“Dr. Death” Steve Williams & Johnny Ace vs Super Generation Army (Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama)
Real World Tag League 1996 Match
11/16/1996
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 05/16/2024) Kicking off a condensed Real World Tag League with a rematch of September’s title match, in which Steve Williams and Johnny Ace finally won the tag belts. Like I was saying recently AJPW had basically no tag teams at this time so for this tournament they shrunk the field down to seven duos and had them wrestle each other twice in round robin action before the top two teams face off a third time in the finals. It’s a lot to take in but I’d say it’s kind of an interesting format, resulting in a few uncharacteristic sprints and unlikely upsets even with most teams unsurprisingly splitting wins. The real problem is that we’ve simply seen these matchups too much, resulting in the sorts of dry, directionless time limit draws like the one here. The Americans isolate Jun Akiyama for a while but they don’t really do anything, don’t press their advantage or craft any drama from this young up-and-comer getting worked over. They simply hit a lariat or that rope-hung Ace Crusher and let the guy lay around on the floor for a while. We don’t even get countout teases. As a result this is one of the quietest Korakuen crowds I can recall hearing for any major show, these people sitting on their hands for long stretches of time while the four men in the ring fail to stir them into engagement. Saddest of all is how little they react to Doc’s backdrop driver on Akiyama, a spot fought over in such a slow and awkward way that after a collective yelp everyone just goes back to disinterested silence. In fairness the backdrop driver Mitsuharu Misawa takes a few minutes later is a much bigger deal, in no small part because it’s an instantaneous (and illegal) action that interrupts Misawa’s attempt to save his young partner instead of an obvious spot arrived at in the clunkiest way. Even then that excitement doesn’t last. It’s such a bummer to watch them prostitute this really striking move in less effective ways with every passing match, not just with how they’re barely selling the thing anymore but how often it’s attempted: these two spots come in the last five or six minutes of the match and they’re followed by two more failed attempts in which either Super Generation soldier does that doofy kickoff reversal, including once on the floor in a spot that was so clearly going to be countered it’s not even funny. For all the (sorely deserved) criticism Kurt Angle gets for conditioning fans to never react until finishers are kicked out of a second time, these guys were clearly poisoning the well years earlier. Wish Misawa ever did anything as cool as Percocet.
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