AJPW TV July 1990 review 

 

July 1, 1990  

 

These matches come from the June 8, 1990, Budokan Hall show. Having already shown us the top end of the card, we get the mop up from lower down. Also, a special bonus match to open things up.  

 

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Kenta Kobashi 

This is from Chiba Park (June 5, 1990). Two big believable workers here who are prone to the odd ‘moment’. Bigelow’s insistence at using his size to deliver an array of diving headbutts here is frustrating. I know it’s part of the gimmick but still. Also, chinlocks. The match is 7:38. Uncalled for. Kenta gets a run of spots, including a barely connecting missile dropkick but the moonsault misses and Bammer finishes with a splash. This was a little underwhelming, but Kobashi was the Real Deal. Even from this point. I’m looking forward to his development. 

 

Back to Budokan Hall on June 8, then.  

 

Tiger Jeet Singh vs. Abdullah the Butcher 

Oh, fuck off. Both these guys have limited in-ring but are good at their gimmicks. Tiger as the scary foreigner, Abby as the scary foreigner who bleeds a lot. You could argue both guys are “draws”, which is how wrestlers used to be defined before workrate took over. However, without a plucky babyface foil, they’re both shit in the ring. The match is a tedious brawl with lots of choking. The result, a double DQ, is also hugely dissatisfying. Especially after the referee lets loads of shit go including international objects.  

 

Bump count: 

Tiger 3 

Abby 1 

 

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Toshiaki Kawada 

Bigelow working his way through the Pillars here. Kawada is a superior match up as he just eats abuse for the whole match. The trouble with airing this right after the Kobashi match is it exposes Bigelow running the same exact formula in both matches. Only Tosh gets less hope spots because he’s smaller. At least his spinning heel kicks look good. Kawada tries a house show dive and Bigelow catches him, just about, and slams him on the floor. They do a great job of selling the size difference. 

 

Kawada being bullied like this feels like it defines his spot on the card in 1990. Kobashi showed more fire because he’s young and stupid. Kawada is just waiting for the inevitable embrace of the three count. If he can get a few kicks in he’s happy. With the benefit of hindsight, they should have had Tosh win here because Bigelow wasn’t coming back. He just mosied in, beat two of the Pillars on the same tour and never wrestled for All Japan again. Kawada does come closer than Kobashi to the win but only because he’s sneaky and does roll ups while Kenta went head-to-head. *** 

 

Kenta Kobashi vs. Steve Williams 

Speaking of which; here’s the man himself. Doc is a lot closer to Kenta’s size and it’s only Steve’s incredible powerhouse behaviour that seperates them. The match comes down to whether Kobashi can figure out a way around Doc’s power or whether he’ll take him head on, because he’s young and dumb. It’s the latter. Compare this to Misawa outsmarting Jumbo in the main event. Kobashi would never really go beyond his desire to butt heads with everyone. He just got stronger. 

 

Almost all of Kobashi’s hope spots here are him trying to overpower Doc. German suplex, lariat etc. Although he gets insane height on his moonsault. No wonder his knees were fucked. Jesus christ. He was landing those HARD. Kobashi’s main issues is trying to figure out how to sell for Doc. He just doesn’t understand the American football tackles. Oklahoma Stampede does NOT finish. Which gets the crowd out of their seats. Like, holy shit. The balls on this guy! Steve finishes with a top rope diving tackle instead, which looks infinitely worse. *** 

 

July 8, 1990 

 

A new episode, with new non-Budokan Hall related content. Because I spent so long in between episodes, it felt like I’ve been stuck in Budokan Hall, figuratively, for half a year. On this show we get the top three matches from Omiya, taped the day before. That’s a quicker turnaround than most early episodes of Monday Night RAW.  

 

Danny Spivey vs. Akira Taue 

Spivey looks dreadful here, which is bad news for the match. He’s all over the fucking shop. Spivey is about to enter his run of matches where people thought he was ok. It didn’t last very long, and he’d be retired by 1995. You know how he looked when he was Waylon Mercy? Not the black hair and pre-Bray Wyatt gear but the movements? He looks like that here. Maybe he had an injury, but he is sluggish.  

