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Matt Watches 1989 AJPW/1986 NJPW on a Treadmill


Matt D

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5/14/90: Davey Boy Smith vs Dusty Rhodes, Jr.: Just a few minutes here JIP. Davey gives Dustin a couple of things out of the goodness of his heart, but he's mostly in the driver's seat. He really does come off as a star and Dustin comes off as competent and not trying too hard to be his dad. He's a year or two in at this point anyway. Davey wins with a superplex.

5/26/90: Misawa/Kobashi vs Davey Boy Smith/Johnny Smith: Story here is that Misawa and Kobashi might get advantages due to double teaming or using their quickness but Davey and Johnny (who was bigger than I remember from last time, chronologically, that I saw him) were able to take back over with power. Johnny had a nice exchange with Kobashi, bridges and handsprings and all that jazz, but sometimes you saw the strings a bit more, whereas Davey was just this amazing combination of strength and agility. He made it all seem effortless, which isn't to say it was all savvy, just that it looked easy. It was just enough of a narrative to underpin things as they shifted momentum back and forth, had Misawa/Kobashi more or less work from underneath, and then launched into a finishing stretch with a lot of pin breakups but a sort of inevitability for the "Bulldogs."

5/26/90: Kawada/Nakano vs Fuyuki/Kikuchi: Like I said, I value pairings such as this because I know they're not long for the world. This comes in JIP too, but with Kikuchi trying some stuff with Kawada and Kawada just absolutely brutalizing him with kicks and stomps. Total sea change from the pre-Tenryu era where, frankly, Kawada just wouldn't be put in a position to go off like this. The fans go nuts for it because it was so striking. Nakano got in on the act too (and was more of a mean jerk than usual, so good for him) with some hard whips into the rails on the outside. Even after Kikuchi jammed a power bomb attempt and made a hot tag to Fuyuki (who immediately nailed Kawada with a huge spin kick), Kawada still found his way out to demolish Kikuchi more on the outside rails. Kikuchi just had no luck in this one. He finally got back into it only to get kicked off the top by a non-legal man Kawada. Every time he almost got back into it, he'd get nailed from behind or cut off. Fans were very into this though. Ultimately, Nakano got his northern lights and Kawada contained a desperate Fuyuki from interfering to secure the win. Nice little bit of action that might be the first we've really seen of Kikuchi's connection with the crowd. It's a shame we only have 9 mins and not the whole match.

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5/26/90: Terry Gordy vs Davey Boy Smith: Hoss fight! Yeah, this was pretty cool. Gordy really stooged for Davey Boy early, letting him win the eventual shoulder block war and then actually press him up over his head fully and pump it. Crazy stuff. Davey had some luck with holds like a Scorpion too but eventually Gordy was able to create some distance and throw a huge corner clothesline and hit a pile driver. Davey reversed the second (probably the first power bomb attempt of the match) and things stayed fairly even but as the match went on Gordy started getting more and more of an advantage. Davey was able to jam the second power bomb attempt in the ropes and almost win off of a crucifix roll up and even kicked out of the third (hit) power bomb attempt but eventually got overwhelmed. Both guys came out of this looking better though.

5/26/90: Tiger Jeet Singh vs Mighty Inoue: Damndest thing. I'm not sure I've ever seen an AJPW crowd having quite this much fun in this short period of time. Total 2010s indy crowd. But this was the same show as the other 5/26 stuff! @Gordlow watch this.

 

Edited by Matt D
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Bonus match: 5/19/72: Baba/Sakaguchi vs Dory/Terry: I'd been meaning to watch this back when I was doing NJPW. I think it's the only Baba/Sakaguchi tag we have on tape. Here's a memory of their match a night earlier in Amarillo. The reason why I hadn't watched this yet is because it's a 50 minute video, but the match itself is more like 35. This was for the NWA International Tag belts. Terry was Texas champ. Dory was NWA champ. 72 Terry is, like every other year Terry, amazing. He had a way of zipping around the ring and causing as much annoyance and irritation as possible. Baba and Sakaguchi outwrestled them for the first minute or two, but then they really honed in on Baba's leg and went to town with submissions and double-teams. At one point each man hooked the leg and fell backwards and it shows the difference between them. With Terry, it was just throwing his body back as hard as he could. With Dory, it was into a perfect bridge on the back of his head. But they balanced one another. We got a legitimately hot tag midway through the first fall, and Sakaguchi didn't quite have the strikes where they'd be a few years later but he was ok. His fire was always the best part of him. Dory and Terry stooged well here including both tossed into the corner flipping this way or that. Terry was able to recover with a couple of backbreakers on Sakaguchi for the first fall. In the second, Sakaguchi was able to fight back out of the corner, and there was the fire. What was interesting in the second fall was how like a later AJPW finishing sequence it felt. Terry was a constant annoyance and there was just no way to pin Dory when he was around. This is where we got to see Baba and Sakaguchi really work together as giants including a chop, big boot combo off the ropes or double big boots. It took a few rotations and then getting Terry out of the way to pick up the second fall with the Sakaguchi atomic drop. Third fall had some cool stuff, like Terry and Dory doing a combo butterfly suplex with linked hands, which you almost never see any team do ever. I can't really think of other examples. Much more heeling in this last fall (which was funny as Terry was sort of faking handshakes in the second) with the Funks striking like bulldogs moving the ref this way or that. Just chaos on the apron/outside. Some really fun stuff with Terry trying to pretend he got thrown over the top too. Great finish as they had a clear advantage on Sakaguchi but he made a blind tag allowing Baba to come flying off the top with the knee for a shock pin. Fans went up for it even though I wouldn't say they were super hot for other things in the match though that could be audio. It's impressive how well they filled them time, even with resetting and refocusing again and again and with a lot of time to fill. A lot of that comes down to how dynamic Terry was and how much he could do with foils like Baba and Sakaguchi.

