One-Post Complete and Accurate Bockwinkel vs. Jumbo

MD: Back in November 2022, I was doing fairly detailed bullet point write ups of AEW TV over at DVDVR. I think maybe it was a little bit easier to do that at that point of the pandemic, I don't know. I had no intention of writing up the Death Triangle vs Elite series though, so I decided to counter-program by going through all of the singles Bockwinkel vs Jumbo matches we had on tape. These are more conversational message board reviews so not quite up to my normal Segunda Caida standard (maybe a little repetitive too since I didn't write them to be put in one post like this), but I thought I'd collate them all into a quick C+A. If you twisted my arm, then Matches 2-5 and 7 would be EPIC, 1 and 9 would be GREAT and 6 would be FUN, but I wasn't writing with that in mind. You can watch along as the matches are linked.

Match 1 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 12/13/78

This was for Bock's AWA belt. It's basically in three acts. Bockwinkel controls the arm for one third, Jumbo controls the arm for one third, and then there's a finishing stretch as they work towards the draw. I can't even begin to express how hard they were working the holds. There are shots mid-match and you can just see the sweat pouring off of Jumbo just off of armbars and hammerlocks and in and out exchanges. In the middle of December. He created a ton of motion with Bockwinkel when he was working from underneath. Of course, the greatest strength of Bock is his reactions, the way he's always constantly in the moment and his pure elation of hurting someone. When Jumbo took over, it was all about Bockwinkel trying to escape and getting reversed back into it. With Bock on top, it was about Jumbo's different attempts at escaping. With Jumbo on top, it was about Jumbo using varied techniques to stretch Bockwinkel, switching things up after each escape attempt. There was a clear moment where he shifted to hammering Bockwinkel and going for the win. He knew time was against him and Bockwinkel had the champion's advantage. Some people might find this transition stilted or awkward or ignoring what came before, but it was really all about Jumbo trying to pick the exact moment where he'd worn down Bock just enough that he'd be able to hit his stuff and try to beat him. If he went too soon, Bockwinkel would reverse it. If he went too late, he wouldn't have enough time to put him away. And maybe there wasn't a perfect moment because the champ was just that good. Judging by the fact this went to a draw after they threw everything they had at one another, that was probably the case. We'll see how these matches develop from here, but the wrestling that took up at least two thirds of it was just so good.

Match 2 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta Hawaii 2/14/79

This one was 2/3 falls and man was it ever good. The first fall was full of so much of what I love about Bockwinkel and then the second fall was such an amazing showing for Jumbo. In that first fall, they went a different way with it, with Bockwinkel trying to take liberties to get an advantage early but getting jammed by Jumbo. This time, Bock didn't get his arm control first and it went straight to Jumbo's and they worked it and worked it with Bockwinkel cheating to get out or making it seem like he just might, but getting jammed right back down. He's always struggling, always fighting, always reacting and Jumbo's so smooth working from top. Eventually, Bock has enough and drops the pretense and just starts kicking and stomping him down, but Jumbo fires back, including a huge chop off the ropes that causes Bock to do his full body sell. They're about twenty in now, as there were a couple of minutes clipped here and his total exhaustion sell is the best ever. And it's still early really! Anyway, after blocking Jumbo's butterfly, Bock tries the King of the Mountain which is what he does when there's a babyface too fiery for him but Jumbo immediately fights out, rushes in and just unloads on Bock, super intense. He misses a knee in the corner and Bock, in short order, gets the figure four. Just great fighting out of it by Jumbo turning it a couple of times, but he succumbs. So that's the first fall and I love how one beat so smoothly led to the next and you could just tell what kayfabe Bock was thinking and trying to do at every point.

Second fall has Jumbo fighting with the bad leg and he does it so valiantly that the crowd really starts to get behind him. I've seen American crowds get behind Japanese guys before (especially in California) but maybe never quite like this and it's both Bock AND Jumbo here. He keeps falling a bit behind due to his leg but powering back, including hitting an atomic drop but being unable to hang on to the cobra twist. This ultimately leads to Bock containing him with a King of the Mountain (This time) but pressing it too far and allowing for Jumbo to fire back in, opening Bock up with chops and ultimately hitting the butterfly and the cobra twist causing him to pass out.

The last fall teases the time limit (9 minutes left) just from the start, and they have some near falls (a butterfly that Bock blocks but Jumbo turns into a piledriver, brutal stomps on the leg turned into a Jumbo half crab). You get maybe a sense that Jumbo doesn't know how to put him away but he goes for broke with his hurt leg with another atomic drop and gets another cobra twist only for Bock to toss the ref and draw the DQ. Really masterful match here. And just a lovely 1980 crowd to get behind a foreigner so thoroughly. I couldn't imagine a nicer crowd, the sort that you'd want for big wrestling match like this, that bought into it fully and that put aside their own biases to give their all for the challenger.

Match 3 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta AWA 6/22/80

This was in AWA territory and Baba was in to commentate for Japanese TV. That means, Heenan was there, Mean Gene did the Ring Announcing ("Tommy" Jumbo Tsuruta) and Verne said before the match he'd wrestle the winner. Heenan then shoved him for no good reason and Verne clocked him, which made Heenan sort of a non-factor for much of the match. Match itself was very good. They worked the entry point much differently than the last two, more of the format of Bockwinkel trying to abuse Jumbo and then Jumbo firing back tit-for-tat. If Bock would get an arm drag and slam him then Jumbo would get the spots as revenge and show him up. Bock took over with some real chippy stuff, just a double leg that looked like they were shooting and hard, hard shots onto the arm. He was trying to contain Jumbo but Jumbo hit the jumping knee and started to meanly work over the back. Bock may have unlocked grumpy Jumbo years early with how hard they were going at it. Less long holds here, but definite focus to try to set up the double underhook suplex and abdominal stretch. Bockwinkel would try to figure up from underneath but Jumbo stayed on him. When they finally got to the hold, Bock was able to push them out of the ring. He came back in with a bunch of headlock cheapshots to the throat. Two of the things I tend to give Bock credit for are his total engagement and full body selling as the match goes on. The cross-section of the two is how he just throws his entire body into everything he does. If he throws a punch, he'll sort of recoil back with it. There's a spot here where he goes for a pile driver, can't get it, and Jumbo gets one shortly thereafter, and as he's up, he's just flailing his feet perfectly. But he does that with almost everything. It's just this amazing performance presence in the moment that almost not other wrestler can live up to (Terry Funk and... maybe Negro Casas and Buddy Rose and I'm not even sure who else?). Jumbo kept coming back with the crowd definitely behind him, with Bock trying to slow him down, including with a King of the Mountain. Ultimately, they ended back up in the stretch, but Bock was able to hiptoss Jumbo right into the ref. Great ref bump but the follow up was muddled. Heenan took too long to blatantly interfere. They couldn't get the ref in the right place soon enough, etc. Shame as the match itself was great. So three matches, three different feels and structures, all good stuff.

Match 4 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 2/4/82

I need to keep going with these as I have 9 matches and they only have 7. This was in AJPW but for the AWA Title. Verne had gotten it back and retired at this point. Between 80 and 82, I'd say Jumbo had moved on to his second form more fully. That is to say that he and Bock came off like equals here, which gave the match a different sort of feel. Bock slammed him from the get go, but then Jumbo returned favor and he took almost the entirety of the opening matwork by hanging onto the arm through Bockwinkel's escape attempts. On paper, some of this (the arm submissions, into a surfboard sort of test of strength, into the initial cobra twist) that took up the first ten minutes might not sound compelling, but when they were zoomed into Bock (and Jumbo's!) facial expressions, it was very good. Just full commitment to the struggle. Bockwinkel might be the best actor and reactor in a wrestling ring ever. And Jumbo, with mouth stretched open and gritted teeth, rose to the occasion.

This went just under twenty and it probably needed another two or three minutes with Bock on top. He took over after the Cobra Twist with some hard shots to the gut in the ropes, a little King of the Mountain, and a slam from a suplex position bringing Jumbo in from the apron. Bock had some holds here but it just needed a bit more heat. Jumbo's big comeback was with the jumping knee off the ropes out of the sleeper.

I'd say the last five minutes of this were excellent. Jumbo was absolutely feeling it, yelling and charging across the ring for these big jumping stomps to Bock's back. He'd use the crab and most of a camel clutch to really wear it down and set things up for the second Cobra Twist. Pretty dramatic stuff and the fans were buying into it. Bockwinkel was able to pry the leg out slowly and dramatically to get him over and escape. He had a last burst of offense, but was always reaching back to sell the back in a way that felt organic and never took away from what he was doing. Just the stuff that he was better than literally anyone in wrestling at doing and that puts him over his contemporaries because he's able to balance this and registering what happened in the match while still keeping it dynamic and exciting and emotional and electric. It all builds to him being unable to slam Jumbo and Jumbo trying to put him away with an airplane spin. Both wrestlers go tumbling out and Jumbo starts spinning him again again, spiraling around the ringside area erratically as photographers have to dive out of the way. Incredible visual. He's unable to beat the count back in though so it's a draw. This was a different dynamic and interesting to see but I think Bockwinkel ultimately gave up just a little too much without getting a little more back to really put it over the top. If Bock had leaned on him a bit more the place would have exploded all the more so when Jumbo hit the jumping knee. Still, great performances.

