Matt Watches 1989 AJPW/1986 NJPW on a Treadmill

[Ryan]

On 9/18/2020 at 8:49 AM, gordi said:

Watching The Roadies in Japan is just tremendous fun. They had such a great aura and were so incredibly over everywhere they went. You can hear how excited the Japanese crowd were to see them. 

I was lucky enough to get to hang out and go to a couple of shows with Yuji Tsuruta back when he was living in Osaka around 2013. He told me a story of watching his dad fight the Road Warriors when he was a kid (perhaps that very same match that you posted)! He asked his dad why he didn't beat them and Jumbo's reply was basically "Did you see the size of those guys?" and Yuji, at the time, was like "Yeah, I guess that makes sense."

There have been wrestlers since then that are even bigger or more muscular than them, and there have been guys their size who were better at the technical parts of pro wrestling... but, man, they were just a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. Nobody can touch the mystique they had at their peak. Just unreal. 

(That's Yuji on the right):

Not shown, Suwama beating up Gordi off camera for daring to be in his presence.

[Ryan]

Misawa with cows in Kansas City is peak 80s AJPW.

[Matt D]

As a rule, I'm not giffing stuff other than Misawa with cows, but this is an exception.

Spoiler

 

[Gordi the former AEW fan]

On 9/29/2020 at 9:33 PM, Ryan said:

Not shown, Suwama beating up Gordi off camera for daring to be in his presence.

Not to detail Matt's thread... But... Suwama was yet another pro wrestler that I have met in Japan who could not have been nicer or cooler. He chatted with us for ages, then he asked Yuji's permission to do the OH! taunt during his match, then during the match he looked right at us, did the Jumbo OH! pose and yelled "OH-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!" I got a huge kick out of that.

 

[Matt D]

Gordi, feel free to add color however you like. I'm always glad to see any reply in this thing that's not me.

3/29/89: Hansen (c) vs Tenryu: This was the stuff. I was so glad to see this was a singles match. I like tags but it's nice to break it up and see a different aspect of things. Tons of learned psychology and gamesmanship here. For instance, right at the start, Tenryu was guarded against Hansen so Hansen drew him in by putting his head down like on a back body drop attempt. Tenryu went to kick it and Hansen grabbed the foot and lariated his head off. Brilliant stuff. There were other examples like that too. There was definitely a sense that Hansen couldn't keep Tenryu down for long which was weird to see both in and out of context but not unwelcome. It ended with a massive Tenryu shoulder block off the top with Hansen charging at him like a hurricane. They hit heads and Tenryu tried to follow up with a powerbomb (his second in the match) and there was every sense that if he hit it, he'd win everything, but he was still reeling from the collision and Hansen reversed it for the win.

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.

[Godfrey]

I haven't seen this Hansen/Tenryu but their match in '88 has a great finish. Tenryu goes to the top but Stan Lariats him off and Tenryu sells it into the third row and gets counted out. Hansen could never get a handle on Tenryu which is why he blitzes him so often.

[Matt D]

4/4/89 Tenryu/Hansen vs Jumbo/Yatsu (c): I have no idea if there's any history of Hansen and Tenryu teaming but this felt like a weird pairing since I just saw them wrestle. I'm really seeing Tenryu as if for the first time as part of this project. His use of learned psychology is a few years before his time at least. I love how he dodged the first double knee only to get nailed on the second here, or how he ducked behind on a Yatsu German attempt, and then went off the ropes only to get nailed by Jumbo so that he fell into it to get hit. Or how he countered the second bulldog, letting Hansen charge Yatsu into the corner. He's really good at that sort of structuring of complex spots that show familiarity but seem completely natural. Hansen was a looming beast on the outside, which made for a much different dynamic than the Tenryu/Kawada tags, obviously. He was a force, who'd often come in, even after a kick out just to get a few more shots in. I think from a kayfabe perspective, he and Tenryu weren't always on the same page. There was one point where Tenryu lost an advantage on Yatsu because Hansen had to come in and do some extra damage. The finish was a completely ill-advised Hansen whip of Tenryu(the legal man) into Yatsu in the corner. It was so dynamic that Tenryu went flying out which let a recovering Jumbo come at him from nowhere and ultimately led to the count-out. If Hansen had been the one to get whipped into the corner instead, with Jumbo incapacitated on the outside, they would have won the match.

