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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.
HANDWERK 