The Revolution is Genocide, Your Execution will be Televised, don't Cross Tenryu like Isaiah, that Shit be Ill-Advised

Genichiro Tenryu v Keiji Mutoh (All Japan, 6/8/01) - GREAT

This was kind of weird. I dug a lot of it and thought it often worked because of the pace...but on the other hand that same pace was a bit of a struggle. Or Mutoh working that pace in general is a struggle. You could've JIP'd the first seven or so minutes and not a ton would've been lost overall, though Mutoh hitting an early Shining Wizard and Tenryu's subsequent sell, where he never looked quite right again thereafter, was a pretty great moment. Not much of note happened in that opening stretch otherwise. Or not much grabbed me; maybe you'll find something more noteworthy. Actually we got a little teaser of Mutoh working the leg for his Shining Wizard strategy so if you like the idea of that then you're in luck. I didn't dislike Mutoh in this but I'm not sure how good he was. He's a strange worker. He moves like he's buffering, where he'll sit there dead-eyed for a while and then bang, he's in motion for a few seconds and it's really quick and it looks like your fibre broadband is doing more work than it should have to in order to catch up in real time. I also cannot be arsed one bit with watching him methodically work a leg so that didn't bode well either. But hey, things picked up nicely when Tenryu hit a brainbuster on the apron and from that point on I thought they built things really well. Tenryu's "get to fuck with that" response to Mutoh's low dropkicks by hitting a few of his own was awesome. It'll irk people that the duelling leg work never played a bigger role in the finish, but Mutoh's whole point of going to the leg is to set up the Shining Wizard anyway and that certainly did play a role in the finish. They could've sold it better, I guess? I don't know man, I'm sort of past caring about that stuff at this stage. There were a few really cool moments in that back half though, like Mutoh's knee to the head as a counter to the brainbuster, followed by Tenryu almost goading him into another Shining Wizard attempt that he was ready to block and capitalise on. In terms of scale you'd never hold the last five minutes of this up against the All Japan finishing runs of a few years earlier, but it never intended to replicate that and I appreciate how much drama they were able to build off a few key nearfalls.  

Complete & Accurate Tenryu