SWS Wrestlefest in Tokyo Dome (3.30.91) review 

 

March 30, 1991 

 

We’re in Tokyo, Japan at the Dome. This is a week after Wrestlemania and two weeks after the WCW/NJPW copromoted show here that drew 64,000 fans. Wrestlemania managed a rather limp 15,000 for an albeit exciting show that delivered in the ring. Only six days later, the WWF crew were in front of a much larger crowd here in Tokyo. 36,000. This is the very peak of the SWS. Founded at an awkward time for pro-wrestling the company was doomed to failure. It couldn’t compete with All Japan and New Japan. Nor could they ever find a suitable opponent for Genichiro Tenryu, by far the company’s biggest star. The Japanese press weren’t keen on the promotion as it was seen as a ‘money mark’ promotion. The money coming from glasses supplier Megane Super. The connection to the evil WWF empire did not help matters.  

 

Big shout out to my guy Matthew Gregg for putting this on VK. What a champion.  

 

A bunch of undercard crap ended up on the cutting room floor, leaving the opener as;  

 

Rockers vs. Hart Foundation 

This is the end of the Hart Foundation as Bret is about to go solo. Anvil actually got a singles push too until they decided he wasn’t very good and teamed him with Owen as the “New Foundation”. Perhaps predictably this match is effortlessly good but also, perhaps predictably, nobody works particularly hard. It’s the first time that Shawn is a clear stand-out in the Rockers though. He’d started to get a few singles matches in Q1 of 1991 and people in power were noticing his upside.  

 

When it’s Bret vs Shawn in this thing, it’s really good. Both guys selling well and making everything interesting. This is before Shawn got all overblown with his bumps, and his selling is tight. The difference in effort here compared to the WCW talent in their Dome show is evident. This is done at a canter. Sometimes it’s well below the canter. Bret in particular looks like he cannot be fucking bothered. 

 

Both Rockers take decent bumps to the floor, but the setup, both times, is a little pedestrian. Bret does good work at the finish, rolling through Shawn’s crossbody to score the pinfall. Shawn looks unimpressed. Presumably because the Harts won’t team anymore and he looks like a jobber. The match was fine, but that’s it. The prime, for both teams, had passed by early 1991. Bret and Shawn were eager to get into singles at this point. Hell, Bret had been for two years. **½  

 

Post Match: Bret gets an interview where he boasts about his technical excellence. It’s very self centred and has nothing to do with Anvil. The next time I’ll watch Bret and Anvil team will be IYH Canadian Stampede.  

 

John Tenta vs. Koji Kitao 

This happened a few days before Kitao, in a rematch of this match, got fed up with being treated like a jabronie and shot on Tenta. SWS fired him and that was effectively the end of him as a big star in Japanese wrestling. Two big boys in here but there is a distinct lack of meat slapping. Interesting to note that Tenta is heavily cheered for kicking Kitao’s ass whereas Kitao’s attacks get no reaction at all. They did not like Kitao at all. It’s probably because he stinks. The strikes in this are all over the place. They clearly have major communication issues, and Kitao gets made to look stupid several times. Powerslam, big elbow and the butt splash finishes for Quake. This was very underwhelming and I can see how Kitao got pissed off if that’s how they were booking him. The match was not good at all. * 

 

Great Kabuki & Takashi Ishikawa vs. Ted DiBiase & Haku 

Not sure why it’s DiBiase & Haku here. Haku would win over the bookers though and would frequently appear in both SWS and Tenryu’s follow up promotion WAR. DiBiase still feels like one of the WWF’s main guys and its nuts that just two years later he’d be retired. This match is, if I’m being polite, slowly paced. If I wasn’t, I would say it’s really boring and you shouldn’t waste 15 minutes of your life watching it. Not even the respectful Japanese audience can get involved as they know it’s just a bunch of stuff happening without any reason for it. The camera crew gets bored and focuses on Greg Valentine, who’s watching this. Jesus, it’s tedious. MVP is Kabuki, for taking the heat and being game for a few bumps. Ishikawa gets a hot tag, but Haku savate kicks him, and DiBiase wins with a backdrop driver. Very, very dull. ½* 

 

Sgt Slaughter vs. Ultimate Warrior 

Sarge is a week removed from losing his WWF title and is reduced to bumping around for Warrior in the midcard. Sarge is game for it though and one of his first bumps is backwards over the announcer’s table. When we get into the ring, Sarge, possibly hurt, is less into it. OH WAIT, he does his bump out of the ring. Warrior is excitable here, and Sarge is happy to just pinball around for his directionless attacks. Sarge on offence is a less than thrilling prospect. It’s mostly just stomps, which Warrior has no interest in selling. Anyway, he hulks up and runs through Sarge for the win. **¾. This was surprisingly good. One of Warrior’s good lesser known matches, although the bulk of it was on Slaughter for how he performed.  