 

Or maybe he saw the attendance and said “I ain’t bumping for 3,000 people brrrrrrrother”. Just as I type that he switches gears and looks better. Taue tries hard to get the match on course but he’s not the most mobile himself. They probably should have just stood in the middle of the ring and waffled each other for 8 minutes. Spivey finishes with a DDT. 

 

Kenta Kobashi vs. Stan Hansen 

Oh, hell yeah! They had a match in February, which I went **** on and it was only four minutes long. This is the rematch to show how much Kobashi has improved. It lacks the first match’s sheer dynamism. Kenta shows a little tactical nous here, going after Hansen’s lariat arm. Sadly, that slows the match right down. I want to see these two swinging for the fucking fences!  

 

The way Stan takes over the match with nonchalant kicks and chops is beautiful. He doesn’t need a second gear to beat Kobashi. It’s so dismissive. I love it. Kobashi botches in the middle of the match, mistaking a suplex for a DDT and landing on his own dome. Stan’s look afterwards screams “you stupid motherfucker”. Stan takes Kenta’s head off with the lariat and that’ll do, pig. That’ll do. HHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! ***¼. Even with the mistakes this was pleasingly stiff. 

 

Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu 

Super Generation Army vs. Tsuruta-gun here. Misawa has beaten Jumbo once and now the old man is pissed off about it. Yatsu has one more night in AJPW so he’s checking out with a main event here before jumping to Super World of Sports. Yatsu’s departure would lead to the elevation of Taue. Much like Misawsa benefitted from Genichiro Tenryu’s departure.  

 

This match takes up half the entire show’s runtime. Kawada looks in “the mood”. As the junior guy in the match, he’s expected to take a fall, and he is not taking that shit lying down. Until Jumbo gets in there and murders him. Jumbo had this sheer size that made him so intimidating. Especially to the upcoming former juniors. While Tosh and Misawa are similar builds, Misawa is not the same guy he was a month ago. He has an air of confidence and superiority that you can’t coach. 

 

The reps that AJPW got their top guys was incredible. Every tour show has a combination of top guys, so they know each other inside out. Which is why Kawada looks like a million bucks in these things and nowhere near it when he’s working an import.  

Just chillin. Interesting to note Misawa is now fully committed to the Emerald colour scheme. Tosh is still in blue and yellow. The idea being that blue is his colour but he can’t escape the mentorship of Tenryu. The yellow becoming more prominent when he just accepted it. Either that or he supported Boca Juniors.  

 

Anyway, the match is fluid but not terribly exciting. The absolute baseline for anything with these guys is high, unless someone is in a mood. Misawa breaks out the backwards diving headbutt. One of the most tremendously reckless moves in his repertoire. Misawa & Kawada both look slick here. They will only get better. Can I justify putting them in the tag team of the year awards?  

 

My favourite spot in this is when Jumbo decides he’s simply had enough of this shit and SMACKS Misawa with a lariat. It’s a hum dinger. Kawada is forced to tag in, and Jumbo just kills him with a backdrop driver off the ropes when he’s looking for a high spot. ***¼. Not quite the classic but building blocks here for future business. Apart from Yatsu but then he was barely involved. They’re already living in a post-Yatsu world here. 

 

July 15, 1990 

 

This is a special “Bruiser Brody Memorial Night” presentation from Korakuen Hall. Two years after Brody’s murder in Puerto Rico and he’s still on All Japan’s intro videos. He had an unescapable presence in wrestling and it’s astonishing that pro-wrestling, as an entity, allowed his murderer to continue to work afterwards. It was the end of Jose Gonzalez’s international career, but he continued to work in Puerto Rico and was booked there as recently as 2022. And you wonder why it’s so difficult to root out the wrong un’s in wrestling. This guy killed one of the boys and they STILL wouldn’t get rid of him. That’s the biggest crime in the business.  

