Matches from AJPW 11/25/90: WALKING TALL DORY~! NO RESPECT DYNAMITE~! KIDNEY PUNISHING HANSEN/KAWADA~!

The Funks vs. Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith AJPW 11/25/90

ER:  A pretty amazing match that I had never seen, with four standout performances. It's so hard hitting, and these new All Japan Classics episodes showcase that in the best way. The sound on these episodes is incredible, and it puts you right in the middle of this high impact style. I can't imagine what it was like sitting front row for such a physical style as All Japan - let alone be a participant in it! -  but this video makes it feel like I was there 35 years ago. It's one of five Tag League matches smack in the middle of the show, and they kill each other and treat it like a match with actual stakes. It's an awesome Dory match and more evidence that Dynamite Kid's Winter 1990 is him at one of his highest levels. Dory comes off like the tougher, harder hitting Funk, an actual Cool Dory match. The match peaks with the Bulldogs working over Terry's Not As Damaged 46 year old legs in ways that contributed to Terry's Old Knees while Terry scrambles in half a dozen of the greatest attempts at making a hot tag, a face in peril to his big brother's ass kicking tough guy. 

Johnny Smith is at his absolute beefiest; Dynamite is at his most bitter and dangerous, a little guy starting the most violent fights at the bar. It's a great team. Dynamite looks angry the entire match, on the apron, in the ring, and treats Terry like an old man to be put to pasture. Terry works lighter to come off as vulnerable to loss as possible, and is at perhaps his most sexy. Sexy Terry working as Pretty Ricky. Ponytail Terry with his little mustache and the best body of his career. I love Hot Ponytail Terry in his Body Glove tights, and here's Dory in his blue trunks working stiffer than anyone in the match,  maybe anyone on the show (Eric's Note: Kawada and Hansen kick each other so hard in the kidneys later on the card that Dory Funk would have died so let's leave it to saying he worked stiffer than anyone in this match). It adds up to a middle of the card tag match that was worked as a small show main event. 

Listen to how hard they're all smacking each other! Dory's contact on his collar and elbow tie-ups with Johnny were the sound of bodies used to taking hits. When Dory is in against Dynamite, he hits him with uppercuts that are so hard that I don't think Kid had to sell his limbs all going numb. He looked shocked that Dory was hitting him so hard. He tees off hard on Smith and really looks like a mat expert going after Smith's knee and ankle. Everyone worked this super honestly, but Dory's work was the most honest and well executed of all. And here's Dynamite, the by far smallest man in the match and the guy who I'd least want to confront about anything. He goes after Terry with no respect. Maybe my favorite spot in the match, is when Terry is hitting Johnny with headbutt after headbutt before they both go down. Johnny goes down, Terry spirals down after, and the second Terry hits the mat Dynamite's eyes go wide and he scrambles up to the top rope to hit a headbutt to Terry's stomach. He pulls it off so hastily, making it look like a snap impulse, and his knees land full weight one inch from Terry's face. It looked so dangerous and was only one of the things that made this match play so tough. Dynamite is so geared up when he's in against Terry, that they even do a spot where Dynamite presses Terry off him on a kickout and Terry flies several feet from it, like Dynamite was Yokozuna. Dynamite kills Terry with clotheslines to the back of the head, throws him to the floor with a back body drop, and - most incredibly - drags him into a standing stretch muffler that blew me away. Dynamite's body had to be in constant agony and as he locked in the muffler and stood to his feet, clasping his hands while the much larger Terry was hanging upside down in a headstand, his pain was as palpable as any I've seen.  

The Bulldogs working over Terry's knee was some excellent third act cutting off the ring. Dynamite wanted that knee all match, and when he got it he was like a dog with a chew toy. He was slamming Terry's calf over his knee and it looked like one of the most violent pieces of work I've seen. Terry's selling was incredible, crawling and leaping towards Dory while Smith and Dynamite had to keep tackling and blocking. There were some nearfalls that got the big crowd to bite, like one of the most well-used and well-executed rolling inside cradles. Dory pulled the cradle and Smith rolled it over and the movement was so good that Yokohama bought in. Terry's win over Smith was so well done, as Dynamite had totally drained Terry and suddenly one of the biggest stars in wrestling history looked like he could be beaten by Johnny Smith. He has to resort to scrambling on top of Smith during a pinfall exchange and just weigh his body down. The Bulldogs looked like a tough vital team against two legends, and The Funks looked legitimately at the top of their abilities. 

Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. The Land of Giants AJPW 11/25/90

ER: Phil and I wrote about this match 7 years ago and I don't think I appreciated it enough then. It seems funny to say that I didn't appreciate an Old Andre match enough, as I think every single review of any Old Andre match I've ever written is me appreciating and analyzing every step he takes. I love the 1990 Tag League old broken but still proud Giants, and we should all be thankful that we got to see them against the worst Fake Road Warriors team ever assembled in a respected promotion. I cannot and will not say it is a great match, because it is not. The Land of Giants - Skywalker Nitron especially, specifically - are total cornballs. Nitron is the goofiest of all, almost surely the goofiest wrestler All Japan used in 1990. You're off the hook Richard Charland and David Sammartino. But part of what makes the match great, is that Andre and Baba know that these two are cornballs, and the gift that brings us is a very active Andre match. 

Andre is old but not nearly as old as he'd look in 1992. He was in the ring a lot against both cornballs and had a bunch of great ideas and ways to attack both of them. He looked really strong, even if Nitron sold some of his offense with the goofy acting only seen from people reading stories to small children in libraries. Andre looked like he had a lot of fun beating these two goofs up. He had two different cantaloupe fist punches, one while holding Nitron in a headlock and the other just thrown to the face and followed up with a NOAH worthy headbutt. He grabbed Masters in a knuckle lock and made it look like he was crushing his hand. The camera had a zoom in on Andre interlacing his fingers with Butch and his fingers were so big they looked like they were forcing Masters' fingers to break apart. It looks like something that would and did drop Masters to a knee. The best part is when he broke the knuckle lock by rearing back and punching Masters in the fingers. 

This match has Andre the fucking Giant holding Rob Zombie's Michael Myers in a bearhug. Freddy vs. Jason is my least favorite Nightmare on Elm Street movie and my least favorite Friday the 13th movie, but Andre the Giant vs. Michael Myers is a horror movie showdown we needed to see and I would have paid money to. There's no way I would have gone into that movie and gotten Andre keeping his bearhug locked in by pulling on The Shape's rattail. Moustapha Akkad wouldn't have had the guts. 

Stan Hansen/Danny Spivey vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Mitsuharu Misawa AJPW 11/25/90

ER: The Funks vs. New Bulldogs was a hard hitting match. Every open hand on chest and back landed with a loud crack and Dory Funk threw in a last hurrah before his 50s with a great Walking Tall badass role. It's great. But then two matches later Kawada and Hansen took such righteous anger out of each other's kidneys that it made me think *I* was going to piss blood. This is some of the toughest wrestling you'll ever see. Hansen is in full force of nature mode and he hits Kawada like a kid in training camp. Every chair, every shoulder, every godforsaken kick, was felt thoroughly. Hansen is such a force of nature, that you're not expecting Kawada to take such a force so head on. Kawada kicks Hansen back even harder and cracks baseball bat shots off the old cowboy's torso. Kawada makes such wicked contact that Hansen's pancreas selling looks like the man is learning how to sell a bruised pancreas in real time. Hansen is the best Train Running Off the Rails impacter in wrestling and it was amazing to see Kawada throw his whole body at a moving train. The finish is incredible and features one of the greatest low bridges I've ever seen. Misawa flies over the top rope with such speed that I jumped in the same way I do in the movies when a car gets unexpectedly T-boned. Spivey's team with Hansen took his timing to a really high level. Misawa is there one second and gone the next and as he's flying one direction, Hansen runs the other and knocks Kawada into the sky with a western lariat. Later, Doc and Gordy try to hit harder clotheslines on Taue in the main event and make fine cases. Later still, Jumbo and Taue outdo them all with their clotheslines to Gordy. It's show-long clothesline oneupmanship I can support. And then Jumbo gives Gordy another. 

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All Japan Motherload - The Funks vs. Bruiser Brody/Jimmy Snuka - AJPW 12/2/87

ER: In which two men - both of whom will find themselves on different ends of the murder controversy spectrum - team up against two vacationing brothers who have likely not murdered any humans in their life, but have likely had many experiences putting down assorted dogs and livestock. Four men. Four men who have been around DEATH AND MURDER their whole lives. Four men who start a tag match with 10 minutes of a side headlock on Jimmy Snuka. Four men recorded on a handheld camera by some person in the crowd (this match supposedly aired on TV but this is certainly not the TV recording). Yet overall, this match was good! Brody and Snuka were the two best men in the match. You may not believe that. It intrigued me on paper because I saw "Terry Funk" and "1987" and I thought...I don't recall seeing those two things together. And sure enough, in 1987 he and Dory just worked this one AJ tour and a match in Puerto Rico against the Road Warriors. I don't think Terry worked at all in '88. So them deciding to lock on 10 minutes of headlocks to start this match is not entirely unexpected. Please imagine with me, Terry greeting Baba after landing in Japan, and saying in his Terry Funk voice "Baba I don't know just how much I'm gonna be able to do this run". You know that you just read that in Terry Funk voice and you also know that you love reading things in Terry Funk voice.