 

That might be in my top five Warrior matches. It’s certainly close. The obvious ones aside (Savage, Hogan, Rude, Savage again) it’s up there.  

 

We get some clips from video control of the opening match. It’s an eight man but there isn’t enough footage to bother typing out the teams. Arakawa gets the first pop of the night for getting tired doing an airplane spin. Samson Fuyuki (remember him???) gets the pin. We also get clips of Jim Duggan vs. Kendo Nagasaki, which went on second. This is predictably awful with Kendo taking the odd exciting bump. Ugly superkick finishes for Kendo. Duggan’s bump was dreadful.  

 

Shinichi Takano & Shunji Takano vs. Demolition 

Lucky us, we get this match in full. The Demos, having effectively finished their WWF careers by jobbing at Wrestlemania to Tenryu & Kitao, were given an SWS run as a ‘thanks’. Demolition look strong here. Mainly because mini Takano (Shinichi) takes a beating for most of the match. The referee (one Michael Chioda) fucks up a fall, after Shinichi gets planted with a powerbomb. He clearly counts three, but they just keep going. Demolition Decapitation finishes a minute later anyway. The win would help to establish the Demos as a monster team in SWS. It’s a shame* the company went nowhere. Basically a squash but a fun enough one for a minor thumbs up. 

 

*for Demolition, not for me quite frankly.  

 

Naoki Sano vs. Masakatsu Funaki 

Funaki is representing Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi (PWFG). They’ve been promised to not wrestle WWF guys to ‘preserve the style’. Sano isn’t exactly the best choice. He’s a junior. But, yanno, Inokism. PWFG is one of the promotions that sprung up after UWF collapsed. The main guys formed UWFi (Takeda) and RINGS (Maeda) whereas Fujiwara felt the need to do something different. Funaki and Minoru Suzuki both went with him, sick of the drama between the others presumably. So, here we are. Funaki was a decent sized star, and ticket sales went up once he was named on the show. 

 

Funaki’s aggressive, grounded style is tough for Sano to live with. Sano regularly leaves a limb unprotected and gives Funaki an easy hold, which he can’t finish with because we need to fill ten minutes. When they do stand up it’s much better as it allows Sano to land strikes and do throws. He has no follow through though. A throw is just a throw, and Funaki can wrestle out of whatever follows with ease. They go for a big KO finish only for Funaki to duck a swipe at his head, hit a German suplex and finish with the armbar. The difference here was Funaki’s ability to transition from the throw into the submission (hooking one arm within the German suplex to allow a smooth transition). Something Sano failed to do all match. I can’t imagine Fujiwara was too thrilled with how this looked, as one of his top guys was taken to the limit by someone who couldn’t hook a submission at all. **½ 

 

This was fought under UWF rules, but you would never know because it never came up. I feel bad for Funaki, who was one of the best at this style in the world. He was made to look like a bit of a chump by SWS. Especially the match after one where Demolition got to demolish SWS talent.  

 

Mr Perfect vs. Texas Tornado 

Or Curt Hennig vs. Kerry von Erich, if you’re not Vince pilled. This isn’t for Hennig’s IC belt, which makes the booking of it strange. Hennig takes some crazy bumps in this. Some of them are the usual twisty nonsense he does, some are not. He doesn’t look 100%, a theme that will reoccur during 1991 as his back got worse. Kerry looks ok here. He’s a wee bit sluggish but his basics still work and he looks the part. There’s a key moment here where Perfect wings Tornado with a chair shot. The crowd boo. It’s clearly a DQ. If the title was on the line, you could argue Hennig was trying to get disqualified. An awful ref bump follows. Not even the set up of it looks good with Chioda getting trapped in the corner. Perfectplex should finish, but the ref calls it a DQ instead. Man, that’s a terrible finish. The crowd HATE it because they’re not used to dreadful WWF booking. It also makes the babyface look like a loser. *½  

 

The post match where Kerry clears Perfect out is not bought by the crowd at all and they boo him. That shit ain’t gonna work around here, brrrrrother! Quite why they booked that finish is anyone’s guess, but it made Kerry look like a jabronie and that’s why the crowd treated him so badly. 

