The History of FMW: Episode 27

THT Podcast

The History of FMW with Bahu Episode 27: Second half of 2002, FMW is dead! Arai commits suicide, Kodo Fuyuki announces his cancer, a flurry of new promotions begin and much more
2002 started off with another set back as Mr. Gannosuke suffered a leg injury to put him out for the next few months. FMW only ran a handful more shows until they were dead by the end of February. A flurry of new promotions backed by Onita and Fuyuki sprang up until Fuyuki announced he had cancer. Through all of the tribulations of borrowing mafia money and having the entire underground looking for him Shoichi Arai took his own life. The story of FMW may end here but a new generation of wrestling was only just getting started.
This is truly one of the most in depth episodes on a wrestling company, American or Japanese, ever done. If you want to know how the sponsorships work, an outline of the mafia/yakuza involvement in wrestling and all the supply lines or products this is an amazing listen.
Continue following this podcast and in the coming episodes we will be discussing Onita in every company under the sun, promotions like WMF (with Hayabusa), Apache Pro, Freedoms and more spring up, learn about where all of these wrestlers wound up and so much more.
I produce the History of FMW, the Deathmatch News Radio podcast and the INTL Deathmatch Newsletter out of pure love of wrestling and if you think I have given your life value think about giving me some value back at my Patreon at HTTP://PATREON.COM/DEATHMATCHNEWS with multiple tier levels of support that give access to interview archives, early podcast access and more
Please subscriber to the THT Podcast Network for more shows on wrestling from WWE and NJPW to GCW, CZW and more deathmatch content.
Join me on my new website, https://indiewrestlingintl.wordpress.com/ where I will be covering Japanese wrestling indies such as BJW, Basara, Freedoms, DDT, any news covering deathmatches with videos, articles, news reports, results and so much more! I have also launched a podcast series chronicling the History of FMW and various Independent Japanese Wrestling new updates and analysis with friends I meet that you can find at http://indiewrestlingintl.libsyn.com/website or on rss at http://indiewrestlingintl.libsyn.com/rss
Don't forget to check out http://bahufmw.com and http://fmwwrestling.com for all the archived news and results concerning FMW as well as where to buy all the latest Freedoms and classic deathmatch DVD's.