 

The only reason Buck Zumhofe is “retired” is because the cunt is in jail for sexually abusing children and won’t ever get out. This is why I’m having to slowly come to terms with people I legitimately hate, for good reason, being involved in professional wrestling. It’s also the reason I am distancing myself from it and will continue to do so. You can’t be disappointed in people you thought were alright when it turns out they are mates with a scumbag if you don’t care in the first place.  

 

Stan Hansen starts us off and he doesn’t say “died” he says “murdered”.  

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Hansen speak normally. This is just him talking, from the heart, about Brody. Stan, shooting from the hip, tells us how Brody didn’t take any shit from anyone but especially the promoters. Hansen urges us to “never, never forget him”.  

 

AJPW Junior Heavyweight Championship 

Masanobu Fuchi (c) vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi 

Two guys who rarely get their chance to shine on this show. Kikuchi is a fantastic junior. All energy and high flying. Fuchi has a more grounded style. I’m pretty sure he only knows two moves and one of them is a scoop slam but hey, he’s still great. Kikuchi goes 1000MPH until he’s backdropped out of the ring and then he sells like he’s dead. Kikuchi was ideal for tag teams because he could do the opening shine and then sell like a motherfucker until the hot tag.  

 

Kikuchi’s comeback is low key fantastic too. He starts swinging wildly, hoping to connect and tags Fuchi enough times to get back on the ropes. It’s all for nought as Fuchi picks him off with a few suplexes and finishes with a German into the pin. Both guys looked superb here. A lovely little reminder that AJPW did have more depth beyond Jumbo, the Pillars and imports. ***½  

 

Stan Hansen, Danny Spivey & Joel Deaton vs. Miracle Violence Connection & Johnny Ace 

Joel Deaton made it onto a televised match! There’s some obvious dead weight out here, but it is basically Stan vs MVC so it’s still good. Spivey helpfully wears colourful trunks here so you can tell him apart from Ace. Although only one of them looks like a serial killer so there’s that too. This is to build towards the Hansen-Gordy rematch for the Triple Crown. Joel Deaton gets so many chants here he mistakenly believes the match exists for him to get over. It does not. 

 

There are way too many rest holds in this. I hate it when you get a trios match and there’s a load of chinlocks and guys just hanging around doing nothing. The Hansen and Gordy bits are wild though. Hansen throwing controlled abuse, Gordy all limbs and craziness. He does not look like he’s a matter of weeks away from a near death experience. I just wish the match had that energy when Gordy isn’t in there and it just doesn’t.  

 

If you only saw Gordy in his later years it’s hard to explain how enormous the fall-off is. I watched an Executioner vs. Undertaker match a few weeks ago and holy shit, it’s so bad. Like easily negative stars. It’s like when Gordy “died” he came back a lesser man. There are chunks of this match where Johnny Ace sucks so much that I wish the match would just end. At least Deaton can get fluke roll ups on the real talent. Ace is just making up the numbers. Speaking of which, Deaton makes up the number three by counting it while looking at the lights. Doc gets the pin, and Gordy is out here selling an arm injury LIKE A GOD DAMN CHAMP.  

 

Super Generation Army (Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi) vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, Mighty Inoue & Great Kabuki 

Kabuki is the next man off to join Super World of Sports. He’s going at the end of the month. He’s not a loss like Yatsu is. Kawada is in no mood for his shit, that’s for sure. If Kawada is sparking the departing Kabuki with his kicks, then Jumbo has decided it’s time to put Misawa in his place. The difference is that Misawa doesn’t just lie down and die. He’s got a bunch of wacky moves and he’s not afraid to surprise Jumbo with them. Although, I’m starting to notice patterns in their matches. Jumbo should start reversing stuff.  

