10 Hardcore Japanese Wrestling Stipulations You Won't Believe Are Real

4. Hellfire Death Match

That's it?

Really, that's the sum total of words that this stipulation requires? We're almost disappointed, we thought it was going to be much crazier.

But of course it is much crazier. How dare you think otherwise.

So while the fire poles and occasional explosion were reasonable enough fare, Onita concluded that there just wasn't a big enough sense of threat to these Death Matches. Because he is mad. So he came up with the Hellfire Death Match. The concept was simple: replace the ropes with barbed wire (obviously, that should go without saying by now, except no, the presence of barbed wire in a wrestling match should NEVER go without saying), wrap the wire with petrol-soaked rags, set the rags on fire, then maybe some chin locks or something, that's as far ahead as they thought.

It was an inferno.

What followed was one of the few occasions that a FMW match had to be called off. The heat was so intense, the wrestlers got so burned and the crowd was so utterly, and correctly terrified that referees called an end to it. The debacle was never again repeated owing to the fact that one of the wrestlers, Sabu's uncle, the Original Sheik, slipping into a medical coma as a result on his injuries.

But perhaps we've exhausted our FMW-based insanity. Let's leave Atsushi Onita to think about what he's done and move on Big Japan Wrestling.

Will they be any saner?