Old man Hansen

Stan Hansen v Akira Taue (All Japan, 4/11/94)

I've said it a few times before, but I think this is my favourite period of Hansen's career. By "period" I could probably just say the 90s as a whole and it would still be fairly accurate. The Pillars were climbing the ladder and you had other American talent like Gordy and Williams emerging while Hansen was on the decline (at least physically). He wasn't necessarily being phased out right from the turn of the decade -- he was still one of the promotion's top guys, but before long father time had his claws in him and he was almost becoming a relic of the past. He couldn't bully this new generation the same way he could the previous. Studs like Kobashi wouldn't take it for long and by the end of '93 Misawa had already knocked him off his perch. It's that '92-'94-ish period that I love the most. I still think '93 is the best year of his career, the way he captured that feeling of baddest gunslinger in the west (the east?) who maybe wasn't the baddest anymore, who either refused to acknowledge that fact or did acknowledge it but was too far along to do things any other way. A man struggling to hold onto his place in the world, who'd go out on his shield, dangerous till the very end. By this point in '94 he'd slipped even further down the pecking order. He was still someone who you bought winning against basically anybody, including Kawada in the Champions Carnival that the latter went on to win, but those wins were more difficult to come by. The night before this he even lost to Kobashi for the first time ever. And as Hansen became less of a tornado who could just overwhelm people, it meant we got to see more of him as wounded animal, selling from below, garnering sympathy (for as much sympathy as a rampant maniac can garner). He's an amazing seller, maybe even an underrated one, at least in that his selling is rarely talked about in comparison to his brawling and offence and the carnage that comes with those things. In the Kobashi match the previous night he picked up a rib injury, and that carries over to this. It's one of my favourite Hansen selling performances ever and almost reminded me of Steamboat's at Starrcade '84, where even the way he stood told you that he wanted to keep the ribs on that side out of reach. Taue isn't particularly dynamic offensively, but I'm fine with that and everything he did stayed laser-focused on Hansen's ribs. Plus Taue is someone who did a lot of hotshots and snake eyes anyway, so just tweak it a little and drop a guy a bit higher up. It was actually pretty un-All Japan-like for this period of All Japan. And I guess in the end that's what made it so interesting.