Tenryu's Dirty, Mean and Mighty Unclean. He's a Wanted Man, Public Enemy Number One.

Genichiro Tenryu, Stan Hansen & Samson Fuyuki v Jumbo Tsuruta, Yoshiaki Yatsu & Great Kabuki (All Japan, 7/3/89) - SKIPPABLE 

Well you can add Hansen v Kabuki to the Whiskey & Wrestling dream match catalogue. I think this is the first time I've ever seen them together and it was easily my personal highlight of the match. When Hansen whipped Kabuki into the ropes I figured the latter was getting his arse handed to him and his offence in return would be close to nonexistent. But then Kabuki blasted him under the chin with a thrust kick and reeled off a flurry of uppercuts, and Hansen selling Kabuki's offence really was a thing of beauty. Hansen never even tried to murder him in response and the fact he immediately tagged out instead went a decent way towards putting over Kabuki as being dangerous. I imagine a seven minute singles match would've been great fun. Nothing else here was all that good, unfortunately. They had some okay ideas and a few of them landed initially, like Kabuki and Jumbo almost coming to blows, or Tenryu about getting concussed, or any number of times where it looked like a heat segment might break out, but it was sort of all over the place structurally and nothing really had time to  resonate. Lots of abrupt momentum shifts, a whole bunch of "okay I'll go on offence now because you've hit enough moves," an inordinate amount of times where one guy would just blow something off and tag out. It was all very strange. Tenryu had an off night as well, though his exchanges with Kabuki will always be fun and these were no different. Hansen constantly raving like a headcase about whatever was amusing. He'd often come running in just to take a swing at someone, maybe because the crowd were dead, maybe because he was bored standing on the apron. Kabuki was the MVP pretty easily, and even though it's not hard to see why he was never held in particularly high regard I would like to reiterate that people were wrong. This was like 22 minutes and not terrible by any stretch, but nothing you need to see.


Genichiro Tenryu, Toshiaki Kawada & Samson Fuyuki v Giant Baba, Rusher Kimura & Masa Fuchi (All Japan, 9/15/89) - EPIC

Now we're talking. If the last match was Tenryu on an off night, this was him reminding us that he might've been the best wrestler in the world. He was unbelievable here and all three of his match-ups ruled, as did pretty much every single exchange he had. In some ways his performance drove the direction of the match. In the beginning he was in grump mode, but he wasn't chopping anybody in the throat or doing anything untoward. For about ten minutes that was reflected in the overall tone. Everything ticked along nicely, nothing was blow away amazing but it was perfectly good wrestling. Then the longer it went the more Tenryu's temper flared, and that rubbed off on his partners, and that really opened things up. It established a clear face/heel divide, where in the second half Tenryu and Footloose were the heels and everybody decided Fuyuki was a real bastard and booed his every action. Tenryu was throwing shots at everyone, whomping Fuchi with chairs, threatening to launch a table at Baba, stomping on Fuchi's face, chopping Kimura even further into decrepitude, punting Fuchi in the spleen and kidneys and really Fuchi must've done something to him at some point because he got the living shit beat out of him. Fuchi as face in peril being abused by an irate 40 year old isn't a role you associate with him, in fact you associate Fuchi with being the irate 40 year old abusing everybody else, but man was he exceptional in this. Within the first few minutes he was dribbling blood from his mouth and his extended heat segment midway in was what really propelled this into that upper tier. Kimura can't really do much other than throw headbutts and get chopped exceptionally hard in the chest, but of course he did all that to the best of his abilities. Baba ruled, though. He's the oldest and probably most broken down of the lot but he never wrestled like it. Sure his overhand chops aren't the nastiest overhand chops you'll ever see, and sure his offence can look a bit clunky, but fuck it, the people lived and died with him and everything he did in this was money. The stuff with Tenryu was wonderful. I'm a broken record going on about how Tenryu is a master at showing vulnerability in believable ways, but almost nobody could make Baba's strikes at this point in his career look as believable. That the old man was refusing to accept Tenryu as the new king only pissed Tenryu off more, so he'd routinely cheapshot him while Baba stood on the apron minding his own business. There was an amazing moment where Tenryu tried to almost fake Baba out with a chop, but Baba didn't buy it and stood there completely indifferent to it all. It was like that GIF where Matt Barnes fakes throwing the ball at Kobe's face and Kobe doesn't even blink. Solid opening third, great middle third, shit hot closing third. Awesome match.


Complete & Accurate Tenryu