Match 5 of 9, Nick Bockwinkel vs Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 7/13/78

The armwork in the first ten minutes of this one is just all time great. Previous matches between them were more clinical and academic and "title match" but here he's doing top wristlocks and double wristlocks it's just so, so mean. It takes the full ten minutes for Jumbo to start to get an advantage and power over the top and Bock just grabs the hair or lays in a knee to the gut (he hadn't had to previously) after all that work and struggle. Finally something clicks in Jumbo's pre-grumpy brain and he steps around on an arm pulling wristlock and rakes Bock's face with his boot to take over. You can see him level up mid match.

Bock's still able to keep the advantage due to the hurt arm though (Jumbo selling after he hits elbows) and Bock presses it in the corner, but it's just not enough of a lever and Jumbo comes back. Bock's able to block the belly to back though and hits one of his own. Exciting stuff. He followed it with a pile driver but went back to the well and Jumbo comes back. By this point, it's sort of clear that Bock has to do something extra to really keep Jumbo down and he tries, going up for a second rope knee drop, something he's learned from Stevens over the years, but never does himself. He misses (of course) and Jumbo starts on the leg, going for a figure four. Bock survives, but is selling big. He's good enough at almost every point to find a way back whether it's an eyepoke or punching from underneath and he manages to start the King of the Mountain and even post Jumbo on the outside. He's still desperate though and gets backdropped when he tries a pile driver on the floor.

The match really opens up after that, with Jumbo hitting a knee lift so high that the announcers call it a leg lariat. He starts on the back after this, but Bock wins a punch exchange. I love the balance between a competent champion and a desperate cheater with Bockwinkel. He was always credible. Always dangerous. But backed against a wall, he'd do anything to survive. It makes it mean all the more a little later on when Jumbo is able to fire up and win a punch exchange and hit a stalling turning pile driver of his own. As the match rolls into the last five minutes, Jumbo leans more and more on Bock's back (With Bock doing some amazing full body selling draped into the ropes), getting the crab and ultimately going for the cobra twist. Bock tries to turn it and crashes into the ref. This leads to a phantom fall after the belly to back and another ref bump as Bock nails him when Jumbo moves. There's a figure four afterwards (and maybe they should have not moved onto the back and stayed with the leg if that was going to be the phantom win #2?) but the ref calls for the dq and Jumbo is despondent. This was some really good stuff. If last one they were equals, this one you got the sense that Jumbo had Bock's number and furthermore, that he was going to get him next time.

Match 6 of 9: Jumbo Tsuruta vs Nick Bockwinkel AJPW 2/23/84

I hate to say it but I wasn't feeling this one quite as much. It's a shame because it's the end of a big journey for Jumbo and Terry Funk is the special ref. It even starts brilliantly with Bock rushing in for a cross body right at the bell. I love his entry point gameplans. He got a major early advantage from that and the next fifteen (!) minutes or so was him controlling the arm, and honestly, I wish it was better. Bock did his job, really working it, at times working it almost too much to keep the crowd in it, just huge flailing motions while keeping technique and switching it up again and again, one hold after the next. Jumbo seemed weirdly listless though. I could hardly tell this was the same guy who was doing such gritty working from underneath in the previous years. I just don't really get it given the setting; my only guess, other than him just feeling sluggish for some reason like sickness, was that he knew he was winning the title and he wanted to look at strong as possible. He did sell towards the end of it, but mostly when he was out of a hold and trying to take over.

Ultimately (after a tease with the jumping knee), Jumbo fought into a front face lock and after he couldn't get the double underhook suplex, he hit two pile drivers and they were on. It was fairly back and forth from there, with a big feel to it, inside and outside of the ring. Jumbo pressed an advantage with a beautiful double underhook (when he actually hit it) and gutwrench suplex. Bock got a knee up on a corner charge and landed a pile driver of his own. Jumbo dodged a corner charge and dug in on a crab. Funk was really a non factor for most of the match, a shame considering how he could have helped those first 15-20 minutes sing, but I liked him a lot during the crab, explaining the stakes to Bock but that he could quit. Bock's full body selling was at play here, the best ever. The way his arm flailed about as Jumbo was positioning him for the gutwrench was just so, so good. No one better. Bock took back over and knocked Jumbo into Funk, both of them sailing out of the ring. There was a second ref though. Bock continued to press, slamming Jumbo from the outside in repeatedly. Jumbo finally floated over (beautifully, might I add) and hit a belly to back with a bridge as Funk slid back in for the ironclad win. It was a great moment, but it wasn't as great of a match as the ones that preceeded it. I'm not sure if they were under a certain directive to do things a certain way. I know that Funk didn't want to take attention off of them but Funk, being Funk, always makes things better. While Jumbo was fiery at certain moments, and while the crowd went absolutely nuts for the win, he was neither what he had been against Bock previously or what he would be (a vicious gladiator) in the years to come. This is not the best match in the series.

Match 7 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel vs Jumbo Tsuruta (c) AJPW 2/26/84

This was a couple of nights later and was Jumbo defending. I have to look at where this is on the tour actually. Let me see. There were a couple of nights left but this was the last really big match for Jumbo on it. I imagine the Japanese fans having seen what happened with Baba a few years earlier and certain other things, half expected Bockwinkel to win it back, that Jumbo would just get a win but not get to hold it through the end of the tour. That, combined with the fact that Bockwinkel took so much of this, gave things a real sense of drama. This was certainly better than the title change and it might be my most favorite match of the series so far, even though I don't necessarily think it was the best.

Bockwinkel controlled for the first eight minutes or so with headlocks and front face locks. He had more history as a title match wrestler and they were great headlocks. Watching this, you wanted Jumbo to try to toss him off just to see Bockwinkel grind down and sink to his knees. Really top notch stuff. He hit a pile driver between the headlock and the front facelock exchanges, but ultimately lost things by trying to go for a butterfly suplex. He needed Jumbo into the corner but lost the offense. He'd take back over quickly enough but then hit a clumsy but cool cross body off the top and Jumbo would take over after that. Bock was going out of his comfort zone with both moves, externally calm but internally roiling over having lost the title and he was paying for it.

Jumbo would hit an errant pile driver here and go for a sleeper only to get driven into the corner (more there later). This led to the bit we were missing from the last match as Bockwinkel locked on a cobra twist only for Funk to somehow go sailing out of the ring, followed by him getting strung up in some rope running. Good. If you're going to have Funk, use him. It was right in the middle of the match, between chapters, like a palette cleaner. Jumbo would go for the butterfly, but get jammed, allowing Bock to get a crab attempt. Jumbo would toss him out with sheer strength and, after some back and forth, go for a sleeper again, only for Bock to chuck him out, starting the real King of the Mountain stuff. Two points here; one, when Bock was getting in a cheapshot from underneath, he'd follow it up (while being admonished by Funk) by selling his whole body as only he could really putting over what Jumbo had just done to him and the weight of the match and how desperate he'd been to get out of that spot; second, he used King of the Mountain in almost all of his matches and it was often used to cut off a hot babyface and keep control, but he used it at different points and in different ways. It always fit the match.

Anyway, the King of the Mountain was really good here, with Bock continuing to go for it, suplexing Jumbo in once right on his head, and having Jumbo fire back into the ring another time. Before the last one, they both hit heads and then did a double punch which shifted gears towards more of a finishing stretch. The last KOTM had Jumbo get his leg stuck in the ropes and Bockwinkel just unload on it. This led to a figure four and both guys hitting the floor. Bockwinkel had clear control as the count was on, but at the very last second, as Bock was about to roll back in and win, Jumbo grabbed him so he couldn't make it in. It was a very dramatic, New Japan style finish that kept Jumbo the belt as they were both counted out. Very much a Bock match with Jumbo just needing to show fire and having the crowd behind him. Good stuff.

Match 8 of 9: Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs Nick Bockwinkel AJPW 3/24/84

This was another really good one, driven by the fact that Bockwinkel, as the challenger, controlled a lot of it. That meant headlocks to begin, but the best headlocks imaginable. When it seemed like Jumbo might get out, a hairpull, when Jumbo overcame that, he hit a drop toehold and really locked in a deep scissored toehold. When the fans would chant for Jumbo, Bock would grind it more and Jumbo would sell huge. When Jumbo turned over his own headlock out of it, Bock was able to turn it around for a shinbreaker and a leglock. When Jumbo made it to the ropes, Bock switched to attacking the leg and starting a king of the mountain. I just love that from a narrative perspective. Bock put him in trouble and Jumbo worked so hard to get out only to get immediately stymied by something else and the work began anew.

