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Matt Watches 1989 AJPW/1986 NJPW on a Treadmill


Matt D

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Caught up and watching 89 in earnest.

All 5/12/89:

Mitsuo Momota vs Johnny Smith: Back half of this was basically what you wanted, Momota getting crushed by Smith's power stuff and having to mount comebacks as the crowd got behind him. First half was matwork which Momota could do fine but without the gusto of Fuchi. It reminds me a little of Virus' 2010s title run. So long as he had that title, we had multiple big singles matches with him against a variety of opponents. Once he lost it, that ended. Momota's fine, but he's not Fuchi.

Footloose vs Kabuki/Yatsu: This one's a bit of a blur. Couple of thoughts:

  1. I really don't like the front dropkick off the top in these tag matches. It does more pushing of a wrestler than seeming like a painful blow and a lot of times that leads to a big tag. It sort of takes me out of things relatively. Maybe there's a way to do it right in the execution or the bumping but it's not happening in 80s AJPW.
  2. Kabuki gave me exactly what I wanted after the hot tag. Palm strikes to one guy in the corner and then a back kick as the other came in. Exactly what you want out of him.
  3. Most of this was Yatsu getting out-teamed by the more regular partners, but the finish was a crushing German. As much as I don't like the top rope front dropkicks in 88-89 AJPW, I really like the German where the guy taking it tries to run forward first but gets pulled back into it.

Jumbo/Nakano vs Spivey/Slater: Slater did nothing here to make me think he wasn't capable of being a top notch foreigner. He took a secondary role because Spivey's big and the match called for it but it seemed like a conscious effort to dial it back as much as anything else. Nakano brings some interesting flourishes of offense but they don't all look as steady and effective as the main guys. In a world with no more Brody, they had good reason to build Spivey up and they did it pretty well. I'd go for a Spivey vs Jumbo match for instance.

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On 11/7/2020 at 7:59 PM, Jiji said:

I know Matt is covering '89 All Japan but I don't think he's gotten to this one yet. '88-'89 is a bit of a dark spot for me with AJPW. I've seen some of the big matches from those two years but I hadn't seen this:

https://www.facebook.com/AJPWClassics/videos/655283301993733/

(not sure why it isn't embedding)

But the Bulldogs vs. Furnas & Kroffat from May of '89. The match starts with really tight psychology, especially with Davey and Kroffat trying to athletically outdo one another, but the thing that really stands out with this match for me is how much they maintain the illusion of a physical competition. Most everything is a struggle but it's not super sloppy barring one or two spots. It looks legitimate. It's an awesome blend of old school fightin' and sound storytelling. The latter kind of drifts in the end a bit but I fucking loved this match. I wish current day wrestlers would incorporate more anger and "realism" (I know, Irish whips and all that) into their matches instead of everything being so quick and clean all of the time (I think that shit would pop even more if done only occasionally like an Omega snap dragon suplex). 

edit: I'm probably going to rewatch this later as I was completely exhausted and fading in the second half but what a fun match. Not quite the heights of the '92 Kobashi/Kikuchi match but if this is Furnas and Kroffat's second best match, it's a great one to have in that slot.

This actually couldn't have worked out better. This is 5-12-89 which is exactly where I was. I'm breaking my no bulldogs rule for it, and I am glad I did.

What's interesting about this is that it almost feels like a lucha tag, with pairings. The early going with Furnas and Davey Boy one-upping one another with full nelsons, a test of strength, shoulder blocks, etc., is the sort of thing which couldn't be done today because even if it WAS done, it'd be done in sort of a winking, ironic, "oh, we see what they're doing!" sort of way. The struggle here was amazing, and Davey had this babyfaced natural charisma, like he was a big kid, that was so engaging. Dynamite wasn't a massive hindrance to the match, but he also wasn't in there long. It's painful just to look at the guy here since he seems withered and really just a shell of what he was. He'd come in, hit one big spot or take one big bump and immediately tag out. It's frustrating because it goes away from what made him so special nine years prior, the aggression and attitude and dickishness. It's the sort of thing that works in Calgary and Portland and as a junior bully in 1980 NJPW but less so against bigger opponents which is why his 88 is so frustrating. Kroffat was very good as glue here, but he's still not the wrestler he'd be a year later when he's basically the only guy in the whole promotion wrestling as a heel.

