Onita wants to do exploding barbed wire match with Jon Moxley

The legendary Atsushi Onita is looking to do an Explosive Barbed Wire Match with AEW’s Jon Moxley in the United States.

The talk of Onita wanting to do this match with Moxley goes back to last year, but a new report from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter notes that Onita is very interested in doing the match, but it comes down to politics.

Onita is reportedly open to doing the match in AEW. The last time he was in the United States he sent feelers to AEW about being willing to work on AEW TV. AEW President Tony Khan has said in the past that they would be willing to do this type of match because of how well the first did, but they’d want it to be the climax of a feud with their own guys, so it wouldn’t make much sense to do it with Onita. Moxley does work select indie dates but they have to be approved by AEW. There’s no word on if AEW would approve an Explosive Barbed Wire Match for one of their biggest stars, outside of the company at that.

AEW’s only Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match headlined the 2021 Revolution pay-per-view, and saw then-AEW World Champion Kenny Omega retain over Moxley. While seen as somewhat of a success, the ending fell flat as there was a lackluster explosion, which led to significant negative feedback online. Onita was invited by AEW to be present for the match, but he was unable to travel to the United States due to COVID-19 and priot commitments. Onita did appear in a video package to promote the match, but he said he felt responsible for the weak explosion at Revolution because he couldn’t be involved.

Onita launched a new promotion that focused on Explosion Matches back in May 2021 – FMWE, which stands for Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling Explosion. Onita won a No Rope Explosion Match against Matt Tremont on Halloween 2021 in Trenton, NJ for Onita’s FMWE promotion and Tremont’s H2O Wrestling.