Anyway, Jumbo fought his way back in and even got the jumping knee, but Bock was basically fresh and got out at one. From there, Jumbo was just trying to contain Bock, and he couldn't do it. Bock floated over and started going for the figure four. This was real Clash of Titans stuff, with Jumbo pressing his arms up to try to prevent the leg from dropping down. Bock eventually got it though. Just amazing overhead visuals on this struggle and then the hold. Jumbo made it to the ropes and Bock started slamming his leg against the apron brutally. Back in the ring, Jumbo comes back with a leg caught enzuigiri to a huge pop and he's back in the fight. Butterfly suplex, two count. Pile driver, two count.

The leg selling is gone by the way which is a shame. Jumbo could have used it to let Bock take back over, for instance. Instead, Bock just fights from underneath, hitting a pile driver of his own. What I love is that before he picks him up for it, he just turns his head ever so slightly to take in the crowd; he's always so in the moment. It's a tiny thing but it's everpresent in his work. They crash into each other and then do a double punch (Bock hits a belly to back out of a headlock in the middle). Bock tries for another King of the Mountain but Jumbo storms in with chops. This is pissed off angry proto-Gladiator Jumbo, a very different entity than a few years earlier even if he wasn't who he'd be a few years later. Bock knows he's in trouble, so he tosses him into the ref and hits a belt shot on the outside. Jumbo recovers though, charging in, tossing Bock out, and going for belt shots of his own. When the ref gets in the way, Jumbo nails him too, the seed of violence already taking root. Post match, they brawl repeatedly with people trying to separate them, Bock gets big cheers from the crowd, and Jumbo cuts a promo about defending in the US. He had defended against Lanza, Robinson, and Brunzell the first round and in the second, he'd even face Baron Von Raschke (We don't have that one unfortunately), before falling to Martel. I really liked these two Bock-As-Challenger matches, though I probably liked the last one a bit more. This one had the first inklings of really violent Jumbo though.

Match 9 of 9: Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs Nick Bockwinkel AJPW 9/12/87

This was for Jumbo's International Title and it only went around ten minutes. It was worked very differently from all the previous matches. I'd call it an AJPW heavyweight sprint. There were holds but they weren't worked for long. They were worked hard, of course, but without overt consequence and escapes or reversals were relatively quick. There was no moment of posturing, no empty space within the match. They were right back up throwing knees or forearms or going for the next hold or spot. That doesn't doesn't mean there wasn't implied consequence. I've never seen a Bockwinkel match end with him sucking air like this. Yes, he was at the absolute tail end of his career, but it was a testament to how hard they were going.

I'd prefer a match where things built and resonated more but there was nothing unbelievable in this. It was both men jockeying for opportunity at any moment and going as hard against each other as they absolutely could. Jumbo won off of a flying body press, which is nice as it's an unusual way for him to win and the fans would remember next time he'd hit one, but I'd rather him have used the Thesz Press as that was one of his more regular moves, if they were going to go with a finish like this. Both men, the worse for wear, shook hands after the match. If nothing else, this shows another hat Bockwinkel could wear and that he could hang even in the wilds of hard-hitting 1987 AJPW. Overall, it's not my favorite of the series, but it's an interesting and different look at things and shows how the company and Jumbo were progressing. I'm not going to rank the nine but I'd say the best matches overall would be the middle defenses for Bockwinkel and the two defenses for Jumbo with the lesser matches being the title switch and this last one. It's all good in its own way though.

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Found Footage Friday: TSURUTA-GUN~! VS~! SUPER~! GENERATION~! ARMY~! BARR~! DANDY~! PANTHER~! CHARLES~! ESTRADA~! RAYO~! HERMANOS DINOMITA~!

Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masa Fuchi vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi NJPW 3/3/91 

MD: Oops, this one's on me guys, sorry. There was a big dump of handhelds that came into the community back in 2018 and it was a lot to parse through. Over the years, we've covered a lot here, and I'd had reached out to all the usual tape trading subjects from years past to see what was really new (albeit with little interest from them who have all moved on) but sometimes something I thought had already been out there actually wasn't. And this wasn't. So, as best as I can tell, it's going to be a brand new Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs. Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi match that almost none of you (if not absolutely none of you) have ever seen. And it holds up with some of the best stuff of this period, quite frankly.

The whole thing is good but it probably peaks in the first couple of minutes. The match starts with Kobashi and Fuchi on the mat for a minute, including Kobashi's rolling cradle. Kawada comes in. They'd heated up Kawada and Taue pretty fierce in January and it was still going strong here, so Taue wants in (and Jumbo wants him in), Kawada immediately tags back to Kobashi like a true heatseeker and Taue sneaks in a cheap shot onto Kawada on the apron the first chance he gets. The crowd has come to like Taue by this point but there are no good guys here, just pure animosity, as shown by Kawada rolling back in, ignoring the fact that Kobashi and starting a massive early-match brawl with Taue that everyone has to break up. It's a hell of a way to start a match.

After that it settles down into the beats you'd expect: more Taue vs. Kawada, Misawa eating a beatdown and coming back with the forearm, Kobashi with the superman house afire hot tag until Jumbo shuts him down, both sides getting and advantage and comebacks as the cycle through the pairings, until they finally isolate Kobashi and crush him on an outside table (or in this case, on a chair that they put on a table). The heat on Kobashi is great after they start on the leg, with a Jumbo elevated half cab, a Fuchi STF, and a Taue Scorpion Deathlock, the fans chanting "Kobashi" the whole time. When he's finally able to get a hot tag of his own, there's this cool bit of stuttering alternating structure where they start on Taue only to cycle back to Kobashi (after a rocket launcher off the top to the floor) only for Fuchi to clip his leg out illegally back in the ring, only to do another comeback and cycle back to Taue. This all leads to the sort of high octane, extended finishing stretch you'd expect, including, maybe, the first time they do the combo Jumbo/Taue belly to back/top rope driving clothesline. Put simply, if this is something you like, and this feud is as universally liked as anything I can think of, there's a hell of a lot to like here.

ER: I was saving this one for my Saturday morning. Waking up, making some coffee, settling down to watch an unseen All Japan trios classic, and baby it was everything. This was an untaped Korakuen main event smack dab in the middle of a tour and these guys go so hard that any reasonable person would think this was an end of tour big show main. Everybody goes hard in this and the dynamics are incredible. 1991 Jumbo was my favorite Jumbo, Kawada and Taue fucking hate each other and are at each other's throats the whole match, Misawa was incredibly fast and aggressive and already knew how to carry himself as a superstar, every single person still had a vendetta against Kobashi's knees, it's all incredible. There isn't a single lull in the action at any point, it's all go go go with quick tags and constant oneupmanship. 

The way Tsuruta-Gun went after Kobashi's knees it's a damn miracle the man made it nearly a decade before the knee surgeries started piling up. They're all real dickheads about it, but the best is when Fuchi runs in with a dropkick right to the knee pit...or was it when Jumbo buckled it with a mule kick to the ACL...or was it when Jumbo was holding Kobashi damn vertically in a single leg crab? A real Dickhead's Choice. Taue threw some of the hardest clotheslines of his career, really shutting down some bullshit, and I flipped my lid when he leveled Misawa with a tope suicida after Misawa had leapt off the apron with an elbow into Jumbo's jaw. I don't think I've ever seen Kobashi get thrown with a Rocket Launcher to the floor, just one other thing that's nuts to see on an untaped house show. It's cool that Misawa was a better kicker than Kawada in 1991. Kawada had the same kick routine here that he would continue to hone and improve as the decade went on, but the variety and impact of Misawa's kicks made this look like his peak attack level, setting everything up with kicks and then sealing the deal with elbows. Jumbo's kitchen sink knees looked organ-rearranging, and he threw Misawa with a bodyslam that looked and sounded so painful that all 2,100 people in Korakuen made the exact same pinched face "oooooooooof" reaction. Six legends bringing real emotion and high energy and hate-filled stiffness for 30 minutes in my favorite wrestling style of all time? It's all I wanted. 

Love Machine/El Dandy/Panterita del Ring vs. Blue Panther/Emilio Charles Jr./Jerry Estrada CMLL  5/3/92?

MD: Some great stuff in here even though it was a twenty minute video that went more like fifteen instead of the thirty that went twenty-two and gave us the pairings that I really wanted. Obviously it was a perfect rudo side. My experience with Panther and Love Machine is more the mask match and what followed elsewhere, so it surprised me that Barr was more over with the crowd. The announcers noted that the dynamic had been different in Mexico City for the mask match and tried to explain it.

This had an ambush/comeback/beatdown/comeback sort of structure which was fitting a lot into the time and it never quite settled down. We got glimpses of great things though, Panther running from a fiery Love Machine, Dandy's awesome, awesome cracking punch and the not equal but still great and very different thudding punches of Charles and Estrada. When Barr finally got his hands on Panther, he was really able to tear into him (and tear off the mask). Estrada hit the usual ridiculous dive into the crowd. The ref was the same one we've been seeing who was very hard on the tecnicos and missed the cheating. Charles and Panterita really only got to pair up after the dives and that looked fine, with Charles faking a foul (he'd previously done one of his own). Post match, when Panterita was beside himself at the unfair loss, Estrada walked right over and yanked his mask off hilariously. I wish it had a little more to it but you can't fault any of the action here.

