8/26/2012 - Zero-1 Yokohoma Big Fireworks - Exploding Barbwire - Atsushi Onita vs Akebono

8/26/2012 - Zero-1 Yokohoma Big Fireworks - Exploding Barbwire - Atsushi Onita vs Akebono

Onita and crew get stuck in the crowd during their entrance lol

Atsushi Onita gets thrown on the exploding board and...it doesn't explode. DANGEROUS.

Akebono gets misted by Atsushi Onita

Akebono eats an explosion

Atsushi Onita mists Akebono again

Akebono beat Atsushi Onita with a hip throw and a splash following the explosion. This was not good at all. There were three big things that hurt this:
1) Cheap explosions kill matches. These explosions were not very good here and one of them didn't even go off which really disrupted everything. You cannot go cheap on explosions or else you end up looking rinky dink like IWA did with the King of the Deathmatch final. Some of these explosions were laughable, especially the fourth one.
2) Akebono is slow and not good in singles matches. I like Akebono as a person and as a sumo wrestler, but not as a singles wrestler. He moves slowly, does his moves slowly and everything he does looks slow. It's hard to take him as a threat when you know one good shot on one of his knees is going to put him down for the count.
3) There was little heat for this or the heat was poorly captured. If you cannot get heat from blowing someone up, there is no hope ever of getting heat for anything else. Deathmatches should be a big deal.

One other thing that hurt it for me was the video crew. FMW did a fantastic job of capturing explosions and really making them seem like a big deal but Zero-1 choose to shoot from really far away and ended up missing some of the second explosion.

Add a bad finish to this (Akebono takes part of an explosion and doesn't sell it) and you got a crappy match.

These matches are so easy to work and do that it's just a shame what happened here. Onita style is so simple but they couldn't get it done here. Rating:*

Overall thoughts: Skip this one. They screwed this up and I wish this would have been done in BJW where you know it would have been done right. They had a good story here and a good set-up, but Z-1 went cheap and Onita/Bono were too tired to make this work.