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13 hours ago, Matt D said:

5/26/90: Terry Gordy vs Davey Boy Smith: Hoss fight! Yeah, this was pretty cool. Gordy really stooged for Davey Boy early, letting him win the eventual shoulder block war and then actually press him up over his head fully and pump it. Crazy stuff. Davey had some luck with holds like a Scorpion too but eventually Gordy was able to create some distance and throw a huge corner clothesline and hit a pile driver. Davey reversed the second (probably the first power bomb attempt of the match) and things stayed fairly even but as the match went on Gordy started getting more and more of an advantage. Davey was able to jam the second power bomb attempt in the ropes and almost win off of a crucifix roll up and even kicked out of the third (hit) power bomb attempt but eventually got overwhelmed. Both guys came out of this looking better though.

5/26/90: Tiger Jeet Singh vs Mighty Inoue: Damndest thing. I'm not sure I've ever seen an AJPW crowd having quite this much fun in this short period of time. Total 2010s indy crowd. But this was the same show as the other 5/26 stuff! @Gordlow watch this.

 

Good Lord! Thank you! That was a surrealist masterpiece. 2010s Indie crowd having fun is the perfectly apt comparison. The loudest guy in the crowd even sounds almost identical to my crazy Osaka Pro superfan buddy Kenji.

Also: Can you guess how many people there are, in the world, where if they said "Here's some shaky fan cam footage of a Tiger Jeet Singh match that I think you'll enjoy" my response would be to immediately drop everything and watch the match? Glad I did. That made my day even brighter.     

  Edit: Kenji, who is like that at wrestling shows:

                                            QM3rpRF.jpg

Edited by Gordlow
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5/25/90: Terry Gordy vs Kenta Kobashi: So if Kobashi got his first win in 89 and then had the big series at the start of the year, and increasingly was featured in tags after that, and finally realized he had to stand up to Hansen and sort of went overboard on that, maybe, just maybe, this was the night that he became a man? Remember, Gordy is going to beat Davey Boy the next night. He's a hoss and a beast and a threat. A veritable monster. Kobashi takes it right to him, pushing him back, ducking a shot, taking him off his feet. Gordy feeds. A lot of the meat of the match is Kobashi fighting for a toehold, for a crab, for a Texas Cloverleaf, for the figure four. He's able to keep Gordy down, able to contain him. When they're on their feet, Kobashi hits and darts back. It's when Gordy's able to hit nasty corner clotheslines, rushing right behind Kobashi, when he's able to take him to the floor and suplex him, when he's able to muscle him over with a small package just to get him down so he can smother him, when he finally connect with a lariat out of nowhere, that the hierarchy sets back in. Still, Kobashi makes him work for it, survives the pile driver, fights out of the first power bomb, gets a believable nearfall even! It's not enough. Gordy puts him down with two power bombs (that in and of itself a demented sign of respect), but here, on this night, an ascendant Kobashi pushed a monster to his limit.

Match below:

Spoiler

 

 

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5/26/90: Jumbo/Kabuki/Fuchi vs Misawa/Taue/Kobashi: It's crazy to think how quickly the Misawa/Jumbo program heated up. This started with Fuchi taking everyone's stuff and especially getting tossed around by Taue but Jumbo's in quickly and crushes Kobashi with the knee and then runs over to nail Taue and especially Misawa. Two trends here are the older guys working on Kobashi and Fuchi losing the offense for his side. Once Kobashi's able to make it to Misawa (still relatively early here), he presses his advantage, but gets pulled at by Jumbo from the outside and he just crushes him. It takes a bit for Jumbo to recover but when he does, he rushes back in and goes after Misawa, who wasn't even legal at this point. Just a big crazy scene. This is all mid-match and Kabuki takes advantage of the chaos to work on Kobashi's arm. They control him with that until Fuchi switches over to the leg on the outside with a nasty shinbreaker onto a ringside table. Lots of Kobashi working from underneath, managing to get some hope or even the tag (usually after Taue or Misawa intervene) only to come back in and get swept back under because of the fact he's so damaged. Taue hits Fuchi with the atomic drop/belly to back combo at one point. That's worth noting since I think he hadn't done that too much before this. There's some really good Jumbo vs Kobashi stuff in here where Kobashi just barely hangs on again and again. The finishing stretch is really exciting with everything broken down and Fuchi finally falling as they're able to hold off the others. It's a big pop for the young guys winning. The replay post match goes out of its way to show Jumbo smacking Misawa and Misawa smacking Jumbo and Jumbo rubbing his chin in pain from it, etc. This does kind of feel like the sweet spot between great action, internal storytelling, and the hot finishing stretches before things get too bloated in the years to come. Let's see how it all develops into June.

For one thing, Bigelow is coming!

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4 hours ago, Matt D said:

5/26/90: Jumbo/Kabuki/Fuchi vs Misawa/Taue/Kobashi: It's crazy to think how quickly the Misawa/Jumbo program heated up. This started with Fuchi taking everyone's stuff and especially getting tossed around by Taue but Jumbo's in quickly and crushes Kobashi with the knee and then runs over to nail Taue and especially Misawa. Two trends here are the older guys working on Kobashi and Fuchi losing the offense for his side. Once Kobashi's able to make it to Misawa (still relatively early here), he presses his advantage, but gets pulled at by Jumbo from the outside and he just crushes him. It takes a bit for Jumbo to recover but when he does, he rushes back in and goes after Misawa, who wasn't even legal at this point. Just a big crazy scene. This is all mid-match and Kabuki takes advantage of the chaos to work on Kobashi's arm. They control him with that until Fuchi switches over to the leg on the outside with a nasty shinbreaker onto a ringside table. Lots of Kobashi working from underneath, managing to get some hope or even the tag (usually after Taue or Misawa intervene) only to come back in and get swept back under because of the fact he's so damaged. Taue hits Fuchi with the atomic drop/belly to back combo at one point. That's worth noting since I think he hadn't done that too much before this. There's some really good Jumbo vs Kobashi stuff in here where Kobashi just barely hangs on again and again. The finishing stretch is really exciting with everything broken down and Fuchi finally falling as they're able to hold off the others. It's a big pop for the young guys winning. The replay post match goes out of its way to show Jumbo smacking Misawa and Misawa smacking Jumbo and Jumbo rubbing his chin in pain from it, etc. This does kind of feel like the sweet spot between great action, internal storytelling, and the hot finishing stretches before things get too bloated in the years to come. Let's see how it all develops into June.