ER: I love that this was the standard for a throwaway weekly trios match in 1992. This adds a new layer to the Blue Panther/Love Machine feud and I don't think I've ever heard a weekly crowd respond so positively to Love Machine before this. Blue Panther as a cheapshot artist who can also wrench you on the mat was probably my favorite era of Panther (even those I do love old man tecnico Panther) but it was eye opening seeing how big the tecnico reactions were any time Love Machine started to wail on Panther, culminating in a tremendous tope suicida that flattens a few people in the front row. Dandy and Estrada worked magic any time they crossed paths, but somehow Panther and Love Machine outpunched them here. I wish we could have seen more Panterita Del Ring. The man worked differently as Safari and then evolved into Ephesto, but as Panterita he could really cut loose and we only got a little taste of that here, as he was the clear 6th banana of the match, and Estrada's perfect unmasking of him after the match only made that status more concrete. This was the perfect kind of unearthed lucha match to just devour like junk food. 

Rayo de Jalisco Jr/Mascara Sagrada/Black Magic vs. Los Hermanos Dinamita (Cien Caras, Mascara Ano 2000, Universo 2000) CMLL 5/17/92

MD: A weird moment in time as a chunk of these guys were main eventing the AAA debut show right around (maybe even two days before) this match. This immediately followed a tribute to Rene Guajuardo, who, among all of his other accolades had trained and promoted in this area, and had just passed away. The match itself made me wish for the tecnicos from the last match.

When they got to the beatdown in the segunda and the tercera comeback that followed, it was pretty good. You can count on the Dinamitas to beat people around the ring and Cien Caras to be a charismatic ass about it. That played into the comeback as well where Rayo could play the other half of that song well enough. The primera exchanges and the crowd-pleasing spots in the end to led up to the foul on Rayo and the DQ, though? Not so great. Again, you can count on the rudos here to get some good shots in (like Cien Caras' hopping knee to the gut) and there was one fairly decent Mascara Ano 2000 and Mascara Sagrada exchange. Black Magic looked best on the tecnico side, charging into things and asserting himself. This late in the game and after all of the animosity of the beatdown and coemback, I wasn't really feeling the multiple headlocks/la estrella/flip-flop submissions like I might have otherwise. Maybe it really was time for the change that was coming. Maybe it was just that some of these guys were focused on the next thing.

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Found Footage Friday: ANDRE~! JUMBO~! KI~! NECRO~! CORNETTE~! A FLAIR~! LAWLER~! BABA~! TAUE~! CHRISTOPHER~!

Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue AJPW RWTL 11/20/90 - EPIC

MD: Instead of reviewing this, I just want to list all the cool moments. At this point it'd been almost a year since Taue and Baba wrestled each other and Taue grew a lot in 90. He'd throw headbutts at Baba only to eat the brain chop. He'd come back with the palm strikes against the ropes and hit Baba with his own Russian Leg Sweep, only to piss Baba off so he hit him with one of his own. It had been a year (the last RWTL) since Jumbo fought Baba and the crowd buzzed huge when Jumbo tagged in. Early on, Jumbo put on the breaks so Baba couldn't get him with the big boot and Baba gave him a sort of "Aw, shucks" expression.

Then there was Andre, who only faced Jumbo or Taue a handful of times in his career. Taue tried to hit him with an enziguiri but could only get to the middle of his back. Jumbo tried to knock him over with a shoulder block and recoiled with as much over the top selling as I've ever seen out of him (it was warranted). Then Jumbo and Taue combined with a double jumping knee to trap Andre in the ropes but failed utterly to double suplex him. After the aforementioned Baba/Taue exchange, Taue was actually able to slam Baba, though he could have milked it more. Unfortunately, then Andre came in and manhandled him (being Taue!) like he was a child. Andre returned the favor from Jumbo's selling, recoiling from Tsuruta's punches and even going down (though he did toss him on the kick out), and then Taue ran into Andre's fist in the most glorious way possible. They finally got that double suplex, but on Baba, but he was able to ultimately survive the onslaught and tag Andre. Then Taue tried to waistlock him as he was going to German Suplex him and paid for it just like you'd expect.

See, all cool stuff. There was a pretty good match in there too, but that's a lot of cool stuff for a fifteen minute video and a ten minute match.

ER: Man this was awesome. This is the biggest bumping Andre performance of the 90s, and I'm not sure how far back into the 80s you'd have to go to find a match where he bumped more, but it's pretty far. It's amazing. To think, they aired the Andre/Baba RWTL '90 match against The Land of Giants, but their match against the Funks, this match, and the drool worthy Abdullah/Kimala II match all happened on house shows. This show was not officially taped, but was a house show the size of a TV taping, and obviously our intrepid cameraman saw how important this was. I'm so glad he did. I've gotten used to seeing inactive Andre performances, and seeing just how much he can add to a match with as little movement as possible, relying on body language and his incomparable selling and acting. There is so much to gleam from minimalist Andre, that seeing him get in and out of the ring multiple times and taking 4-5 bumps is downright shocking. When he and Baba entered the ring and I saw how Andre was pulling himself up onto the apron and climbing the turnbuckle rungs like a ladder to get the rest of his body upright, I assumed this was going to be a lot of Andre punching people from the ring apron. I've seen plenty of matches where just getting into the ring past the ring ropes looked like Andre pushing a boulder up a mountain, and I'm always excited to see how he can integrate his body's pain into a match. Instead, he made this into so much more. 

There were still great apron Andre moments, like the way he kicked at Taue's foot when Taue was breaking a submission, but I was surprised at how much Andre did in the ring. He worked really well with both Jumbo and Taue, and that first showdown with Jumbo felt special. I loved how Andre sold for Jumbo, how their first exchange went so much differently from their later showdown. When Andre squares off with Jumbo for the first time, Jumbo comes barreling in with a shoulderblock that hits a wall and sends Jumbo recoiling back into the ropes, and when he tries it against Andre just grabs him by the neck and face and squeezes, then blasts him with a headbutt. When a weaker Andre squares off with Jumbo late in the match, it's all about Andre's selling. I loved how Andre staggered around for Jumbo's hard elbow smashes. Andre is a man with somehow impeccable balance, who is able to sell as if he's a man with no center of gravity, always in danger of toppling over. Jumbo hits him with a couple elbows and sends Andre staggering, and Andre has to lunge for the ropes just to dodge Jumbo's big knee. The dodge does not deter Jumbo, and seeing that Andre is still staggered, he knocks him to the mat with a definitive elbow smash. It's wild to see Andre getting knocked down by a strike, and I couldn't even guess the last time it happened before this. 

Taue/Andre was fun in a different way, as Taue is the young punk (I like how a young punk in All Japan is someone who has wrestled almost 500 matches) who boldly fires off shots against the biggest man in Nagoya. I thought the Taue enziguiri looked great, catching Andre in the base of his neck (Andre sold it perfectly, like he just got punctured by a larger than average mosquito), then throwing a couple of jumping knees into Andre's torso before sending Andre careening backwards into the ropes with Jumbo's help. Andre had a great look of panic while stuck in the ropes, and was freed relatively quickly so that Jumbo and Taue could try an ill-advised tandem suplex. I loved how Andre dropped to his butt to block the suplex, as it made the suplex look that much more threatening. Andre did not frequently wind up on the mat during his All Japan run (he winds up on the mat more in this match than in several other available Andre AJ matches combined), so him willingly dropping to the mat only made it look like Jumbo and Taue were *that* close to suplexing him. 

I know I'm focusing a lot on Andre, but I thought this was a tremendous Baba match too. Really, it was a tremendous Everybody match, but I digress. Baba had some fun small stuff with Taue to start, giving Taue a great oldhead "okay, okay!" look after Taue backs him into the ropes and chops him. He does a slick armdrag takedown of Taue and works the headscissors, then later breaks out a rolling ankle pick on Jumbo, rolling down Jumbo's leg from a hammerlock to force Jumbo's momentum forward. It's always weird fun watching first couple years matches from guys like Taue or Tamon Honda, as they have 100% different movesets than during their peak years, and it's barely like watching an early version of the same wrestler, it's more like watching a completely different guy. Taue does Jumbo kneelifts instead of big running kicks, hits Baba with a bodyslam/elbowdrop/legdrop combo that he completely dropped, even throws a great lariat that I don't remember him using past 1992. I loved their dueling side Russian legsweeps (a move that always looks like it might cause Baba to shatter), and how Taue and Jumbo pulled off the tandem suplex on Baba, then took turns seeing who could hit him with a harder lariat (jury is out, both Taue and Jumbo really aimed to wreck their boss). Taue has Baba on the ropes and keeps that energy when Andre tags in, and it goes terribly for him. Taue chops away on Andre until Andre has had enough, then just shoves Taue into the corner and triumphantly squishes him over and over again, whips him into Baba's boot, and then drops that elbow. You can see Andre digging that elbow into Taue's chest as he presses down on his sternum with his palm, making sure the punk stays down. Another 90s Andre classic.