@JijiWhat I'd say is that this is simply the style at the time for AJPW, though things were more demarcated here. You don't get that same sort of opening Davey Boy vs Furnas exchange in other matches. In what I've been seeing in 87-88, there would be matches that build to a big moment between Jumbo and Tenryu though, that sort of thing. You get a lot of that aggressive competitiveness without it necessarily going as over the top as it would just a few years later. You should check out more. If you want a link to anything I covered and can't find it, let me know.

I also did:

5/13/89 Furnas/Kroffat vs Takano/Takagi which was about 5 minutes JIP and is mainly notable because it was the best Takagi looked so far. He's the very bottom of the AJPW totem pole that makes regular TV but he seemed absolutely credible here which says a lot about the talent pool top to bottom.

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I've been keeping it up. Just behind in writing it up. Plus I wasted time and watched an old Survivor Series match (95 Royals vs Dark Side) the other night. You guys will be glad to know I'm down over 25 pounds now and actually managed 4.7 MPH for 29 minutes at 3.5 altitude the other night without dropping my speed at any point which is way better than before.

5/13/89: Spivey/Slater vs Jumbo/Yatsu: I know he hangs around the promotion off and on for the next few years, but this has to be the most special Spivey every was in his career. It's a big, big deal to this crowd when Spivey and Jumbo face off and Jumbo knows it and milks it as much as I've ever seen him milk anything. He raises his hand and shouts and just hovers looking out to the crowd. Slater, here, plays his role well and his role is to take a bit, lose a little, and to keep up the illegal advantage (which feels illegal here as opposed to other matches where both guys break things up plenty). There almost feels like there's more momentum behind a Jumbo vs Spivey singles match than a Jumbo vs Tenryu one at this point.

5/13/89: Footloose vs Davey Boy/Johnny Smith: My big takeaway here is just how big a star Davey Boy would have been in AJPW if he didn't go off to WWF in 1990. The biggest issue with him was that maybe he needed another move or two to hang with the guys he was wrestling, but he did have the fisherman's suplex here too, though I'm not sure that visually played to his strengths. (Johnny) Smith had a lot of stuff to make up for it, including a Vader Bomb where he put his feet on the top which I'm not sure I've ever seen. Finish was a banana peel but it protected DBS fine.

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5/20/89: Footloose vs Jumbo/Yatsu: I get that it was their theme and gimmick and everything and that's great for 1987 or what have you but can you imagine being in May of 1989 and coming out to the ring to face grumpy Jumbo and Yatsu to Footloose? This was big boot Jumbo which is probably the best jumbo. Footloose still held their own primarily because of superior teamwork and liberal chairshots on the floor. We get this full thing and I'm frustrated we get this one and not the full version of the absolute beating from a month or two before. One bit of miscommunication at the end opens them up for a Jumbo back drop driver though. One mistake is all it takes.

5/27/89: Tenryu vs Spivey: This was to put some shine on Tenryu going into June while making sure people knew Spivey would be a credible opponent. As such, he took most of this short one and Tenryu had a banana peel roll up in the end. Not much more to say than that. I tend to like Tenryu more than Jumbo (though 89 Jumbo is pretty up there) but I would have rather seen Jumbo vs Spivey.

Bonus match: 86' Baba/Tenryu vs Windham/Rotunda: Had a few minutes to kill here and tossed Tenryu 86 into the youtube machine. Windham was such a hoss at this point. He gets tossed into the corner and dropkicks out of it and it doesn't sound like much but it looks like gold and once you see it, you realize you've never seen anyone else do it. Baba chopping Rotunda and his mustache in the skull is great pro wrestling. That said, is this not the coolest thing IRS ever did in the ring?

WL3OMX.gif

Bonus match: 3/23/02 Rotunda vs Tenryu: I don't know. It came up. Anyway, this was a fine little sprint where Rotunda really took it to Tenryu but the finish was super anticlimactic. Just a couple of minutes. Mike was in full Syracuse gear which was weird for a guy in his mid-40s.