 

Jumbo is constantly having to bail out Inoue, who might as well get a JOBBER tattoo. Jumbo’s elite timing does create some sensational near falls. Including one that breaks the audio on the recording because the crowd pop it so loud. After being saved half a dozen times Inoue then flukes a cradle on try-hard Kenta for the pin. Amazing. I loved this. ***½. A top, top Jumbo Tsuruta performance here. What a stud.  

 

This is the kind of match where one guys performance is so good it makes me reconsider my Wrestler of the Year list. I had Jumbo at #2. I’m pretty sure it’s #1 after this.  

 

July 23, 1990 

 

Another new taping location as we’re in Kanazawa, Ishikawa. This is the Hansen vs Gordy rematch for the Triple Crown. In between this airing and NEXT WEEK Gordy will be stripped of the belt after collapsing. All Japan had a press release detailing his death ready to go!  

 

Steve Williams & Johnny Ace vs. Danny Spivey & Terry Taylor 

Terry Taylor finally makes tape. He’s been here this whole tour. He did NOTHING and never came back; in case you were wondering. Doc just ignores the poor bastard. Ace puts him in a chinlock. Can you imagine a more boring match than Terry Taylor vs. Johnny Ace? Two charisma voids doing basic moves to zero heat.  

I’ve managed to capture them in a rare moment where the frenetic energy ceases. Taylor takes the Ace Crusher, pops right back up and tags out. Fuck me. Why do All Japan bring in such shitty workers? Speaking of shitty workers; Dan Spivey is in this match and BOY, is he bad. More Waylon Mercy level stuff here but if he tags out, I have to watch Terry Taylor. It’s a real “fuck you” to the fans, honestly. Doc eventually gets fed up and puts Taylor away with the Oklahoma Stampede. This was not good. It turns out Doc can’t carry three other guys. 

 

Jumbo Tsuruta, Masanobu Fuchi & Great Kabuki vs. Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi & Akira Taue 

Misawa is now treating people like Kabuki in derisive fashion. The difference in this guy since the start of the year is astounding. Tiger Mask II is not a great wrestler. Misawa is. This match has a MAJOR issue and that’s a lack of Jumbo. He’s barely in it. When Jumbo was in and out of the last trios match, he fucking killed it. They don’t use him here.  

 

Any time he is in the match, it’s immediately elevated. In 1990, I’m pretty sure Jumbo Tsuruta was the best wrestler in the world. Kabuki doesn’t look great here and his impending departure is welcome. SWS can have him. Comms get very excited when Kobashi takes on Fuchi. “German, german, german, GEEERRRRRMAAAAAAAANNN”. He only suplexed him mate, it’s not even the finish! I can’t wait for how hyped comms will get in the coming years when the wrestling is the tits. 

 

Anyway, this only gets good towards the end where Fuchi gets picked off, bullied and pinned. Nowhere near as good as the last trios. I blame Kabuki.  

 

Triple Crown Championship 

Stan Hansen (c) vs. Terry Gordy 

Gordy won the title and then lost it to Hansen earlier in the year. This is the ‘former champion’ rematch. It’s a sluggish contest and Hansen is better against people he can bully. Hell, he bullied Vader earlier in the year though so there’s no excuse. Can we put it down to Gordy being ‘out of sorts’? It’s hard to say. Knowing he’ll collapse a few days after this doesn’t help with my enjoyment of the match, that’s for sure.  

 

Anyway, there’s a lot of side headlocks and nothing much doing. It’s one of the flattest Triple Crown matches you’ll ever see. Which is frustrating because I love both guys, but it just doesn’t happen here. It’s very, very slow. Especially compared to the Misawa/Tsuruta stuff that was happening around it and most modern fans would struggle with it. It’s not like the holds even mean anything. Way too much resting with no purpose. It’s designed as a ‘war of attrition’. So, if you enjoyed the battle of the Somme, you’ll love this. 

 

Incidentally my great grandfather died in the Somme, you sick bastards. How dare you.  

 

The match just rumbles on and if it didn’t have Hansen and all his presence and stiffness, it would be in real trouble. It’s a slog, frankly. The most interesting part of the match is Misawa standing watching it. Out here with his eyeballs instead of standing in front of a monitor like a fed-pilled chump.  

