Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

Matt Watches 1989 AJPW/1986 NJPW on a Treadmill


Matt D

Recommended Posts

3/24/90: Tenryu/Kawada/Fuyuki vs Kabuki/Nakano/Inoue: This was a hell of a thing. We come in midway with Fuyuki turning the tables on Inoue and tossing him. He ends up on the floor too and Tenryu comes charging in with a chair. They turn things around and he clocks Fuyuki and Fuyuki blades big enough that once back in the ring, he ends up sputtering on his own blood. From there we get major heat on Fuyuki to the point where he's getting big chants. Obviously, Inoue (shots straight to the skull) and Kabuki (uppercuts to die for, literally) handle this better than Nakano but he eventually gets into the spirit too. Fuyuki really has to work for the tag to Kawada but once he gets it, the kicks (and fairly rare Tiger Suplex) start flying. Fuyuki wants back in and gets some revenge, but you also get the sense that he doesn't want to tag Tenryu in. Tenryu is so amazing at portraying emotion for someone so stoic. You always know what he's feeling and you always care.  In the end, he helps Fuyuki, who reverses a small package and he seems proud and caring of him after the match. The bloody heat on Fuyuki was pretty awesome, let me tell you.

3/24/90: Williams vs Yatsu: Really, really good stuff. Yatsu looked kind of, sort of terrible in the Olympics vs MVC tag; it made the PWO 1990 yearbook and everyone there more or less thought the same, but he was firing on all cylinders here. He charged in with headbutts as Doc was doing the pre-match run around the ring and they never looked back, scrapping at each other in and out of the ring, throwing each other around, hitting big spots. Yatsu absolutely kept up and it became a contest of very reasonable no-selling and mutual selling and ever escalating violence and pride. Doc was able to block a German at the end was just too much for Yatsu, but it was pretty much everything you'd want out of a match early in the Carnival between these two.

I've got Spivey/Hansen vs Taue/Jumbo to go (I think), but of this card, the other thing I wish we had was Joe Malenko vs Kikuchi. I need to go back and grab Tiger Mask vs Kobashi from 3/6/90 too.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really need to check out these 88-early 90 AJPW matches. They sound so interesting and make me so curious what AJPW looks like in the universe where Tenryu and co. never left.

Edited by Eivion
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think about it sometimes, but where Takano or Fuyuki end up is sort of more interesting to me than what Tenyru would be doing in December 90. Tenryu/Jumbo/Taue vs Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada is sort of tempting to think about though.

3/6/90 Tiger Mask II vs Kobashi: This is their first singles match and the first few minutes were just ok. There was some vague sense of Tiger Mask's lunging ability giving him an advantage but it wasn't too well defined. Eventually, Kobashi hits a shin-breaker and things become interesting, especially so after a big Kobashi dive. Kobashi stays on the leg and Tiger Mask's selling is just ok considering, with a few detours to interesting, imaginative bits of offense like the canadian backbreaker drop, but really, the thing to pay attention to is the great finishing stretch, just full of struggle as each guy has to work so hard to hit their big moves. I sort of knew that Tiger Mask probably had to win, just for hierarchy reasons, but Kobashi actually hit the moonsault and that got both me and him. Misawa hitting the axe kick and then whipping Kobashi off the ropes to hit the Tiger Driver was such a neat little sequence to end things. Just a taste of what's to come.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I think about it sometimes, but where Takano or Fuyuki end up is sort of more interesting to me than what Tenyru would be doing in December 90. Tenryu/Jumbo/Taue vs Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada is sort of tempting to think about though.

I agree with this. Despite mentioning Tenryu specifically, its more the guys he took with him I'm interested in how different things might have been.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Eivion said:

I really need to check out these 88-early 90 AJPW matches. They sound so interesting and make me so curious what AJPW looks like in the universe where Tenryu and co. never left.

