FMW 10th Anniversary Show

FMW 10th Anniversary Show: Entertainment Wrestling Special Live
Promotion	Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling
Date	November 23, 1999
City	Yokohama, Japan
Venue	Yokohama Arena
Attendance	11,000
Pay-per-view chronology
← Previous Making of a New Legend IV: Day 7 Next → Making of a New Legend VI: Day 5
FMW Anniversary Show chronology
← Previous 9th Anniversary Next → 11th Anniversary

FMW 10th Anniversary Show: Entertainment Wrestling Special Live was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW). The event took place on November 23, 1999 at the Yokohama Arena in Yokohama, Japan. This was the tenth edition of the company's premier event Anniversary Show, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the company.

In the main event, H defeated "Hayabusa" (Mr. Gannosuke in disguise) with Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee (originally, it was supposed to be Dr. Death Steve Williams as the special guest referee, but allegedly due to his loyalty to Giant Baba and All Japan Pro Wrestling, Williams refused, which resulted in the WWF firing him and replacing him with Michaels). H and Gannosuke reconciled after the match and ended their rivalry for the first time in FMW and would enjoy a reign as WEW Tag Team Champions shortly after the event. In the event's other high-profile matches, Masato Tanaka defeated Kodo Fuyuki in a loser leaves FMW 13,000 volt electrical thunderbolt cage deathmatch to win the WEW Heavyweight Championship, forcing Fuyuki to leave FMW, Tetsuhiro Kuroda and Hisakatsu Oya retained the WEW Tag Team Championship against ECW World Tag Team Champions Raven and Tommy Dreamer and Kintaro Kanemura retained the WEW Hardcore Championship against Balls Mahoney.

The event is known in the United States as Judgment Day.^[1]

Event[]

Reception[]

The 10th Anniversary Show received mixed reviews from critics. Stuart of Puroresu Central wrote "This card was so/so, but the good outweighed the bad, or at least will be remembered more than the bad (which is essentially the same thing). From the Kanemura vs. Balls match onward, everything was decent (the ECW vs FMW tag was borderline) or better", and considered it a good way for Japanese wrestling to "get into the Japanese style without immediately dashing away from the dominant angle-driven style of the WWF and WCW" He appreciated the ladder match, calling it "a good way to start the show, because it was a hot, action-packed match with no resting" but also panned it for not being "the standard of many U.S. ladder matches, despite being fought in the same Americanized way" and gave mixed reviews to the Hardcore Championship match, praising Kanemura with "This match showed how good Kanemura can still be and was a walk in the park for him, because it was hardcore-lite compared to the old school FMW garbage stuff (exploding barbed wire, etc.)" but panned Mahoney's performance and the match itself. He gave mixed reaction to the Tag Team Championship match, in which he praised the defending champions and panned the challengers, with analyzing that the match was not "even that decent, but the champions and the novelty made it watchable". He gave positive reviews to Tanaka/Fuyuki match by stating that the match was "really damn good".^[2]

Ryan Byers of 411mania wrote "Though this card wasn’t quite as bad as things would become, it certainly featured several key steps in that direction. As a result, instead of this show being pleasant nostalgia, it was an unfortunate reminder of how a once great company began its death spiral" He appreciated the Hardcore Championship match, with stating that "The two wrestlers paced the match well and the spots built in their intensity to the big finish, which is how you want a hardcore match to play out. In addition to that, I have to give them credit for coming up with some spots involving the car that I had never seen before and have not seen since. Heck, some of them were even safer than many extreme spots, since the automobile glass that they were using on one another is actually designed to break in such a way that it will do as little damage as possible to people. Though I’m at a point in my life during which I’m not going to advocate for any wrestlers slamming each other on hard metal objects or making risky twelve foot dives, if you accept the premise that this sort of match is going to be happening in the world, this was a damn fine example of it." He also praised the WEW World Heavyweight Championship match considering it "interesting" and rated it a 3 out of 4 stars.^[1]

Results[]

References[]

External links[]

• FMW 10th Anniversary Show
• FMW 10th Anniversary Show: Judgment Day on YouTube