[Matt D]

4/18/89: Tenryu vs Furnas: Lots of huge dropkicks. Not a great match. Tenryu dodges the third but eats the fourth. Furnas isn't super careful with him, including bobbling him on a press slam. You know that back brain kick everyone does? Tenyru does that to the front of Furnas' face as he's running towards him. You know what? Let me gif some of these things because the finish is awesome too:

Spoiler

4/18/89: Jumbo v Hansen: Ehhhh. This is the Triple Crown Unification match. I think you kind of need more contrast than these two have to offer by this point. There's hard hitting but not a lot of narrative here. Jumbo can beat Hansen up in the corner all day but can't really do any damage to him without launching bombs. When he tries he creates distance and Hansen can come back. Hansen does the best, biggest damage to Jumbo on the outside and the second or third time around he opens him up with a chair and really goes after the wound after that. The match becomes a hell of a lot better after that. In no world is it a good thing to unify titles on a freaking banana peel finish though. What the hell? I think we have a match with them two days later so maybe there was a method to this madness but yeesh.

[Octopus]

Hey friend, was going to type this out earlier but I’ve been distracted. Now that I’m just tipsy enough I have time to type. 

I want to first say, I love these. Keep writing and keep watching. Much appreciated content. 

My understanding of the Hansen/ Tenryu dynamic. You witnessed the tail end of their feud and missed a respect moment where they are now (or “now” based on where you are in the timeline) friends. They had previous matches where things got contentious at least three times in ‘88 and before that were on opposite side of tag matches w/ Gordy and Jumbo. 

I won’t spoil anything specific, but worth knowing going forward and maybe doing time machine ‘88 watches. I know you’re my fellow Context Brother, so hopefully you appreciate that.

Here are a few links to those matches, sorry it took me a bit to track down the dates:

March 12th, 1988

 

Start it around 20:12ish, unless you want to watch Jumbo Tsuruta vs Tiger Mask.

Match 27th, 1988

 

This is FB video. So apologies if the link doesn’t embed well.

July 27th, 1988

After this you should be caught up to what you already watched. I’m sure a more knowledgeable All Japan fan could fill any other blanks.

[Matt D]

This is well appreciated and I will get through those before long. Right now, I'm trying to do what I feel is the bare minimum to set myself up for 6/5/89, which is going to come sooner than later.

That means I have to skip a lot of the Choshu/Yatsu vs Jumbo/Tenryu tags. There are just too many (something like 9 remaining) and I'd rather go through them all at some point.

My loose gameplan for bonus matches is (bolded matches definite ones)...

Jumbo/Tenryu vs TMII rwtl 86
Jumbo/Tenryu vs Yatsu/Nakano 1/17/87
J/T vs Roadies 3/12/87
J/TM vs T/Hara 6/11/87
T/H vs J/Kabuki 8/21/87
J vs T 8/31/87
J/Y vs T/H RWTL 87
" " 1/2/88
J/K/Ishikawa vs Hara/Kawada/Fuyuki 3/11/88
T/H vs J/Kabuki 5/24/88
T/H vs J/Y 6/4/88
" " 8/29/88
" " 8/30/88
" " 9/15/88
J vs T 10/28/88
J/Y vs T/Kawada RWTL 88

To that effect:

Bonus match: Jumbo/Tenryu vs Tiger Mask II/Baba RWTL 11/28/86: If I'm not touching the Choshu stuff, then I want to see them against other big opponents. Jumbo starts off this one hesitant to really do anything over the top, especially when they have TM in the corner at one point early. The other side returns the favor by running Jumbo into Baba's foot in a picture perfect spot. The best part of this was when Jumbo finally got frustrated and chopped Baba on the apron leading to their big exchange. Baba's chops all looked absolutely killer in this. Misawa was a perfectly acceptable Tiger Mask here, lacking Sayama's speed but with a bunch of strikes that looked perfectly precise, though perhaps a bit less accuracy on the dives. The one that started off the match was not pretty and as much as I liked his flipping body blow off the top, it wasn't beautiful or anything. Not a lot more to say here. I could watch Baba chop people in the neck all day.