 

Jimmy Snuka & Barbarian vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu & Ishinriki 

My first thoughts are whether Yatsu can actually carry this whole thing on his back. Instead it’s plucky as heck Ishinriki who decides to run the show. He refuses to sell for Barbarian and Barbarian just has a laugh with it, taking silly bumps and doing overblown power kickouts. Ishinriki is really good here, when you consider he only wrestled his first match in January. Imagine what a thrill it would have been hitting top rope to floor moves on Jimmy Snuka! Barbarian eventually gets revenge on Ishinriki with A BIG BOOT OF DEATH. He kicked him right square in the face lads! Yatsu gets to pin Barbarian, because the Japanese booking mentality doesn’t allow the inferior Snuka to eat the loss. Barbarian had his fluffy little work boots on here, god bless him. Ishinriki was great in this too. ***. Wait, MATCH OF THE NIGHT SO FAR? Are you fucking kidding me? Legitimately fun. I had a blast with this. 

 

Ishinriki is the hidden gem of SWS so far. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wrestle before. What a cracking little worker he was. Should have been 1991 rookie of the year. The actual 1991 rookie of the year was Marc Mero in WCW. Let’s see how they compare.  

 

Randy Savage vs. George Takano 

Yes, the Savage retirement lasted all of six days. Takano, for my money, had the most to lose from SWS. He left a burgeoning and exciting NJPW junior division to ‘step up’ in SWS. He promptly flopped and went into semi-retirement the following year. This is a Randy Savage performance where he blatantly wasn’t expecting to do any wrestling for half a year and didn’t come in prepared to show off or anything.  

 

Randy works heel and spends a lot of time stalling on the floor. Nobody cares. He can’t draw heat. People don’t want to boo him. It ends up being a very poor Savage performance all round. His whole ‘I want to come off the road’ vibes have never been stronger. He sells a little, but the caffeine fuelled persona simply doesn’t show up. I’ve seen a lot of really bad WCW matches with a broken down Savage in, and this isn’t due to his body being unable to work but rather he doesn’t want to be here.  

 

Strangely enough Savage would appear on a bunch of SWS tours during his downtime. Takano doesn’t fire up enough either, so the match is mostly low energy plodding until Takano starts to land heavy bombs near the finish. Takano lands a very botchy looking Tombstone on Randy, and you could forgive Macho for being a little hot about it. Big Elbow finishes shortly afterwards. Very low effort semi-main event. Not good work from either guy. *¼ 

 

Road Warriors vs. Hulk Hogan & Genichiro Tenryu 

LOD are introduced as the Road Warriors and come out to “Iron Man” if you’re in any doubt as to why they’re over and in the main event. Hogan comes out in a MOOD, shoving over multiple staff members on his way to the ring. He’s just a bit testy about being surrounded by foreigners, brother. He big boots the cameraman clean off the apron. LOD start hard and fast and it’s so weird seeing them manhandle Hogan. Everyone works babyface so it’s just a bunch of big spots. It’s a lot of fun. 

Tenryu and Hawk just chopping the hell of each other is pretty great and then Hogan tags in and batters Hawk with AXE BOMBAAAAAA. Sadly, the match degenerates into a series of chinlocks. Boo! The match is a total mess with everyone wailing on each other in an uncoordinated fashion. Which, incidentally, I adore. It feels like the kind of match four big dick swinging morons would put together after the eighth round of sake.  

 

It’s very odd seeing Hogan tag in, clean house, drop the leg and Animal just interferes so there’s no pin. They’re very kind to Tenryu on the Doomsday Device but Hogan breaks that pin up…WITH A CHAIR. You pissed him off by not staying down on the big leg drop brother. And then, because no one will take a job, the Hogan & Tenryu team get counted out for a very unsatisfying conclusion. Match was nuts though, so we’ll go ***½ for a laugh.  

 

The 411: 

What a strange entity this is. A bizarre meshing of the two promotions with a disregard for Japan in general. You can see why SWS didn’t last, but it’ll be one hell of a ride. Thumbs up for the sheer curio value of the show.