Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, & Kenta Kobashi vs Jumbo Tsuruta, The Great Kabuki, & Mighty Inoue
07/12/1990
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 03/24/2024) We’re missing five or six minutes of this joined-in-progress broadcast but we get enough to know it’s another fun Korakuen Hall main event, increasingly becoming par for the course. Mostly I wanted to review it to talk about Mighty Inoue, who will make at least a few more appearances in this series. Billed at 5’9”, Inoue was very small by puroresu standards of the 1970s and 80s but managed to have a great deal of success in spite of it. He spent the first 14 years of his career in International Wrestling Enterprise, the oft-forgotten third promotion to spring up after Rikidōzan’s death, though it’s worth noting it predates both NJPW and AJPW by several years. IWE’s multicultural makeup allowed Inoue to take excursions all across Europe, Quebec, and Hawaii, giving him more of a varied in-ring style and personal flair than most puro stars of the day did. With his signature rolling senton he was also an early pioneer in puroresu highflying, first as a “heavyweight” in IWE and later as a junior heavyweight in AJPW when Giant Baba bumped him down to that fledgling division. (Along with my beloved Ashura Hara, Inoue was one of the few IWE wrestlers to not transition to NJPW when their home promotion folded in 1981. In fact, Inoue brought a young trainee named Hiromichi Fuyuki along with him.) In IWE Inoue was a one-time IWA World Heavyweight Champion and a six-time tag champ with various partners, including with fellow fiery short guy Animal Hamaguchi in a team dubbed the Naniwa Brothers. Here in AJPW he’s been a stalwart in the midcard tag division, holding the All Asia titles several times along with the longest recorded reign of the NWA International Junior Heavyweight title, that belt Tiger Mask Misawa vacated to move into the heavyweight ranks. By this point Inoue’s transitioning into the last stage of his career as an undercard comedy guy, a role he’ll continue to play when he retires and becomes a referee first in AJPW and later in NOAH. (Having picked up several languages in his continent-hopping excursion, he also served as foreign liaison for the various gaikokujin NOAH brought in during the 2000s.) Very colorful figure who got a bad rap from the stuffy, all-too-serious tape traders who were first bringing AJPW and NOAH to western audiences. If you’d like to learn more about Inoue, I’d recommend Cameren Lee’s wonderful biography over on PWO.
Returning to this match, Inoue plays an interesting role in this early incarnation of the Tsuruta-gun stable. He’s a crafty, capable veteran (he eventually picks up the win here) but his size is an unmistakable weakness against younger heavyweights, providing the budding Super Generation Army team with a punching bag the likes of which they won’t see again until Yoshinari Ogawa returns from injury. That also provides some much-needed variety in this intergenerational matchup, allowing the younger guys to control the brunt of a match for once. Already you can see how much they’ve improved: Kenta Kobashi isn’t nearly so hesitant as he was against Misawa a few months back and Toshiaki Kawada is basically fully formed by now, teeing off on Great Kabuki with UWF-style kicks that stand out in a big way on the AJPW roster. The punches with which the veterans respond to said kicks are likewise great and once again I am big mad that Kabuki was ever lured away by those Megane Super motherfuckers. Jumbo Tsuruta and his young rival are almost afterthoughts here with how much the lesser members of Super Generation Army are allowed to shine, though Jumbo breaks up a pair of pinfalls in dramatic fashion late in the match to set up the finish: when Kobashi ducks a clothesline from the big man Inoue’s able to slip in and hit a sweet 70s-style headscissors takedown to steal a victory.
Brock Hates Wrestling 