Bonus match: Beats me? Tenryu vs Kamala: Some big bumps by Kamala at the end here, both through the ropes and over the rail. That's what stood out the most. Past that, it was mostly by the numbers (lots of choking/nerve stuff with Tenryu fighting up, Tenryu trying and failing to slam to lead to a cut off, Kamala cutting off the back brain kick by just falling on Tenryu, a missed splash from the top, the countout win, etc.), but those are the numbers because they work.

Edited by Matt D
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/16/2020 at 6:29 AM, El Gran Gordi said:

Seriously. If they really needed to pick a Kenny Loggins song with a movie tie-in, "Danger Zone" was right there.

Fuchi had called dibs on that one years before, sadly. Also, Tom Magee had used it on at least the 1988.03.27 Budokan show, so it still had that stink on it. (Now I'm just imagining somebody in All Japan trying to make "I'm Alright" work.)

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5 hours ago, KinchStalker said:

Greetings, by the way. I'm a recent PWO member who the OP pointed here, and I made an account to participate.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone Matt invites is more than welcome to the party! May I suggest that you have a look at Matt's SECRET SANTO thread? That could be a thing you'd enjoy participating in.

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Hey, yeah, welcome. I'm glad for anyone interested to follow along and chime in. The social aspect is what's keeping me going as much as anything else.

You guys will note it's been about a week and a half. I had a little setback with something which felt like sciatica on my left side. No idea what happened (probably me picking up things and/or small children). I'm still maybe a little concerned that I did something I shouldn't have but the pain has been receding steadily over the last few days and I pushed it today on the treadmill. I'm definitely down about 30 pounds here but also crashing into Thanksgiving, so I pushed it today. Kicked my butt but I really wanted to watch...

6/5/89: Jumbo vs Tenryu: The #1 match in the DVDVR Best of the 80s AJPW set. It feels like a long road for me to get to here, but it's really just been a couple of months. This match unmistakably sums up 1989 AJPW and its style: hard-hitting, consequence-laden, familiar, deeply full of pride and emotion, with a crowd that understands the weight of what they're seeing and that may have a favorite (Jumbo) but relish in Tenryu's struggle and triumph as well. Jumbo, both technical Jumbo and grumpy Jumbo, are easier to understand than Tenryu. He's stoic and tough and hard hitting, but has that Funk-imparted vulnerability that drives meaning better than anything else in pro wrestling. Here, just through his resilience he pushes Jumbo into areas that he wouldn't normally go. It's different than someone like Hansen because it's not about surviving but instead about containing (early, with the cobra clutches) and escalating past the point of comfort (later, first with the big boots and then with the kneedrops off the ropes) because he's so hard to put away. I love that Jumbo's hurt leg is just a matter-of-fact and has been for basically a year, just a narrative tool like any other. Without going back and watching all of the lead up, it wouldn't have meant nearly as much to me. It's part of the match but not the key part, just like the strike trading or the complex spots and counters early, Hansen being the only focused-upon figure watching from the outside, and even the kneepad-dropping. None of it was necessarily the element that defined the match, but all of it came together to create something larger than the sum of its parts. The finish was definitive and meaningful, clean and clear, Tenryu finally surviving Jumbo, finally out-toughing him, finally owning the narrative so that Tenryu being Tenryu becomes more prevalent, more dominant, more focused, more defining to the All Japan ring than Jumbo being Jumbo. The finish wasn't flashy or complex. It was all about the struggle of Tenryu outpowering Jumbo to hit the second powerbomb. Nothing was given. Everything was a battle. Of course it was. The post-match is great, with Jumbo, frustrated, going for the handshake too soon, before the win really had a chance to settle in for Tenryu. You get the sense that if he could bring himself to wait, Tenryu would have embraced their old team and taken the hand, but if Jumbo had to wait, he wouldn't have extended the hand in the first place. It's interesting in that I don't actually think this was necessarily superior to a lot of the other matches I've been seeing, but it was in many ways the clearest representation of the style and all of the footage I've seen so far, and that's as good as reason as any to rank it #1.

I have watched a few more things, so more later.

