Classic Deathmatch Recs?

You can skip right down to the Onita matches at the end if you want, but I've basically created a film festival for you since you'll be all pilled up.

We'll call it "The GunDance Film Festival: The Birth and Blood of Atsushi Onita"

Honestly. Start here:
Terry & Dory Funk Jr vs Abdullah the Butcher & The Sheik 12/77 RWTL
Jerry Lawler vs Terry Funk Empty Arena Match
Onita & Masa Fuchi vs Ricky Morton & Eddie Gilbert Tupleo Concession Stand Brawl 9/4/81
Carlos Colon vs Hercules Ayala (Fire Match 9/10/88)
Carlos Colon vs Steve Strong (Barbed Wire 10/7/89) - One of the most shockingly good matches ever. Loudest crowd in history. Seriously. Watch this all pilled up

I think you should watch or revisit all of these first to sort of get the origin story. Funk & Colon were Onita's two biggest influences. As far as FMW recommendations go, I didn't include Onita vs Funk or Onita vs Tenryu or any of the big Megumi Kudo retirement tour matches because I just assume everyone is super familiar with those.

Onita vs Ryuma Go 4/30/89 (Pioneer)
Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi 6/2/89
Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi 10/6/89 (1st FMW main event)
Onita vs Kurisu 2/12/90 (barbed wire match, but the wire is on boards outside of the ring not replacing the ropes so its interesting to look at)
Onita & Goto vs Ngasaki & Kurisu 4/1/90
Onita vs Tarzan Goto 8/4/90 (1st electrified barbed wire match)
Onita vs Mr Pogo 11/5/90 (texas death match)
Onita vs Tarzan Goto 2/26/91
Onita vs Tarzan Goto 9/23/91 (Exploding Barbed Wire Cage)
Onita/Santo/Goto vs Casas/Patterson/Boulder 5/16/92 (FMW/WWA California)


Those first two matches against Aoyagi are really interesting. (I love Aoyagi.) Onita actually restarted his career on the back of the UWF2.0 explosion. He went to a show and challenged everyone to a fight, but was kicked out because he didn't have a ticket. He wanted to prove to UWF that he could fight legit fighters so he fought well known karate fighter Aoyagi on a Martial Arts show. But Onita got his ass kicked so he started using Pro Wrestling moves against Aoyagi and got DQ'd. So Onita wanted to start his own promotion where he could use his own rules allowing Martial Arts and Pro Wrestling.

If you haven't read it, highest recommendation possible for Bahu's comprehensive history of FMW. One of the best wrestling things on the internet
fmwwrestling.us/FMWHistory.html

I think this early stuff is so much better than the later post Onita death match stuff. Everyone praised stuff like Honma and Shadow XW (or whatever) back in the day for "adding psychology to death matches." Which was just code for they did a bunch of counters, highspots and nearfalls in addition to the blood & guts. Great psychology in a death match is when the first ever FMW explosion happens & the ref takes a bump to put it over even though he's 10 feet away from the explosion.

I dunno how far forward you'd like me to go with recommendations, but this is the key early stuff from before Onita's 1995 retirement. In addition to that stuff I would strongly encourage watching:
Foley vs Funk (IWA 1/8/95)
Funk vs Sabu (Born to be Wired)

The Foley vs Funk match is superior to their King of the Death Match and is the best Non-Onita death match up to this point in time.
Born to be Wired I recommended because it sort of feels like the bridge between the Colon/early Onita styles and the emerging BJPW style. Also this match is utterly fucking harrowing and would be a really good cap on a day of death matches.

So to just put everything together in one list:

Terry & Dory Funk Jr vs Abdullah the Butcher & The Sheik 12/77 RWTL
Jerry Lawler vs Terry Funk Empty Arena Match
Onita & Masa Fuchi vs Ricky Morton & Eddie Gilbert Tupleo Concession Stand Brawl 9/4/81
Carlos Colon vs Hercules Ayala (Fire Match 9/10/88)
Carlos Colon vs Steve Strong (Barbed Wire 10/7/89)
Onita vs Ryuma Go 4/30/89 (Pioneer)
Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi 6/2/89
Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi 10/6/89 (1st FMW main event)
Onita vs Kurisu 2/12/90 (barbed wire match, but the wire is on boards outside of the ring not replacing the ropes so its interesting to look at)
Onita & Goto vs Ngasaki & Kurisu 4/1/90
Onita vs Tarzan Goto 8/4/90 (1st electrified barbed wire match)
Onita vs Mr Pogo 11/5/90 (texas death match)
Onita vs Tarzan Goto 2/26/91
Onita vs Tarzan Goto 9/23/91 (Exploding Barbed Wire Cage)
Foley vs Funk (IWA 1/8/95)
Funk vs Sabu (Born to be Wired)

Feel better! Hope your ear doesn't fall off!

Atsushi Onita and Tarzan Goto vs. Masanobu Kurisu and Kendo Nagasaki 4/1/1990 (Texas Death Match)
Carlos Colon vs. Hercules Ayala 9/20/1987 (Barbed Wire)
Atsushi Onita vs. Genichiro Tenryu 5/5/1994 (Barbed Wire Exploding Cage)
Atsushi Onita vs. Hayabusa 5/5/1995 (Barbed Wire Exploding Cage)
Mayumi Ozaki vs. Megumi Kudo 4/18/1997 (Barbed Wire)

The singles match between Yamakawa and Honma from 1999 used to have a rep for being the greatest deathmatch of all. Whatever happened to that? That match doesn't even seem to be online anymore. Quite a few people also liked their 2000 singles match.

Since people are recommending stuff like Funks vs. Abby/Sheikh, what exactly are we talking about when referring "deathmatch" here? Something with a certain stipulation or just ridiculously bloody shit that features some bizarre choice in weaponry?

Anyways, here are some choices I am particular to:

Tarzan Goto/Ryo Miyake vs. Masayoshi Motegi/Shinichi Nakano (WYF 97)
Tarzan Goto vs. Cactus Jack (IWA Japan 1995)
La Fiera vs. Jerry Estrada (Chain match)
Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs. Alexander Otsuka (BattlARTS)
Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs. Jun Kasai (BJW... dont remember when exactly, but they were both barefoot and there was thumbtacks.)
Actually, Mitsuhiro Matsunagas whole series of matches in ZERO1 back in 2005 or so. You know the one.
Ishinriki vs. Umanosuke Ueda (Knife Deathmatch, NOW)
Headhunter A vs. Headhunter B (IWA Japan)

Nope, that is the 2000 one. The 1999 one was in a different building and also featured one of the most notoriously crazy bumps ever, a Tombstone Piledriver off the apron through a board with lighttubes.

They were both on Schneider comps back in the day.

This is probably a question I don't really know how to answer, even though I brought it up. When I think of deathmatch wrestling I think of barb wire, explosions, etc etc. But I get that this may be somewhat narrow. 

I wound up starting with some of the Funks vs Abby/Sheik stuff last night because it is also a rivalry I have just never gotten around to watching and I am long overdue on. I only started cherrypicking the 70s a couple years ago and kept putting off this rivalry for no great reason.   It seemed reasonable to start with that stuff.

Is the Funk-Foley 1/8/95 match anywhere, or is that another DVD/compilation thing?