For one thing, Bigelow is coming!

No promises I can do this a lot going forward, but I’ll try and follow along with at least some of these matches. We’re getting into one of my favorite time periods so it’ll be a ball to attempt to contribute. I am back into an old job so I’m doing less manual labor and I’ve been much less tired this week. Also, the film festival I run (Octopus Marquee , look me up on instagram if you like abstract cinema) is in-between editing I need to do. So it’ll be a treat to do some of these All Japan trios! Hope you don’t mind, Matt.

 

——

Yesterday, we had a bday party for my son. Officially, lil Octopus will be turning the bing ONE tomorrow but the weekend is usually the best time to throw down some Caprice Suns and enjoy a slice of Little Caesars Pizza or two (friends, pizza men, lend me your taste buds!). At the casual get together (Baby Shark themed, of course) my wife’s brother and I were talking about the brilliance of branding of the Wu-Tang Clan. I think it started about the show of their origins and developed into this. Establishing character, but firstly recognizing the attempt at branding. Each MC not only had a rap name but also a side name. GZA was the Genius, Ghost Face was Tony Starks, Raekwon was the Chef, etc. All Japan and the hot kids rising did this but with colors! It is so cool to easily identify who is who (obviously we can see they are different) by their choice of trunks. Kobashi is Orange, Taue is Red, and Misawa is Green. Not only is Misawa wearing Green, but his is long boys, not just trunks. Visually, they are all different in both the ring but in the landscape of the universe. We will see Misawa as the pants leader, lack of visible shins, ready to lead this group of rag tag bare knees to victory against these pure black-trunked older curmudgeons. 

—-

The match starts to establish the roles and styles of the young studs. Fuchi and Taue begin. Taue takes control with shoulder tackles and a scoop slam. Even when Fuchi whips him against the ropes, Taue over powers. Akira tags in Kenta. Kobashi maintains control by a drop kick of the top rope and arm drags. He does not have Taue’s strength but he has fire and spunk! His fire gets the best of him and Fuchi can ground him. Leading to a Jumbo tag in. Young itty bitty Kobashi steps back to square off against mammoth Tsuruta. He may not fear, but he acknowledges his supremacy. The camera brilliantly cuts to the pantsed leader who is watching from the side. Awaiting the clash that will soon happen. KOBASHI SLAPS THE SHIT OUT OF JUMBO’S CHEST. Take that you old bully. Drop kick too, ya dusty old sit-down lawnmower. Not enough to keep down King Crabby. Jumbo big knees little Kobashi and then clobbers down the youngins on the apron. Green Pants runs in saying “don’t do that” but the ref stops a fight. 

We now have each of the good guys established. Green Pants is the leader and will stand up for himself and his team. Red Trunks is the strong one who can gain control, and Orange Trunks has fire and with bravery will throw himself at a challenger despite his potential short comings.

Misawa gets tagged in and the crowd gives of an audible “ohhhh” in excitement as Misawa and Jumbo circle. Kabuki stands on the apron with face paint being himself. Mitsuhara and Tsuruta lock up and I’ll be dipped, Misawa gains control with kicks and knees. Misawa is letting that big fella have it. No wonder he wears pants! Jumbo makes us question the validity of basing power structures on the length of leg based clothing when he powers out and lariats the pants off him! Kabuki tags in and gets to show the world that the true power comes in face paint! Leap frogged a couple of times by Misawa and drop kicked. Pants beats face paint. Get him out the ring. Do some fun taunts and prove your Hogan-esque charisma is enough to lead this company into its head dropping future! Body slam him too, Red Trunks! Uh oh, Kabuki must have time traveled to Reseda. Super Kick Party! Face Paint beats trunks, I guess. 

Fuchi comes in and keeps Taue grounded. It’s interesting to see his offense is so great at maintaining Akira in a grounded position so he can continually punch him. Anytime Taue attempts to stand, Fuchi grounds. One misstep and Tall Red can switch the punching around. Misawa comes in to establish himself as the top athlete. And my favorite storytelling technique in wrestling: Parallel Moments. Misawa elbows Jumbo off the apron. Brilliant. Jumbo stays knocked out on the outside for a bit. 

All this is within the first 10 minutes of the match. If you are a viewer and you see these performers for the first time, you can follow along who they are as characters and how their personal rhythms operate both as opponents and as pieces within the story being told. Big grizzled veteran willing to chop anyone down trying to climb his mountain, the man who can attack out of nowhere, and the mean spirited technician vs the big young powerhouse, the young firecracker, and the superior athlete who will climb the mountain top. 

During the match, as Kabuki is giving Kobashi sharp punches to the stomach, jumbo wakes up. Tags in and charges Misawa. The match is continuing but pandemonium breaks throughout. Jumbo now hates Misawa as they roll around punching each other. Break it up ref! Basically the match stops to break these two hooligans up. C’mon guys, we’re trying to fight. Misawa chants erupt as they’re mean mugging each other across the ring. Whew, glad that’s over with so we can start wrestling again. JUMBO RUNS ACROSS FOR MORE FIGHTING. Dang it. Cut it out, guys. Even though it is a wrestling match, the moment successfully feels like a fight breaking out mid basketball game. We as fans were not supposed to see such an event happen in front of us. These guys really hate each other. Kabuki gets Kobashi in an arm bar and the scheduled match continues. Why not get the grounder in. Fuchi comes in for an arm bar! Neat. Take turns beating up Orangey. He’ll have brief come back attempts but a Kabuki Jackson kick will keep that soon to be greatest chopper down.