 

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Matt, stay safe with that side of yours. Sciatic nerves can be really painful and annoying to deal with. 

Wonderful write up. This is one of my favorite matches so seeing your context project got here has been a real treat. 

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4 hours ago, Matt D said:

It's interesting in that I don't actually think this was necessarily superior to a lot of the other matches I've been seeing, but it was in many ways the clearest representation of the style and all of the footage I've seen so far, and that's as good as reason as any to rank it #1.

 

 

That is interesting! I'd imagine that part of the reason that this match in particular is held in such high regard is its importance in a kayfabe sense. Also that it was a climactic point in a long-term narrative that managed to live up to sky-high expectations. 

Very good analysis overall. I fell like I have a better sense of how this all fits into context after following along on this thread. 

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On 10/19/2020 at 8:11 PM, Matt D said:

Look, I've been sitting on this for days now, but Hara both looks and wrestles like a guy with a lot of gambling debt, ok? He just does.

I feel I should be the one to drop a couple Hara tidbits as I have, as of writing, decided to make a photo of Hara my avatar on this forum.* I already told this story on PWO, where people had been confused by Hara's involvement in the postmatch angle for Tenryu/Choshu from 6/21/85. But Hara had been sketchy long before the 1988 stuff. He'd been forwarded money to promote a show in Nagasaki, but he entrusted a "friend" with the money and the responsibility, and when said friend bounced, Hara vanished. The story goes that no tickets had been sold for the show, and they didn't even see any posters. He got a second chance in April, and eventually became a member of Kokusai Ketsumeigun (the ex-IWE faction). However, even before the debt collectors started coming to shows, Baba had apparently been writing out Hara's checks to his wife.


*It's from this glorious sleeve for a duet he recorded with Mieko Enomoto. Enomoto's story isn't related to wrestling at all, but it's too wild for me not to acknowledge, and it is the perfect backstory for one who would record a duet with a man like Ashura Hara. Her initial fame in the early 80s stemmed from testifying against her husband, the secretary under prime minister Tanaka, who'd accepted bribes from the Lockheed Corporation to purchase aircraft from them instead of McDonnell Douglas. (This scandal was what finally ended the career of major underworld player Yoshio Kodama, even if he survived the suicide attack that sexploitation actor Mitsuyasu Maeno had made in protest by crashing a plane into his house.) Then she posed for Penthouse, and became a celebrity for a couple years.

Edited by KinchStalker
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On 9/28/2020 at 2:05 PM, Matt D said:

Choshu feels almost like a virus infecting AJPW with more kinetic violence.

Unfortunately, he also infected them with his "trying to get the sasorigatame" spot, which Jumbo and Tenryu kept bringing back throughout 1987 after Choshu's departure. Ishikawa gets a pass since he'd stolen the move before Choshu jumped ship, though.

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However, I should note that another part of what did Hara in wasn't debt incurred from gambling, but rather his generosity. Whereas Jumbo was far closer to the Mick Foley end of frugality when it came to buying things for his juniors, Tenryu was extremely generous, and Hara took after his friend in that regard. However, Tenryu was in a position where he could afford to, for instance, stuff an envelope filled with ¥10,000 bills into Shiro Koshinaka's pocket as a parting gift after personally convincing Baba to let him start a new life in New Japan. Hara's pockets, however, weren't that deep, and all the drinks he bought for the younger guys hit his wallet hard. Story goes that Hara was even in debt to the hotel where Baba held the press conference announcing his dismissal. 

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Easing my way back here.

5/27/89 Jumbo/Yatsu/Nakano vs Hansen/Gordy/Muraco: Ok I saw this over a week ago now and forgot to write about it. The main thing of note is that Muraco could hang in this setting. He really felt like he was angling for another tour and frankly, they should have give it to him (maybe they did; we'll see I guess). He had a killer samoan drop and pieldriver among other things. I don't remember a ton else about this. The Japanese were on defensive for a lot of it, which isn't surprising. It was pretty good. I remember that too!

