New Footage Friday: All Japan 1/8/90

FULL SHOW

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Mitsuo Momota

MD: For a first match young guy, Kikuchi looked to have a ton of promise here. The dropkick stands out but he sold well and just looked like he belonged in there for the most part. Momota is a guy you want to see as an underdog, so watching him tear apart an arm in interesting ways is compelling but not what I enjoy the most out of him. They dropped the arm stuff in the last third which didn't necessarily do the match justice but you could see hints of the wrestler Kikuchi would become here.

ER: This felt more like a 1990 WWF house show match than a 1990 All Japan match, which still has some pluses. Much of the match is Momota grinding at Kikuchi's left arm, and Kikuchi's screaming during the arm work really made a lot of it resonate. But once you know that the left arm is never going to come up in any way once they go into the home stretch, it kind of renders the bulk of the match as "lets see if these front rows fill up a little more before the bigger matches". So you lop out the long arm section, and you're still left with a couple of cool things. Kikuchi's dropkick is fantastic and the way Momota sells it makes it seem like it hits with as much force as it looks like it's hitting. Later in the match Momota merely tosses Kikuchi to the floor and Kikuchi flies through the ropes as if he's hitting a tope on an invisible man, just a nutty bump to be taking in a "work the arm" match. I really loved how Momota blocked a Kikuchi hip toss by holding the ropes in the corner, then violently shoved Kikuchi to the mat. But I just can't by a single DDT finishing off Kikuchi, not after I seeing the decades of coconut clonks his head would end up enduring. 

Goro Tsurumi vs. Steve Gatorwolf

MD: Man, Gatorwolf's chops suck. I'll just lay that out there. He's big, has some presence, but Wahoo he is not. You know who could have had a good match against Tsurumi? Wahoo. Tsurumi's stuff is all good though. Good knees, took up space well, etc., but this was too long and Gatorwolf disappoints. We go deep on these cards, look under the overturned rock, but there maybe should be some limits? This feels like a match that no one's ever seen certainly, including the people that were actually in the crowd that night.

ER: I liked this more than Matt, and disagree about Gatorwolf's chops. Bad kneedrop? Sure Gatorwolf had a bad kneedrop. But All Japan fans had different ideas of what overhand chops to someone's forehead were supposed to look like and I think Gatorwolf's chops worked really well within the context of All Japan. What is kind of odd about Gatorwolf, is that his overhand chops are easily his weakest strike, but also the strike he uses 75% of the time. It would be like a pitcher with a terrible curveball who still used his curveball almost every pitch. There's a traditional chop exchange out of the corner, and Gatorwolf really blisters Goro's chest with a couple. He also threw this short right hand to the jaw a couple times that looked really good, but mostly it was the tomahawk chops. Goro Tsurumi is always an entertaining low card guy for me, but I think of him as a mid 80s AJ guy, not a 1990 AJ guy, and his offense that is primarily eye rakes and punches doesn't seem like anything that would fit into AJ (outside of Rusher Kimura). 

Tsurumi essentially works like Tarzan Goto working as Rusher Kimura, and that is a thing that I like. His punches look really great (and I love how he shook out his hand occasionally), he has a nice jawbreaker (which Gatorwolf bumped nicely), a couple of fun kneedrops where he just dropped both knees down into Gatorwolf's stomach, and a few eye rake variants. I couldn't believe Gatorwolf got the win here. Early 90s AJ had this weird habit of bringing in WWF job guys for tours, but it's not like they were giving those guys wins! Gatorwolf worked Tsurumi far more than any opponent on his tour, and was 8-2 against him! He lost to everyone else, so this might have been Baba really blatantly saying "You do not belong in All Japan any longer, Goro. Also you will be losing to David Sammartino and Joel Deaton in a couple months."  

Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Rip Rogers

MD: Rogers was just infinitely entertaining. If I was Baba, I'd have put him right in the comedy six mans (That weren't quite comedy six mans yet, but we'll get to that). He's a super over the top parody babyface here with lots of clapping and oh yeahs! He carried a kid around the ring on his shoulders before the match, which felt unique but was something he did multiple times on the tour. And if this was 1997 Ogawa or 2002 Ogawa or whatever, he would have been able to react and respond to it and it would have been amazing. 1990 Ogawa? He played grumpy with a chip on his shoulder as Rogers is just having a good time. I liked this a lot better than his Kobashi match a couple of days later, because Kobashi, in the midst of a big 7 match series against various opponents (including allies like Kabuki and Yatsu) just took it all way too seriously with the ability to take it to Rip, forcing Rogers into more of a heel role, where here he felt like a bizarre attraction. 

ER: I love the Rip Rogers All Japan tours, and Rip really should have been a regular undercard gaijin for the rest of the decade. Mike Modest basically secured a long term NOAH gig by getting a simple thumbs up gesture over, and Rogers has 5 or 6 different bits that are a definite hit with the AJ crowds. I've looked at some of his other matches from his two tours (here are matches against Fuchi and Sato, and here are matches against Kobashi and Eigen), and the act is a hit. Clapping, toting around kids, taking an eternity to hand off his robe, checking out his hair in his hand mirror, it gets a reaction every time and I have no doubt that he would have added to the routines with a longer stay. Rip has the shtick (which Ogawa plays into a little, mussing up Rip's hair), but he also works stiff, and this was when Ogawa was more of a stiff younger worker too, so we get a great mix of goof off yelping from Rip and then some stiff arm lariats from both. Rip has great punches (and he shakes his fist out too! A bunch of guys after my heart on this show...) and both bumped convincingly for the other. I loved Rip finishing with a superplex, too, but I just couldn't shake the idea that this guy should have been a gaijin undercard star.  

Mighty Inoue/Isamu Teranishi vs. The Fantastics

MD: Inoue was really good. I don't think he gets enough credit. Huge energy. Everything's crisp. Everything's mean. He has something special in how he moves and hits stuff. Teranishi, on the other had, does not. He was in there to lose offense and get beaten on. Fantastics kept taking advantage on him with teamwork and then Inoue had to come in and fix things. Fulton and Rogers had good stuff, like always, and fed well for Inoue, but I like them more when they get to lean into either face or heel roles generally.

ER: The Fantastics are so great during their 90s All Japan run that I have to imagine a ton of people just weren't seeing their matches, or else they would have been talked about as one of the greater 90s tag teams. The are total asskickers in All Japan, small, but packing a wallop. Matching them up against the still very fast and hard hitting Mighty Inoue and the super tough sumo Teranishi is just a super fun pairing. Fulton kept cutting off Inoue and Teranishi with his great right hand, Rogers had a lot of force behind everything he did (he hit a legdrop on a hot tag at one point and it felt like he was trying his hardest to destroy his tailbone), but perhaps his greatest strength is in taking all of Inoue's nastiest shots. Inoue sticks Rogers with a disgusting gutbuster/senton combo and looks like a truck tire rolling over Tommy. Teranishi hits a great kneedrop off the top and it felt like a possible finish. But the Fantastics were too good with cutoff spots and watching them peel Teranishi far enough away from Inoue was great, loved their Drive-By finish, and Fulton's running punch to keep Inoue from breaking up the pin was the sweetest icing.

 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/The Great Kabuki vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Motoshi Okuma/Haruka Eigen

MD: You can't say that they didn't make good use out of Fuchi in these matches. He was able to switch on a dime between hanging with his legendary opponents and stooging all over the place for them. Due to the HH, I had a hard time telling Fuchi's side apart at times, but that's more on me. Baba's more mobile here and Rusher hasn't shifted over completely to the bit where he just stands around stoically as people hit him, but I'm not sure that's even a good thing. The matches get a lot funnier a few years later even if they're probably more technically sound at this point.

ER: I thought this was great, and maybe the best fusion of comedy and the guys still being able to work. Everyone in a trios having the average age of 45 just feels like a modern WWE match, and most of these guys could still go in the ring. It's much more wrestling with some comedy, as opposed to comedy with a little bit of wrestling like this style of trios would become. A lot of these guys (Eigen, Fuchi, Kabuki, Okuma) are still real ass kickers, Baba was still able to hit with a surprising amount of force and was still quite spry, and Rusher was inflexible but still had several cool tricks. 

Baba and Fuchi were a great match, with Baba hitting him with some really impressive stuff for a 52 year old giant. His Russian legsweep makes him look like an actual powerful giant, he hits one of the loudest Baba chops I've ever heard to the side of Fuchi's neck, Fuchi runs super fast directly into Baba's big boot, it honestly looked like they could have had a great singles match in 1990. But for some reason Fuchi hardly worked singles matches in 1990, not defending his World Junior title for a six month stretch. It's not just those two with chemistry, everyone works really well with everyone else, all get nice moments to shine. Kabuki looked as violent as ever, starting a match long trend of Eigen and Fuchi getting kicked in the shoulder blades. Kabuki makes kicking guys in the back and look so fun that Baba throws several great ones of his own. Eigen is really spirited and mean here, throwing stiff chops, slapping the taste out of Rusher's mouth with a hard fast combo, taking a quick flipping bump to the floor; he didn't look too old to be out to pasture, but he was working 90% tags and trios as one of the lowest totem pole guys on the roster. It's a real testament to how deep the native roster was. 

Okuma is a guy I always forget about, but contributed nasty headbutts (including a big standing splash variation) and has some great battles with Rusher and Baba. Even Rusher has his vicious moments, taking a ton of headbutts and throwing heavy chops, choking Eigen hard in the ropes. The comedy is well integrated and smartly played, not nearly so much a focal point of the match style, but a fun added feature of a quicker paced match than you'd expect. There was a lot of movement for a match that would become the old man style, and the few comedy spots provide nice breaks in the action. We get the Eigen spitting spot, except nobody has newspapers and he makes it to the 3rd row. And we get a great comedy callback spot to play off an earlier Baba moment. Kabuki had hit a hard bodyslam on Fuchi and Baba stepped firmly down onto Fuchi's stomach with his gigantic foot, then firmly walking on and over him. Fuchi later tries to do the same, only to get his foot grabbed, tripping him on his way over. The finish is a bit abrupt, which is a funny thing to say about one of the longest matches on the show. But I thought this was really one of the best matches from a style not known for it's high end in-ring. 

Shinichi Nakano vs. Randy Rose

MD: You feel a little bad for Rose to have to follow Rip on the card. He tried hard, though, including hitting an axe-handle off the apron, but his stooge stuff (like getting pulled off the ropes in a double leg or teeter-tottering like Funk in the ropes while getting chopped or getting atomic dropped onto a chair) wasn't going to play post-Rip. Nakano, like usual, was just there. This was fine but the crowd didn't come along.


Shunji Takano/Akira Taue vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Ivan Koloff

MD: A nothing match. This was a good tour for Koloff, but you don't really get to see that here so just take my word for it. Taue wasn't even close to being The Taue at this point, and watching him here, you couldn't be blamed for thinking he'd be another sumo guy who didn't make it. Takano (who was a couple of years younger actually), on the other hand, seemed like he would have been a player.

Yoshiaki Yatsu/Kenta Kobashi vs. The British Bulldogs

MD: This was mostly Davey Boy putting young Kobashi through his paces, but that was a lot of fun to see. Davey looked great and like he could have been feuding with Jumbo or Tenryu for the Triple Crown if he didn't go to the WWF towards the end of 90. I'm iffy on late Bulldogs matches because it's not very enjoyable to watch broken-down Dynamite, but he wasn't in much and mostly threw headbutts or did a little bit of grinding on Kobashi when he was in. Yatsu got to clean house towards the end but this felt about getting some more miles on Kobashi.

Jumbo Tsuruta/Tiger Mask II/Isao Takagi vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Toshiaki Kawada/Samson Fuyuki

MD: This came just a few days after Takagi brutally ambushed Tenryu before a singles TV match with Koloff. It's also one of Tiger Mask Misawa's first matches back after missing most of 89 with an injury. Tenryu had faced Jumbo dozens of times over the last year, but generally, Tenryi had the younger guys (in Footloose) on his side and Jumbo would have older warriors like Kabuki or Yatsu on his. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to see Tenryu be a grumpy bastard against the youth. He made up for lost time here. Every time he got into the ring and got his hands on Takagi, it's great. He just brutalizes him for a few seconds and then dismissively tags out to one of his partners. He's equally a jerk to Tiger Mask (chopping him for no reason whenever he gets too close to the corner while he's on the apron) and, of course, Jumbo (just leaping into the ring, running across and tagging him). 

My single favorite bit was him wrecking Takagi after Isao had the impudence to pull Tiger Mask out of the way of the Tenryu top rope elbow drop. It was obvious that he took it personally and no one was better at taking things personally than Tenryu. Even though that was my favorite, the match was just full of great Tenryu moments: dropping a table on Takagi from the outside, eating some Tiger Mask kicks only to yank him down to the mat by his mask, smugly dodging a double knee by Takagi and Jumbo. All the while, he's incredibly giving, letting Tiger Mask and Takagi both have big moments against him. Jumbo and Footloose play their parts well and this ends up being as a really nice piece of business and a great lost match.