Side note: Kabuki’s snap based offense is cool. Each punch and grapple feels like his whole body jolts into it. In a match where there is much more precision, he is an interesting outliner and I appreciate him for it.

Misawa saves Kobashi from a Jumbo beat down. Square off. It’s interesting because Misawa still appears slightly dazed from their last roll around but he’s still standing tall. Speaking of tall, Taue tags in and takes it to the tall Tsuruta. After a lariat he tags in cutie Kobashi. Back drop, baby. Not enough to keep Jumbo down though. Outside shenanigans, yada yada yada. Let’s take turns kicking Kenta’s knee. Taue comes in, he’s doin sumo stuff. Neat. Yada yada yada. Kobashi gets beaten up. Yada yada yada. Misawa takes down Jumbo. Yada yada yada. Kobashi beaten up again. Yada yada yada. KOBASHI KICKS OUT OF A LARIAT. Boy, that kid has a lot of spirit. 

Ending sequence is very exciting. Modern even. Lots of running in to throw each other out. Big moves and kick outs. Broken up pins. As the calamity clears, Misawa wins with a Tiger Suplex on Fuchi. Jumbo is pissed as the crowd chants “MISAWA MISAWA MISAWA!”

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Great to have anyone on this journey as much or as little as they can be. I posted that last HH because I didn't see it online. I'll try to do quick searches and if something's not online (For AJPW at least), I'll link to it as I go, even if maybe a little bit later. And I'm doing these quickly, so I can't put that much depth into things always so glad to have a bit more care from another angle.

6/1/90: MVC vs Bam Bam Bulldogs (Davey Boy Smith/Bam Bam Bigelow: This was Bammer's debut and the crowd was excited for him. Lots of Bigelow chants. I think Davey was a bad influence here as he was sort of playing working from underneath babyface and didn't feel fully unleash. Plus a cut (after some delayed gratification of it) meant we didn't see the first real Battle of the Bam Bams exchange. So what was awesome here? The opening couple of minutes. Davey Boy crashed into Gordy and Gordy went OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (really for that long) as he shrugged him back. So Davey just hoisted him in the air for a military press. Then he did it to Doc. Then doc did it to Davey with a bunch of presses. Then he did it to Gordy and dropped Gordy right on Davey. Great stuff, folks. The rest of the match didn't really live up to that. Bam Bam won the first strike exchange against Doc by going to the headbutts but then missed a corner charge and ate a belly to back from Doc and just never looked all that foreboding here. He had to fight from underneath on a chinlock for instance, and didn't really manage it along with the crowd's chants, which is a cardinal wrestling sin. Reward them, even if you're ultimately going to get cut off. Finishing stretch had Davey grabbing the rope to break up the first Oklahoma Slam attempt and Bammer breaking up pin attempts after bombs but they had Davey's number in the end and eventually, after a nearfall off a roll up, he ate one too many power bombs as Bam Bam and Doc were fighting to the back. Not the world's best Bigelow performance here which is a shame as I was all ready for it.

6/1/90: Tiger Jeet Singh/Goro Tsurumi vs Abby/RANGER ROSS: Man, Ranger Ross is like Randy Savage without physical charisma. He went zooming over the top rope to hit a shot on the outside and did a springboard clothesline and rapid fire shouts off the top onto Tiger Jeet Singh as Abby held him towards the end. Super cool stuff, with that last bit getting the crowd behind Singh (though no goofy Singh chants for everything that happened). Tsurumi also hit him with this amazingly cool suplex down onto his knee face first thing. The match started with Abby vs Singh brawling on the floor (occasional sword shots) and it sort of ended with it before it settled down to Goro vs Abby, a bit of hope with a Singh chairshot from the outside only for the Abby cut off shot and the elbow. As Abby partners go, Ranger Ross was not at all a bad one.

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Bonus match: 3/5/69 Giant Baba vs The Destroyer: I'm a little under the weather (just a cold) so no running. This is 50 mins or so, 2/3 falls. Destroyer starts the match by saying that he's going to win with the figure four. He spends the whole match searching for it. He controls with holds for the first ten or so, switching it up, going for pins, trying to cheat liberally. Baba escapes using his strength but he can't get an advantage. When he gets it, however, he holds it for the next ten minutes or so, starting with a slick rolling leg pick. In general, he's not as smooth as Destroyer move for move but he just needs one to really press his strength advantage. Destroyer keeps things entertaining. He goes for the figure four early on a counter here but can't get it. That brings us to a bunch of headscissors, where he'll use hook or crook to escape, but then elaborately end up back in (eye poke, headlock, run up the ropes for headscissors takeover, right back in). At the 20 minute mark they finally speed things up with a rope running interlude where Destroyer dodges and points to his head. It's a great bit of dissonance, the idea he's the intelligent masked gentleman with teeth like that and the nose bulging out of the mask. Baba spends a few subsequent minutes slowing things down by escaping Destroyer's own headscissors attempt and just tearing Destroyer in half with a proto STF and half crab.

This sort of brings us to the second half of the match where Destroyer starts leaning into the imaginary hidden object, going after the eyes with it. Baba tries to get revenge by going after eyes himself, which is another theme here, Destroyer drawing Baba into making emotional mistakes. Here it lets him take back over, but not for long as he ends up in bodyscissors. Baba has a moment here where he seems a little unsure how to put the Destroyer away. This whole bit is about Destroyer casually outthinking him and being willing to adapt and not focus entirely on the leg. He does start to work on it but Baba comes back and works on Destroyer's leg (emotionally), only for Destroyer to get him in a great bicep slicer. The other side of things is that Baba is just too big and too strong and too valiant and he escapes so as to beat Destroyer around the ring again. Big stooging here with a lot of Baba pulling at Destroyer's masking and ending with one of my favorite French holds, the hammering leg nelson. Baba has a lot of holds where the fans get to chant along as he grinds over and over. This is one.