6/5/89: Footloose vs Kroffat/Furnas. Obviously this was good too. I saw this the other night. My big takeaway here was that as the match went on, Kawada felt more and more bigger than this match. Early on, the story was the animosity between Kroffat and himself. And yeah, he ate the fall at the end but not until he survived a ton of stuff. You got the sense that his elevation into being Tenryu's partner had leveled him up somewhat. A year or two later, the divide between Kroffat and Furnas would be deeper; Furnas would be bigger and Kroffat would lean harder into the heel mannerisms. Right now what made them so dangerous was that Furnas could hit big agility moves and Kroffat had some absolute bombs. The post-match handshakes were made all the better by the earlier animosity.

Plan now is to go back and watch the Hansen vs Tenryu matches that @Octopussuggested for me and then move back along.

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I'm back on track for the most part.

6/5/89: Mitsuo Momota (c) vs Isamu Teranishi: This is the best Momota has looked as champion so far. Straightforward but compelling matwork where he was in charge. Teranishi had some good strikes (headbutts primarily) and they had an exciting enough finishing stretch. You can get a lot of mileage out of trying for a German in these junior heavyweight matches. Momota was super over in the post match.

Bonus match: 3/9/88 Tenryu vs Hansen: Hansen singles matches have three elements to them, like any match but more so. The opening: how does Hansen's opponent try to deal with the problem of Hansen? Here it's with two quick back brain kicks that look like they might work only to eat a full body charge out of the ring. The second bit is what sort of comeback moment or transition there might be. Tenryu isn't always your strongest person on this because he's so good at selling and enduring pain that sometimes it's just a matter-of-fact thing that he can come back after any amount of punishment. Against Jumbo, that's great. Again Hansen? Maybe less so. Then it's the finish, and the finish here was good, with Tenryu able to at least GO for some bombs, but not be able to actually hit them. After a few attempts, he wins with a roll up instead. While I liked the "Problem of Stan" bits at the beginning, the best thing here is the post match where Hansen wraps the cowbell around his arm and just kills Tenryu. Amazing stuff.

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Bonus match 3/27/88: Tenryu vs Hansen: Ok, now this is an interesting one. It has what a lot of people would consider to be a crappy finish which is why it only ranked 24th on the 80s set, but it's really unique for a Hansen match. Tenryu basically starts the match bleeding from the side of his face from the cowbell shot a few weeks before and it's awesome because 1) it's right at the start of the match. He starts the match bloody. 2) it's not the forehead that's bleeding so it's a unique visual and leads to other unique visuals like the blood rubbing off the side of his arm through the match. 3) it seems to keep a fire lit underneath him. He rushes right at Hansen (to no avail), he comes back fairly quickly though. He just stays on him, meeting him much closer to halfway than most people can. There are moments where Hansen takes back over because Tenryu misses a bomb, like a huge ducked corner clothesline, which is not the way Hansen usually takes back offense. 4) and of course midway through the match, Hansen starts on the side of the head, first to escape a hold and then just because he's a mean ornery bastard. Even then, Tenryu is literally fighting for his life and stays in it, but even a wounded wolf with his back against a wall isn't going to beat a T-rex. The finish is Hansen pulling him back up, almost paying for it, and then just refusing to stop his bombardment of Tenryu in the corner and getting DQed. It's almost the finish the match needed to justify Tenryu staying in it as much as he did and it was a sort of performance Tenryu, even with two belts, probably needed considering how much grumpy Jumbo was dominating him during this period.

Bonus match: Tenryu vs Yoshinari Ogawa 2005 NOAH.

MD: I really like Ogawa. Let me put it this way: when Orange Cassidy's early match act is at its very best, it's the spirit of Ogawa that he's channeling. Here, he did ok, until he didn't, and then he almost did a couple of times, but old man Tenryu just clotheslines you to death.

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On 10/2/2020 at 11:39 AM, Matt D said:

4/4/89: Takano vs Kobashi: Not a lot to say here. The HH was far away for most of it. It stayed on the mat for the first half and we couldn't see much. After that, Kobashi did a good job throwing himself at Takano and got over to a degree for it, but he was outsized, if not out-heart-ed. He was a little wild and sloppy at times, maybe. Takano won handedly but they had a nice moment after the bell.

I can find AJPW televised matches easily, but handhelds that weren't on the old Archive or haven't been posted to YouTube elude me. Do you still have this, by chance?

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36 minutes ago, KinchStalker said:

I can find AJPW televised matches easily, but handhelds that weren't on the old Archive or haven't been posted to YouTube elude me. Do you still have this, by chance?

No problem. Check your PMs. That goes for anyone on anything here.

Bonus match: July 27, 1988 Hansen vs Tenryu: Tenryu's still bandaged up months later, so who knows. The story here is that Hansen ambushes him on the way to the ring, thus making this feel like a normal Hansen mugging. Again, Tenryu bleeds from the get go and while he can mount the start of comebacks, Hansen isn't about to stay down for long enough for the momentum to shift. It all builds to the lariat attempt and Tenryu getting a knee up in the ropes. Even that only gets him so far, because after a few minutes (a few minutes mostly anyone else wouldn't have been able to claim though!) he misses a back brain kick and Hansen takes back over. Again, it's telling that Hansen needs a ducked/missed move like that to take back over when with anyone else, he would have just been able to power through. Tenryu gets another moment or two of hope, but he's too battered, too bloody, as blind as Hansen normally is but without the presence to make up for it, slowed, distracted, and he's killed dead with a lariat as he's making his way to the top for the countout loss. More of what I'd normally expect from a Hansen match but they've all been good and to their credit, all different.

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On 11/8/2020 at 3:10 PM, Matt D said:

Slater did nothing here to make me think he wasn't capable of being a top notch foreigner. He took a secondary role because Spivey's big and the match called for it but it seemed like a conscious effort to dial it back as much as anything else.

There's a good chance you're already aware, but there's a handful of much earlier AJPW Slater matches that are well worth seeing, from when the company was consciously trying to present him as a Terry proxy. (Sure, that might sound axiomatic considering who we're talking about, but they had him use the Funks' entrance theme at least once: I specifically recall hearing it on the 7/3/81 Baba/Jumbo vs Slater/Robinson tag.) The 1980 Carnival final against Jumbo is the most famous, but there's also a couple worthwhile tags.

In my AJPW watching I'd thought that Slater's work from the Choshu period onwards wasn't on par with what he'd done in 78-81. Hansen incorrectly stated in his autobiography that he stopped working All Japan because of a shoot incident during a Choshu tag, but honestly, I can't blame Stan for not remembering his subsequent work. For what it's worth, I just reached this match in my own First 20 Years of AJPW watchalong, and I did think Slater here was much better than he had been in the company in years.

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Two sessions here:

6/5/89: Sting vs Spivey: This fell through the cracks for copyright reasons (Likewise 7/15 Malenkos vs Fantstics so someone remind me to not miss that when I get there), but it's on youtube anyway so who knows. It's kind of funny because Spivey was definitely a bigger star in AJPW than Sting at this point. At least if you've been tracking 89 and these matches, it sure feels that way. I got the sense Sting wasn't really going up for Spivey here, especially on his side slams but it's still a fun match. Sting's duck under-go behind-German Suplex on a clothesline attempt is kind of wild. They protected the Scorpion Deathlock well enough but Spivey still got a banana peel roll up.

6/6/89: Sting vs Taue: Handheld. Pretty disappointing as it's a straight up squash. Taue gets a moment where he might get some offense but nope. He DOES go up for Sting's stuff better than Sting went up for Spivey's so take that as you will.

7/1/89: Momota vs Joe Malenko: We just get a few minutes of this and it makes you wish we got more. The fans absolutely loved Momota's flip dive through the ropes. Joe blocks a German beautifully by getting a leg back between the legs, hits one for 2, and then hits a weirdo Cross-rhodes style move that looked botchy but still sort of painful for the win and the belt. Good finishing stretch but I would have liked to see their opening matwork.

