Genichiro Tenryu/Takashi Ishikawa vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu/Isao Takagi, SWS Echizen Fighting Party Beginning Charity Preview Event (9/29/1990)

This ruled.

As the big match on what is essentially a preview show a few weeks before the big debut weekend in mid-October, the match has a fine line to walk. Obviously, there needs to be some enticement here to come back for more, but with the two big stars clearly being Tenryu and Yatsu, so much has to be saved too, particularly between the,. It’s not an unfamiliar line to walk, of course, it is essentially just a build up tag, but in this case, it’s a build up tag for an entire promotion.

It succeeds perfectly.

First things first, in terms of the loftier ambitions, it does a stellar job in regards to Tenryu and Yatsu.

The two meet, of course, but it’s in short moments. A brawl at the start of what we see as the match (god bless 1990s commercial tapes), one again outside near the end, and only a few flashes of fighting inside the ring. It’s enough to whet the appetite, but nowhere even close enough to be satisfying, but in the way that the idea is supposed to work. It does that because every interaction is so electric. Yoshiaki Yatsu is absolutely not a top level star on Tenryu’s level, but there’s such hate in his eyes and feeling in his movement that it works anyways. It’s all very effective, in the basic way a build up match is supposed to be, which is to say that in these moments, I want nothing more than to abandon the linear nature of this product and get right to their very next meeting.

On that larger level, that SWS advertisement part, it also just straight up whips ass.

This is a match entirely about ass kicking, from Tenryu being attacked outside by Yatsu as the match is joined in progress to the control on him, to then in the last half when firecracker Ishikawa gets in on it against Yatsu some, ending with this genuinely insane and all-time mean spirited beating on overmatched Yatsu stooge Isao Takagi (best known a decade later as Arashi), himself having had issues with Tenryu pre-exodus earlier in the year in All Japan.

It’s beyond fascinating.

Speaking strictly in theory, with Tenryu as the clear promotional centerpiece and this all beginning with him being the one suffering from cheap shots at the start, one knows this isn’t meant as this thing to babyface poor Takagi. However, if the JIP cut here happened a minute or two later, one might never know that. The beating is that severe and extensive and memorable, both in a narrative sense — Tenryu practically crucifying this out of his element rookie that Yatsu, and others, used to try and humiliate him — and a physical one that while Tenryu has and will get more violent and intense with the beatings, I’m not sure any other one has ever felt as outright mean as this.

For the last half or last third of the match, save a Yatsu interruption to briefly throw a row of chairs at Tenryu outside, Isao Takagi is relentlessly beaten, and it is almost never with wrestling moves. Tenryu throws what feels like 100 of the nastiest and cruelest little short punts of his life in between chops and other attacks, and they come in all forms. With a big wind-up and swing to the back, fast in the corner to the face, more mocking and prodding ones to the back of the head. Takagi has some light blood by his nose, but it’s genuinely hard to tell if he is actually hurt or something else weird (he would retire for a decade within two months of this) or if this is just an awesome idea, and I really really love that grey area.

(Do not tell me if it was all work or all shoot or any mixture. So much of this rare joy is in not entirely knowing for sure. Let me have that.)

Beautifully, that is just kind of the match.

No turning of the tide ever comes. Yatsu never gets back in.

Our Hero simply beats ass until he cannot beat anymore, and immediately, there is a consequence paid in the SWS for behavior like Yatsu and Takagi engaged in.

Tenryu continues beating the dog shit out of this poor boy, and after he cannot get back up after an uncommonly mean and loud feeling chop, the referee calls the match, and Revolution wins by knock out.

It’s not must-see or anything, but it is an insane showing from the best to ever do it, and one that takes place in one of the more interesting matches I’ve watched recently. In that sense, while I cannot recommend it to someone with an extensive backlog, I also cannot recommend it enough for people with less of one built up.

