Abdullah the Butcher vs. Hiroshi Wajima AJPW 1/2/88
MD: Abby had bigger fish to fry. His eyes were on Jumbo and Baba. Wajima was just a guy he had to babysit here. I'm not going back to see if this did ratings or not but I bet it did even as Wajima was less of a TV draw than he'd been the year before. I'll be honest. I started my AJPW chronological watch with 89 in part to avoid the guy. I kind of regret that now though not necessarily because of anything he did here. More because I would have liked to track every Tenryu match after his turn. But I'd say in small doses, i.e. this match, Wajima was pretty interesting to watch.
Here we got to see him through the lens of an Abdullah the Butcher that wanted the country of Japan to remember that he was a singular and formidable monster.
Wajima would try a bunch of things. Abby would no sell them in the most bored and stoic way possible, hilarious to both me (despite myself) and the crowd at the time, and cut him off with the throat shot. The fans would chant Butcher over and over again. Then Abby would do some stylized karate shots and pose. It was something. To Abby's credit, it built to Wajima finally got him over and even though the first time that happened, Abby looked more bemused and surprised than anything else, it did sort of matter because of the mountain Wajima climbed. It would have just mattered more if it was, let's say, Isao Takagi (since he'll come up later) or Shunji Takano doing it and not someone who had been around main events for a while. Abby quickly had enough of that, hit a shoulder block and started laying in the elbow drops. Wajima kept putting his feet on the ropes and Abby got incensed and started going after anyone that moved with Baba making the save. Definitely a match that one experiences, this one.
ER: Another lifetime ago, I was the sole person on the Pro Wrestling Only All Japan 80s Nominating Committee to want this match as on the 150 matches on the final set. I understand the need to keep someone like me in check on a group project like the 80s sets. We were cultivating something important and historical for a large group of people to see and experience. Setting new talking points and updating tastes and standards. All 150 slots were important. I sincerely wanted this Abby/Wajima match on the Final 150. I love it. It deserved to be on. The main argument against it was that some thought it was the clear 150th place finisher, which might be true. Some would rank it low because it's only 6.5 minutes bell to bell. It isn't a title change, it doesn't build to a hot finish, and obviously not enough voters went to the wall for Abdullah the Butcher matches, because he had no matches on the set. Hiroshi Wajima had three. So maybe we put this match on the set as the fourth Wajima match and the only Abby match, and it finishes last? Is that bad?
The two last place matches, #149 and #150, wound up being two different Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Bruiser Brody matches. Their 1983 match was #149, their 1988 match was #150. That 1988 match was #150 on my own personal ballot, in full unanimous agreement with the mass voting bloc in finding Jumbo/Brody '88 to be the very worst match of the 150 best All Japan matches of the 80s. Did we need to have two different Jumbo/Brody matches on their if they were considered the two worst of the set? Every territory we did was going to have a match that finished dead last. There has to be a Worst Scorsese Movie. I always wanted to put a colorful match on the set as the one we thought would finish last. For the WWF set I wanted the best of the Bobby Heenan/Ultimate Warrior weasel suit matches (which didn't make the set). For the Memphis set I Phil and I were the ones pushing for the Nightmare Freddy matches that finished dead last.
Something has to finish last. Abdullah the Butcher should have been #150. Or #147. Time has proven me correct on this match. I love this match. It has incredible aura, incredible atmosphere, feels filled with danger and tension and unpredictability for its entire short runtime, and devolves into genuine spectacle in Korakuen. This match has intrigue. Abby had returned to Japan a few weeks earlier after a three year absence. He had primarily been a New Japan guy in the first half of the decade and now he was a New All Japan Guy. Abby looked like as big a superstar in 1988 as he had a decade earlier. I don't think we put enough respect on his 87-95 run. Watch this match and witness the power of his charisma. Wajima was one of my favorite kind of wrestlers: Disgraced Former Sumo, but he was a big name and had the greatest robe in wrestling. People respected him.