The period often gets pared down to "watch 12/16/88 and 6/5/89" as a tablesetter for the Misawa era, and that's so wrong. 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3/27/90: Rusher Kimura/Mighty Inoue vs Tenryu/Kawada: This is JIP and we probably miss some cool Inoue exchanges early, but when we do come in, it's with Revolution taking over on Kimura. After that it just becomes a one sided beating. Kimura wasn't an emotive seller, but he had a connection with the crowd and the headbutts meant that he could tease believable hope spots at any point. Those two things together, with an added dash of blood, Revolution's skill in cutting off the ring and tagging in when in trouble, and Inoue being fiery on the outside, all adds up to a fairly compelling beatdown. Inoue finally comes in with a chair but can't really turn the tide. After a few times of working for the powerbomb (and eventually assisted powerbomb), it becomes one of those odd matches which don't have a final tag and where the beatdown is so extended to actually lead to a win.

3/27/90: Takano/Nakano vs Hansen/Spivey: This is mostly a beatdown on Nakano, as you'd expect, but there's some fun Takano stuff early, including him hitting a really high dropkick on Hansen, and a great post match where Hansen and Spivey just kill guys. I don't have a ton else to say about it.

I have to figure out if we have both the 3/24 Spivey/Hansen vs Jumbo/Taue and the 3/27 MVC vs Jumbo/Taue. I might have skipped ahead otherwise.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'm going to have to skim back through 3/24 Spivey/Hansen vs Jumbo/Taue as I watched it a week ago and then never wrote it up since I wanted to do both at once. Oops.

Here's the 3/27 (on the 4/8 TV)  though:

3/27/90: Jumbo/Taue vs MVC: I fully believe that once upon a time sheet readers wanted to watch these matches for the hard hitting, the workrate, the action, the headdrops. I also full believe that they missed the best part of it all, the attitude. This might not be fair, but I've read my share of 89 and 90 Observers (and 2021 Dave). This match is entirely about Taue refusing to back down in a strike exchange with Gordy, even as it's obvious his shots, while driving Gordy back, aren't doing the same level of damage. It's about Williams bounding back onto his feet like no one else in wrestling history, getting right into Jumbo's face, and showing this amazing mix of hubris/confidence/arrogance/aptitude as he misses two huge clotheslines only to turn that bounding into a bump as he eats the knee. It's about Taue fighting back from being dominated and getting some distance only to get run over, to manage a dropdown, to lock in an abdominal stretch, and it's about Jumbo in the background clapping for him, having refused to intervene before that. It's about Taue tagging out to Jumbo at every important opportunity when Kobashi or Kawada would have pressed on, maybe to their own detriment, to prove a point with their recovered advantage. It's about the inevitability of Taue in the corner and having to choose to fight off the illegal man going up to the top, knowing he had no choice but he was the bigger threat, and ending up eating a spike piledriver that he was fated to take. It's about Taue losing the match for his team, not by making a mistake in the ring, but by making one from the apron, choosing not to jump in to defend Jumbo after he hit the belly to back. It's about Taue showing a last bit of defiance by refusing to let go of the ropes as Williams was trying to hit him with the Oklahoma slam, and it's about Gordy showing the gumption and forwardness Taue didn't (even if not the sportsmanship) by charging in and taking out Jumbo so that he could assist Williams in hitting that slam in the end. These matches are full of this larger than life spirit. These characters just bleed off the screen and I swear that people just missed it because they were trying to calculate star ratings or were waiting to see a power bomb.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/16/90: Fuchi/Kobashi vs Tito Santana/Jimmy Snuka: Kobashi got to be cool coming out to Fuchi's Danger Zone. Good for him. Snuka was barely in this one except for to have a weird leapfrog that actually served as a cut off on Fuchi. Santana more or less worked heel. Let me put it this way. It was the second most heelish performance I've seen in his career (both in Japan). Arn Anderson talks, erroneously, about how he'd be a bad babyface because he doesn't have babyface "skills." By skills, he mainly means dropkicks and flying headscissors and stuff off the top. Tito didn't have heel skills, being cutoffs and clubbering and raking a guy's eyes over the ropes and eyepokes and who knows what else, so even though he showed attitude and aggression, he was still hitting his dropkicks. Kobashi had a nice transition where he flew in with a springboard splash. Fuchi got pretty chippy at times. Overall though, this was more of a miscasting than anything else.

4/16/90: Kabuki vs Greg Valentine: Valentine was full Elvis here and it was just weird. I was dreading a Kabuki night off and hoping for Valentine/Garvin level stuff and it fell somewhere in the middle. Both guys were happy to lay it in but Valentine kept going back to the goofy pose/dance thing. You'd think he'd feel freed by the locale but maybe he was instructed that the crowd wanted to see the full WWF nonsense production, and I suppose it protected him on the finish since he hit the pose something like three times before getting rolled up. There was a good match in here with Valentine going hard onto the leg, but we didn't get it, just the ghost of its potential.

