Top 30 Thursday - All Japan #27. Stan Hansen vs. Genichiro Tenryu, 7/27/88

Good lord what a ferocious beating. This is one of the more violent beatings in wrestling history, something normally reserved for a jobber who laced his boots in the wrong corner of the locker room. Stan Hansen is basically the personification of pro wrestling, coming out and swinging his lasso at tiny scattering Japanese people. Keep in mind this is a little over a week after Bruiser Brody was murdered. So Hansen paces in the ring, he being the epitome of pro wrestling, and the supple, needling guitar tones of Tenryu's theme hit, as if he's personally being led to the ring by a Jeff Skunk Baxter solo, and Hansen gives him about 10 seconds of entrance time before he barrels through the crowd and unleashes cowbell hell on Tenryu's face. Tenryu was not doing anything to deserve this premature beating, other than shaking peoples' hands and walking to the ring. He didn't even appear to be dawdling in any way. Hansen just rushes him and breaks open his forehead with Tenryu's own belt and then goes back to the ring to pace and taunt while ring boys in purple shorts put papier mache bandages on Tenryu's head. Tenryu finally makes it to the ring and there are no intros, Hansen just beats him to the mat and stomps his face a bunch. Tenryu is bloody and Hansen is constant. Big ass knees, kicks with the toe of his boot, the elbow drops that every human being loves, nasty front kicks, Hansen even breaks out an amazing fist drop I don't remember him using before, and also breaks out a King Kong tribute knee drop that looked greater than any knee drop Brody ever threw. Tenryu peppers in comebacks including some awesome clotheslines (which even Hansen kind of steals the spotlight on by doing a great stagger sell and dropping to a knee), and some not at all very great enziguiris. And that's kind of how things go, making it all at once a great match, and a flawed match. Tenryu probably takes way too much of a beating before his comeback, and his offense on comeback doesn't seem anywhere near as painful as the beating he himself had taken up to that point. He does kick Hansen in the balls at one point, which is a far more believable way to to level the playing field. And all of it leads to Hansen knocking Tenryu into the front row with a lariat off the top rope. The match was a blast to watch due to Hansen's unmatched badassery, and while the comeback should have come earlier (the longer Hansen's beating went the less believable a comeback seemed) the work within was awesome. This is the kind of match I could watch once a year and not get tired of. It's the kind of match that's an easy answer if anybody ever has the gall to ask you "So why is Stan Hansen one of your absolute favorite wrestlers?"