Jerry Lawler/Brian Christopher vs. David Flair/Jim Cornette 3/31/2002

MD: There's a moment in here where David has Lawler backed in the corner and lays in some punches. He'd developed pretty decent ones at some point and Lawler might be the best guy in the history of wrestling when it comes to sympathetically taking offense in the corner. I've seen him as an old man build matches over the last couple of years just around that. Anyway, afterwards, Flair goes over to Cornette and eagerly asks if he did good before getting nailed from behind and stooging. That, right there, was probably David's ceiling, but it was a very effective moment. David looking for fatherly acceptance from Russo or whatever obviously didn't work, but a couple of years and a number of matches later, with Cornette in that role? That might have had some legs.

Having Christopher in there (and I have to admit, he sort of felt like 80s Greg Gagne, after he'd already had some success, teaming with Verne) makes you think that David's best was sort of as a poor man's version of him. Where he stood out the most wasn't trying to be Ric Flair but the slightly off-kilter stooging, just how Christopher was best as an over-the-top stooge. Still, he had a pretty decent cut off punch and got some heat with pile drivers. He also took a neckbreaker in an ugly manner. Bumping just wasn't his strong suit. It didn't need to be here, though, since Cornette carried a ton of weight: with the pre-course promo, with the super padded trunks, by trying to coach instead of wrestle until Christopher tossed him in, by getting shaken up and tagging Lawler hilariously, by using the powder and getting believable shots in on the outside. This was pretty close to the whole Cornette experience and the Lawler family knew how to get the most out of it.

ER: This was great, and really there was only one reason to think this wasn't going to be great, but it's a pretty important reason. That said, this is probably the most complete I have ever seen David Flair look in a wrestling ring. Flair is a complete unnatural ("The Unnatural" would be a really funny gimmick for someone like Renegade or Flair to have worked), a guy who looks like he's never moved athletically in his life, who always took the weirdest bumps while having no idea what to do with his body on offense. Here, more than any other awful David Flair performance I've seen, he knew exactly what to do. Before the match, Cornette got on the mic and talked a lot of great hyperbolic BS about how "David Flair is going to be the best wrestler of the 21st century!" And, you know, I gotta say there are nothing but fascinating matches from the last 100 matches of Flair's career, so maybe he was onto something Has anyone here seen any of the Puerto Rico, All Japan, or even remember if the TNA stuff was any good? Any lucky souls get to see Regal/Flair in South Carolina, taped as a Velocity dark match? I hate how I'm talking myself into seeing more David Flair. 

My favorite part of this was how everyone got to show off their right hands, and honestly, every person in this match had a good right hand. Lawler having a good right hand won't surprise you, and he used it well here (including blindsiding Flair with a right before dropping to his knees with a fistdrop), and Cornette at this point is someone who is established as having a great right hand. But they aren't the ones who throw the most punches in this match. We get two actual punch outs between Christopher and Flair, and they were good! They each showed a bit of light on two of them, but the form of Flair was what stood out the most. This was a man who, just a couple years before, did not have good form on ANYthing. And here he is throwing actual punches to the chin and jaw, not cheating by trying to throw them past Christopher's head or doing that weird Abyss punch where he sands the top of their head. David Flair was throwing actual worked punches in 2002, and they were good. He has a nice gutwrench slam and an even better pair of piledrivers, and you can color me impressed. He still looked like he couldn't really bump, taking a neckbreaker like a baby wiggling in his high chair to avoid the mashed carrots. Also, I love how Cornette was the biggest bumper in the entire match. Every piece of Cornette shtick was great, like tagging out to Lawler after getting punched around by Christopher. Cornette even took a big bump to the floor, and all of his big back bumps to sell punches were perfect. I always love how good Cornette is at bumping despite looking like, well, a guy who would be filmed berating a Wendy's employee.  

Low-Ki vs. Necro Butcher JAPW 5/19/07 - EPIC

PAS: This is honestly one of the great all time match ups in wrestling history. I am not sure how I had no idea they wrestled in JAPW in addition to the two IWA-MS classics the year before and the fun brawl a few years later in IWA-EC. Having this show up is like finding a new Santo vs. Casas or Lawler vs. Dundee match. Necro is really the perfect opponent for Ki: he is willing to meet his recklessness and stiffness with recklessness and stiffness of his own. Ki throws full force kicks to his head, and Necro responds with hard shoot punches to the jaw, just sick stuff both ways. FUTEN shit. There is a moment where Ki lands a double stomp on Necro's back and you can see his spine invert. Necro punches his way out of the Warriors Way double stomp and hits a crazy looking top rope rana. They do the thumbtacks spot with Necro getting Irish whipped and stepping on them with his bare feet. It is an incredible spot the first time you see it, but Necro went back to the well a couple of times with it. Still that is a minor complaint for an otherwise hellacious monster of a match.

MD: This was as good of a brawl-with-plunder 2000s match as you'll find, really, two guys who just threw everything they had at each other and did everything they could to prevent the other from doing the same. Violence and struggle from beginning to end. What made this better was that it was at St. Joseph's gym, with a priest obviously holding the keys to letting JAPW run there and getting to do the ring introductions in turn. So, he got to introduce Necro with his "Choose Death" shirt. That's as pro wrestling as you get basically. You can almost imagine Fat Frank reassuring the guy it was okay because Ki was going over so it was a parable about good vs. evil, with good overcoming the excesses of evil...or something. I especially appreciated the fight out of the Warrior's Way set-up because Necro had previously sort of sat around draped on the top rope for the double stomp. It was a great double stomp, but that had seemed a bit off given the match they were having. The fact he refused to allow such a thing to happen again was great and pulled me right back in. It was the sort of a match where the announcers and the crowd would go just as nuts for Necro taking the Cactus Jack plunge through a table as they would for something like Ki hitting a power drive elbow on the floor. Agreed with Phil on the thumbtacks spot, though it obviously worked for the crowd on that night and they used it effectively in setting up the finish. Necro probably went to that well as often as he did because it protected him in a loss.

ER: Athletically, these two couldn't be much more different. Low Ki has maybe the best body control in American wrestling history (I used to say "in wrestling history" but all of our unearthed French Catch footage kind of popped that balloon) and Necro Butcher wrestles like the proverbial bull in a china shop. It's one of wrestling's great juxtapositions, and they meet in the middle with stiffness. Necro takes so many kicks in this match, all to the body and head, and no matter how many times he punches back at Ki and sticks digs his fingers into Ki's mouth, nose, and eyes, those kicks keep coming. I loved Ki kicking Necro right in the eye, causing Necro to get stuck in the ropes like a death match Andre. Necro has a lot of fun ways to fight back, seems like he was always punching while off balance, from his knees, from his back, even hanging upside down. But I thought what set this apart wasn't just the stiffness, it was the way they each sold strikes and how they each fought for offense. A Necro punch is always a great thing, but when Ki slips out of a powerbomb and gets decked right after, Ki - limp bodied - bounces and flops down to the mat while hitting every rope on the way down, and that's just wrestling perfection. When Necro tries to powerbomb Ki into a table, Ki tries to fight out, making Necro fight against physics to re-lift Ki and finally drop to his knees with a powerbomb. when Ki goes for the Warriors Way, he tries to keep Necro in the tree of woe by grinding his boot into Necro's kneecap, causing Necro to reflexively punch up at Ki until he breaks. Necro getting run barefoot through the thumbtacks is a great way to set up offense, distracting Necro long enough to shotgun dropkick him through a table. Their stiffness was often used as a means to distract, not as a means to an end, and I think that's something that really elevates their feud to all time status. Monsta Mack's screeching Chicken Lady impression over every single awesome part of the match couldn't hold this one back. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LAWLER

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW KI

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Found Footage Friday: All Japan 12/5/85

Haru Sonoda vs. Shinichi Nakano

MD: Good performance here from rookie Nakano. He showed a bulldog's tenacity in attacking Sonoda's arm (especially good headbutts to it) and never felt like he shouldn't be in the match. I'd seen him quite a bit recently in 89-90 and past a bit of meandering at times, I would have believed you if you told me this match was from that era. Maybe that was part of the problem in him not advancing more. Sonada (who was Magic Dragon but I imagine most people reading this would know that) came back with headbutts and inside shots and a lot of focus on the eyes. Nakano sold an eye rake with a back bump which was a choice. Finishing stretch was okay in that you at least wondered if Nakano had a shot.

Nick Bockwinkel/Curt Hennig vs. Mighty Inoue/Masa Fuchi

MD: This was what drew me to this show as much as anything else. A new Bockwinkel match. Against two of my favorites of the decade for AJPW in Inoue and Fuchi. AWA babyface Hennig was in for a lot of this, having his leg dismantled by Inoue and Fuchi as they cut off the ring. The nature of the handheld made the ring look huge and the distance insurmountable at one point for Hennig. There were a couple of clips there in that part but you got the idea. Once he did make it to Bockwinkel, Bock was amazing as usual. He immediately pressed Inoue in the corner, then raised his hand in a flamboyant gesture of an exasperated clean break before laying in some shots anyway. He followed it up with a deep slam across the ring before Fuchi came and the two of them scrapped their way to the floor. When it was Hennig's turn to get some revenge, he showed a lot of fire. The finishing stretch was definitive but unique, with Bock lifting Fuchi up for a Hart Attack move with Hennig's "Axe" and then hitting a rare power bomb for the win. I don't think it was ever better than the sum of its parts, but the parts were all very good.

