Super Generation Army (Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada) (c) vs Tsuruta-gun (Jumbo Tsuruta & Akira Taue)
AJPW World Tag Team Championship
taped 09/04/1991, aired 09/08/1991
Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 04/07/2024) At long last we get another half-decent match out of this feud. The four and a half month stretch between Fan Appreciation Day and now isn’t particularly long but boy has it felt like an endless period of regression for everyone involved, including the veterans. This match doesn’t attempt anything new but, regardless of what I’ve said in recent reviews, I think that’s exactly why it works; sticking to timeless formulas, these guys recreate some of the excitement and investment they effortlessly achieved throughout 1990. A cordial lockup between Akira Taue and Toshiaki Kawada almost immediately explodes so it doesn’t feel like the last nine months of their feud never happened. After an initial flurry of elbows from you-know-who, Tsuruta-gun isolate the smaller man and lesser star of the opposing team. It’s nothing novel but that, in a way, feels relatively fresh after a few months of these teams trading alignments and overthinking the most basic staples of professional wrestling. I especially love Jumbo Tsuruta trapping Kawada in a gross abdominal stretch, torquing his body in eight different directions with a sort of spiteful intensity that the big guy’s been lacking for a minute. Naturally that extends to his interactions with Mitsuharu Misawa. That series of backdrop drivers a few weeks ago legitimately separated Misawa’s shoulder, such that Jumbo immediately goes after the guy’s arm when he makes the hot tag for Kawada and is able to shrug off a few desperate elbows from the kid thanks to his weakened state. Thankfully this double control segment doesn’t last long either, as Misawa’s able to tag out to Kawada who himself is almost instantly overwhelmed by these newly-aggressive opponents. Even Misawa’s dramatic return from injury is better than what we’ve seen in a long time; actually getting his shoulder taped up (though the wrappings are immediately ripped off) and continuing to sell the effect of these heels targeting the injury feels so much more engaging than the increasingly aloof performances we’ve been getting from him. The spots and sequences of the finishing stretch are all things we’ve seen before—save for Kawada tossing a nearly-unconscious Misawa atop Jumbo’s body for a pin after he nailed the big man with a northern lariat, a fairly uncharacteristic spot for the pure, sacrosanct Zen Nihon Puroresu—but an exhausted Misawa finally submitting Jumbo with the facelock does feel like a major moment, a bigger accomplishment even than pinning the guy back in June of last year. Plain ol’ pro wrestling done without any unnecessary flourishes or self-indulgent experimentation. Amazing how refreshing that can be.
Brock Hates Wrestling 