EDIT: I just realized I have some matches from 3-31 to check out so I'm not quite on the final stretch yet.

Edited by Matt D
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3/31/90: Jumbo/Takano/Taue vs Hansen/Spivey/DAVID SAMMARTINO: Let's go in order here. I always like seeing Jumbo, Takano, and Taue together as they're three big dudes. We're still at the point where it looks just from the matches alone and how they present themselves like Takano (Three years YOUNGER than Taue!) was going to be a potential successor to Jumbo more so than Taue. That said, Taue was chippier now than he'd been in months previous. It doesn't do him much good against anyone but Sammartino, though. David really did try. I think he knew what it took to hang but he didn't have the size or the presence, so when he'd try to take down a guy like Taue when it didn't make sense in the match, even Taue would try to stay on top of him and prevent it. Hansen was quick to come in and try to protect him though. I liked David here. It's the best I've ever seen him look, especially dismantling an arm. It made me want to see him as Zbyszko's heel partner in 91 WCW for instance. This ended up too uncooperative. Sometimes that leads to a real visceral slugfest. Here it just sort of a clumsy mess. I believe that Sammartino might have been able to have a good match during this run with Footloose or Kobashi or Kabuki, but maybe not the big guys.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3/31/90: Furnas/Kroffat vs Joe Malenko/Kobashi: Liked this a lot. It was for the titles and Kobashi/Malenko really gave a run at it. What made this work was the contrast as Malenko especially had to work to outquick Furnas' strength. Some excellent exchanges where Malenko would go for one thing, get jammed, and move right on to the next. The Can-Ams would comeback with superior teamwork. The most impressive spot in here was Furnas doing a Gotch lift and Kroffat coming from of nowhere with a missile dropkick to Malenko dangling in mid air. Eventually, there was a long advantage on Furnas where he had a few bits of hope but they kept cutting him off. There was a chippy bit where Kroffat tried to get involved and ended up scrapping with Kobashi on the floor with a chair getting involved. The finish had Furnas and Kroffat doing together what neither could do separately, but there was a lot of meat left on the bone here.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3/31/90: Tenryu/Kawada vs Kimura/Teranishi: Oh hey! You know who remembers that match where Hansen and Tenryu beat the shit out of Baba and Rusher? Rusher does! This was awesome. First Rusher throws the flowers at Tenryu and Tenryu throws them back but that's just a feint for... the poison mist! Tenryu is blinded. They go right after him. Headbutts, eyesrakes, stomps, a knee off the top, more stomps, more headbutts, just working over Tenryu's eye again and again. Teranishi has some suplexes. It's all brutal and Tenryu sells huge, super giving. A Tenryu chant does NOT break out, not against Rusher, not over this, not after everything. Kawada gets more and more frustrated until he finally starts coming in with kicks to break up submissions. See, with Tenryu hurt, Teranishi and Kimura could tag out enough to get control but they weren't quick enough to stop a Kawada that was done caring what the ref would say. Still, when he finally got the tag in, it was to eat a clothesline from Rusher. They still had the advantage, but of course, fate was sealed. They would have had to run up the clock way more because it was only a matter of time before Tenryu recovered. Once he did, he wanted to absolutely kill someone (that someone being Teranishi), which, guess what, he did. Teranishi did fine here, but if let's say, Inoue was in his place here, this would have been a MOTYC for AJPW. As it was, this was just a wonderful little piece of business.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Octopus said:

Matt, what are your biggest takeaways so far on this journey? Any big changes of opinions/ thoughts on certain workers?

