If you were to sort through my title history reviews, you’d find multiple instances of me saying I’d never review the lineage of this title. I had a perfect excuse to not do it in my Big Japan Pro-Wrestling Strong Championship title history review. But a few things have made it so that this lineage is needling at me now. The first is that at this point, I’ve reviewed eight titles under the WWE umbrella because they’ve all been used to headline major shows. So the excuse that one title represents a company is out the window. Second, I’ve now reviewed two other deathmatch titles in FREEDOMS and GCW, not to mention the early deathmatches that IWA Mid-South champions put on. Third, this title headlines BJW shows much more often than the Strong Championship does, something I lamented in my review of that lineage. And finally, I was able to find far more than half of the title changes from this title’s 23-year history. And tangentially, now that the IWGP belt has a broken lineage, this is one of the longest-lasting title lineages in Japan, topped only by the Triple Crown. That’s bonkers.
August 9, 1998 – Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Great Pogo def. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Flaming Casket Match}
From the finals of a tournament to crown the first champion. We’ve got barbed wire instead of ropes, and they’re on fire, and there’s a casket in the middle of the ring. Every couple of minutes, more kerosene-soaked rags on the barbed wire ropes are lit on fire. The action is just Pogo slicing Matsunaga with sharp objects, some of which he has set on fire. The one cool spot in the match sees Matsunaga set his own elbowpad on fire and hit a lariat. Pogo hits a piledriver, dumps Matsunaga in the casket, and lights it on fire for the win at 8:36. When I was in high school I rented an FMW tape from Blockbuster because I assumed it had some of the great Japanese wrestling I’d heard about on the internet. What I watched was boring, gore wrestling. This looked a lot like that. Snooze. Except for that lariat. Matsunaga won the title two weeks later in a match with the same stipulation. *½
September 23, 1998 – Tokyo, Japan
Shadow WX def. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
This was all clipped up, and what we got was mostly these two walking around the building with their arms around each other’s shoulders as if that’s a convincing way to make the viewer believe that one guy is half unconscious and being led around. Fuck this business-exposing crap. The “action” shown was literally three spots, a suplex on a light tube board, and slam through a light tube board, and WX slamming Matsunaga onto a board covered in spikes for the win at 4:14 (shown of 13:18). There’s nothing to rate here as what was shown was totally disjointed. As a result, Matsunaga has to “wrestle” a crocodile. It’s very small and the whole thing feels like animal abuse. Matsunaga is able to get the croc into a casket in about five minutes, most of which were him standing around wondering what to do next. Fuck off. Four months later, Abdullah the Butcher beat WX for the title. N/A
February 28, 1999 – Tokyo, Japan
Shadow WX def. Abdullah the Butcher {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
Abdullah the Butcher is in this match, so the only wrestling move in it was the final one, where WX hit a monkey flip for the win at 10:59 (shown of 14:46). The rest of the match was Butcher walking around and hitting WX with a fork and with barbed wire. This was not a wrestling match. ½*
May 30, 1999 – Osaka, Osaka
Ryuji Yamakawa def. Shadow WX {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
I catch my first glimpse of the original title belt here, and it’s a ridiculous design. Despite being labeled as the Independent Wrestling Championship on the belt, the ring announcer clearly calls it the Death Match Heavyweight Championship. This was meant to be another no-rope flaming barbed wire match, but it was pretty much moot because both guys left the ring to brawl on the top of various truck beds instead. Those beds had caskets on them which were filled with weapons. So why wasn’t it a truck casket match then? Oh my god what am I even asking? At one point, Yamakawa broke out a big ass flamethrower, which WX stole from him by poking him with a light tube. When they finally do make it back to the ring for the final few minutes, they manage to crank up the intensity a little. Yamakawa throws WX into two sides of the flaming barbed wire, and then hits a tiger driver for the win at 18:58 (shown of 22:29). This would have been fun had it been an eight-minute match without the crap on the trucks. WX won the title back two and a half months later. *
December 4, 1999 – Yokohama, Kanegawa
Ryuji Yamakawa def. Shadow WX {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
Each corner has a board covered in powered light tubes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. This actually resembled a wrestling match, which was a very welcome change of pace. There were peaks and valleys and transitions of control. You know, wrestling. It wasn’t great, but it was comprehensible. It even ended with a tale of self-defeat. WX had the match well in hand, but he decided to introduce fire to the mix. He set himself on fire and hit a Superfly Splash successfully, but later a spitting fireball missed and set a board in the corner ablaze. Yamakawa whipped him into it and then hit two tiger drivers for the win at 15:08 (shown of 18:11). **½
January 2, 2000 – Tokyo, Japan
Tomoaki Honma def. Ryuji Yamakawa {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