 

The match continues to rumble on until Doc comes out here and saves Gordy from the lariat, which is surely a DQ. Gordy whacks Stan with a lariat for the belt. Ugh. This was not good. A legitimate snoozer from start to finish. Probably the dullest Hansen singles match I’ve seen. Gordy gets the belt and then mere days later collapses at a bar from a heart attack. AJPW strip him of the title and the championship is vacant. The weird part is that despite nearly dying Gordy is back in the ring a month later.  

 

While nearly dying of a heart attack should have been the catalyst for Gordy to change his lifestyle, instead he just ignored it and carried on. I can’t imagine that. Three years later Gordy suffered an overdose and slipped into a coma. This time, the damage was permanent, and he was never the same. He had to learn how to talk and walk again. It’s astonishing he wrestled again but when he did, he wasn’t the same guy. 

 

Shout out to Roy Lucier, btw, for putting all these shows on YouTube like a fucking champ. Much respect my brother.  

 

July 30, 1990 

 

This was taped on July 19, 1990, in Takefu, Fukui and is only two matches long. The second of which being for the tag belts. 

 

Stan Hansen & Terry Taylor vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi 

Terry Taylor working with Misawa is like putting lipstick on a pig. WWF shouldn’t have given him the Red Rooster gimmick; they should have put a mask on him and called him Create-A-Wrestler. Just a big “?” on the front of that sucker. Give the most basic moveset load out. He wouldn’t even have to change his bland offence one bit. Luckily, Stan Hansen is also here but he’s in the mood for sitting in headlocks so….shall we call it a day?  

 

Stan eventually wakes up, for all of two moves, and then tries to do double teams with Taylor. Noooo, Stan, why? Misawa’s leg becomes the focal point of the match. Let’s see how his selling is, shall we? Generally, very good. Doesn’t put weight on it. Doesn’t walk under his own steam even. Does a great job of reducing his own mobility in the process to show the damage that’s been done. Because Terry Taylor is a total loser, Misawa picks him off with the Tiger Driver anyway. Misawa’s selling was great here and it got good towards the end but most of the match was a chore. 

 

AJPW World Tag Team Championship 

Miracle Violence Connection (c) vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Great Kabuki 

This is potentially an issue as Kabuki is leaving the company next week. Does Giant Baba know? I don’t think so. Given the 30+ minute run time, the match is somewhat sluggish. This would be less of an issue for AJPW as the decade continued but a lot of American workers believed that long matches had to be slow paced. This one is tedious. Nothing happens for AGES.  

 

Both challengers spend time taking heat but it’s aimless, pointless and rudderless. So many holds are just wear down nonsense that don’t go anywhere. It’s a truly boring match. Jumbo is hardly in it. WHY IS IT SO LONG? Out of nowhere Doc hits the Oklahoma Stampede and that’s Jumbo’s signal to take the fuck up. He piles in there and starts throwing MEATY lariats.  

 

Stan Hansen turns up towards the conclusion and you’d better believe he’s pissed off with Doc for costing him the TC. The distraction allows Jumbo to plant Doc with the backdrop driver for the win and the belts. Although Doc did attempt to kick out. The belts would be vacated a matter of days later and put up for grabs during Real World Tag League! At least a solution presented itself. Maybe they did know Kabuki was leaving.  

 

The 411: 

July 1990 wasn’t the greatest month for AJPW TV. While there are a few stand out matches and generally match quality here is better than everywhere else, they were also struggling with the SWS exodus and Gordy’s issues. The most interesting part is the rise of not only Misawa here but his buddies. Kawada, Kobashi and Taue. The Super Generation Army’s rise and subsequent split is the entire decade’s booking. These four gentlemen, plus assorted supporting cast, would make All Japan an unmissable promotion during the 90s. Which is why we’re onboard at the start. Let’s see where we go from here.