Abdullah the Butcher clearly was not one of them. This whole match feels uncooperative and Abdullah looks like a guy who just keeps fearlessly making an all time great sumo look like a chump. There is no fork stabbing. There is no blood. But there is a lot of Abdullah the Butcher no selling Wajima's strikes and looking at him with unblinking, unimpressed eyes. His head is the perfect shape and his expressions are incredible. He walks through or ignores every Wajima strike while throwing screaming taped finger thrusts into his throat, and every single time he does karate poses, a new one every strike. He steps repeatedly to a champion sumo and makes more poses and faces than you've ever seen him do. Wajima finally takes the hint and does a couple shoot throws grabbing Abby by his sizable pants. Abby had finally been Gotten in a match where he disrespected Wajima over and over and over, and once he gets thrown he decides NOPE and runs into a legendary sumo with full contact shoulderblock and drops three running elbows onto his neck and chest.
Abby is so disrespectful to Wajima - AND THEN SHOVES JOE HIGUCHI, HARD! - that it draws out Jumbo and Baba and every green-tracksuited undercarder, and Abby spends 10 constantly enjoyable minutes avoiding physical interaction with Baba and Jumbo while throwing fingers at the throat of every tracksuit he sees. Jumbo is screaming at him while being held back, Baba takes his tracksuit jacket off and is walking around in track pants and no shirt, Abby is walking around the rows of Korakuen flanked by TNT and Black Assassin who isn't a guy anyone knows. It's the best. It's always intriguing, always entertaining.
Here's the match that unanimously finished #150, which is extra appropriate because it was the main event of 3/27/88, with the Tom Magee and Tommy Rich/Austin Idol matches we cover below. Watch this match and tell me it's better than the spectacle of Abby/Wajima.
#150:
Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Bruiser Brody AJPW 3/27/88
Also, I was the extreme high vote for one of the Wajima matches that made the final set. I had Wajima/Ishikawa vs. Tenryu/Hara 6/8/87 as my #4 match. #4! It finished #141. #141! I ranked a match #4 that finished in the bottom 6%! You can't get much farther apart than 4 and 141. I haven't watched that match since doing the set, 13 years ago. I'm going to watch it later. I'm justified 15 years later in my love for Abby/Wajima, let's see what shit I was working through in 2012 to be the extreme high Wajima voter:
Hiroshi Wajima/Takashi Ishikawa vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara AJPW 6/8/87
[Watched it again, turns out I was completely right once again. This match rocks. It's four sumos all angry for different reasons, Tenryu and Wajima cannot stand each other, everyone takes unprofessional shots. Wajima sells Tenryu's enziguiris better than anyone, Hara clotheslines Wajima in the side of the face and Wajima pays him back with one that knocks him onto his head. Every second of it has aura and/or sumos hitting each other hard]
Tommy Rich/Austin Idol vs. Tiger Mask II/Great Kabuki AJPW 3/27/88
MD: You'll want to stick around for the post match where Idol gathers a crowd around him and starts to pose like crazy. That's the most interesting thing in this one but it's also legitimately interesting. The second most interesting thing is the chinlock he puts on Kabuki where he works it so hard that every vein in his neck looked like it'd pop. The sheets said that Idol and Rich didn't get over because the Japanese didn't know what to make of guys who mostly punched and I find that kind of absurd and dismissive. The third is that Rich/Idol come out to Roll with the Changes by REO Speedwagon.
I didn't love the feeling out stuff here or the finishing stretch to be honest, but I did think the control on Kabuki where they went after his neck/throat with a bunch of headlock punches/throat shots and a great Rich neckbreaker, plus the aforementioned chinlock was all very good. Tiger Mask probably just wasn't the right guy to match up against these two?
