5 Uncredited Architects Of WWE's Attitude Era
4. Atsushi Onita
Paul Heyman is often credited as the man whose popularisation of hardcore wrestling gave rise to the extreme ring style so pervasive in the WWF at the turn of the millennium - but Atsushi Onita is the man from whom Heyman borrowed inspiration.
The founder and star of Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, Onita, himself inspired by Farhat, Gypsy Joe and their contemporaries, recognised that there was a market for such violence on a wider scale than had been seen in Japan at that point, and dedicated his promotion and resources to it.
Entering the ring adorned in a leather jacket and with a cigarette dangling from his mouth - while pro wrestling in the west was still breezy and colourful - Onita was massively over with his adoring faithful, who paid in their droves to see him and his peers throw one another into barbed wire and explosives.
The first match of this kind was wrestled by Onita against Tarzan Goto in August 1990.
The crazier traditions, like flaming chairs and landmines, didn't make it to the WWF - or even the original ECW. His influence, however, while indirect, remains vast.
Annoyingly, although barbed wire was used liberally throughout the period, the closest WWE came to producing an FMW-style match (at least in name) was a total dud. The Barbed Wire Cage match between JBL and The Big Show was a non-starter - the promise of barbed wire barbarity was thoroughly deflated when it became apparent that the two relatively immobile behemoths would have to climb the cage if they were to stand any chance of using it.