ER: Normally I'm a fan of minimalist wrestling but I wanted a bit more from this one. I was hoping to see Hennig and Inoue work quick and land hard and instead it was a lock of Inoue holding Hennig in a leglock. It was engaging enough, but it wasn't the kind of engagement I wanted. Mockingly, the handheld cuts away right as Hennig starts punching Inoue from his back and Inoue starts connecting back. Fuchi wasn't as much of a dickhead here as he'd become, wrestling much more like Jumbo lite. I did really like Fuchi catching a Hennig kick and Hennig punching him a couple times while hopping on one leg. Bockwinkel hit hard when he tagged in, and the finish was spirited. Inoue splats Bock with his senton and then hits the mat just as hard when Bock rolls away from the next one. The Hennig Axe bomber Hart Attack looked awesome, and Bockwinkel's powerslam finish looked just as good. 

Tiger Mask II/Genichiro Tenryu/Motsohi Okuma vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu/Isamu Teranishi/Norio Honaga

MD: First couple of minutes here had me a little worried as everything was nice and clean and sportsmanlike. Then Yatsu came in and everything changed. 85 Yatsu came off as far more of a disruptor and dissident than Tenryu, a real chip on his shoulder, a real attitude, and more than happy to toss people around with one throw after another. Tenryu would meet him halfway, blasting him with shots and tossing him around on the floor, but he wasn't nearly as violent against anyone else, even Honaga who he was paired up with in the finishing stretch (a standard "junior getting some hope against a star before getting put down" bit). In fact, it was Okuma who came off as both a force and, really, a star, even though he was teaming with Tiger Mask and Tenryu. His headbutt act was perfectly suited for a house show setting and over. Following up from a bit where Yatsu (using Teranishi's distractions) kept coming in to break up submissions, Okuma did the same with headbutts. Eventually, the other side got revenge by all getting their own headbutts in on him (with the crowd egging Honaga along as he was the last and most hesitant of the bunch). I would have liked some of the teams' control segments to last a bit longer as it all felt a little too back and forth but once they got past that initial reluctance to really fight one another and Yatsu reset the mood, this became overall enjoyable.

British Bulldogs vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi/Fumihiro Niikura

MD: Pretty typical ten minute Bulldogs match here. It's 85 so Dynamite was mobile but roided to the gills. Kobayashi especially made the Bulldogs look good, not that it took a ton of work. They were leaping off of pin attempts for both of them and not just Davey Boy which I found interesting. Davey always looked like he was having so much fun in there while Dynamite never did. When it was time to eat offense for the Bulldogs, that was Davey too. I don't know. Unless we're talking 1980-2 jerk heel Dynamite, I always see the stuff I expect to in his matches. Hard to come in with an open mind. This was fine though.

Jesse Barr/Harley Race vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Giant Baba

MD: I had some hopes for this one. Generally, I think Race gives way too much in Japan given who he is and what his rep is and how awesome he can be when he's really laying it in. His partner here was Barr though so I couldn't imagine Barr carrying too much of the offense. This still had a decent amount of Race stooging though. Some of it was pretty ginger. He moved super slow out of a corner whip, for instance, but then he walked right into a belly to belly, so it's not like you can complain. When he did go on offense, it was pretty great, with some killer headbutts out of the corner and then holding Jumbo up for the world's longest delayed pile driver. Even the way he'd turn a Jumbo front facelock into a suplex, just the way he powered him over, had a ton of presence behind it. Barr was okay, bumping big for Baba (and glad to do it) and rewarded later by getting to belly-to-back him. The finish had Jumbo and Baba repeatedly kill Barr only for Race to save him again and again until both teams got counted out. My favorite part towards the end was the guys with the handheld camera shouting out what they thought Jumbo's next move would be (they got the clothesline right but didn't realize he wanted to do a revenge pile driver instead of the belly to back).

ER: This managed to be a bit dull and a bit surprising all at once. Jumbo had a couple dry runs on offense, and Race was a bit slow and deliberate at times, but I love these kind of matches because it's always fun seeing guys like Jesse Barr interact with huge legends. Race bumps a lot, getting big air on a Jumbo hiptoss and really tossed with a belly to belly, gets the legs knocked out from him by a Baba back elbow (after Race punched Baba in the eye), and down the stretch he takes his big rope flip bump backwards to the floor. I agree with Matt that it's more fun when Race fights back harder, and we get a feel for that when he's punching at Jumbo and gives him a hard atomic drop. I think '85 Jumbo is more interesting as a dynamic seller than on offense, buckling his knees at the impact of Race's strikes. 

Jesse Barr interacting with Baba and Jumbo delivered what I wanted, and I liked how the guys recording this either really liked Jesse Barr, or at minimum were pretending to like Barr to crack each other up. Every time Barr would pull off a move they'd yell "Barrrr!" I didn't really hear them react to any Harley Race offense, but they reacted to Barr the whole time. Barr had a really nice high bearhug on Jumbo that Baba had to come in and break with a chop to the back of Barr's neck, and later he got to throw Jumbo with a nice belly to belly, and drop Baba with a high delayed back suplex. Jesse Barr dropping Giant Baba with a huge back suplex was too much, I love it. Baba had a bunch of great chops and Jumbo knocked Barr to the floor with a big running knee, then Barr rearranged every ringside barricade with his body. It had dull parts, it had some great stuff, it's a good enough 12 minutes. 

Dory Funk Jr. vs. Riki Choshu

MD: First and last third of this were really good but I thought they'd be striking a lot more. Instead they worked the mat and that first third had them moving in and out of things frequently and really fighting for positioning and counters. Gritty stuff. In the middle, it devolved a bit more into fighting for one particular hold, be it a half crab or the Scorpion, but they picked things back up for the finishing stretch. At one point Dory hit a belly to back followed by a butterfly suplex and a Russian legsweep. Just boom, boom, boom. Then Choshu blocked the fourth boom (an atomic drop) and started throwing the clotheslines leading to one great near fall where Dory ducked it. Eventually, they hit the floor and Hansen and Dibiase (and then Hara and Rusher) came out to cause chaos and set up the next match and that was that. The good stuff here was very good.

ER: I thought this was pretty great, a hardscrabble match where nothing looked easy. This looked like a real workout for Dory and Choshu, and I thought Dory was especially impressive. Choshu is a real bulldog and goes after Dory on the mat, and it's cool to start a match with 6-7 minutes of catch as catch can before going into the stuff where you really need a gas tank. Dory was just a couple months away from his WWF stint and looked really big, far bigger chest and arms than he had earlier in the decade. That extra size comes in handy as he and Choshu have some pretty nasty collisions. The matwork was tough on its own, both guys working hard to block single legs and Funk fighting off the Scorpion, and I didn't think the finishing run would be as hot as it was. Not only did Dory start dropping Choshu, but both guys were getting to their feet quick, and the excellent camera work really zoomed in and showed how hard that 1985 AJ mat was. 

Every bump looked body jarring and Funk really looked like he was powering a heavy Choshu up. Funk's back suplex looked great and his butterfly suplex was strong, guy looked like he was out there on the farm loaded bales, and if Stan Hansen hadn't pulled a Russian legsweep even more deadly looked in the very next match then I would have said Dory clearly had the best legsweep on this show. Choshu threw a few lariats right at Dory's neck, and I like how accurately Dory sold them: one knocked him flat on his back, one to the side of his neck knocked him sideways and onto one foot, and when Riki started swinging his arm my man had to act fast. Dory ducking THEE lariat was perfectly done, as Riki swung for the fences and Dory just dipped his head under and hooked the waist, a nearfall on an O'Connor roll that would have been a really good finish. Tough as hell match, shocking this kind of workout was what they were doing when the cameras weren't rolling. 

Rusher Kimura/Ashura Hara vs. Ted Dibiase/Stan Hansen

MD: This had one clip in the middle but probably not a big one. Hara and Rusher took it right to their opponents, with both sides trying to drive each other back into the corner when possible. Dibiase tries hard but when paired with Hansen he always comes off as a guy trying to wear his dad's suit. This was short and entirely back and forth but it had the sort of energy you'd want given who was in there.

ER: Man how cool does Baba look at ringside with his yellow stripe on black track pants, black shirt tucked in? Our director was 100% right to zoom in on him. The Yellowjacket ringside track suits were a real highlight of 1985. There was a cut in the middle of this one, so I'm not sure how much we missed, but what we have is 8 minutes of a real good fast-paced scrap. Everybody comes off like a tough son of a gun, with Hansen bullying Rusher around and the still-spry 44 year Rusher fighting back hard. Rusher was easier for Hansen to bully 5 years later, but he was still beefy and mad in 1985. I love the way Hansen tangles guys up and spins and rolls around the ring with him, really tussling. His body language is always the best, and he pays close attention to things that could easily be throwaways, like the way he clamps heavily on Rusher and Hara's traps when he locks in a nerve hold. 

