Hansen v Kobashi (they have a good match)

Stan Hansen v Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 9/4/91)

Goodness, this might be the meanest Stan Hansen there's ever been. That covers a ridiculous amount of ground and it's nigh on impossible to know for sure, but he was in a deeply unpleasant mood on this night and he took every bit of it out on Kobashi. Before the bell even rings he just murders him with a lariat and for the next five minutes Kobashi is googly-eyed trying to regain his bearings. Hansen drags him outside, powerbombs him on the floor - which is the ever-present in their rivalry - and recklessly chucks a table at his head. He just wallops him up and down the place and Kobashi can only fight back with a chop here or a kick there. Of course every hope spot he gets, no matter how minuscule, elicits a massive reaction. I actually watched their match from 1990 just before this and you could already see the progress Kobashi had made from then to this, not necessarily as a worker (though that too, obviously), but more his standing in the All Japan pecking order. In the 1990 match his hope spots were ragged, more of an annoyance to Hansen than anything he truly had to worry about. Here he was getting worried, especially after Kobashi hit the moonsault, and then again when Kobashi took it to the floor himself. I've written about a few Hansen/Kobashi matches on this stupid blog over the years and I always bring up how you can track their interactions from beginning to end, how they evolve, the threads that run through all of them -- it might be my favourite of the prominent 90s All Japan match-ups in that respect. At the end of the day it's simple enough. Hansen is a menace who runs roughshod over everything, Kobashi is the young prodigy who's destined for the crown. The former's decline coincides with the latter's rise and at a certain point in their trajectories Kobashi will overtake Hansen. It's just how it goes. How Hansen tries to fight back the tide with each subsequent bout is where the dynamic thrives. At this point there isn't a huge amount of danger that he'll lose, but Kobashi doggedly going after the sleeper out on the floor had Hansen reeling and the way he shut him down with that second lariat was fucking incredible. Hansen was pissed off before but that felt like a real breaking point, where he was thoroughly fed up with this kid and just wanted to go chew some tobacco in peace. The way he slammed him into the barricade afterwards was borderline absurd and the finish is another all-time Hansen v Kobashi level finish. Stan Hansen, you truly were the surliest.