Big Boss Man vs. Jake the Snake in Japan!

Big Boss Man vs. Jake Roberts Wrestling Summit 4/13/90

ER: This was fantastic! This was from the famous Wrestling Summit show with WWF, AJPW, and NJPW, and Boss Man got one of the biggest reactions of the night. How cool is this big super show in the Tokyo Dome? This is one of the only matches Jake ever had in Japan (the only other one available is his cool match against Hashimoto a few years later), and it's one of the finest Boss Man performances I've seen. Roberts has just a little offense to use, and Boss Man builds to the DDT nicely, scrambling away a couple times early to avoid it, really showing Roberts was a threat. He ever put over Roberts' size by treating his strikes like a big deal, like a thing to be avoided. Early on Jake hits a back elbow and Boss Man takes a ridiculously fast, crazy bump backwards through the ropes to the floor, later he'd take one of the best inside out bumps off a clothesline. Boss Man is so damn agile here, really making a ton of openings for Jake just by missing offense or finding the most painful way to sell offense, and I loved how he staggered around for Jake. He takes a shot to the ring post that made me love him even more, misses a big splash off the top (that top turnbuckle was doing a lot of heavy lifting there), and I love matches based around aggressive big guys. His offense looked great too, big falling lariat, nice ragdoll bearhug, big punches, big backbreaker, almost snapping Jake across the middle rope with his butt splash. The fans really treated Boss Man as a major heel here, really yelling at him and he was great at soaking up the boos. He had turned face back in the states by this point, not sure if the fans just remembered him as Big Bubba or what. But this was a big performance on a big stage and felt like a big awesome deal.