Hansen never makes it easy on anybody. He's always pulling on you, laying on you heavy and not giving you rest holds, and always hitting so damn hard. Hansen is just the most annoying opponent, more relentless than Fit Finlay and 60 pounds bigger. And I like when guys like Kimura and Hara can deflect that relentless energy, even if only temporarily. I loved the finishing building to Rusher's hot tag, when Hansen rushes into a Hara boot and spirals his way dramatically down the length of the ring. Rusher tags in and throws a ton of headbutts and Hansen reacts to them like he's in a swarm of bees. I liked Dibiase here too, holding his end of Large Gaijin Hansen Partner of a big tandem shoulderblock that knocked Hara ass over elbow, and bringing the beauty of the falling fistdrop to Hiroshima. He dropped a bit of the technique here and to focus on the energy, and I kind of like Dibiase wrestling like Joel Deaton. Hansen hits one of the smoothest violent Russian legsweeps I've ever seen, Dibiase wins it with a big rotating powerslam, and Hansen slides out of the ring and gets the hell out of that arena like he was missing his bus. Great stuff. 

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Found Footage Friday: KUNG FU~! ROCCO~ HANSEN~! JUMBO~! TENRYU~! AWESOME KONG~! DEVIL~! BORSHOI~!

Kung Fu vs. Rollerball Rocco UK 11/19/85

MD: Rocco is a guy who always feels like he's too bombastic for the style, always ready to explode out at any moment, always too quick to rush back to action, never settling for the comparatively refined (even when entirely dirty and underhanded) World of Sport wrestling. Here, he was able to draw entirely outside the lines and it felt like Cheshire by way of Puerto Rico, especially in the first few minutes which had brawling around the arena, a low blow, a flip bump from the stage back into the ring, moves off the top, choking with a cord, the corner pad taken off and the buckle used as a weapon. It was all pretty wild. Meanwhile, Rocco was leaning in and through and around and up and over for all of Kung Fu's offense, making kicks and straight shots look absolutely deadly, and more than happy to hit some bombs of his own, like dropping Kung Fu with a back bump pile driver of sorts. It calmed down a little in the back half and felt more like a normal Rocco match, to the point where the escalation almost went in reverse, but it was all quick enough that you never were too far away from that crazy beginning. Primarily, this whole thing made me badly wish that 85 Rocco vs 85 Colon in a baseball stadium in San Juan had somehow happened.

PAS: This was great, totally different then you would expect from a match in England. Matt's comparison with Puerto Rico was on point, because it totally had that unhinged vibe, it also reminded me a bit of Poffo's ICW. Rocco was great in this bringing intensity from the beginning, All of the brawling on the stage was awesome, including Rocco eating an insane beal from the stage into the ring. Really liked Kung Fu's Chuck Norrisish martial arts, that thrust to throat looked sick, and his kicks were more Stan Lane then Low-Ki, but great looking Stan Laneish kicks. These guys matched up a bunch, and I want to watch them all, it feels like two guys that meant to be matched up.


Jumbo Tsuruta/Yoshiaki Yatsu/Great Kabuki vs. Stan Hansen/Genichiro Tenryu/Samson Fuyuki AJPW 7/3/89

MD: This was recently uncovered by the new round of Classics and it's a match that fits the moment, that period where Hansen had just joined with Tenryu, a month after Tenryu had taken the title from Jumbo. The clash up against each other with absolutely no give for thirteen or so minutes here, never, ever, allowing for the least bit of disbelief. It's all suspended the whole way through. There's no space for doubt. Revolution controls the ring better, but Jumbo's more than happy to charge in and assert himself when he's not the legal man. In the few matches we have of them working together, Fuyuki always seems more confident when he's with Hansen. Here, even though he eats the early big boot by Jumbo (and Jumbo loved to do that to Footloose), he comes back with his own later as Jumbo's trying to get into the ring. That would set up the exchange they'd have towards the end when Jumbo finally put him down. The match opens up a bit after Hansen and Tenryu hit an assisted powerbomb on Kabuki. 

Yatsu ends up brawling on the outside with Hansen but Jumbo targets Tenryu, absolutely crushing him with a jumping knee in the corner, which led to bleeding and Jumbo being absolutely unrelenting with repeated stomps. Kabuki having to shove Jumbo to get him off felt like a real lost (and now uncovered) definitional moment for 89 Jumbo and the fury he felt towards Tenryu, the only person who could really get under his skin. For all of Jumbo's high and mighty sportsman's nature and noble chin, Tenryu could bring him down to his level, in the gutter with blood and violence. Otherwise, Kabuki was in there to lose the offense a few times (as was Fuyuki) and launch those awesome uppercuts at Tenryu and Hansen. Fuyuki made a try at it towards the end, but he was overexuberent and Jumbo caught him off the ropes with a hotshot and the belly to back for the win. Post match, the violence unsurprisingly continued with bullropes and tables getting involved. This was a worthy release from the AJPW archives that sums up the moment in time very well.

PAS: Goddamn was this my shit. Just six nasty crowbars unloading on each other. I am a low voter on World Champion title match Jumbo, but pissed up Jumbo stomping and punching Tenryu until he is bleeding I am all the way in on. Hansen was great as a background character in this match, a half blind bulldozer smashing everything in sight, I loved the sections where he was getting strafed by Kabuki uppercuts until he unloaded with a knees and punches. Yastsu, Hara and Fuyuki also bring the appropriate level of crazy and this match basically never lets up. This was WAR before WAR, mixing in pissed off Jumbo and reckless Hansen, and I couldn't recommend it more. 

Command Bolshoi/Devil Masami vs Amazing Kong/Haruka Matsuo JWP 9/18/05

MD: Interesting match that covered a lot of ground. Very different Bolshoi than what we've been seeing from her stuff a decade later. Here she was competent and quick but not some sort of maestro. Kong was probably still finding her legs to a degree. She worked to her size fairly well but not so much so as she would a couple of years later. Some of her positioning felt a little more obvious. Each of the exchanges here were a little bit different and the most memorable probably ended up being Matsuo vs Masami, where Masami was just an absolute tank against her. At one point, she ate a dropkick right in the face while she was kneeling, to the point that you could see the flesh move, and she just shrugged it off and pressed on. Later on, she not only prevented Matsuo from making it to the corner with her hair alone, but then threw her across the ring with said hair. It was pretty wild and maybe not something I'd want to see over the span of multiple matches, but dropping in to see her as a force of nature counterpoint to Kong with Matsuo just bouncing off of her was ok for one match. And Matsuo, while she earned many of her openings with Kong's help, did certainly throw herself with everything she had against Masami. I would have been curious to see what the Bolshoi we've been seeing lately might have been able to do with a Kong from a few years later. 

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New Footage Friday: All Japan 11/19/90

Masa Fuchi/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Ricky Santana/Doug Furnas

MD: In general, it's astounding that these AJPW Handhelds are as well-shot as they are. Occasionally you're bound to get a match like this where there's just nothing the poor guy shooting can do to capture the action. We got glimpses of Furnas powering people about, maybe the tiniest hints that Ogawa was starting to put a few things together, a buzz for Fuchi doing awesome Fuchi things, and some energetic stuff (stooging? flying? who knows!) from Santana, but mostly, we're looking at the back of people's heads. Ah well.

ER: Matches like these remind me how often I take handhelds for granted. For all the amazing handheld footage we have of various territories and eras, we don't really have a ton where 75% of the match is blocked by someone's head. What we do see are some moments that make Doug Furnas come off like a monster heel, Fuchi like a VERY relevant 36 year old (that man was prematurely shunted to openers and old man trios), and Ogawa like a guy that big crowds are really getting behind. Furnas had this kickass muscular athlete spot where he hit a press slam and then did a back handspring into a running shoulderblock that sent Ogawa flying. Fuchi works super fast exchanges and comes in at the end to hit a sick kneedrop off the top rope. Fans went nuts thinking they were seeing Ogawa pin Furnas with a nice bridging German, but Furnas knows just how to egg them on and rubs their faces in a strong belly to belly. 


Mitsuo Momota/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith

MD: This one we could see clearly and it was fairly good stuff. Johnny Smith didn't have Davey's likability and oafish charisma, but he was a physical force and very athletic. In some ways, his edge synced better with Dynamite's. Kikuchi already had a lot going for him in 1990: His stuff snapped, he could draw sympathy, and he had fire in his comebacks. Momota was fine here but he worked best as an underdog and Kikuchi was there to play that role. Good finish, getting him out of the way for the bodyslam tombstone and headbutt.