I'm sure that I will have big takeaways, 100%. Thanks. I'll write something after I finish 4/19/90 and Tenryu's last AJPW match of this period which is my artificial stopping point. I have one more 3/31 match (Gordy/Williams vs Nakano/Tiger Mask) but then it's just the WWF/AJPW show and whateve else I have between 4/1-4/19. So we're almost there, though the holidays could disrupt me a bit.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3/31/90: Gordy/Williams vs Tiger Mask/Nakano: Effective hierarchy-driven match here. Really a poster-child for the intrinsic psychology for a 1990 catchweight AJPW tag. It's just what would happen. That's how AJPW in this era works and why, maybe, it gets a little frustrating a couple of years down the line where it becomes more than that. Nakano really tried to take it to Gordy and Williams but most of what he did couldn't hurt them and his best weapon, a drop kick, either put him in poor position for what would come next or just knocked his opponents back to the corner. He'd hit three shots, stagger Gordy slightly, and get taken out by one. Alternatively, Tiger Mask would come in and do real damage with his kicks. Everyone comes out looking better. Nakano looks good for his fire, for coming back to make a hot tag, for trying and not quitting. Gordy and Williams look good for eating up Nakano despite all that and ultimately getting the win. Tiger Mask looks good for actually being able to do real damage despite not being all that bigger than Nakano. So even though it was a fundamentally mathematical exercise, it did everything it should have while still being compelling.

Doc's little shimmy over to his feet to get of an armlock is the damndest thing. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? I forget if I've giffed it already here. It's just unnatural.

Anyway, that's March.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/9/90: Kobashi/Tiger Mask vs Can-Ams: All Asia Tag Title Change. So, people have been asking for summary takes (I mean just one person but...), and here's a take, and it's a hot one: These All Asia Tag Team matches, basically the Junior Heavyweight tags in 89 and the first few months of 90 are all kind of crummy. We're mainly talking Footloose, Can-Ams, Bulldogs, Tiger Mask, Kobashi, Malenkos, etc. There are exceptions, like that one super heated Can-Ams vs Footloose one (or even the one with Joe Malenko I just watched because they found a way to work some narrative in there), and there are specific moments in all of these matches that are very good. In fact, the workrate in these matches is always good. They're worked hard, move fast, have a lot of moves, a lot of energy, are hard hitting, are quite often exciting, but they're almost always lacking meaningful narratives. With the heavyweight tags, there's really a sense of aggregated team advantage. There are clear momentum shifts that matter. Not always, but more often than not. In these, it's just noise and missed opportunities.

I sort of dare someone to watch this match and find a narrative in it, implicit or explicit. There were a couple of times I thought something might be developing. For instance, Kobashi rushes in relatively early to break up a move and I thought that over-exuberance might lead to the moment a little later when the Can-Ams open the floodgates to more brazenly do so than they might have otherwise, but nope.  Then later on, Tiger Mask, after hitting a spin kick on Furnas, gets back body dropped over the top and that's followed up by Furnas pressing Kroffat on to him, but nope. Tiger Mask just sort of meanders over for a tag a little bit later. Ah well. So then maybe Kobashi's side is hurting and he gets swept under like happens in heavyweight tags? Nope. Just back and forth. Ok, what about the notion that Kobashi and Tiger Mask were starting to gel as a unit a little, but they were still having some miscommunication: for instance Tiger Mask didn't break up a hold quickly enough because he took to long to drop kick someone instead or there was some clumsiness to picking up one onto Tiger Mask's shoulders so that Kobashi could drop kick him, while the Can-Ams were always great at their tandem offense. Nope! Because they win! So maybe they were such a force that all it took was them gelling a bit to win the day? Maybe, but that makes both the Can-Ams and Footlose, who they beat, look terrible in the loss. It's well-worked, hard hitting, fast moving, high energy, meaningless momentum shifts.

It's like anything else. I'm not trying to compare this to RnR vs Midnights. I'm comparing it to random Tenryu/Kawada vs Kabuki/Yatsu matches or whatever. You watch one of these matches and you forgive the noise. You watch them in context again and again and they end up pretty annoying.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/9/90: Tenryu vs Taue: Great sprint but only because Taue was absolutely fighting for his life. He takes it right to Tenryu because he knows the second Tenryu gets back on offense, he is going to legitimately hurt him. But so long as Taue deserves to be in control, Tenryu will let him. That means taking it to the floor and smashing him with a chair and coming back off a reverse whip into the rail immediately. It's all driven by fear though, and as such, it can't last. It doesn't deserve to last. So Tenryu takes over, but then something happens. Taue comes back and in the comeback, that fear starts to become something more akin to confidence. Taue was huge. He was bigger than his peers. He was stronger than his peers. He was physically imposing. And maybe, finally, as he fights for his life against Tenryu, he starts to realize it. His dropkick doesn't just get swatted away but drives Tenryu into the corner. He locks on a proto-Nodowa and drives him down. He goes to the top (ok, this was a mistake). It doesn't matter in the end, because the back brain kick and the power bomb loom like destiny, but you watch this and wonder if a switch finally flipped in Akira Taue. When the bell rang, Tenryu was a monster. What he did here and in the matches prior was abuse. But maybe, just maybe, it worked when nothing else could in this unyielding, unforgiving environment?

