Another piece of commission work, this time from Ko-fi contributor Kai. You can be like them if you’d like and pay me to watch and write about all sorts of matches, provided of course that you do your due diligence and make sure I haven’t already done so. If you’d like to do that, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The market price is $5 per match, and if you have an aim more complex than simply multiplying a number by five, feel free to hop in the DMs, and we can work something out.
This is another commission that I was incredibly happy to receive.
New Japan vs. WAR in 1992-1993 is, in my eyes, the greatest interpromotional feud ever. It doesn’t have a climax like New Japan vs. UWFi, the overall year over year over year volume of something like NOAH vs. New Japan that raged for close to a decade, its best stuff isn’t on the level of the two all-time ROH vs. CZW matches, but in terms of overall quality and especially in terms of raw hate across all matches, no other feud touches it. In totality, it is the benchmark that all other interpromotional skirmishes should aspire to.
Tenryu and Hase are a LARGE part of that, being two of the feud’s most valuable players along with Shinya Hashimoto, and this match shows why.
Everything outside of pro wrestling aside, Hiroshi Hase is incredible. One of the decade’s greatest babyfaces, there’s a natural charm to him that especially comes out when he gets fired up in these New Japan vs. WAR matches, even beyond all of the mechanical things he’s always done very well. You can chalk it up to needing something to fight for or something to fight against, you can chalk it up to a kind of energy some wrestlers naturally get in these situations, or you can chalk it up to simply having the greatest bullies he’ll ever have in guys like Tenryu and Fuyuki and the like.
Speaking of those bullies, it’s in this feud that Genichiro Tenryu delivers maybe the greatest run of bully heel work ever in wrestling history. Many wrestlers have been dominant and great, many wrestlers have been rude and dismissive and great, many wrestlers have been hot-headed violent maniacs and been great, and some have managed to combine a few of those elements. I don’t believe anyone has ever combined all of those into one the way that 1992-1994 Genichiro Tenryu quite did across these series of matches.
He’s not at the peak of that here, this is a big singles match main event in a larger venue and asks for a different sort of a performance than a Korakuen Hall build up tag does, but save the manic violence, all of those attributes are on display. In particular, Tenryu puts on a facial expression masterclass here, going from condescending staredowns in the first half to these moments of sheer absolute panic when Hase comes close to hitting his big stuff. The real kicker is the transition from the latter back to the former, a repeated process of Tenryu going above and beyond to show not just that he’s mad that a smaller and lower ranked Hase for getting him in moments, but trying to show in fact that no, shut up, he didn’t fucking get him, shut up. The arrogance and the struggle to really back it up are key here.
Genichiro Tenryu is better than Hiroshi Hase, everybody knows it, but the real issue between them is that Tenryu wants to smoke him, to completely run through him as a show of dominance, and he can’t. I think that that’s beautiful, this big mean bully mad that he can’t win by enough, and almost blowing the entire thing a few times because of it.
The real impressive thing about this is match is that, at the same time, it manages to operate and feel like a classic underdog story while also having this real sense of grandeur and spectacle to it. This is a match that is wrestled big by both men involved in it and feels important, and at the same time, it’s as if Tenryu is lashing out at the very idea of that feeling at all times.
In this match, Tenryu strikes this ultra fascinating balance between constantly trying to show that Hase is not on his level and absolutely struggling with him. Tenryu’s a guy here who tries to be as dismissive as possible, even just barely holding onto a folding press after one of his Powerbombs, using his legs instead of any part of his upper body, but at the same time, someone digging further and further into desperation of shitheel skullduggery as the match goes on. As always, the greatest joy in matches like these and performances like these is the transition, and while Tenryu doesn’t get as much out of it given his starting point, there’s still such a joy in seeing him go from a disdainful arrogance to grabbing Hase’s hair with all he’s got to avoid another Uranage or using cheap rope counters to escape other suplexes.
Following his third Powerbomb, this one a more American style release Jackknife, Tenryu goes to his greatest show of this, putting on the WAR Special for the win. It’s a great tactic not only for the obvious reason of using the WAR Special to beat one of New Japan’s brightest stars, but in using something he doesn’t often go to as a top level finish to win so it looks a certain way on paper. Of course, it doesn’t actually look like that at all when you watch the match, and I think that’s my favorite part.
Tenryu’s not fooling anybody about how much effort it took, but it feels like the perfect conclusion to have him go “well, no actually” after clearly exerting this much effort. Hase proves something no matter what the last move in the match is, and there is nothing more befitting one of history’s greatest villains than going out of his way to prove a point that nobody else in the world believes in.
Not the peak of the feud nor a match that works for the same reasons as other matches in the feud, but one of my favorite matches in it or from either man.
HANDWERK 