***+

Jumbo Tsuruta/Mighty Inoue/Isao Takagi vs. Revolution (Genichiro Tenryu/Toshiaki Kawada/Samson Fuyuki), AJPW New Years Giant Series 1990 Day Eighteen (1/26/1990)

This was another commission by KinchStalker. You can pay me to watch any sort of wrestling and then write a few hundred words about it over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The going rate is $5 a match, but feel free to buy a few at a time or just leave a tip if you really liked something I did. Always appreciated. 

A fancam that’s gotten a certain reputation recently as more people have seen it.

Of course, it’s not new to me, as the sort of total psycho who watched everything in the RealHero AJPW archive that ever aired on TV or made tape in any fashion, at least from 1980 through June 2000, as part of another project on that old message board, which is still the best format for any sort of a long form individual promotion based review, no matter how much I love this blog and the increased reach that it has.

However, it’s still a real great match, as one of the last glimpses of Tenryu’s all-time great Revolution stable goes up against Jumbo’s army.

First things first, as with every Revolution vs. Jumbo & “Friends” match, it is REMARKABLY surly, trading periods of control with a frantic pace and increasing hostility. Not always the most mechanically perfect thing, but always uplifted by that certain spirit and tone. Jumbo and Tenryu are as chippy as always with each other, but Tenryu has one of the great unheralded shitkicker teams of all time in Footloose at the ready and they are always as constantly aggrieved and put-upon as he was. Kawada is already just a ball of rage, made even more striking by still occupying the Footloose attire meant to convey a classic 1980s bubbly young babyface team, but that always seemed like a cute little joke when placed on the world’s angriest tag team.

On the other side, Jumbo and Inoue are just as constantly mad. Jumbo and Tenryu don’t get to do quite as much down the stretch, but Fuyuki continually draws the big man’s ire, and as a keen and well-watched eye will know, maybe no other wrestler in history has made Jumbo Tsuruta as pissed off as Toshiaki Kawada has, does, and will continue to do. He’s been plenty mad at other people, but there’s a maximum on this amp, and Kawada always manages to bring Jumbo’s volume up there. The all-time nasty Kitchen Sink yet again, shaking the shit out of him in holds in mid-match, the angriest cut offs of the entire thing, just a beautiful assault. It’s not so much a hint of something in there when Jumbo is confronted by someone younger and/or going for his spot, as that’s been the entire Tenryu feud since mid 1987, but another example of something beautiful.

For his part, Mighty is a delight here in the way that he always is. Overmatched both against the heavyweights and the new generation, but hitting the basics as angrily as possible and hurling his body around like a wrecking ball. Like the even dirtier Masanobu Fuchi, the exact sort of maniac you’d love on a team you root for and despise when he’s up against your interests.

(Isao Takagi ala the future Arashi is but a boy and while he has moments, he is the odd man out here as a guy who just is having a professional match — albeit still quite the good one. Very clearly a rookie with signs in there with five all-world guys who are having a delightful little show around him.)

Jumbo doesn’t have his ideal pick of warriors on his side here (he’d love Yoshiaki Yatsu and Masanobu Fuchi), but he does have the ability to create the exact scenario his team of a rookie and an underdog need to win. He neutralizes Tenryu entirely, yet again, and constantly gets up in Footloose’s shit at the same time. The result is a total loss of control in the last moments, losing track of who’s legal at a given moment, and the only possible situation where Mighty’s flash sunset flip is just barely enough for the win.

Not the greatest match these sides have ever had, but it’s a credit to them that a team with Jumbo Tsuruta on it can still be capable of what feels like an underdog win, even if I personally am never capable of quite rejoicing when Revolution — perhaps the most likeable stable in mainstream Japanese wrestling history — gets one taken off of them, even as the favorites.

If you’re fairly well versed, this isn’t anything you haven’t seen before. That perfect combination of hostility and structural perfection that made these kinds of matches the surest bet in all of wrestling for a real long time. The sort of meat and potatoes six man tag that helped make All Japan one of the best promotions in the world from 1985 through some time in the mid to late 1990s.

If you’re not as well versed and still really floored by this, great news, there’s like a hundred of these, and they’re all a delight.

***