4/13/90: Jake Roberts vs Big Bossman: Humor me. This was post face-turn Bossman. It was a year+ before Jake's heel turn. They booked the match to get Bossman's size and Jake's gimmick on the show, I imagine. After some feeling out and Jake trying to chip at Bossman's arm, the roles settle in. Bossman's the aggressor and as the fans turn on him more and more, he's the heel. I haven't seen a lot of late, late 89 heel Bossman recently, but he'll have put on quite a bit more mass before he turns heel again in 94. Here he's slimmer and can move around well and really leans in on Jake. Ultimately, he's going to miss a top rope splash and really bump across the ring, which the crowd appreciates, but Jake can only capitalize so much. It'll be a DDT out of nowhere that wins him the day. You watch this and it's not so surprising that Bossman'll be back in a few years.

4/13/90: Andre/Baba vs Demolition: I love Andre vs Demolition and it's great to see the face/heel roles reversed. Darsow stooging for Baba at the start is solid stuff. There's glee on Baba's face the first time he tags in Andre, both as a businessman and a wrestler. Andre is, of course, almost completely immobile at this point but it doesn't matter. He needs the help of the rope to miss an elbow drop and once he does, Demolition takes over as only they can. They swarm down upon him with clubbering shots, but all it takes is one touch from Andre for Ax to go flying and rush over to tag Smash, who comes in and does the same thing. It's perfect pro wrestling. They knew the importance, the presence, the connection to the crowd, the symbolic meaning of Andre. It was on them to chip away at him but to also respond accordingly at his touch. So long as they did that, so long as they respected it, so long as they made full use of it, the crowd would explode every time it happened. Andre is potential energy at this point and it's up to his timing and his opponent's reactions to turn it into kinetic gold. Demolition understood that as well as anyone. He was as valuable a resource as ever existed in wrestling and they made the very most of it.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/13/90 Bret Hart vs Tiger Mask: This isn't one of the most disappointing matches of all time or anything. It's Bret working a house match for a draw against an opponent that he got to stretch a bit against and got to hit some more fast, technical stuff with. In a different situation, I fully believe they could have had a good match and there are inklings of it but never full commitment. The deal with Bret hurting his leg and suckering Misawa in but then still sort of selling it could have been interesting. The tease of a dive early with the tiger feint and the dive actually hitting later was good. Again, opening feeling out was quick and they moved in and out of things well. It just ends really abruptly and ensures that nothing that happened mattered at all. The most interesting parts of this was when Bret was starting to tease some heeling with the crowd but nothing ever really comes of it. I guess I'd put it this way: there was a great match in 1990 Bret and 1990 Tiger Mask Misawa and if they got to wrestle five times I'm sure one of those times we would have actually seen it. Faint praise but I'm also not going to call this the most disappointing thing ever.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/13/90: Jumbo/Haku vs Martel/Hennig: It's nice to hear Hennig called out by his own name. It's a bit of a wonder that Martel didn't lose his name during his WWF run and was just billed as "The Model." I don't think I have any great wisdom for this one. Hennig and Martel were billed as former AWA champs. Kind of neat to see them in there with Jumbo, who was another and Haku who at least got a couple of runs at the AWA belt and is in one of my favorite AWA matches, the Blackwell/Slaughter cage match. Martel and Hennig worked well as a team and took a lot of the match against Haku, who really did turn back into a babyface on a dime here. Good dropkick. Good selling. Good presence. I wouldn't say that Martel and Hennig REALLY pulled out their full bag of heel tricks but they did a few more things than you'd expect from just looking at their WWF heel runs. Weird to think that Haku and Hennig were both with Heenan at this point. I was looking at results and there's a six minute Haku vs Ronnie Garvin match from the 5/14 taping that aired on PTW in June. I need to watch that. Anyway, some good heel dominance from them before Jumbo got involved and then Martel jumped into Haku's knees and it was pretty elementary after that. They bumped big for Jumbo and Haku. Jumbo seemed quite pleased post match.

