Genichiro Tenryu v Great Muta (WAR, 10/11/96) - EPIC
I'm a stupid mark for this kind of thing, so obviously I loved the shit out of this match. My usual stance on Keiji Mutoh is that in most circumstances I'd rather take a man in my mouth than watch him wrestle for twenty minutes, but I do think he matches up really well with Tenryu (and you know I'll watch Tenryu against anybody). Plus this is Muta, so I fully expected a bit of a spectacle with a hot crowd, and I got that and more. Muta was actually a total blast in this. Guy just goes off right from the start and wreaks all sorts of havoc. He smashes a glass bottle off the ring post and stabs Tenryu in the forehead with it, piledrives him on a table (which leaves a big blood smear), tries to stab ring boys, jabs Tenryu in the kidneys with a microphone stand; just a whole bunch of awesome stuff. At one point he rips off someone's white shirt and writes something on it in Tenryu's blood! You know what happens when Tenryu makes his comeback. He kisses his fist and throws three absolutely glorious punches, then launches a table at Muta. You're always going to get a big mist spot with Muta, and I really dug him doing it here from about three inches away from Tenryu's face as a kick out of the powerbomb. Looked like Tenryu came up having to spit half of it back out of his own mouth. Ref's performance deserves a shout here as well, you know. He gets his arm cut by a piece of broken glass (which flew up when Muta smashed the bottle), gets flung around by Muta, walks into some residue mist (and sells it like he's swatting away some angry hornets), and has to scramble out the way when Tenryu starts hurling furniture. Muta sells the finish by instantly rolling out the ring and walking away like nothing actually happened, but that was really a small blemish on an otherwise killer match.
Complete & Accurate Tenryu
No comments:
Post a Comment