Bonus match: Jumbo/Tenryu vs Yatsu/Nakano: I was promised death and destruction. I wouldn't quite say we got it. Early on, Jumbo clearly calls for a spot in the ropes where Nakano goes off on him with a bunch of shots and a dropkick. This is not 89 Nakano who can believably get offense in on these guys in a six-man. The comeuppance is appropriate but not over the top. There's a great Jumbo vs Yatsu exchange in here later on, and eventually, a hot tag of sorts right at the end to Nakano. He hits some dropkicks, including a missile one that I think might have bloodied Jumbo's mouth. Jumbo blocks a hiptoss out of the corner and just crushes him, then crushes him again with the knee, then crushes him again with the belly to back. Poor Nakano.

[Matt D]

4/16/89: Jumbo vs Hansen: Oops. This is two days before the unification and about a dozen times better. I came into this with a bit of a groan since I wasn't sure I wanted to see the two of them again but then Jumbo took it right to him and I had no regrets. Hard-hitting, super aggressive. The deal with Hansen, of course, is that you can't keep him down; you can only contain him. Jumbo did for a while, but not forever and Hansen came back with a vengeance. Not much to say here. Good Jumbo control. Good Hansen control. It ended up on the floor the violence just escalating until the ref threw it out. I don't think these two could really do better than this.

4/18/89: Footloose vs Zenk/Kroffat: Hey, this was pretty good. Zenk was all about the high dropkick here and I don't remember that being a big thing for him at other points of his career. That meant a bunch of tandem offense using it, including a great missile dk as Kroffat had his opponent up in a suplex position. I wished Zenk would lean into attitude a bit, but I'd wanted that out of Kroffat in what I've seen of him in 89 too. I always felt like heel Zenk could have been really good but when he sort of pointed that way here, Kroffat just wouldn't play along. Other than that, they worked well together. It was nice to see Footloose in a bit more of a showcase instead of just getting beat upon and fighting for their lives. Zenk almost (almost) felt like he belonged. He was leaning into his AWA heritage especially in the early matwork and I wouldn't at all be offended if he had a couple more tours.

[Gordi the former AEW fan]

I strongly recommend 8/30/88. Here's what I wrote about it on the GME project back when:

In my opinion, this match got unfairly jobbed out in the DVDVR AJPW 80s vote, finishing 35th.

This is Jumbo vs Tenryu in the late 80s with the addition of Ashura Hara and Yoshiaki Yatsu. Not "being held back by" the presence of Hara and Yatsu, but rather with those two awesome, stiff, bruising tag specialists adding to the match. To me, the thing that makes this match special is that big, nasty, fists-and-elbows, can-both-dish-it-out-and-take-it quality that Yatsu and Hara bring to the table. They are ideal tag partners for Jumbo and Tenryu, and they are perfect in their roles here. Hopefully, the qualities that Jumbo and Tenryu bring to the table are already self-evident to anyone reading this.


These had a few matches together. and every one I have seen is at least very good. This is the one from the Bruiser Brody Memorial Show, and in my opinion it's their best one.

The match has an insane pace (by 80s AJPW standards) building to a chaotic climax at the end with everyone absolutely going for the kill trying to put someone away before the time runs out. There's a superb dramatic moment in the build to the climax where Jumbo fights back to his corner, but Yatsu is out on the floor. Jumbo's body language in that moment gets me every time. 
 

[Matt D]

It's easier to hit the Revolution stuff than the Choshu stuff because it's more directly relevant to what I'm watching. I have no strong opinion on Hara so I'm looking forward to developing one.

[Gordi the former AEW fan]

I honestly think Hara is woefully underrated. He isn't a guy with a ton of moves, he's a guy who dishes out (and can absolutely take) one hell of a clubbering. 

[Matt D]

4/18/89: Fuchi (c) vs Nakano: I had no idea that Fuchi came out to Danger Zone. That's tremendous. I'm glad I had just gone back and watched the older Nakano tag because it gave me a better connection to him. The fans, of course, had a great connection to him here. I get the sense that they really liked rooting against Fuchi. He never leaned into anything untoward, but he was just such a force on the mat that it made those who faced him natural underdogs. That's how things played out here. He was so good at prying away a limb in a believable way. I don't know if the narrative towards the end here was better than the narrative towards the end of the Malenko or Momota, but the finish was really good. I don't think it's the first time I've seen that push off/wild whack to the back on a German escape attempt and I loved it there and I love it here too. Great moment with an elated crowd at the end.

