Tsuruta-gun (Jumbo Tsuruta, Masanobu Fuchi, & Yoshinari Ogawa) & Rusher Kimura vs Super Generation Army (Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi)
Eight Man Survival Tag Team Match
04/18/1992
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 04/14/2024) Second time around for this more modern incarnation of the AJPW Fan Appreciation Day and, illustrating the overall trend for this promotion, there’s more of it and it’s even longer than before: now the event is stretched across two days and while last year’s six-man tag went 51 minutes, this eight-man survival tag gets all the way up to 66 minutes. A Masanobu Fuchi invention aping NJPW’s famous five-on-five gauntlet matches, I’ve written about the survival tag stipulation before and how, used correctly, it can be an exciting back-and-forth struggle that makes the most of limited performers at all stages of their careers. That’s sort of what we get here, though this is a real one-sided match for what may be obvious reasons. Having pulled out of the Champion Carnival with both a neck contusion and an ankle injury, Akira Taue could not make this match and in many ways his presence is sorely missed. Replacing him is fan-favorite veteran Rusher Kimura, who will require a patented Brock Hates Wrestling Overlong Introduction™ to fully appreciate.
Coming of age when Rikidōzan kicked off the puroresu boom, Kimura’s life was, for better or worse, completely oriented around professional wrestling. I’ve never heard of anyone else starting out in sumo for the express purpose of conditioning themselves for the squared circle; Kimura quit what was proving to be a fairly fruitful career in his country’s national sport in order to join the Japanese Wrestling Association way back in 1965. Swept up in the scandals of the breakaway Tokyo Pro Wrestling promotion, Kimura joined the fledgling IWE when he was unable to return to JWA with the likes of Antonio Inoki and Katsuhisa Shibata. There he quickly moved up the card. Defeating Dr. Death (a hooded Moose Morowski) by knockout, Kimura was victorious in the first cage match in Japanese wrestling history, a controversial stipulation whose overuse contributed not only to IWE’s downfall but the man’s own crippling injuries. Spinal stenosis wouldn’t stop him from being the top star of the promotion for the last five years of its existence or from playing an important role in Jumbo Tsuruta’s early career: a Kimura vs Jumbo three fall draw during the brief IWE/AJPW alliance, second in Jumbo’s ten match trial series, won Tokyo Sports’ Match of the Year Award in 1976. After IWE folded Kimura made his way to NJPW, becoming one of the hottest heels in the country in spite of his infamously soft-spoken demeanor and even racking up an undefeated streak in UWF before that promotion settled on its shoot style format. A tour of Stampede Wrestling in 1985 would see Kimura suffer a crushed larynx, impeding his famous karaoke singing which had once opened the first IWE show of every new year, depicted below in an illustration from Deluxe Pro Wrestling magazine. Later that year Giant Baba personally invited Kimura to AJPW to feud with him as the legend entered the later stages of his career; the two would eventually team together as staples of the promotion’s comedic undercard. It is in this role that Kimura forges his lasting legacy: cutting meticulously-researched post-match promos on his partners and opponents alike, incorporating their own lives and careers into cheap pops and bits of local flavor, all delivered in an otherwise affably hoarse croak to the delight of the All Japan audience.
Following his coworkers to NOAH in spite of his poor health, Kimura’s final years were a sad reflection of his dedication to wrestling and a disquieting sign of Mitsuharu Misawa’s eventual fate—fitting then that his final public appearance would be at Misawa’s funeral, less than a year before he himself died. Rusher Kimura is but one colorful square running along the rich tapestry that is professional wrestling and he deserves better than whatever scorn he might receive for his role in this match. If you’d like to know more about the man, I can’t recommend enough Cameren Lee’s wonderful biography of him over on Pro Wrestling Only, from which I drew most of these details.
You might suspect that Kimura’s age and overall condition would drag this match down but that’s only partially true, if at all. Thankfully he’s not in it the whole time, nor is anyone else. The elimination format, among other things, helps keep the match fresh; instead of being bogged down by 60+ minutes of the same eight guys—most of whom we’ve seen wrestle each other a lot over the last two years—doing all their old moves to each other ad nauseam, having entrants switch out every so often allows this long match to stay engaging when it otherwise wouldn’t. To some degree that includes Kimura, who only pops in at the end to give some young punks what for and tap out to Toshiaki Kawada’s stretch plum. I wouldn’t say he detracts from the match so much as he caps off an enjoyable bout that was slowing down anyway without him.
The opening section, with the aforementioned Fuchi and Yoshinari Ogawa taking on Kenta Kobashi and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, sees some speedy highflying along with all four men twisting each other’s bodies in truly brutal holds. An uncharacteristic backdrop driver from Ogawa sees Misawa enter in Kikuchi’s place, resulting in dueling chants for Misawa and Fuchi of an intensity that is truly staggering. The ten minute drubbing these overwhelmed juniors receive provides some welcome comedic relief for this familiar feud. (The diabolical Fuchi once again proves to be the MVP of these ultra-long multi-man tags, chewing the scenery any chance he gets. Not only does he torture his opponents to the tune of sadistic fans praising his name, he also does some of the best apron work I’ve ever seen; the man is fucking hysterical whenever he goes to make a save or apply some illegal advantage. Stardom needs to hire him as soon as possible.) Kobashi’s moonsault sends Ogawa packing to be replaced by Jumbo, who wastes no time in going after his intergenerational rival; Misawa eventually fells Fuchi but only after a sleeper damn near kills him in a long control segment from the vets. The T-Gun+1 team likewise go after Kobashi’s leg, helping Jumbo make quick work of the kid once Kimura comes in.
In general the back half of this match is weaker. These guys struggle in transition from the lighthearted torture sessions of the first half to something more serious, losing steam even before the weak link enters the ring. Kimura is obviously quite limited at this stage but can still throw some mean strikes (check out those headbutts, good lord) and isn’t afraid of getting booted in the face in return; he also bumps better than you’d think possible, so, slow as he is, I wouldn’t call him the main obstacle here. A bigger issue, I think, is the recurring problem Super Generation Army have in that they’re often cast in heelish roles that, for one reason or another, feel unconvincing or inappropriate. Once again Kawada is fine in ripping into an opponent out of their depth but Misawa and Kobashi both come across as real assholes for going after a guy who can hardly walk through the ropes. That’s not fun—or at the very least they don’t make it fun. Maybe if they took more delight in their work like Fuchi does, heeling it up in what is obviously an inconsequential crowd-pleaser that ought not reflect on the rest of their work, this match might succeed as well as their previous Fan Appreciation Day main event did. If anything this is another great example of the sort of promotion NOAH will eventually be, one that’s a little more willing to poke fun at its stars and let role reversals thrive without the rigidity of AJPW’s self-serious hierarchy. Either way this is still a hell of a match, one not at all ruined by its final twenty minutes so long as you don’t have a Meltzer-shaped stick up your ass about what pro wrestling is meant to look like. Rusher Kimura forever. All haters take heed.
Brock Hates Wrestling 