----

6/8/89: Jumbo/Yatsu vs Kawada/Hansen: Good stuff here. You rarely see Hansen so thoroughly in "I have a Little Buddy" mode and he saves Kawada a million times here. Kawada, in return, feels the most confident in a big match that I've seen him. Why the hell wouldn't you be with Hansen in your corner. Jumbo does a really great job of catching Kawada's plancha. This back half felt like the appropriate amount of offense on Kawada to me. It makes sense that he fights back until the spike piledriver. It makes sense that Hansen saves him until he's able to get a lucky break. That's why I'm watching 89 instead of 92-95. This is about my limit for a match like this. It shouldn't have gone on any longer given the dynamics and the hierarchy and it didn't. But obviously in the years that follow they have to naturally try to top this stuff. Hansen getting basically a babyface hot tag is a really cool thing to see actually. The finish worked. Nice dynamic here.

7/1/89: Kawada vs Kobashi: Oh this was cool. There was obviously a hierarchy difference here and it's the closest thing to a Kawada squash we've seen and to stoic, dominant Kawada. Kobashi hangs though. The opening stuff is dueling legwork including times where both guys just were hanging on and wrenching at the same time. Kobashi had a cool takedown or two. Eventually, Kawada had enough and just kicked the crap out of Kobashi's skull on the floor. He was pretty dominant after that. Finishing stretch was about trying to get the Germans with Kobashi scoring first and just crushing Kawada. It doesn't do the job though and Kawada locks in the Dragon Suplex for the win. Kobashi didn't get a handshake or any attention at all but he did get a nice ovation after he recovered. A sign of things to come (though they'd never look QUITE like this later) and the first match I've seen in 89 where Kobashi felt like he could break through.

Edited by Matt D
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7/1/89: Jumbo/Isao Takagi vs Tenryu/Hansen: Super sleeper of a match. This should have made the AJPW set somewhere, back half. This is a case where I sort of wish I was doing this the way I usually review things, because I could write a ton of words about this. The key dynamic to keep in mind: this is the first match I can remember since the split in 87 where Jumbo is on a team which has a disadvantage to Tenryu's team. Usually it's either even or a slight to distinct Jumbo advantage. Jumbo would have probably been at a disadvantage if it was Tenryu/Kawada and it's Tenryu/Hansen.

The first two minutes are really amazing. Takagi really, really wants to get in there vs Tenryu to start, despite Jumbo's misgivings. He gives it again, gets thrashed, and Tenryu tosses him back into the corner to tag Jumbo. Then they have this absolutely amazing exchange where they just know each other so well. maybe the best single exchange I've ever seen between the two which is saying a lot.

It's hard to express just how logical and believable everything is as the match goes on. There's this natural tension, a path of least resistance. Everything feels inevitable, almost mechanical or mathematical, like it's a simulation run through a computer. Of course Takagi is going to do X. Of course Hansen is going to rise to Y. Of course the second they do Z, A happens, etc. But it's all so compelling despite that. It's enhanced by it because you can lose yourself in it. It's because, in part, you don't expect wrestling to be so well-oiled, so natural, so obvious. You expect wrestlers to fall short of what you expect of them. They'll drop selling. They'll rush to the next spot. They'll get their shit in. They'll kick out just a few more times. There's none of that here. It's optimized, but it's optimized due to who these characters are and their ability and their history and their intensity and aggression. A (Hansen) is 60% greater than B (Takagi) so the second Takagi loses his ability to hang on to the arm, Hansen comes back 20%. Takagi then makes a mistake by desperately trying to get it back and hansen comes back 40%. Etc. It's sort of like that, but driven by their humanity. I know this is the craziest way to explain Tenryu chopping jumbo RIGHT in the face, but there you go. There are a ton of decisions that Jumbo, as a character/entity, makes in the moment because he has Takagi as a partner and he can't do things the way he would if he had Yatsu with him, and maybe you wouldn't necessarily notice it if you haven't been watching so much of it, but it was clear and obvious to me, and likely to the crowd as well. And holy hell, that's brilliant, subtle, amazing pro wrestling. This match is full of things like that. Virtually everything is like that, and at least for this style of pro wrestling, which isn't about drawing heat and having a hero overcome a villain, but that instead is telling an entirely different genre of story, I'm not sure you can get better than that. More dramatic, maybe, or with a higher level of difficulty, but not better. For what this was meant to be, was trying to be, could have possibly been, there's no way this could have been better. There are things that could have been better, and thus there are things that ARE better, but this couldn't have been better than it was.

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