BONUS: 3/9/85 and 
3/12/87: Road Warriors vs Jumbo/Tenryu (c): I watched the first one by accident thinking it was the second one, though I should have realized sooner for a bunch of reasons. I don't have a lot to say about the first except for that it was weird to see a 2/3 falls match as I haven't for this project and subsequently, the Roadies winning so quickly against Jumbo/Tenryu (even just a fall) felt odd, though I liked that finish of Hawk catching Jumbo out of nowhere. Warriors had great presence but they would have even more in their subsequent visits and the chaos at the end was effective.

The second match was interesting. One thing which was apparent in both was that Jumbo and Tenryu knew they had to do a bit more to damage the Roadies. That might have been Jumbo doing a chop off the second rope or Tenryu going to the elbow too early (which he paid for). I loved the spot where Animal interrupted a whip on Hawk by picking him up and tossing him into a body press. I bet Matt and Jeff Hardy got the posing they do before hitting their top rope moves from Hawk. There was some FIP here, more on Tenryu than on Jumbo and it gave the match some structure. Roadies won the title on a spike pile driver on the floor (and a countout). What surprised me the most was how thoroughly Jumbo was reassuring/checking on Tenryu post match. This is the last time in what I'll be watching that they team before they start ending up on opposing sides so I was expecting something colder, maybe.

[Eivion]

1 hour ago, Matt D said:

I had no idea that Fuchi came out to Danger Zone. That's tremendous.

Seriously? Its been his theme for decades. Don't think he ever stopped using it once he started.

[Matt D]

8 minutes ago, Eivion said:

Seriously? Its been his theme for decades. Don't think he ever stopped using it once he started.

I'm sure I've seen dozens of Fuchi matches but I guess I haven't seen more than a handful of Fuchi entrances. Even in the 5 or 6 I've seen in this project so far, they've all been sans entrance. It does seem like the sort of thing I knew at some point maybe.

But hey, that's partially why I'm doing the legwork here.

[Curt McGirt]

I thought it was Footloose that used "Danger Zone".

[AxB]

Footloose used Footloose!

[Ryan]

7 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I thought it was Footloose that used "Danger Zone".

They apparently used Footloose by the same artist. Shocking, I know. *imagines Kawada and Fuyuki dancing like in the film*

[Ryan]

2 minutes ago, AxB said:

Footloose used Footloose!

You will rue the day your post appeared before mine when posting at the same time...

[Curt McGirt]

See I was imagining that... but afraid of it. 

[Matt D]

Bonus match: 6/11/87: Tsururyu explodes! Tiger Mask II/Jumbo vs Tenryu/Hara: I've been through this bastard three times. First time it was what I could find online and was clipped. Second, I got the whole thing and watched it. Third, I went back with crappy google translate captions on to try to see what they were saying about it. I learned some interesting things. One is that they definitely mentioned Tsururyu a lot. Two is that it was exactly ten years since Tenryu's AJPW debut : Genichiro Tenryu & Giant Baba defeat Mario Milano & Mexico Grande. Three, the Japanese translation function is much worse than the French one. So why did I go back so many times? Mainly because the first time Jumbo gets close to Tenryu here, which is him knocking Hara across the ring, he comes over and whacks him across the face for no reason. Then he gets him in the ring, hits the jumping knee and immediately charges at him to kick him, prone, in the head. Lots of aggression from jumbo. The last time I aw them together, Jumbo was pretty caring towards Tenryu and Meltzer's no help. He vaguely says that Tenryu wanted to turn because he had no good opponents (and maybe even jump to follow Choshu if he didn't get his way) but there's very little in there about him actually turning and what he said, etc.

As for the match, it was good to see Hara. Great headbutts, standing and grounded, and just a good puzzle piece in a match he was stepping up in. Same with Tiger Mask. Tenryu looked pretty great, both in catching Tiger Mask's dive (and baseball slide, etc) and with all the stuff he had for him, a slingshot suplex, a Papa Shango style shoulder breaker, catching him (not really) on the second flip body attack off the top and then power bombing him again. In the end, they got rid of Tiger Mask and continuously double teamed  Jumbo with Total Clothesline-hations until they got DQed. I don't know why the animosity was so high here but this definitely wasn't a peace accord.