4/13/90 Hansen vs Hogan: Let's see. Hansen gave Hogan a ton in the first half, including bleeding. Hogan bled in the back half. There were a couple of neat moments. First, Hansen ran through through the announcer, who fell down, got back up and kept announcing. Early on, Hogan went for his "I'm in Japan; watch me wrestle!" go behind switch and Hansen just drove him into the ropes like a jerk. They had some fun in the press area outside. Probably the best moment in the match was when Hansen went for the Lariat and Hogan just ran through him with the axe bomber. It was fun. I don't think it's better than Hogan vs Quake at Summerslam for his best match of the year though. I think there were moments here where Hogan dominating Hansen so much in Hansen's home territory sort of made everyone who Hansen bullied look worse but then Hansen let barely mobile Blackwell crush him too, so who knows. At least this was buoyed by the power of hierarchy.

Edited by Matt D
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A lot of ground to cover:

4/13/90: Tenryu vs Savage: I had watched this as a one off maybe a year ago but I really undersold it then. It's easy to look at it and be mostly focused on Sherri since her performance is great and she really stands out. There's one off balance roundhouse kick she does when Tenryu's on the floor and Savage has the ref distracted which is just nuts. But what's amazing about this match in context is 1) how up the crowd is for it relative to the rest of the show and really, relative to a lot of other things in 89-90 AJPW and 2) how thoroughly Savage is able to achieve a result with 1990 US offense and pacing. There's no Hulk Hogan go behind hammerlock drop toehold bullshit here. It's Savage being Savage. Let me put it this way: there's no way in hell Jumbo could have had this match with Savage. Tenryu, despite being one of the meanest, hardest hitting wrestlers ever, someone who could absolutely swallow someone up, was also incredibly giving when the match called for it or if his opponent earned it. That's not to say Jumbo might not have had a different, also interesting, also good match with Savage, but he couldn't have this match and I don't think, even with his connection to the crowd, he could get them up like this for whatever that match might have been. On the other hand, given where things were storyline wise, I wish they had booked either Hogan/Savage vs Jumbo/Tenryu or (more likely) Hogan/Jumbo vs Savage/Tenryu, though neither would have been as good or interesting as this.

4/13/90: Footloose/Kitahara vs Can-Ams/Joe Malenko: HH darkmatch from the summit. North American team all have red trunks and this is pretty far away but I know how these guys move by now. Kitahara was in there to lose the offense and hit a missile dropkick but he didn't seem out of place or anything. I swear that Kawada hit this springboard flip kick early but I might have still been getting used to everyone's tights. Probably lacking a great sense of this but everyone worked hard for the setting and the crowd. Finishing stretch was pretty good. Don't make me answer a quiz on this one.

4/16/90: Taue vs Tenryu: Different match than the previous one. There was less of a sense of Taue fighting for his life and more of a sense of him just being in it. He did go for high risks too early because it takes a lot to keep Tenryu down given the hierarchy differnces, but it paid off later in the match, not enough to win it, but enough to create some buzz. Yes, Tenryu beat the crap out of him in these, but I think they probably did a lot for Taue. It's easy to say that with 30 years distance though.

