast of wrestlers including Hayabusa, Mr. Pogo, The Gladiator Mike Awesome, Mick Foley, Horace Hogan, The Headhunters, and the one and only "Drunk" Terry Funk, is an incredible match that some of you hardcore wrestling fans may remember from ICP's Stranglemania 2 between "Mother-in-Law" Toyota and Ho Kudo. This match alone is reason enough to buy this DVD. (You have to see it to believe it.) The only problems I have with this DVD is, for one, the American announcer hired by Tokyopop to do the color commentary absolutely reek of mediocrity, and the second reason being that This is not a complete coherant tournament. There's no shortage of barbed wire or the red stuff in this one though, but if you were strictly looking for the King of Death Match 2000 Tournament, no luck this time, but for this price I certainly don't regret the purchase."