From New Year Great Series. Aside from the Butcher match, which of course didn’t have much in the way of plunder because Butcher can barely move, this is really toned down in that department compared to the WX and Matsunaga matches so far. There are barbed wire boards in two corners and beds of spikes on the floor at ringside, but for the most part the wrestlers try to avoid them. Hey, logic! By the end of the match, Yamakawa was just letting Honma drag him around wherever he needed to be for the next spot, so that’s a knock against this, but I appreciate that in between the spots, Honma tried to make sure they were having a wrestling match. Honma hit a running elbow for the win at 23:45. ***
July 2, 2000 – Tokyo, Japan
Zandig def. Tomoaki Honma {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
From BJ Hardcore Series II. That series title is yikes. It’s not even like it was named during a simpler time. Zandig was CZW Champion here. I hope so much that CZW never comes back so I can keep putting off doing that title lineage. The theme of this match is that there are lemons, salt, and mustard handy to rub into wounds. It’s Japan, so mustard also means wasabi paste. I wanted to hate this because Zandig is trash, but the truth is there was some entertainment to be had here. Watching them navigate around the slippery salt strewn all over the mat was cringey, but seeing the salt fly everywhere when they’d suplex each other was cool. And though Zandig massively botched a dive from two tables stacked on the turnbuckle, press slam from one table stacked on the turnbuckle to a barbed wire board on the floor convinced me that Honma is the bravest (and maybe dumbest) man in the history of wrestling. Zandig hit a spinning powerbomb onto a barbed wire board in the ring for the win at 16:02 (shown of 19:04). ***¼
November 23, 2000 – Yokohama, Kanegawa
Tomoaki Honma def. Zandig {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
From BJW vs. CZW World War. As the big blow off to an interpromotional feud, I can see where this may have worked for the fans. Honma, who lost the title to an outsider and had already once failed to regain it, mostly got his ass kicked throughout the match. But he was resilient to powerbombs through barbed wire boards and glass. And then Zandig got overconfident and spent time stacking glass on top of a barbed wire board, which let Honma get his wits back and powerbomb Zandig through them. Then he hit a running elbow onto the wire and broken glass for the win at 15:16. I get it, but these two fighting were already diminishing returns for me. Most of the points for the strong story. Honma starting no-showing dates after this because of disagreements with BJW and was eventually stripped of the title. ***
May 4, 2001 – Sapporo, Hokkaido
Zandig def. Kintaro Kanemura {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Chessboard Match}
From North Wave. Chessboard means that the mat is gone and these fellas are wrestling on wooden planks. Kanemura and Zandig had defeated Winger and Justice Pain, respectively, to get to the finals of this tournament. As such they were bleeding when the match began. At some point, there had clearly been a schism in the CZW roster, because Pain leads an attack on Zandig during this match and BJW guys have to make the save. Kanemaru basically got no offense in this entire match. Dude was a total afterthought. Zandig pinned by hitting his spinning powerbomb and then plopping a light tube board on top of him for the win at 14:54. *½
August 19, 2001 – Yokohama, Kanegawa
Mitsuhiro Matsunaga def. Zandig {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Universe. This was a super boring walk around and do random crap kind of match. A good chunk of time was taken up by Mad Man Pondo throwing Matsunaga a chain from the balcony to try to hang Zandig, only for Zandig to unconvincingly try to do it to Matsunaga. It looked awful (and is a screwed up enough visual that it isn’t worth trying) and took forever. The match ended when Jun Kasai ran in and stapled a CZW SUCKS sign to Zandig’s back and Matsunaga hit Zandig with a fireball for the win at 17:34. Not good. *½
December 2, 2001 – Yokohama, Kanegawa
Zandig def. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga {BJW Death Match Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Ante Up. Daisuke Sekimoto wrestled in matches just before and after this match, but I’m stuck watching this. Zandig was already bleeding when the match started, so I’m guessing he got involved in the Pain vs. Nick Gage CZW title match earlier in the night. There was glass in the corners rigged to explosives. Not explosives that actually came near the wrestlers, but explosives that were essentially fireworks indicating that glass had been broken. At one point, a Star of David made of light tubes was brought to the ring. On the one hand, we’ve seen tons of light tube crosses broken in death matches, so it’s not like anything is held sacred by these people. On the other, the lack of Jewish people associated with this operation makes that particular weapon really weird for me. After powerbombs through the explosive glass do nothing, Zandig casually staples flash paper onto Matsunaga’s face, burns it, and then puts on a really crappy Camel Clutch for the win at 10:38. This sucked. *
This was a very rough hang for the most part. If this was my first foray into deathmatch wrestling instead of FREEDOMS, I probably would continue to stay very far away from the genre. The CZW/BJW relationship came to an end a couple months later. Zandig kept the title belt because of course he did, the guy is a creep. After I take a little break to clear my head of this crap, I’ll take a look at how BJW handled the title picture without scumbag Americans mucking things up.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