ER: Rich and Idol come out to "Roll with the Changes" and I love it. Tommy Rich was still using REO Speedwagon in Japan when he worked WAR in 1993, when the song was 15 years old. The match rules because it's Idol and Rich working a Memphis tag with Kabuki going along with it, Idol and Rich cutting off the ring and throwing punches from real and comedic angles, Idol connecting with Japanese fans as an honest to god cult celebrity. Jerry Lawler got such an ice cold reaction in his limited Japanese work, but Idol grabs the attention of the All Japan crowd and them makes aloof faces like he doesn't understand why. At one point Idol tags in and throws Great Pro Wrestling Punches while dropping to a knee, throws a snapmare that is actually a man flipping another man to his seat by the head, and then throws punches to a seated Kabuki and chokes him on the mat before running him face first into Tommy Rich's knee. It is everything I love about wrestling distilled into 15 seconds. When he throws headlock punches to Kabuki, Kabuki drops forward to his knees like his nose is broken. Tommy Rich hits a fistdrop off the middle buckle. Idol hooks his hands under Kabuki's chin and flexes his arms as he pulls his neck back over his knee, hair looking like a swag version of the Mark Davis cut, and all is right. Austin Idol had a connection with the Japanese crowds and even in loss, that cult status looms over the victorious Tiger Mask. Idol flexes his biceps in the crowd and the reaction makes it clear that the people want More.
Tom Magee vs. Isao Takagi AJPW 3/27/88
MD: Some of these have been out there more or less for a few years but we never covered them (it's hard to keep up with Classics) so they're really new enough. And this was quite the thing right here. Magee came out to Danger Zone like he was Masa Fuchi or something, stood on the top turnbuckle, dropped his cape, posed, and did a shooting star press into the ring right into a tumble. Hell of a thing.
And you know, parts of this were competent. Sure he landed on Takagi with his first leapfrog and there was just a weirdness to some of what he did. He'd do a headscissors at an angle I've never quite seen it and grabbed the ropes not for heat so much as so he didn't fall over, while in a grounded headscissors. His strikes were stylized to say the least. He put his foot on Takagi's leg while holding an armbar, not to drive him down but to set up a drop toehold and I don't quite get that. Lots of little things like that, but the armdrags looked ok and he was spirited in his legdrops and kneedrops and hiptosses and what not.
But really this was about the spin wheel kicks. His was basically a beesting, the chop of the spinwheelkick, where he got the edge of his foot into the midsection of Takagi. Takagi when he later reversed a whip and hit a charge and just careened at Magee, went foot first right into his face as he arced. And yes, right after that, Magee opened up in a big way, blood coming down his face. The match was over by that point though as he did a somersault to "dodge a charging Takagi", put in quotes for a reason and then did a belly to back position backbreaker which I've never seen before for a submission. Hell of an entrance though.
ER: I don't really think Tom Magee is that much different than many guys who are pushed as a Fast Rising Star on the modern indy (or national television!) scene. He had great athleticism and actually had more offense than I realized, and he isn't AS terrible as advertised when it comes to fitting that offense into an actual match. He feels like someone who could have been molded with more time, but wasn't given more time. I liked some things he did (like his weird drop toehold) but the main thing he had going against him was also the same thing he had going for him: He moved like an alien in the ring. If not like an alien, he moved like someone who had been given the implanted knowledge of pro wrestling, without actually knowing or understanding what pro wrestling was. Many of the things he does look "fine" but he does them as someone who doesn't know what he is doing, and the crowds can feel it. He is doing a kneedrop, he is doing a legdrop, he is doing a weird drop toehold, but he is doing it in a way that doesn't feel like pro wrestling, it feels like a memorized series of steps. Tom Magee memorized the sounds of the alphabet phonetically but cannot actually read or understand letters, and it is off-putting to the people who love wrestling. If you gave an alien a recipe to make a pumpkin pie, but they had never tasted a pie or seen what a pie looked like, you would almost surely get some sort of creation that had similarities to pie while also being grotesque in a way that aesthetically offended you. It's why Magee didn't seem to realize he was even bleeding from the nose and mouth after being hit by a spinning heel kick. He does not understand these humans, nor the ways they leak.
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