They're at around the 45 minute mark here and it's time to lean into the heat (post heavy stooging). Destroyer loads the mask and nails Baba on the outside causing him to blade. Baba fires back bloody and things are pretty exciting from here on in. Destroyer takes all of Baba's stuff, but gets another figure four attempt (#3 or 4) gets pushed off, tries a jacknife, but gets rolled over for a 3 that ends the first fall. They roll into the second fall with more of the same, Destroyer trying to work the leg, missing stuff, Baba hitting and missing dropkicks, both guys hitting and missing kneedrops, some nearfalls where Destroyer just falls right by the ropes, and more loaded mask, all leading to the figure four and the bell going off right when he locks it in.

I get that they wanted to have Baba win but still protect the Destroyer by having his hold on as the bell rang, but it did mess with the drama a bit relative to this being either 0 falls each or 1-1 when the bell rang. This is probably the best choice for what they were trying to do but it didn't make for the absolute best match. It was excellent all around however.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm still not 100% but I was well enough to do half a run and one match, right? 

6/1/90: Jumbo/Kabuki vs Misawa/Kobashi: Again, it's nice to see Kabuki here while we've got him. Hierarchy had Kobashi get tromped by Jumbo (while getting some ineffectual shots in), able to fire back against Kabuki, had Misawa meeting Jumbo head on and able to dominate Kabuki. Jumbo and Kobashi working together did well against Jumbo. That was the start of the match. Jumbo controlled Kobashi early. Kobashi fired back against Kabuki. Misawa dominated Kabuki (and his stuff looked pretty crisp). Jumbo ate a Misawa flying clothesline and we got to see something new out of him. He did develop against Tenryu for a couple of years, falling deeper into that pit, becoming more and more the monster and realizing it less and less. But this was a moment of arms out exasperation, bordering on shock. Suddenly Jumbo was in a new world against a different challenge and he got to really stretch for the first time in quite a while and it was immediately refreshing. That doesn't mean that he didn't kick Kobashi right in the face any time they were in the ring together, granted. Jumbo and Kobashi had some control on Kabuki and as I said, were able to double team Jumbo with a double belly to back or setting him up for Kobashi to come off the top. There was a pretty hot finish where Jumbo kept putting Kobashi down, but Misawa made the save, including after the back drop driver. Of course, even after eating another flying clothesline (Misawa did one too many of them maybe), Jumbo just got up and kicked Kobashi in the face again and hit another one as Kabuki held Misawa's leg. Still, this was the sort of upstart challenge that would have been unthinkable two months earlier. Pressure's building.

Edited by Matt D
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Fighting my way back here.

6/1/90: Kawada vs Hansen: Interesting short matchup. Kawada charged in immediately and Hansen sidestepped (he's quite good at that). Kawada would keep trying to get him in the corner for hard shots, but Hansen would sneak in a perfectly time little toekick or a headbutt. Eventually, Kawada really fired back but missed a spin kick and went sailing out (see). From there Hansen tossed him over the rail and smacked him with a chair and it was sort of academic after that. Kawada floated over on a suplex into the ring and tried for a German but that wasn't happening with these two in June 90. There was a nice little finishing beat where Kawada ducked the first lariat but Hansen recoiled off a shot to hit the second. Good fight from Kawada but he had little chance.

6/2/90: Misawa/Kobashi vs Hansen/Bigelow: This sounds cool on paper and it was but it was very hard to see on the HH, at least as i was watching it. This had the all time great spot of Bigelow having someone up in a suplex and walking over to Hansen in the corner so Hansen could push them both over. Such a cool moment. I think I saw this once previously and tried to gif it. I'll try to find that in a bit. Misawa and Kobashi could take over when they worked together but Bigelow and Hansen just kind of kept clubbering back. There was a fun bit at the end with Kobashi and Hansen, with another ducked Lariat and another rebound second Lariat. He was just in that mood that week. I get the sense that Kawada will keep firing back and Kobashi will create a key moment and capitalize on it for the biggest effect.

Found the gif:

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6/5/90: Misawa/Kawada vs Fuyuki/Kabuki: Footloose keeps on exploding. This was JIP and it starts with Kabuki nailing Kawada as he was trying to fly out after Fuyuki. They dismantled him on the outside and controlled for a while after that, really leaning on him. He was able to fire back against Kabuki but Kabuki really made him work at it, launching all sorts of nasty uppercuts. The hot tag wasn't necessarily hot but Misawa did come in strong. There was a nice nearfall after the suplex/frog splash combo, and at this point AJPW will never end a tag without at least one exciting near-fall that's broken up from the outside. Years later it'll become too much but for now they have it pretty well balanced depending on the magnitude of the match. Finish was Misawa cutting off Fuyuki a couple of times and kind of awkwardly getting the Tiger Driver. It was a good idea, catching his arm off the ropes and sneaking him into position but it was a little clunky in practice. This was pretty good but it would have been better in full, probably.

Edited by Matt D
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6/5/90: Kenta Kobashi vs Bam Bam Bigelow: Bigelow, during this run and from what I've seen in 88, for instance, really works "American" heel. That's going to be a problem against guys like Doc and Gordy. It's probably a problem in tags in general. In singles, it'd probably be a problem against guys like Jumbo. It'd probably even be a problem against Kawada. Against Kobashi though...? You know what? It kind of worked. There was a comeback towards the end here where Kobashi fires up out of a chinlock with elbows! Like he was Tommy Rich or something. I'm not sure how many other guys in 1990 AJPW would do that the way that they were supposed to. He did though. I mean Bigelow crushed him in the corner a moment later, but that's how cutoffs work. Bigelow was super eager to put Kobashi over in the end too as everything built to him slamming Bigelow and then missing the moonsault so he could get crushed. Bigelow was overeager to jump up and get slammed and went up too early and it looked a little silly. There's another world where Bigelow doesn't get fired for counting money in front of Baba or whatever and they have six more encounters before Kobashi finally wins. It's a weird world but one we missed out on.

6/5/90: Steve Williams vs Stan Hansen: Hell of a thing, this one. Doc takes it to Hansen like no one else and actually manhandles him for the brunt of this. Hansen gets his pokey little cutoff shots in and takes back over now and again but I wouldn't call it 50/50. Hansen might stop himself from getting powerbombed on the floor after the mat was pushed back but he's also going to crash hard in the corner so he can't keep the momentum. Eventually he gets opened up and frankly, I'm surprised the crowd wasn't more shocked, because this felt shocking. Chronologically, in this project, I've never seen Hansen treated like this in a situation that mattered. Doc was just an absolute beast here, which isn't to say Hansen wasn't, but one of these guys was in control for more than the other and one was bleeding and the other wasn't. Finishing stretch was great with Hansen wiping out on a desperate missed lariat attempt and then Doc going for the Stampede and almost getting it but Hansen dropping down and hitting the lariat out of nowhere instead. Great hossfight.

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6/5/90: Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs Terry Gordy: They cut very early on to Misawa watching on from the far wall where he's leaning, and even get a comment from him. Jumbo's able to get the jumping knee early, driving Gordy to the outside, but that followed an attempt to lock in a headlock. The first half of this is really Jumbo trying to wrestle and Gordy just powering forth but being unable to press due to Jumbo's skill advantage, so neither can get an edge on the other. They throw some pretty mean clotheslines in the process. It opens up mid way with Jumbo hitting bomb after bomb (belly to back, thesz press, power bomb, pile driver) but being unable to put Gordy away and then Gordy turning it around with a string of his own bombs. Finally, Jumbo goes back to the well for a second Thesz Press and gets clotheslined on the top rope as Gordy shifts weight. He still gets a hope body press after that, but it's the beginning of the end nonetheless, and Gordy is to run up with the Badstreet DDT and score the win and the belt in a shocker. I think it probably needed another five minutes to bridge the two portions of the match but it was certainly exciting. Post-match Doc picks him up to celebrate which is a fun image.

6/8/90: Terry Gordy (c) vs Stan Hansen: Hossfight, not long but they hit hard. Maybe a little clipped? Gordy immediately misses a corner charge and eats a Hansen lariat, so early that it's shocking. He rolls to the outside though and after getting pounded a bit, catches Hansen back inside with the DDT off the ropes. He can't win with it but he does take over beating up Hansen inside and outside of the ring. He has a hard time hitting really big moves like power bombs on him though as Hansen just drives his whole body down to jam it. Hansen gets a bit of hope by ducking a corner charging and moving alarmingly fast for a roll up. Ultimately, he ducks a Gordy clothesline and hits the lariat for another shocking win. Post match, MVC destroy him so he can't celebrate. 

6/8/89: Bam Bam Bigelow vs Toshiaki Kawada: Much like I thought, similar to the Kobashi match but less about building to a big moment and firing up and more about Kawada absorbing and absorbing and absorbing. Looking tough and getting his opening for kicks or whatever else before he gets squashed. I'd be less interested in a 10 match series over years with these two. 

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6/8/89: Jumbo vs Misawa: Whew. What to do with this? The problem with this project is that while I can burst through most things I encounter, sometimes you get a match like this, which is of the canon and classic and epic and it's hard to sum it up based on me stumbling about at 6 mph. You could spend an hour breaking down different aspects of this on a video, if not longer, and I'm sure people have. At the heart of it, it was Misawa's speed and precision against Jumbo's strength, size, and towering presence. It was Misawa throwing himself at Jumbo, Jumbo paying for his attempts to manhandle him, Jumbo leveling up with knees off the top to compensate. It was the opening unveiling, with the shoulder block, the dodged knee, the big boot, and Jumbo going to the belly to back too early which allowed Misawa to turn over on top of him (setting the stage for the actual finish; there was a lot of that, between putting that move in everyone's mind and a lot of Misawa's attempts for a quick pin later on). Misawa followed it by knocking Jumbo out of the ring and throwing him off with the Tiger Feint; he'd have multiple dives in this (though ultimately paid on his frog splash attempt). While, I'd argue that Misawa's forearms were sharp and crisp and a little bit different than anything Jumbo had previously faced, and that for a lot of the first half, Misawa was able to meet Jumbo head on (Jumbo hit a butterfly suplex; Misawa came back with a gutwrench), things shifted when Jumbo caught Misawa off the ropes and hung him throat first onto the top rope. Remember, Jumbo'd just lost the belt a couple of days earlier very much due to the same notion, when Gordy had been able to redirect his throat onto the top rope after an errant Thesz press attempt. From there, Jumbo dominated for a bit: pile driver, Thesz press, mean knee drops, ultimately a power bomb. This is where he went up to the top for those driving knees. This is also where Misawa would get those nearfall hope spots. The finishing stretch was hot and unique, Misawa leaping back off a corner whip only to crash into Jumbo's forearm (big selling by Jumbo there), Jumbo missing the dropkick into the ropes and crotching himself (interestingly, he worked the next two moves without selling this but sold it big post-match as cover for the loss), and the actual finish with Jumbo trying to steal from his younger rival, turning the belly to back into a pin, only to have Misawa float over for it. For some reason the inside leg hook bugs me a bit as it doesn't seem enough to put Jumbo down in this moment, but that's a me thing. We knew it in the weeks prior, and I don't necessarily think he showed anything here he hadn't in a couple of the previous tags, but now it was unquestionable: Misawa had arrived. (Like I said, things slip out here; I didn't even mention the test of strength (Jumbo ultimately overpowering him through two rotations only to get kicked in the face), Misawa blocking the belly to back by pressing off the top or the slaps; how do you talk about this match and not mention the slaps? etc.)

I had seen this back in 2015 and boy do I understand it better in context.

