Tsuruta-gun (Jumbo Tsuruta, Masanobu Fuchi, & Akira Taue) vs Super Generation Army (Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi)
08/18/1990
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan
(reviewed 03/24/2024) The last tour ended with Stan Hansen defeating Mitsuharu Misawa for the Triple Crown and here, at the start of the next tour, we see that the ongoing intergenerational feud has crystallized into its purest form. For one, Super Generation Army finally have their name. After weeks of various magazines referring to them as “Misawa-gun” and AJPW commentator Kenji Wakabayashi even using an English phrase like “Young Generation,” finally he settles on the iconic Chosedaigun for the broadcast of this match. (That said, I’ll continue to use the English translation out of simplicity’s sake.) I’m not exactly sure when they arrive at the Tsuruta-gun moniker but here we see that Akira Taue has finally joined their side, a simple necessity after the defections of Great Kabuki and Yoshiaki Yatsu last month left Jumbo Tsuruta with no heavyweight allies.
Immediately the big boy makes an impact in this new role, flattening Tsuyoshi Kikuchi with a gross lariat a minute into the match before Toshiaki Kawada returns the favor a while later. Kawada has had a fairly quiet presence in this review series thus far but he’s slowly been building the aggressive tendencies that will endear him to psychos the world over: see here how he smothers Taue with his free hand when he applies a sleeper and how he instantly shifts to a preemptive flurry of kicks when the guy manages to tag in Jumbo, not even waiting until the veteran steps through the ropes. Misawa has likewise become more physically fierce even if his emoting isn’t any better, which helps so much in these matches. There’s an added oomph to his dropkicks and he’s finally throwing elbows hard enough that you can actually hear them.
Hell, everybody hits hard here. Kikuchi once again finds himself trapped and tortured by the heel team and when Jumbo bends the kid in half with a Boston crab, Misawa hits him with a slap fierier than I think any move I’ve seen him do in his career at this point. That’s the thing about this feud: because of how it unfolded and what the company was going through, it pushed these guys to be better and better, with most of them doing their career best work within the endless permutations of these warring factions. This isn’t even an especially great match from this feud, despite some superlative action like Jumbo hitting one of the meanest lariats I’ve ever seen. With everyone playing their well-defined roles in speedy, spiteful six-man tags, even a “mediocre” outing is more enjoyable than most matches. Shame everybody hates tag matches now.
Brock Hates Wrestling 