Super Generation Army (Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada) vs The Patriot & Richard Slinger
taped 07/05/1992, aired 07/12/1992
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 04/16/2024) DICK SLINGER BACK FOR MORE, YEAH LET’S GO. He’s here to get beat up by the Super Generation Army guys alongside Del Wilkes, alias The Patriot. A decorated college football star back at the University of South Carolina—go Cocks—Wilkes was a very solid wrestler whose career stretched from the dying days of the AWA to a pretty widely-maligned run in early Attitude Era WWF, which I’ve covered elsewhere on the blog. This is his third tour of AJPW following short stints in 1990 and earlier this year but it’s only at this point that he starts catching on, becoming one of their more popular gaikokujin until a torn triceps forces him to retire in 1997. I like the guy a lot in spite of his being a right-wing shithead, if his gimmick name didn’t make that clear; he doesn’t do anything stupid, exudes a charming good ol’ boy personality behind his American flag mask, and hits the sort of no-nonsense power offense that serves his role well here in Japan. Not weird to see him and Slinger in a tune-up match for the young babyfaces though it is strange to see this get the main event spot even in Korakuen, another indication of how much Jumbo Tsuruta’s absence affects this company’s day to day operations. I’ve long been a Mitsuharu Misawa Elbow Skeptic—the vast majority of instances that people point to of him really nailing somebody are simply what we in the business like to call “selling a move well” or “physics occurring”—but once again Slinger allows him to explore new avenues of beating people up, rocking the diminutive American with a series of uppercuts in the corner more violent than anything else we’ve seen from him in this series. He also takes a great rib-first bump into the corner to set up Slinger’s comeback, only a 0.59 on the Bret Hart scale but an eye-opening transition either way. Quickly arriving at the conclusion that I’d like Misawa way more if he only ever wrestled Dick Slinger. Should’ve put the belts on him instead of Hansen.
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