I figured I'd seen every Jumbo/Tenryu singles match available so this was a pleasant surprise. I didn't even know it existed. If you're breaking it into thirds I thought the first third was awesome, the middle third good, and the final third something that I could be convinced was one or the other. All of it was compelling, though. Going back and watching these two match up a few times in tags and singles over the last week has been fun. It's an incredible feud that built and built over a three-year period until we hit a point where Jumbo almost became a mirror of the man across from him, the sort of man he hated, though maybe ironically the sort of man who lit a fire under him in the first place back when Choshu rocked up. Our man Matt D has written some amazing stuff about the dichotomy between Jumbo and Tenryu in 1989, how Tenryu knew what he was and was comfortable in that knowledge, how he wanted to burn this world to the ground in the name of revolution, while Jumbo still saw himself as the hero even though at times he was channelling the same violence of his old partner, looking to the crowd for the support they'd always given him, oblivious to the fact his makeup was about as black as the pad he wore around his elbow. It's easy to say with the benefit of hindsight and the fact I've gone through most of this stuff before, but that dichotomy seems no less pronounced in '87. Forgetting all of the stuff around narrative progression and how they communicate it in the ring, the reason I want to watch Jumbo against Tenryu more than anyone else in the 80s - and maybe ever - is that Tenryu really does bring out a level of violence in Jumbo that nobody else did; not Choshu, not even Misawa. Old man grumpy Jumbo where he's chasing the new kids off his lawn is still my favourite Jumbo, but this Jumbo was still on the right side of his prime and with it brought an even greater layer of legitimacy to everything. Call it aura, call it basic human physiology (you know, he was younger), call it just deciding to work stiffer, call it whatever you want -- when Jumbo wrestled Tenryu he upped his game to another level and it was routinely electric. This started with Jumbo on a rager and he didn't need Tenryu to push him to violence. The big man was already there. He tried to maul Tenryu early and blasted him with one of the meanest slaps you've ever seen, Tenryu selling it like his eardrum exploded. Tenryu going to the headlock felt like pure containment and made sense, and the fact he worked the thing like it was a vice grip didn't hurt either. This is the sort of headlock Dustin Rhodes should be sending to dummies like Bryan Alvarez when they say headlocks suck. Long live the headlocks, or at least the good ones! Middle third takes a bit of a dip even if it's still good, then they bring it back up after Tenryu hits a hotshot across the top rope. I don't know when that move became Jumbo's kryptonite, if it already was at this point or they were still establishing it as such, but either way it gave Tenryu the upper hand for the first time all match. Everything he'd tried before that just led back to Jumbo going apeshit and taking over with the high knee or a lariat or a flurry of slaps and elbows. This one led to the first real extended run of Tenryu offence and he damn near unloaded the full clip. You're so used to seeing overacted hammy melodrama when someone kicks out of a move in 2022 that Tenryu showing some subtle doubt feels Oscar-worthy. Jumbo doesn't regain control with one move this time either, first it was a backslide attempt and then hitting the backdrop as a reversal, and I liked as well that he sold the damage of Tenryu's recent barrage by being too slow and banged up to make a proper cover. The finishing stretch is sort of weird, really. I liked it in theory as they managed to sell the attrition of it all, how every bit of offence felt hard to come by, like any move could be the match-ender. It was bit rough though, and some of the selling for one or two of the moves that didn't come off was maybe a little disproportionate. I mean I don't mind them working two failed powerbomb attempts, I didn't think they were botches and if you're not going to hit the move then I'd rather it was because your opponent properly struggled to get out of it. This felt like a struggle, but Tenryu just sort of rolling out the ring after it was strange. What I did like was the way he dragged the referee into Jumbo's high knee attempt, while hitting Jumbo with a lariat at the same time. It was the sort of dick move that, no matter how far gone Jumbo would be, no matter how much he'd be infected by the violence, he'd never do something like that. Or at least HE believed that, which only highlighted his hypocrisy even more because a minute later he's completely flipped his lid and slamming the referee in the middle of the ring, lost to the rage completely. And then there's a Brody run-in and I'm not actually sure what the official decision was, if there even was one.
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