What a fun Hara performance. Maybe it's just because I haven't watched him in a minute but he seemed super game in this. All of his exchanges were beefy as all get out and he took one amazing bump onto his neck off a, equally amazing Tenta dropkick. He was leathering folk with lariats, making Takagi regret dabbling in the pro-wrestling, hitting brick wall shoulder tackles, basically the exact sort of thing you want in an eight minute match like this. Takagi is always good fun because he'll step to his elders and slap them in the face despite knowing they'll murder him in return. He got murdered more than once and every time Tenryu stopped to stare at him we all knew what was coming.
Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada v John Tenta & Shunji Takano (All Japan, 1/2/89) - GOOD
This was even beefier. A year on from the previous match Tenta has bulked up a fair bit and Tenryu's general mood has deteriorated, so both tried to melt each other several times. Tenryu obviously knew Tenta was a gamer because he'd try and chop the skin off his chest in a way he didn't always do against foreigners coming in for brief tours. He'd give Mike Miller and Doug Furnas a ton while never truly retaliating like you expect. Straight away he was laying it in against big John and Tenta responding with a huge belly-to-belly was awesome. The extra weight from '88 to '89 means Tenta may have had to shelf the dropkick, but what he lost in athleticism he made up for in THICCness and there were many THICC collisions on display. Tenryu was clearly intimidated by this and tried to smash a chair over his head, which was sort of unexpected yet very awesome. Takano hit at least two incredible dropkicks in this as well, one right under Tenryu's jaw that about took his head clean off. A very fun time all around.
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