All Japan TV (1.2.88) review 

 

January 2, 1988 

 

We’re in Tokyo, Japan at Korakuen Hall. This was supposed to be the “mop up” column but I saw the line up for this and decided that, instead of watching two matches from this show, I would just watch this show. Doing it so wildly out of order will mean I probably get confused but we’ll try and hold it together for the sake of Giant Baba.  

 

Shout out to Roy Lucier for uploading all these to YouTube. Legend.  

 

Giant Baba & Akira Taue vs. Buddy Landell & Paul Harris 

Harris was also known as Tom Tyrone, and he worked in the UK. One of those Lancashire lads. Seeing young black trunks, throwing dropkicks Taue is interesting. He’s not developed a style as yet. Landell has moved into outright stealing Ric Flair’s moves and style here. Previously, they were merely both influenced by Buddy Rogers, but things have changed. How bad is Baba now? Oh, he sucks. Slow motion movement, bad timing, lousy strikes. He might be worse than Andre. Taue gets the pin on Harris, and we can move on. It’s crazy that he kept wrestling for another decade after this.  

 

AWA World Championship 

Curt Hennig (c) vs. Tiger Mask 

This is all a bit surreal. Unfortunately, Misawa never had chemistry with all the Americans he faced as Tiger Mask and almost every ‘dream match’ I’ve come across isn’t very good. The mat counters are clunky and Hennig obviously thinks his opponent isn’t up to much. Watching these Tiger Mask matches makes me wonder how Misawa ever became the legend that he is. Misawa can’t even work out how to bump Curt’s knee lift. Interesting to see Hennig bust out the Perfectplex for a random near fall. The best spots are dropkicks. Both guys land nice dropkicks. That’s about it. Very disappointing. There are some very Misawa ideas, like a big spot on the floor, which leads to TM winning on count out. I look forward to seeing Misawa develop into the guy I remember. He’s only showing it in bits and pieces here. 

 

Abdullah the Butcher vs. Hiroshi Wajima  

Oh, you’re a dead man Wajima. You’re dead! The former sumo wrestler was in AJPW for a few years before deciding it wasn’t for him. Presumably because Baba booked him in matches like this. This is six minutes of Abby ignoring Wajima and yelling at Baba, who’s on commentary. If you want to watch Abby have a good, or at the very least entertaining, match you have to go back to the 1970s.  

 

Abby gets disqualified here, attacks the ref, attacks all the seconds and only stops because Jumbo comes out here to scare him off. The crowd want Baba to fight him and I’m like, HAVE YOU SEEN THESE TWO WRESTLE? Baba whips his shirt off and they yell at each other from a safe distance for a while. No fight ensues because no one wants to see that. 

 

Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu 

This is the start of the rivalry between Jumbo and Tenryu. The latter has formed his own faction called Revolution, which contains future stars Toshiaki Kawada and Yoshinari Ogawa. The Tsuruta-Tenryu rivalry was central to AJPW’s improvements at the end of the 80s. The concept of building two stars and then pitting them against each other wasn’t really a thing before this in Japan. It tended to be more native vs gaijin on top. The recent antics of Maeda and Choshu changed that but this is AJPW putting their top two own label guys, and former partners, against each other. A formula which would continue into the 1990s and produce the whole Four Pillars Era.  

 

Tenryu is such an interesting guy. I always resented him for leaving AJPW when he did but without him leaving Misawa doesn’t get pushed to the top as quickly as he did. Plus Super World of Sports and WAR were interesting promotions to watch. There’s already great heat on him vs. Tsuruta and he goes after the big man with a chair. There’s a bit in this where he makes a save for Hara and Jumbo is on the apron, so he runs across and SLAPS him. Tenryu does a great job of getting in Jumbo’s head. If anything it’s Yatsu who wins the match. He saves Jumbo, calms the match down and drills Hara with a missile dropkick before holding Tenryu down outside the ring so Jumbo wins on count out. What a tremendous friend! ***½ 

 

This is only the start. This feud runs for two years and gets tremendous. It’s already great. I’m all fired up.  

 

Battle Royal 

A bunch of guys in here, including most of tonight’s card. The important people are Abby, Baba and John Tenta. Also, Jumbo and Yatsu are in this but neither Tenryu nor Hara have turned up. Tenta, a former sumo wrestler, debuted in 1987. AJPW saw him as a midcard attraction doing tags and such so he parlayed his size and wrestling experience into a move to the WWF in 1989. They book him strong here, after everyone gangs up to get rid of the other big threats. Tenta pins Jumbo and Yatsu at the finish, holding them down as they attempt to roll each other up. Big John has a beautiful smile. It makes me sad the WWF never felt the urge to book him as a fun-loving babyface.  

 

The 411: 

While I would love to sit through a bunch of these shows, I get the feeling it would get a bit samey. I’m going to pick my shots. The Tsuruta-Tenryu feud is magic though. Top tier, billy big bollocks stuff. I’ve only ever seen their big singles matches and I reckon there’s probably a bunch of cracking tags between them.