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6/8/90: Steve Williams vs Kenta Kobashi: Hell of a match! They start face to face and quickly end up slapping each other. Doc takes Kobashi down and they start rolling about and move into amateur wrestling. Somehow Kobashi gets an advantage and locks in the rolling cradle! They do a bunch of "handfighting" for positioning and Doc locks the arms for a Gangrel suplex out of nowhere. They move into a greco roman knuckle lock test of strength and somehow Kobashi presses him back (What is Doc even doing?!) to get him in position for a big monkey flip. Kobashi tries again off of a reverse whip and Doc just straights up and Kobashi goes thud. Kobashi fires back, dropkicks Doc out, but misses a clothesline and goes sailing over the rail. Doc picks him up and rams him back first into the post. Uh oh. Then they do this awesome bit back in the ring where Doc bearhugs him, and Kobashi keeps firing back only for Doc to turn him for a belly to belly. They do this three times over the span of a minute or two and it's just great. Kobashi buys some space with some kicks but he's really selling the back here. He presses on and hits a dropkick in the corner and a belly to back and they're more or less into the stretch. Doc plows him over. Kobashi dodges a second one and hits a German. Doc runs in again but Kobashi gets a foot up, slams him, hits a clothesline, hits the Moonsault! For two. He can't lift Doc up to finish him off and Doc plows through him. Three big charges but, with a big pop, Kobashi kicks out at two. Doc's done with this foolishness though and picks him up for the Stampede. He hits it. Kobashi kicks out at two and the place EXPLODES. Doc heads up to the top for a flying shoulder tackle for the three. I get the sense when I watch him here that Kobashi, through will power and determination alone, somehow altered reality and he's hanging on to every moment of his time wrestling. Over the span of spring 1990, he starts to become something special before people's eyes.

Spoiler

 

6/30/90: Giant Baba/Richard Slinger vs Teranishi/Inoue: This was 18 minutes+. We get 17+ of it on a blurry VHS tape. Inoue looks good. The finish with Baba kicking people in the face and hitting the neckbreaker drop is fun. Slinger certainly has heart. I get the sense that maybe Mrs. Baba was interested in him and Baba wanted a close up look at him, for about 14 minutes out of an 18 minute match in the ring. He was on top for a bit of it and in holds for a lot of it and hit a spinkick or two but it was hard to get a sense of anything meaningful due to the far back vantage point and the blurry VQ. If you're following along, just watch the Doc/Kobashi match twice instead.

Edited by Matt D
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On 12/19/2022 at 7:27 PM, Matt D said:

6/8/90: Steve Williams vs Kenta Kobashi: Hell of a match! They start face to face and quickly end up slapping each other. Doc takes Kobashi down and they start rolling about and move into amateur wrestling. Somehow Kobashi gets an advantage and locks in the rolling cradle! They do a bunch of "handfighting" for positioning and Doc locks the arms for a Gangrel suplex out of nowhere. They move into a greco roman knuckle lock test of strength and somehow Kobashi presses him back (What is Doc even doing?!) to get him in position for a big monkey flip. Kobashi tries again off of a reverse whip and Doc just straights up and Kobashi goes thud. Kobashi fires back, dropkicks Doc out, but misses a clothesline and goes sailing over the rail. Doc picks him up and rams him back first into the post. Uh oh. Then they do this awesome bit back in the ring where Doc bearhugs him, and Kobashi keeps firing back only for Doc to turn him for a belly to belly. They do this three times over the span of a minute or two and it's just great. Kobashi buys some space with some kicks but he's really selling the back here. He presses on and hits a dropkick in the corner and a belly to back and they're more or less into the stretch. Doc plows him over. Kobashi dodges a second one and hits a German. Doc runs in again but Kobashi gets a foot up, slams him, hits a clothesline, hits the Moonsault! For two. He can't lift Doc up to finish him off and Doc plows through him. Three big charges but, with a big pop, Kobashi kicks out at two. Doc's done with this foolishness though and picks him up for the Stampede. He hits it. Kobashi kicks out at two and the place EXPLODES. Doc heads up to the top for a flying shoulder tackle for the three. I get the sense when I watch him here that Kobashi, through will power and determination alone, somehow altered reality and he's hanging on to every moment of his time wrestling. Over the span of spring 1990, he starts to become something special before people's eyes.

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This was incredible. Someone has to get on Twitter and send it to Lard Lad to say "YOU ARE KOBASHI NOW WATCH THIS MATCH, And LEARN". It might be a Holy Trinity of Kobashi matches after the Hansen match and the wild Akiyama match in NOAH from I believe 2000 where old, broken down Kobashi just says "fuck you I will win". 

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6/30/90: Jumbo/Kabuki/Fuchi vs Misawa/Taue/Kikuchi: Another one with tough video quality but at least everyone's got tights that are different, right? Again, these 30 minute six mans have a lot of stuff happen and it's hard to track all of it without notes and I'm definitely not taking notes.  Fuchi and Kikuchi were paired up early. I think Fuchi was the Jr. Champ and Kikuchi was suddenly a challenger with the youth movement. Crowd was into him right from the get go. Taue gave up too much to Kabuki early but then he fought back against Jumbo. They did a neat bit twice here, first against Jumbo and later Kabuki where Taue started the sumo hundred hand slap across the ring, got cut off mid ring, and then powered back and finished it. Nice little bit. A huge chunk of this was Jumbo's side beating on Kikuchi. A serious beating. He'd have comeback attempts, primarily roll ups, but some strikes against Kabuki but then he'd get cut off hard. Crowd was super behind Kikuchi here. I think he had a good natural sense of drawing sympathy and milking moments. Eventually he did get one last roll up and turned it into a hot tag to Misawa. Taue got some shine here against Jumbo and they had a good bit where the youth movement was constant motion with one big shot after the next. Also, a triple dropkick on Jumbo! Misawa got a nearfall with the Tiger Suplex on Fuchi but it got broken up at the last second. Then Kikuchi ALMOST won with a German but he got crushed in the end and Jumbo's side was victorious. Good step forward for Kikuchi here. And again, it's nice to see some stuff that wouldn't last like Taue vs Kabuki.