Bonus match 2: 6/11/77: Tenryu/Baba vs Mario Milano/Mexico Grande: I ran through this one quickly while watching A New Hope with the 8 year old because I have A New Hope memorized from when I was her age. Not a ton interesting to say here. Tenryu already looked pretty good in doing armdrags/armbars/hanging on. He had a gutwrench and butterfly suplex. Grande was Ricky Romero and he helped Tenryu through things. Baba was never really at risk but some double-teaming had Tenryu in trouble once or twice. Baba ultimately set him up to win with a rolling cradle though.

Edited October 10, 2020 by Matt D

[Matt D]

Ok, I looked at what I had ahead of me and there just aren't a ton of matches between where I am and 6/5/89 and the very next one on my list is a Jumbo vs Tenryu match, so I'm shifting gears to all bonus matches until I get more out of the way. Including actually on the treadmill which I hadn't been doing.

Bonus match: 8/31/87: Jumbo vs Tenryu. I'm glad I went back to this, because I don't have a great sense of them against each other yet and I think it's better to build up and work it out. The general sense I had here is that Jumbo sort of had Tenryu's number but the thing with Tenryu is that he's super hard to put away. There were some little flourishes in the beginning where Jumbo dodged the back brain kick and Tenryu dodged the knee. When I say Jumbo kind of had Tenryu's number, it was things like this: Tenryu would contain him with a hold but Jumbo would get him in the corner backwards and elbow the hell out of him. Tenryu would actually hit the jumping knee but Jumbo would immediately come back and hit one of his own. Where Jumbo made mistakes was trying to do things out of the norm to try to take him out, like a flying body attack. As the match went on, he was worn down by sheer attrition and couldn't hold Tenryu with a slam off the ropes (sending them both tumbling) and he failed to hit the pile driver on the floor. The finish was another to establish Tenryu against him and keep things going, but it certainly wasn't decisive especially after Jumbo took so much of the match (but I find, taking the match if you can't put the guy away isn't as definitive in AJPW as you'd think).

Bonus match: Randy Savage vs Tenryu 4/30/90: Had time to kill but not enough for the next match on my list. I've seen this before, but I have a much better sense of Tenryu now. Savage adapted about 15% (ate a power bomb, hit a knee off the top to protect his elbow, hit a flying body press) and Tenryu adapted something like 50% (interacted with Sherri, tolerated Savage stalling, took more than normal without firing back). It made for a surprisingly good mesh though. Tenryu had enough stateside experience to get it and Savage was game, taking big bumps and eating nasty shots. Savage got great heat here too. Good stuff.

[Matt D]

Bonus match: 10/6/87 - Jumbo vs Tenryu: This wasn't on Ditch's list nor was it on the 80s set. It's amazing here how hotter Jumbo is coming into these matches than Tenryu. Jumbo comes in to kill him and Tenryu just grounds him for minutes with a headlock. Once Jumbo finally gets out of it, he starts flattening him again. Whenever Tenryu starts to get an advantage or really starts to abuse Jumbo, Jumbo gets super hot and fires back by just blasting him. So it was a war but Tenryu was something of a slow starter, taking advantage of Jumbo's mistakes. Both guys hit a lot of stuff and there are real moments of struggle where they can't hit things (especially Tenryu going for the power bomb probably too early and Jumbo just refusing it). My pal Marty, when reviewing this over at PWO, thought that was a mistake and it took him out of the fury but it felt entirely competitive to me.  The best stuff with them so far has been them crashing into each other and trying to go over the top to finally shut each other down. Jumbo bumped into the corner.  Then he hit a Thesz press but clotheslined himself on the top rope. Tenryu took a crazy bump through the ropes on a missed charge. The huge spot was (much like the last match), one guy running at the other on the apron. In the earlier match match, both guys collided and Jumbo, though getting the higher clothesline, fell to the floor and got counted out. Here, Jumbo was the one charging with the jumping knee, and Tenryu got an arm up causing him to go sailing over the rope. The match broke down from there with both guys claiming victory and the seconds all rushing in. When it came back together, Jumbo beat the crap out of Tenryu and slammed the ref and got DQed until Brody came into make the save and look like a moron when he finally had to bump for Jumbo because Brody's terrible. I have no idea what the chaos was about unless they were claiming it was an over the top DQ by Tenryu or something. I tried to look at the autotranslate captions but they remain completely useless with Japanese (and terribly useful in French Catch).

This was when Jumbo was complaining: