Andre the Giant Didn't Have to Treat Joel Deaton Seriously

Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. Dick Slater/Joel Deaton AJPW 11/15/90 - GREAT

ER: Just another 90s Andre gem, the kind of playful menace performance he never would been given credit for having against mustache Joel Deaton. Andre didn't need to have a fun match against Joel Deaton, ever. 1990 Joel Deaton looked like Eric Roberts in Star 80 with less success and was above maybe only Ricky Santana on the All Japan gaijin hierarchy. Andre didn't need to do a single thing with Joel Deaton in 1990. Instead he puts on a little show, playing the menace who cartoonishly thirsts after beating up Joel Deaton. He is security getting enjoyment from throwing Eric Roberts from the Playboy Mansion. 

Andre still had incredible presence in his first several 1990 tours with All Japan. The increasingly vulnerable and broken down Andre of 91-92 came fast and his work and acting changed with it. 1992 Andre was still unique and special to me. There was still major aura, but it wasn't a Powerful Giant aura, and he couldn't have worked this match this way against Joel Deaton in 1992. In 1990 Andre still had powerful confidence and aura; a man who could walk through attacks and grab you with unmatched strength. Every second Andre is on camera, he is picturing Joel Deaton as a steaming turkey dinner. 1990 Andre was special. His November 1990 All Japan tour is in all likelihood his Last Truly Great tour, the way March/April 1990 was the last Truly Great Grateful Dead tour. Touring Legends lumbering through Nagano and The Omni with playful menace before the fall. The only difference is that I love 91-92 Andre and I never listen to 92-95 Dead.  

Everybody is good in this match. Baba's worked fun stretches with Deaton and Slater and each came with little surprises. Baba works Deaton like he's a white trash rookie Taue. I am a big 1990 Baba fan. He's playful and adds in visual winks whenever he does a move that he knows looks more spry than any fan was expecting from him. He takes an incredible, layered bump in the corner late in this match after Jowl Fucking Deaton hits him with the best clothesline of the match. I'd have bet $20 on Deaton running into a size 15, and Baba sold it like he had already taken that bet. Baba in 1990 was still leaning into real clotheslines with his weird chest and taking big bumps into the corner. A guy surprising you with a big bump is always more interesting than a guy who bumps a lot. 

Dick Slater is a great opponent for 1990 Baba because Baba can still work stiff enough to justify gaijin over-bumping for him and gaijin bumping for Baba and his reactions to the bumps are one of my favorite little things in wrestling. Slater's 90s is extremely under-discussed for something so great. I need to start writing about Dick Slater's work when he was My Current Age and how great he was right up until his unfortunate back injury. The more we cover IWA-Japan Dick Slater, Puerto Rico, SMW, any year of 90s WCW, All Japan tour Dirty Dick Slater, all of them, the more he might seriously look like a top 50 worker of the 90s, maybe higher. He had Tully Blanchard Energy just when we needed it most. Rough 'n' Ready would be much more appreciated now than they were in 1996. We would have gotten a memorable late 90s ECW run. Anyway,

this is an Andre match. As great as 90s Dick Slater was, nobody was ever Andre. This is the beautiful kind of Andre gem where he has a competitive match against someone who shouldn't be competitive with Andre In His Current State. I love that Andre match. I love how Andre works every person. I want to see matches where he is old but unstoppable but letting Joel Deaton survive. His confidence and presence are unmatched. He is sporting incredible and absurd Capital J muttonchops, that I would make fun of on any ska gimmicked Chikara wrestler who had the same but here you're left with something so much deeper. It's weird to think about Andre styling one of his sideburns into a perfect capital J, so do you think it was just a weird accident? If it was, why would he leave it and not clean it up? Are we to think he has enough energy to shave at all but not enough to fix a coded message on one of his cheeks? The world's largest Prince in a dispute with his record label, signaling to the press with a coy wink that he's going back to his roots as Jean Ferre. That can't be an accident. 

Andre stands on the apron, visibly salivating. Fantasizing about how much he's going to mess Joel Deaton up. Deaton had tried to sneak a chop in on Andre after tagging in and Andre saw it coming a mile away. He doesn't take his eyes off Deaton again. Deaton is in the ring, tied up on his back by Baba's weight, and you can see Deaton staring not up at Baba, but staring wide-eyed directly into Andre's eyes on the apron. Staring right through his mustache. I can't imagine how scary that would have been in 1990. Andre has such a visible craving for Deaton that his entire body drifts down the apron toward him; a man not realizing he's going 85 as he subconsciously keeps up with a hotshot in another car. You've never seen his eyes more excited when he tags in and grabs Deaton by the throat the second Deaton throws a punch. He palms Deaton by the mustache and throws a hand across the bridge of his nose, holds him in a sleeper that looked like it would have strangled Deaton to death in seconds flat had that strike to the nose hadn't happened. This is not a physically broken man, this is a Strongman Giant. When he holds Slater and Deaton prone for Baba, it is clear that neither could have wriggled out of his clutches if they tried. Andre could project his unreal strength and physically overwhelm large men. He allows Deaton to catch a break on the elbowdrop. It looks worse when Old But Powerful Andre eases up on the elbow, but the man had already had his feast, no need to pick the bones. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE