Genichiro Tenryu v Killer Khan (All Japan, 4/12/85) - EPIC
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this. These two almost always match up great together, but I don't think I'd ever seen a singles match between them, something that's hard to imagine yet also a thing I would never dare lie about. I didn't even know one existed before last night. Either way I figured it would be good because of course I'd figure that, but it wound up being good in sort of surprising ways and in the end I thought it was a brilliant slow build title match. The first five minutes have some of the best grappling from two guys I don't really think of as great grapplers or mat wrestlers. They're great at many things, Tenryu so many that I'd call him one of the three greatest wrestlers to ever live, but I can't really think of a single instance where I thought, "man, that bit of Tenryu matwork there was great!" But this was just really snug, gritty stuff. The headlocks were super tight, Tenryu's wrist lock and cross armbreaker looked brutal, then Khan applied his own bastard of a wrist lock, and then Tenryu reversed that into the slickest fucking octopus stretch! And this was a DEEP octopus stretch. I don't think he even sunk it in like this when he was wrestling Inoki and you know he'd have wanted to just for the insult of it all. Khan's Boston crab was top drawer, really sitting back on it like Bret Hart trying to cripple Jerry Lawler. They maintained the hatred of the feud through everything they did so it almost had the feeling of a New Japan v UWF match. That all builds to them peppering in strikes and before long they're lacing into each other. Khan's Mongolian chop after sitting Tenryu on the top rope was phenomenal, the surprise of it almost sending Tenryu over the buckles to a potentially horrific end. Tenryu was full blown slapping Khan across the face, Khan was responding with a cross chop to the throat, everything carrying real malice. Out on the floor Khan misses a kneedrop off the apron (after hitting a glorious one off the middle rope back in the ring), so Tenryu chucks him clean over the barricade and a table fulla documents and commentator's notes. The last few minutes are spent almost entirely on the apron with Khan trying to get back in and Tenryu hitting an enziguri and two lariats. Khan heaves Tenryu into the ring post and starts choking and biting him, and of course it gets thrown out but ultimately they went about four minutes past the point where I thought for sure they were getting counted out. This was out of nowhere fantastic.
For a blissful 90 seconds of this we got near-prime Tenryu v near-one-of-his-primes Terry, and it was every bit as magnificent as you'd think. I imagine a full 12-minute singles match from around this point would've been otherworldly. Did they even have a singles match? I tried to check Cagematch but it keeps dying on me so maybe they would rather that sort of information be kept hidden. This is JIP to Terry in peril and we get the Tenryu part pretty quickly. Terry was eating brutal chops like Terry Funk, then he ducks a home-runner that Tenryu threw like it was NOT designed to be ducked, and Terry stinging Tenryu with a punch flurry was quite frankly perfection. The longer Dory in peril segment is also fun, but not quite Terry because obviously. Tenryu chopped him while Terry was standing on the apron minding his business and once again we wish there was a singles match that very night. Tenryu pointing to Terry before applying the spinning toe hold to Dory was also fucking amazing. Finish could've gone either way, or as either way as you can get for something you're 99% sure is finishing on a count out, but at least they never phoned it in. Apparently this went 23 minutes in total and I'm not sure what that would've looked like. I wish we had it, though.
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