04/29/1997

Street Fight: Atsushi Onita, Masato Tanaka, WING Kanemura def. Cactus Jack, Terry Funk & Mike Awesome  in 15:19

Oddly, Cactus was already a year into his WWE run at this time, but was still working this madness. No one was fucking around here, as Onita piledrove Funk on a table outside within the first minute of the match, almost like he was trying to gain revenge for 1989 Ric Flair. It didn’t matter because it only took a few minutes for Funk to come back and repeatedly burn Onita with a flaming branding iron, and Tanaka was coming off the top rope with a chairshot to Awesome’s head. Everyone, except Awesome and Cactus, was bleeding soon enough. Funk took the flaming branding iron and decided to fill his mouth with fluid and blew a MASSIVE FIREBALL at Onita because why the fuck not? As if that weren’t far enough, Funk started dousing Onita’s head in the flammable fluid and was about to blow a fireball at his head, but thankfully, he was cut off. Awesome and Tanaka were having most of their usual FMW match in the middle of all this wild shit. With all the blood and weapons, the scariest part was actually a Funk moonsault to the floor, which was supposed to hit Onita, but Cactus and Awesome were going to catch him. Funk was well short and almost busted his shit on the ground. My goodness. They did a fair amount of nearfalls and saves in more traditional Japanese fashion, and had the crowd going. The finish came when Kanemara came off the top with a chair on top of a prone Cactus, finally ending the chaos. This was a brutal match, and as I said, there was some good drama with the nearfalls here for sure. ***1/2