Found Footage Friday: 1989 AJPW~! MALENKO~! FUCHI~! ABBY~! BABA~! KAMALA~! MIGHTY~!

Mighty Inoue vs. Shinichi Nakano AJPW 2/23/89

MD: Another set of Classics drops as we go down the list of new footage. This one is probably one I wouldn't have gone out of my way for in general, but it was good overall. A Jr. Heavyweight Title match. We've gotten pieces filled in for this lineage and defenses and the matches hold up quite well against late 80s NJPW title matches really. You have guys like Fuchi, Inoue, and Momota carrying the division with people like Joe Malenko popping in.

I don't have a lot of time for Nakano in general, but this was set up to be almost impossible to fail. For one, he ambushed right from the start, giving things early direction and not forcing them into feeling out matwork he might not excel at. He slapped Inoue out of nowhere and then hit his signature power slam before tossing him to the floor and destroying him on the rails. Back in the ring, it was a seated chinlock. He at times had a sense that he wasn't sure how to best capitalize on the moment. 

None of that from Inoue. First chance he got (grabbing the head out of a Nakano toehold) he focused right in and chained three or four things together perfectly. As the match went on and they went back and forth, he wouldn't let things meander much either. At one point, Nakano was hitting shoulder thrusts in the corner with not enough pepper behind them, so Inoue asserted himself and started shin kicking him in the face. 

They had an exciting finishing stretch where Inoue got him down for the flipping sentons but missed the second. That allowed Nakano to hit his fisherman's suplex but Inoue got out to win with a very cool headscissors roll up out of a side slam. This overachieved, but it was entirely because Inoue is so good.

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala AJPW 3/8/89

MD: It would be easy to dismiss this, to just say some fun things about Baba's cool trip on Kamala, how Kamala fought out of the corner, or how great Rusher's strikes against Abby looked. Or we could play into the amusing bits here, the amazing look on Baba's face Abby got a cheapshot on him on a rope break and then did the whole martial arts hand waving shtick. We could go on about how they were like a married couple having a spat and how delightful that was. And that'd be valid. We could talk about how into this the crowd was, how they buzzed for Kamala's big moments or Abby asserting himself or Rusher making a comeback or whenever Baba came into the ring. 

And on some level, I am going to talk briefly about the sum of all of that. But I just don't think I can do this justice. I'm not even sure I want to do this justice. This match, ten minutes or so until the countout, is its own sort of magic. It's delightful. I was smiling the whole way through, out of delight, and I rode the same wave as the crowd, decades later. I could argue that we were taught and trained and conditioned not to enjoy matches like this and then I'd feel dumb, because of how stupid that sounds, but also because how stupid it makes me feel that at one point in my life many years ago, I would have denied myself this sort of joy, would have tried to hide behind a sort of self-important sense that wrestling had to be something else. 

Sometimes wrestling should be this. Hell, most wrestling should be begging to be this, because this clash of characters, of timing, of conducting a crowd, of heart and humor and misfit, monster, mythic heroism and villainy... it's just so different than we can hope to find out of most other forms of entertainment. There's nothing in the world quite like this. Watch this. It's ten minutes plus some before and after. Let yourself feel what that crowd was feeling. Smile along. Be delighted. It's okay. The world is a dark place, but there's light to be found in the least likely of places.

Joe Malenko vs. Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/20/89

MD: I can't help but think about this match in context. 1989 All Japan is defined by the war between Tenryu and Jumbo, between Hansen teaming with Tenryu and tearing through people, by Footloose having spotfests, Rusher and Eigen and Okuma doing comedy, guys like Shunji Takano and Kabuki scrapping and holding down the midcard against both Revolution and foreign monsters. And yet, here is a an absolute throwback to both the sort of 70s hold-driven matches Jumbo had made his name on and the sort of Junior Heavyweight technical battles we'd expect out of Fujinami at the turn of the 80s before Tiger Mask changed the paradigm in New Japan. It feels like the pinnacle of the Denny Brown/Nelson Royal style of NWA Junior Heavyweight Title matches that riddled the undercards of certain territories for years. 

I also can't help but think of Newborn UWF, a native monster that was threatening all traditional ways of doing business in Japan. To watch Maeda, Takada, Yamazaki, Anjo, and all the others is to feel a constant sense of danger. One mistake could bring a fight to an end or allow for severe punishment. There's a tension that leaves viewers on edge the whole time through. It's exciting but it's also exhausting. There can be narratives. There were always narratives. But they were based on an incessant pressure. This is different. It's a slow unlocking, a game of chess instead of a perilous tug of war. Damage had to be done, joints had to be weakened, effort had to be put in. It required a different sort of investment, both for the wrestlers and for the crowd. The struggle is somehow more simulated but also richer and broader for that simulation. It may not feel quite as real but it feels just as true. The wrestlers struggle for every inch, sell every twist of a joint, and react emotionally to consequences (such as Fuchi retreating from the ring, arm damaged, after it seemed like Malenko had an answer for everything he tried). If UWF was constant sudden death, this was regulation soccer, where the ebb and flow of shots on goal and ball possession would add up over time.

And of course, I couldn't help but think about Fuchi. He's the most versatile wrestler I've ever seen. He could go from comedy, to a title match like this, to mauling younger wrestlers. You see wrestlers manage that over their career, but for him that might all be within the same week. I think about him destroying hte knees of the Super Generation Army on tables, brutality on top of brutality. Here though, it was a chess  move. It opened the match up, turned everything on its head, gave him a lever to pry on for the rest of the match, and pry he did. Malenko was constantly off balance and every subsequent move he hit was full of desperation. Fuchi could, would, and did throw little pokey kicks to the knee take back over whenever the opportunity arose. It was the same move, even the same brutality, but it was used in an entirely different way than those Tsuruta-gun trio matches of a year or two later. 

It all built to a spectacular finishing stretch. Malenko's desperation paid off for him as he caught Fuchi in a bridging blockbuster fallaway slam. He followed it up with a northern lights suplex and then a clutch armbar. With leg damaged, he couldn't put Fuchi away. Fuchi, arm possibly still hurt, went with leaping enziguiris instead, and then was able to jam Malenko's final attempt to slip around him for a bridging butterfly suplex and the title win. So while I thought back, forward, and laterally to 70s Jumbo, to Denny Brown, to 1989 AJPW, to UWF, and to 1991 six-mans, what I thought about most of all was how this match stood on its own, and just how good it all was. History might show these late 80s AJPW Juniors matches to be a last gasp of and older tradition in some ways, but it was a gasp that showed how much vital, vibrant, and worthwhile life might have still been left to be found in the style.