All Japan Pro Wrestling (February 18 & February 19 1989)

 

The first episode covered a show from Kansas City. The intro video was comedy gold, with footage of Misawa as Tiger Mask hanging out with cows in the middle of some random field and a cut to Jumbo and Yatsu joking about Hansen as they chowed down on enormous steaks. All of this unfolded with Final Countdown as the soundtrack. Extras potential right there, but the matches would go on either AWA or territories.

 

1. Tiger Mask vs Tommy Sharpe

2. Dory & Terry Funk vs Doug Sommers & Gary Young

3. Dynamite Kid & Davey Boy Smith vs Rock and Roll Express

4. Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy vs Yoshiaki Yatsu & Jumbo Tsuarta

 

 

5. Dynamite Kid & Davey Boy Smith vs Joe & Dean Malenko - They worked this as a string of little interactions, each ending with a cool-looking hold or move. The execution has to be nearly flawless for that formula to work and it wasn't here. The match got better in the last five minutes, with the moves looking sharper and leading to actual pin attempts. But as a whole, this didn't flow or come off as nifty as it was supposed to.

 

6. Masa Fuchi, Yoshiaki Yatsu & Jumbo Tsuruta vs Hiromichi Fuyuki, Toshiaki Kawada & Genichiro Tenryu - JIP and I can't tell how much was clipped. The 11 minutes that made tape were pretty great -- fast-paced but not in a way that obscured the impact of the individual moves. Jumbo and Tenryu produced a short but supercool duel of counters. And then Jumbo swarmed Tenryu and took him out of the ring at the end so he couldn't mess with the fall. All-Japan was so good at fanning a rivalry but not giving away too much in these six-mans. Really, almost every bit of offense in the match looked great, from Kawada's kicks and lariats to Yatsu's game-ending belly-to-back suplex. We might end up deciding that the clip was too great and the match was inessential. But it's definitely worth a look from you guys.

We really need the AJ guys living it up in KC as an extra especially for Jumbo's pink sweater.