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6/30/90: Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada: The plague ships passed in the night and since I'm not showing symptoms yet and my wife was upstairs with those who were, I ran. This went 20+ and is an interesting look at these guys at this hinge point in time. I'm not quite sure why they were wrestling, but it was pretty good. They went all out early and some of the dodges seemed a little cooperative but nothing else in the match did. Lots of the key moments here were due to spin kicks or missed or caught spin kicks so it was a bit of a theme. The move of the youth. The zeitgeist. Early on, Kobashi outfinessed Kawada, including a perfect dodge and a big dive off the top, but back in the ring, he tried to get mean and Kawada out meaned him. He was mean in general. The match started with a shoulder block and Kawada immediately kicked him right in the back. Interesting, Kobashi did a few Kawada kicks early, even before Kawada did, which is really just a sign that these were used by all sorts before they became his trademark (again, I first saw them with Tenryu). If I had to break this down, Kobashi had more holds (cloverleaf, legbar, half crab, stretch muffler) but Kawada had more bombs, but these guys' attributes were pretty close. I make that sound more video gamey than it should. It's interesting that in the Doc match, Kobashi used the rolling cradle early, whereas here, it came pretty late, but still felt organic. Kawada got his own crucifix type pinfall attempt too. Big dives later on too, with a tope con hilo (I think that's what that was) by Kawada and Kobashi have to really restrain his airtime on his plancha as the rail was so close. What's kind of interesting is that neither of these guys had what I'd say were clear finishers that they win with often because there aren't squashes and the tag matches get broken up so much and a lot of the time it's the higher guys on the card who won when they were tagging. So Kobashi has the over the shoulder bomb and the moonsault, but he rarely wins with the moonsault (or even hits the over the shoulder bomb, but he did here for two; the moonsault got jammed by knees to set up the finishing stretch). Kawada, I guess had a tiger suplex? a Dragon suplex? A German? A spinkick? A bomb? I don't know. I'm sure someone know but I haven't gotten the sense of it from watching in 89 and 90. This ended with Kawada going for a full nelson (teasing the dragon suplex) only to get reversed around and them trading some pin attempts before Kawada ended up on top. I think this needed just a bit more of a thorughline story I could pull together but they also didn't just do stuff without any sense for twenty minutes either. Good action certainly.

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I watched Kobashi/Williams. It was weird seeing a young Kobashi as the Kobashi I've been watching lately is from when he can barely walk and works epic main events based on charisma and strained facial expressions. It was clear that he didn't come from a wrestling background when they tried to do that amateur stuff at the beginning. The match followed a fairly typical AJPW pattern. Kobashi improved by leaps and bounds during the early 90s, and I'd have to say he wasn't that great in singles in 1990 (six-mans is another story), but interestingly, Doc also improved as a singles worker due to All Japan. His work here in '90 was a far cry from how good he'd become in '93-94. That said, they worked a decent match. Doc had to dig deep to put Kobashi away, Kobashi put up the kind of fight that Japanese fans like to see, and he grew a bit more as a wrestler and an athlete. 

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The Hansen/Williams hoss fight was a lot of fun. Has anyone shown this to JR? He might crack a smile for the first time in 20 years. Is this the best Steve Williams singles match up until this point? It's gotta be close. Loved Williams as the aggressor, especially that part where Hansen is prone on the mat and Williams is screaming, "Come on!" at him. When Stan was willing to sell for a guy, he was one of the best sellers of all-time. He'd probably tell you he was just copying Terry Funk, but the way he stumbled and tripped over every time he tried to escape or catch a breather was sublime. He was as reckless with his own body as he was with his lariats. That bump through the ropes after he missed the lariat was something else. And the finish... Jesus, he took off Williams' head. Has there ever been a better finish than the Western lariat?  

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7/7/90: Jumbo/Yatsu vs Misawa/Kawada: I was positive on my PCR on Tuesday but I'm symptom free so I ran. This is it for Yatsu, our one big Olympics vs Misawa+X tag. It'll be interesting seeing Jumbo moving forward as most of his usual partners: Yatsu, Kabuki, Takano, Nakano, Tiger Mask, will all be either gone or on the other side. He teamed with Fuchi in 89 and 90 a bit but not a ton due to the wealth of options, really, and due to Fuchi being in the Baba tags a lot. Yatsu was a special talent and fit so well in this period of AJPW. He could scrap. He could wrestle. He could wear the headguard and just headbutt people with an absolute ton of heart. He could dominate with the big power moves (bulldog, power slam). He was the only guy with a real submission finisher and not just a crab or a Scorpion deathlock. And he got it. There's a moment here early where he's faced off with Kawada and it's just not what the fans want to see. They're itching to see Misawa vs Jumbo again right? So he disengages, claps to get the crowd going, and then presses Kawada right into the ropes, knees him a couple of times, and slaps him in the face. Kawada responds by just unloading on him and driving him out of the ring. The crowd goes nuts and chants for Kawada. He understood the possibilities of that moment. Almost immediately thereafter Jumbo hits the jumping knee on Kawada and starts crushing him (he also runs across the ring and takes out Misawa on the apron for good measure), until Kawada can hit a cross body off the ropes and they get the first taste of Jumbo vs Misawa in the match. Misawa dodges the knee and crushes Jumbo with a jumping clothesline. Great stuff. Once Kawada's back in, the Olympics take over on him (Hierarchy!) but he comes back with a clothesline that makes Jumbo mist spit everywhere. Great visual. There's actually a chunk of work on Misawa's leg here, as Yatsu starts on it with his leglock. When he tries to kick at it, though, Misawa just outkicks him. The kids are living by kicks and spinkicks really, and it works to a degree but it eventually lets Yatsu catch one and tag in Jumbo to switch advantages. Finishing stretch is fun, with Misawa busy clocking Yatsu on the floor with a chair as Kawada turns around one belly to back on Jumbo (a move that is all the more important after its use in the Jumbo vs Misawa singles match), but Jumbo catches him going up to the top and hits a rare belly to back off the top (I think the indication was that Kawada was going for a moonsault as he had hit a press when Misawa helped hold the opponent earlier). Fare thee well, Yatsu, I'll see you back in SWS in a year or so.

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