All Japan Battle Royal 1/2/97

As part of my continued look at the All Japan New Years battle royals, here is 1997.

1/2/97

ER: This didn't have a ton of comedy, but it found ways to dispose of every single one of the most threatening guys all in a row. Dr. Death goes right after Taue at the bell, batters him, and slams him into the buckles to set up the Stampede. BUT, as Doc is running back towards the center of the ring to slam Taue, Kawada runs in and just shoves Taue over onto Doc. Doc cannot believe it. This suffered a bit from poor choice of camera angle, as we mostly miss Bobby Duncum Jr. getting eliminated at the same time as Doc (a simple DDT from Izumida put him down), and we also miss how Gary Albright ends up on the bottom of a pile. But the biggest possible crime is the camera missing Stan Hansen's elimination. Hansen is always such an unstoppable force in these matches (um, well, any matches he's in, I suppose that would be true), and to completely miss what happened to actually take him out of the match? Shameful. He did get dogpiled by 10 people, but I wanted to know how the clear favorite got taken off his feet to begin with. And perhaps an even bigger disappointment was that he left with no ill will. After he got pinned I assumed he would crush whomever wronged him with the inside of his left arm, but he just casually exited the ring.

Hansen's elimination sent us on a string of big name eliminations, all in a row. Kawada was a real asskicker the entire time he was in, and he was always going after big names. I love the moments in these battle royals where two guys square off in the middle, and everyone else hangs back on the ropes, like it's a big dance off. Kawada and Kobashi fight over suplexes, and just as Kawada gets a vertical suplex, Kobashi shifts his weight and lands on him, resulting in a dogpile to eliminate Kawada. But then Taue hilariously takes the opportunity to grab Kobashi in a Boston crab while Kobashi is still pinning Kawada! However, everyone just rolls Kobashi through and he pins Taue with a sunset flip type cradle, and of course they then roll Taue over to pin Kobashi. Misawa and Akiyama are the next gone, and the ring separates into Gaijin vs. Native. So we get Eigen, Izumida, Hase, Honda, and Omori in one corner, and The Eagle, The Lacrosse, and Johnny Ace in the other corner.

Hase fires up his troops (while clearly using all of them as human shields) against the gaijin, but then shoves Eigen to the wolves. It was the only way. Hase keeps playing guys on his own side, even coming to an alliance with Lacrosse before naturally turning on him once he eliminated Honda. Hase was great at being the manipulative ringleader, because you knew it was all going to blow up in his face. By the time Omori hit him with a nice spinning heel kick and Izumida flew down with his big round head, the crowd was losing it. Omori vs. Izumida is not the final two I expected, but that's a major part of the joy with these matches. I'm not a big Omori fan, probably would have him towards the bottom of my Kings Road Power Rankings, and he doesn't endear himself any further here. He and IZU work a couple brief singles match spots, throw in a couple decent nearfalls, but Omori sucks all the drama out of the finish. After IZU misses a big falling meteor headbutt, Omori plants him with a German suplex. However, Omori loses the bridge, and the ref stops counting the pinfall. At that point it becomes a struggle for Izumida to keep his shoulders to the mat, while Omori awkwardly scrambles to hold a cradle. Time really stood still as it became clear this was the finish, and Omori couldn't get out of his own way. After Omori wins, he runs to the turnbuckles to celebrate, and actually slips and falls off the ropes. Rough ending, but at least Omori was finally able to put his weird Royal Rumble appearance behind him and win the big one.