ER: I really like the Dynamite/Smith team. Smith is a sound wrestler but pretty colorless, and Dynamite is a broken down 32. But the team dynamic is stronger than the Bulldogs dynamic would have been at this point, as Dynamite doesn't have to provide nearly as much flash and instead can rely on his strengths as an asshole. Here he's mostly utilized as a guy stopping Kikuchi's momentum and saving Smith, and it works really well. Dynamite looks and acts like a real tough guy piece of shit, with his slicked back hair and sideburns, and I loved every instance of him breaking up a pin with a boot to the back of someone's head, stopping a Kikuchi Boston Crab with the hardest chop of the match, and coming in late to smack Kikuchi off the top rope. We missed the first couple minutes of this, and that's likely where most of the Dynamite/Momota exchanges happened. The little bit we got looked great, with Momota working some fast juniors exchanges and then stopping Kid short with a straight kneelift. Dynamite's finishing 1-2 was really nasty, deadlifting Kikuchi into a scoop tombstone (that had to be hell on his back) and hitting a crippled (but still crazy) version of his top rope headbutt that inadvertently adds a forearm across Kikuchi's throat. This was a different Dynamite Kid than his uninjured heyday, but this iteration of him sees him picking and choosing how to use his fading athleticism, while increasing the emotional heft of his selling (the way he sells a falling headbutt looks like he rung his own bell). It's a different way of doing things, but I always get engaged seeing a wrestler operating at his base muscle memory. 


Haruka Eigen/Motoshi Okuma vs. The Land of Giants (Skywalker Nitron/Butch Masters)

MD: Eigen and Okuma get a solid B- for effort in trying to fend off Masters and Nitron, including chaining some strikes together to finally get one of them down, but the finish was inevitable from the start. Land of the Giants had presence due to their size and worked best when hammering down on their opponents or lifting them up. Their other strikes, including the kicks in the corner? Less so. This was still effective enough in presenting an attraction and making fans wonder how a more accomplished team might fare against them.

ER: Man, the fans in Niigata LOVED The Land of Giants. At least during their entrance. When the two giants stormed out and ambushed the natives you'd think the crowd was watching the Road Warriors. Land of the Giants might be the actual worst of the big league Road Warriors knockoffs, but I'll always think a pair of teaming giants has a high floor, no matter how glaring their weaknesses might be. And there are weaknesses. Nitron is very tentative with all of his stuff, almost always double pumping or stuttering a bit before making a move. Masters has a lot more confidence and has better timing, but neither of them have good strikes. It shouldn't be difficult for two legitimately huge guys to just swing their arms and voila, Good Looking Strikes, but pro wrestling doesn't really work that way. The best stuff here came from Okuma and Eigen making inroads and the fans getting excited about the distant prospect of an upset. Okuma especially got them fired up, taking advantage of a (really nice looking) missed Masters avalanche and helping Eigen knock him to the mat. I laughed at Eigen grabbing a single leg and Okuma kicking Master's plant leg out from under him, and Okuma misses his diving headbutt by whipping his forehead down into the mat. I also really loved Okuma's delayed reaction sell of the double big boot, looking up at them as if to say "TWO boots??" before falling to his back. The assisted legdrop is a cool finisher for Land of the Giants, but of course Nitron hesitates twice before finally lifting Masters. 

Rusher Kimura/Mighty Inoue vs. Stan Hansen/Dan Spivey

MD: Mighty Inoue really wrestled like a million bucks, but here he also got exposed as being really tiny. What was striking, however, was that Hansen and Spivey actually made him LOOK like a million bucks here, letting Inoue outmaneuver them. That lasted right til the end where he somehow rode Hansen's attempt to interfere into his somersault senton and took Hansen out (and literally out of the ring) before the distraction had him walk right into the Spivey Spike DDT. Kimura was only in for a little, but but he got to give Hansen a taste of his own medicine with the world's longest eyerake. If Inoue was two or three inches taller, he could have been one of the biggest stars of the 80s. Sometimes you get these bizarre house show performances where Hansen will give a ton to someone, like we saw some months back with Blackwell. Here, though, Inoue made it all seem earned. 

ER: This is a great house show curiosity, a match that looks like a surefire on-paper steamrolling and instead is worked as if the teams were equals. Hansen and Spivey paid a lot of reverence to the two old men (Rusher Kimura here is 8 years older than I presently am), with Spivey selling Rusher's headbutt like a real momentum shifter multiple times. Hansen runs over several audience members on the way to the ring, but he generously sells for Inoue, and the two big men getting knocked around by two smaller/older guys is incredibly entertaining. Spivey was smart about what to sell, not going down for every move but every other move, consistently selling the headbutts as a big move but merely getting knocked on his heels by shoulderblocks and lariats. Rusher has a fun hot tag where he punches Spivey right in the neck, Inoue hits a big bulldog on Spivey and has a great run of flying shoulder tackles (including one that Hansen bumps to the floor), but he misses his beautiful somersault senton right after disposing of Hansen and Spivey pounces with his spike DDT. I always get excited for new All Japan handhelds, because there are always weirdo gems like these where we get glimpses of guys working outside of the established All Japan hierarchy.


Dr. Death/Terry Gordy vs. Kenta Kobashi/Johnny Ace

MD: We get a few really good minutes of footage if you skip past the handheld issues that start this video out. There's a 50% chance that's all you'd get anyway with a match like this if it was filmed for the TV, so I can't complain too much. The clarity comes in right when Williams had Kobashi in a bear hug and the fans were going nuts for him to escape. Instead he ate a belly to belly. From what we could see, everyone looked great. Ace is an underrated apron cheerleader, not that this crowd needed much leading. Kobashi had been in the spotlight for about a year and a half at this point and he definitely already had It here, working from underneath and unleashing his fire when it was his time to get revenge. Unfortunately, the few minutes of clarity we got just made you want to see more since this looked like a great one overall.

ER: This was just the final 5 minute stretch of a 17 minute match, and I'm sure we at least got the best and hottest 5 minute stretch of the match. Sure it would be nice to have full matches on handhelds, and a lot of people would be excited for new Kobashi footage, but I like that we got complete versions of the other matches and just the finish of this one. The crowd is over the moon for Kobashi here, but on this same show I've been way more into babyface performances from Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, Motoshi Okuma, Rusher Kimura, and Mighty Inoue. I don't even think Kobashi was the best babyface in his own match, as this felt way more like a great Johnny Ace show. Kobashi had goofy slaps during his big hot tag, and meanwhile Ace is taking big bumps off the top and breaking up pins with his whole body, really knowing when to let Kobashi shine and when to step up. Gordy and Doc looked exactly how you'd expect them to look, and the hot crowd made the match-finishing Gordy powerbombs feel even bigger. 


Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. Kimala II/Abdullah the Butcher - GREAT

MD: This was fun for what it was and you knew what it would be coming in. Andre vs. Abby is a rare match-up if not a completely unique one, and both Abby and Kimala II were respectful and willing to put over the grandeur of their opponents. It was interesting to see a 1990 Giant Baba match where he did the brunt of the work. The highlight was the corner battering ram spot but Abby's timing was as good as ever. It was a crowd-pleaser though it was funny that Abby and Kimala got some chants from obvious dissidents before the match started.

PAS: I thought this was awesome. I am an end of the road Andre super fan, and watching him throw hands with 1990 Abby is really thrilling. We don't get a ton of it but it ruled. There is a 2/3 falls Abby vs. Andre match from 1977 in Houston, and it's probably in Billy Corgan's garage. DAMN YOU CORGAN!!. I enjoyed Kimala bringing the athleticism. He just flew into all of Baba's stuff, hit a dropkick, dove off the top, really wrestled around Baba and made his stuff look good. I would have loved to see the crowd brawling between Andre and Abby, but what we got was a blast.


Mitsuhara Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. Terry Funk/Dory Funk Jr.

MD: This went all the way and from what we could see, which admittedly wasn't everything was really good. The crowd was up for it and made it feel like a big deal, a sort of parallel to Tsuruta-gun vs the Super Generation Army, but the latter facing legends in the Funks instead. It had just about everything you'd want: Dory throwing forearms instead of sitting in holds, Terry getting a ton of sympathy as he took all of Misawa and Kawada's stuff, a big comeback with an amazing exchange ending in him ducking a Kawada kick and flooring him, and an incredibly exciting and increasingly wild last ten minutes as they built up to the draw. Dory and Terry rose to the occasion, including tossing out a standing double hip toss which seemed pretty unique from them. I loved the bit where Misawa and Kawada both tried a Scorpion Deathlock since that's a death move in AJPW. And it ended with Kawada surviving the spinning toehold as the clock ran out and a show of respect from the four.

PAS: Terry vs. Misawa is a match up that only happened here (Terry worked with Tiger Mask II in the 80s) and they really had great charisma with each other, Misawa's stoicism blended nicely with Terry's wild shit. We get some fun feeling out stuff with Dory early and it built to a pretty exciting finish run, with Terry hitting his piledriver on Kawada and Misawa and Kawada trying to finish the Funks with scorpion death locks. I liked how the finishing run felt frantic, sometimes draws just finished, but here both teams felt like they were working against each other and the clock. 


Joel Deaton/Dick Slater vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue

MD: This had a sense of inevitability from the start, but it was still pretty good for what it was. Deaton and Slater were able to maintain control when they leaned into their teamwork. Taue wasn't quite there yet but he was closer than he was and could better use his size and presence, though in this match he was there to set up the big tag to Jumbo. Inevitability is the best part about Jumbo, that last minute where his opponent survives but where everyone in the crowd knew the hand would be raised and the backdrop was coming. Slater, despite being past his prime still came off as fairly credible in this setting.

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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.

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