So we get those 10 minutes of side headlock, and they aren't entirely boring. Terry is a guy who is usually pretty fun working holds, working anything really. It's never quite as mechanical or mindless as other guys, and there's that added excitement of "any second know he may just do something entirely Terry Funk". Snuka is not bad at being a guy in a headlock. I felt his frustration. Dory is unlike Terry, in that much of the time he cares not about making holds interesting, not just in his work but in his face. I don't believe I've ever seen a person more bored with what they are doing, than when I looked into Dory's eyes during various tag matches. His faces are almost Kikuchi-like in their long term selling, as you really believe that just the act of being a professional wrestler is physically draining his lifeforce. You really believe that he is trapped in this cycle of needing to continue wrestling, while it's also destroying him from the inside. You see people at the DMV enjoying their job more than Dory Funk. But things pick up when Brody sees Snuka's frustration, develops his own frustration, and comes in to boot Terry with one of the harder front kicks you've seen Brody unleash. Snuka takes over and grabs his own headlock, but awesomely punches Terry from the side headlock, Nolan Ryan style. He sat in that thing for 10 minutes, and now he's showing what HE would have done with that same side headlock. He plants Terry with a great piledriver and Funk hilariously won't allow Snuka to turn him over for the pin. Funk straightens his body as if to sell some sort of locked up paralysis, but as Snuka keeps trying to roll him over for a pin Funk keeps his body straight and clearly fights getting rolled over, for a long and awkward amount of time, in a really blatant sorry not sorry kind of way. I would have been pissed if I were Snuka, and I personally am not a man who has ever been driven to murder, so Snuka must have been REAL pissed. Brody was fun, lighting up both Funks with stiff yakuza kicks, and blasting Terry's chest with chops. Even over the poor fancam audio those chops sounded brutal. Brody also takes a wild bump into the crowd that really belies his selfish rep. He and Terry brawl to the floor and Funk takes a piledriver on the exposed mats, then eventually a chair joins the ring and this gets thrown out. The headlocks were shockingly not bad, and after that was gold. 1987 was a weird year.

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All Japan Motherload - The Funks vs. The Malenkos - AJPW 10/19/90

ER: In which Terry comes out with bangs, a ponytail a little mustache, clearly doing a Chicky Starr tribute. This was a fun match with the Funks playing into the Malenkos' game, Dory selling transitions like a sleepy turtle, and Terry breaking out some weird and goofy and sometimes misguided things. Dean clearly had a bunch of things he was dying to try out here, and Dory both does and does not go along with them. I liked a couple of the leglocks and drop toeholds Dean went for, and Dory had some cool reversals even if Dory's eyes were drooping more than Keith Moon's before a gig. The most fun was when Terry would take a roll with Dean. He had a really cool arm drag out of a go behind and came up with a nice way to get into position for a Dean top rope sunset flip. He also hilariously made Dean wait forever in position while he took an eternity doing his own top rope sunset flip right after. I really dug all the mat stuff, thought both Malenkos matched up well with both Funks, and really liked Dory's high backslide to beat Dean. They kept things low key throughout, no big bumps, felt like a smartly worked house show match.

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All Japan Motherload - Genichiro Tenryu/Rocky Hata vs. The Funks - AJPW 12/2/77

ER: This is notable because ROOKIE YEAR TENRYU!! This is 27 yr old rookie Tenryu, all slender and lump-free but still spectacularly coiffed. Funks have matching shaved heads and I don't ever recall seeing Terry with hair this short. Now that I noticed Dory Funk = David Morse I cannot unsee it and I can only pray that somehow Terry and Morse ended up in a movie together at one point. The Funks jogging suits are literally my favorite jogging suits I have seen, with a beautiful deep blue and red, slim leg with slight flair at the bottom, tasteful collar on the jacket, right amount of elastic at the waist. Gorgeous. Tenryu and Hata control with headlocks and we eventually get to see Tenryu break out the sumo charging chops into the corner. Funks takeover and begin bullying Tenryu and it's so so so bizarre to see Tenryu as a young FIP. Funks break out a sweet double indian deathlock. Everybody takes turns showing off their throw strength, with Terry hitting a mean hardway vertical on Hata, Tenryu getting a side suplex, Dory hitting a butterfly, at one point Terry dropkicks Hata and lands knee first on his face. I expected Funks to steamroll here but they let the younger guys control a bit, though it was still so strange seeing Tenryu get picked on.

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