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FMW which began as a small promotion of wrestling misfits in 1989 with Atsushi Onita as their leader as owner and top wrestler of the promotion, ended up seeing the promotion sky rocket in popularity the following year in 1990 after Onita had the first ever No Ropes Exploding Barbed wire Death Match against Tarzan Goto on August 4, 1990.
The next year in 1991, Onita's popularity continued to grow as he began to appear on National Television variety shows and became a household name to many in Japan. Onita's goals shifted from keeping his promotion and his name relevant to him wanting to become bigger than Japan's biggest wrestling star ever Antonio Inoki. Onita's plan was to bring in legendary names that everybody knew and beat them on the big stage.
FMW which stood for Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling based on the original idea of the promotion being based around Onita facing off against fighters with other backgrounds after already having defeated Judo Bronze Medalist in the 1988 Olympics, Grigori Verichev from Russia, earlier in the year. Onita's dream was to bring in a boxer and defeat him to show a wrestler can beat a top ranked boxer. Leon Spinks who had already had shown he was willing to travel to Japan and lose to a wrestler as he had faced off against Antonio Inoki and lost to him on October 9, 1986 was called and asked if he wanted to begin working for FMW to setup a future big show match against Atsushi Onita.
Spinks, needing the money, agreed and entered the FMW World Strongest Tag Team Tournament making his debut on November 27, 1991 where he teamed with fellow American Rufus Blackborn to defeat the team of Atsushi Onita and Tarzan Goto with Spinks KO'ing Onita in Shizuoka. The Spinks team would come up short making the finals due to Spinks' partner Blackborn taking a couple of losses in their tournament matches to keep Spinks protected. Also, making their FMW debuts in that same tag team tournament would be The Sheik and Sabu as Onita also wanted to take turns between feuding with Spinks and The Sheik so that they could rotate being brought in on different tours.
Oddly enough, when The Sheik and Spinks would be on the same tour together, they would sit with each other on the FMW heel bus together as they would end up connecting a friendship with one another on the long bus rides. FMW would wait to bring back Spinks again until March 1992 where Spinks would end up getting his big FMW win by defeating Tarzan Goto on March 25, 1992 at Korakuen Hall after KO'ing him for the FMW top title at the time called the WWA Martial Arts Heavyweight Title. This was also probably the best FMW match of Spinks' career and that was because he was protected and only asked to go six minutes. Spinks winning the title was to set up his big match against Atsushi Onita at the 12,000 seat Tokyo Ariake Coliseum show.
The Onita vs. Spinks match would be FMW's second biggest show of the year in 1992 held on May 24th, but for the first time in FMW's history that they would run an unsuccessful big event. They would announce 7,000 people in the 12,000 building but only around 5,000 people would actually attend the show. Spinks just was not the draw that FMW was hoping. It did not help that it was the first inside big show and thus they could not do any explosions like FMW had done for all their other big shows that were a success.
The match between Onita vs. Spinks would be in a regular cage match and the match would be horrible as Onita was not the type of wrestler who could carry Spinks to anything decent for over 8 minutes and they did not have the electric crowd that Spinks vs. Goto had at Korakuen Hall two months earlier. Onita would end up defeating Spinks for the WWA Martial Arts Title and Spinks was pretty much done as far as a main event wrestler after the disappointing crowd and match.
Spinks still wanted to continue to work for FMW though as the pay was better than anything he was getting at the time, and money was something he was in need for. FMW's last ditch effort to keep Spinks in the main event picture was to ask his brother Michael Spinks to work for FMW and team with his brother but his Michael refused. Spinks would then only be brought in for big Stadium shows to work midcard matches including working Kawasaki Stadium and losing to former Olympian Grigori Verichev on May 5, 1993 in a Judo vs. Boxer match on the show.
Spinks' last tour with FMW took place in August 1993 where he would end up facing off against the likes of Terry Funk who would defeat Spinks by DQ on August 26, 1993 and getting a KO win over Sabu on August 28, 1993 at Korakuen Hall. Spinks' last wrestling match would be on September 1, 1993 defeating Sambo Asako in Sapporo before FMW would stop booking him.
Many of the FMW wrestlers working with him at the time had expressed concern afterwards while working with him that he was already showing signs of memory loss due to his boxing past and him screwing up 5 minute matches and FMW felt all his value was gone at that point and there was no reason to continue to fly him back which would end Spinks' two year career in FMW.
BAHU runs and operates www.BAHUFMW.com, a comprehensive look at the run and legacy of Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling.
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