4/16/90: Baba/Kabuki/ANDRE vs Takano/Nakano/Fuchi: Andre'll be back later but by that point Kabuki/Takano and Nakano will be gone, so this felt novel. The match was built to Takano being in there against anyone from the other side since neither Nakano or Fuchi could really hang size-wise with Andre or Baba. I don't remember Takano throwing his big kicks that he uses against big guys but he had presence and it felt like something worth waiting for. There weren't any cool partner moments between Kabuki and Andre unfortunately but there was a fun moment at the end where Andre had to fight all three guys out of the corner. Fuchi was unsurprisingly good at getting crushed by Andre, but so was everyone else.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/16/90: Jumbo/Kobashi vs Hansen/Spivey: So... you guys understand that at this point in 1990, Kobashi is an absolute wildman, right? It clicked in his head that the way to get over is to take and take and take and take and take, so that's what he does. At this point, he had it in him to be way more of a bully than Taue. There are moments here where Spivey and Hansen are able to stop him but that's only when they're working together. And it's all moot anyway because eventually they leave the ring and even if Hansen's beating on him, he'll still drive the big galoot into the corner for Jumbo to tag in and they're not any better off. Jumbo spends about three minutes just grinding his heel into Hansen's arm by the way. Personally, Kobashi hitting his head and deciding that he too is Stan Hansen is not the world's most compelling match structure for me and I'm glad he eventually develops into something else later (save for his superman comebacks), so this ends up as a weird novelty much more than a good match.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/13/90: Warrior vs Dibiase: Figured I'd double back for this even though I'm not hitting the NJ matches. It's pretty good. The idea that it's not is skewed but unsurprising. Definitely not a dud. I think they should have actually led harder into what got the Road Warriors over in Japan. Warrior probably gave TOO MUCH, even if Dibiase worked hard to bump big and dramatically for him, doing things like flailing his feet when he was lifted up. It starts with Dibiase hitting some belt shots to the stomach so that Warrior can get that initial burst of toughness as he fights out of the corner and the shine has the feet flailing and big bump over the top on a clothesline, etc. I'm not sure if the fans were buying into Warrior's arm pumping thing but I'm also not as convinced that they were outright making fun of his strikes. His strikes looked fine relative to 89-90 AJPW because Dibiase was leaning into them and making them look fine. If they were outright mocking him, it was due to the arm waving shenanigans which is not the sort of thing the Road Warriors would have done or because of some preconceived notion. Transition is legitimately great as after some criss crossing, Dibiase sidesteps the flying shoulder and drops Warrior on his face. For people not super familiar with the WWF at this time, a transition like that, one really focused on a specific piece of signature offense of a wrestler, was very rare, and tends to be very memorable when it happens. Like Warrior moving out of the way of Hogan's legdrop at WMVI. That never happened. Transitions tended to be far more generic and interchangeable. I'd argue that it's one of the best transitions in the entire era for WWF. Dibiase's offense after that is pretty good, including the fist drop, with Warrior getting to fight out of the corner for a bit of toughness/hope. The comeback is him kicking out of a pile driver and starting to hulk up and if they wanted to lean into the Road Warriors feel, he should have just sat up immediately after getting pile driven. The crowd probably would been more up for that. Normally, I'm against such things, but with Warrior, as the champ, in Japan, it's exactly what you're protecting a move for. If not for this, then what? It was good and I wish I could send annoying letters back to the 1990 Observer to tell them that a wristwatch could actually be a as good as a wristlock or something.

BONUS MATCH: 10/27/01: FOOTLOOSE EXPLODES: Kawada vs Fuyuki: I thought about going another month more until Misawa unmasked, not to see him unmask but to see the match he unmasks before, which is the first time Kawada faces off in a tag against Fuyuki but it's probably best I go another show or two until Tenryu's last match or at least the end of that April tour before switching gears. But I still wanted to see Kawada vs Fuyuki so I jumped forward to their singles match in 2001. This is fat FMW Fuyuki but there's a lot to dig into here. Kawada refuses the handshake to start. They go mostly back and forth with Kawada out striking Fuyuki but Fuyuki's size and the fact he's been out in the wilderness meaning he's happy to go for low blows giving him an advantage otherwise until Fuyuki's able to drive Kawada's back into the post on the outside. From there he takes over. He's too big to get the inverted surfboard on but he locks in a STF instead. Kawada eventually comes back. They tease power bombs throughout the match (I think there's one early that I would erase, but don't quote me on that and I think Kawada should have managed one for the finish but ah well) and both guys hit some big drops, belly to back and German from Kawada, fisherman's buster (upgrade of his old fisherman's suplex) and superplex from Fuyuki. Kawada locks in the stretch plum and while he sold the effort of it to explain Fuyuki getting out, I would have rather he sold the back as a reason for it instead. Fuyuki locked it in himself and you wonder if it was jealousy or what. Best part of the match might be the two of them just slapping each other towards the end because you really feel the connection. They do the stagger back and forth shots with Fuyuki playing to his size as he refuses to fall. There's a moment where Kawada looks at him which is full of some wist in the midst of this but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Finish is fairly anticlimactic and I think the match called for a power bomb, like I said. Still, I'm glad it happened as it felt like two lives coming back together years after their friendship ended, with one being on top of the world through his hard work and the other scrapping for everything he had and two of them settling whatever feelings were left between them.

