The Secret History Of ECW | Wrestling Timelines

August 4, 1990 - Current Blast

In the first ever match of its kind, the legendarily unhinged Atsushi Onita defeats Tarzan Goto in a ‘No Rope Barbed Wire Current Blast Death match - or, a No Ropes Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match.

This isn’t the most iconic explosion match - Onita and Terry Funk’s 1993 cinematic masterpiece in suspense and respect is the genre benchmark - but it’s a game-changer of a rough demo. The idea, and it’s so violently spectacular that it will very quickly propel the fledgling Frontier Martial-Arts Pro Wrestling into stadiums, is for the wrestlers to avoid stumbling into the barbed wire. If that happens - and it obviously does, after the requisite tension is built - the wrestler’s flesh will be ripped, their skin burned by a shower of sparks. A bomb in a wrestling match: it’s an unfathomable, fiendishly amazing idea.

(Heyman was desperate to pull off an explosion match in his own promotion, but his attempts failed dismally.)

Heyman, like the rest of the hardcore students of the game, is captivated by this total tape-trading sensation and its array of thrilling, bizarre matches. FMW becomes the most awesome proposition on the international stage; the concept of the death match, inspired by Onita’s fandom of the Sheik, is beyond alluring.

Heyman himself is inspired to take U.S. wrestling in a new, terrifying direction.