Edited by Matt D
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/16/90: Footloose vs Kitahara/Kikuchi: I can't tell if Kikuchi is over or if there's just a pocket of six fans near the guy filming the fancam. This was pretty even, weirdly so, but maybe my hierarchy is messed up or maybe they knew Tenryu was on the way out and were pushing some new guys, or maybe Kikuchi just got the Kobashi memo that if he is assertive he might get over. There were some neat individual exchanges here including a sweep fest by Kitahara and Kawada where I think Kawada got the worst of it and was limping for a bit. Despite Kitahara/Kikuchi being scrappy, Kawada could still shut them down with a kick. Finish was ok with Footloose's superior teamwork winning the day but this was just a little too formless for me.

4/16/90: MVC vs Can-Ams: On the other hand, this was pretty awesome. There was more of a natural story with MVC's power and athleticism vs Can-Ams smaller athleticism and smaller power. So Furnas was still strong but he wasn't quite Gordy+Williams strong. But on the other hand Kroffat was quicker than either than them and while WIlliams was athletic, he wasn't quite Kroffat athletic. That said, there were still some great reactions here from Kroffat, like after Williams blatantly no sold a DDT. The first real Memphis reaction I've seen out of him chronologically. Furnas vs Gordy early on was very enjoyable (MVC outpowered him finally by double teaming). Kroffat and Furnas were as over as faces as I can remember, especially during some fiery and chaotic chair assaults on the outside and a pretty exciting finishing stretch where it never quite seemed like they had a chance but where Furnas also just wouldn't go down. You watch this and you wonder if the problem is just Footloose. It's not though. It's that Junior vs Junior doesn't have enough inherent contrast in 1989-90 AJPW. The implicit narratives that drive the style work best when there are some natural differences and discrepancies (size, hierarchy, even just capitalized opportunity) between the combatants. Here, Furnas and Kroffat may have been bullies, but they were up against bigger bullies by far.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/19/90: MVC vs Hansen/Spivey: One of the biggest hoss fights I've seen in this project. Here's a secret about AJPW in this era. The best stuff is in the first minute or two and the last minute or two. That's not always true with American wrestling, for instance, where the build of the heat, and the moment comeback are all more important. What you want here is Spivey rolling around like a maniac with Williams and Hansen and Gordy just pounding the hell out of one another. The finishing stretch was pretty crazy as first Spivey couldn't quite put Williams away and then Williams and Gordy couldn't quite keep Hansen out of the match long enough to pin Spivey. I don't think this ever gained anything resembling a "narrative" but they just really went at it in a way that filled in all the gaps to a point where it never really mattered.

4/19/90: Baba/Kabuki/Momota vs Fuchi/Eigen/Okuma: Not a ton to say here. This was around 8 minutes and fun. Momota was there to get beaten on which always gives these a bit of a different feel. Eigen had a great bunch of headbutts against Kabuki and Okuma had him in enough danger after a falling one to have Fuchi (I think) run across the ring to block Baba which ended up being a comedy spot more than anything else. Then Okuma ran into Baba's foot and got suplexed by Kabuki and that was that.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4/19/90: Can-Am Express vs Tiger Mask/Kobashi: It's funny. I went hard on the last match along these lines that I saw but this almost swung too far the other way. It was all Can-Ams as they took over from Kobashi relatively early (though not until he hit his over the shoulder neckbreaker drop thing) and cut off the ring and just beat him up for fifteen minutes. Good, compelling stuff though it never quite built to the sort of comeback you wanted. It didn't escalate. They hit interesting things though, my favorite being a double slingshot belly to back suplex. Eventually Tiger Mask was able to help Kobashi get an opportunity to help himself and he got the tag and was able to keep Furnas out of the way long enough for Misawa to hit a Tiger Driver and end it. Better than Kobashi eating everyone up or your move my move but room to be better still.

I need to double back to the 10 minutes of an Jumbo/Yatsu/Kabuki vs Tenryu/Hansen/Fuyuki match that Classics just aired and then press on to the last Jumbo vs Tenryu match to close this all out. Hopefully tomorrow.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...