Posted June 4, 201015 yr comment_5451611 All Japan Pro Wrestling (July 23 & July 30 1989) 1. Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas vs Isao Takagi & Shunji Takano - One of the least interesting Kroffat/Furnas tags I've seen. 2. Davey Boy Smith & Johnny Smith vs Toshiaki Kawada & Fuyuki - Sloppy, unfocused and one of the worst Footloose matches I've reviewed for this project. Only Kawada looked remotely like an elite worker. 3. Dynamite Kid vs Shinnichi Nakano - Just a plodding beatdown by Dynamite. Shitty show so far. 4. Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu vs Dan Spivey & Dick Slater - This never got beyond the teams going back and forth, doing their stuff in equal doses. Jumbo was the biggest star so he got to do his stuff last. Slater had lost a lot over the course of the decade. I liked his one flurry of punches on the outside, but he left most of the offense to Spivey. 5. Stan Hansen vs Akira Taue - Sick shoulderblock-lariat combo from Hansen, but this was short and obviously, Taue had no chance. 6. Jumbo Tsuruta & Kenta Kobashi vs Tom Zenk & Jim Brunzell - Jumbo seemed so out of place in this group, and I entered with no doubt that he would take the fall with a backdrop suplex whenever he felt like it. Zenk and Brunzell did some decent work on Kobashi's leg and tossed in some nifty double teams. Kobashi did his usual young lion routine. So it was all perfectly decent, but they couldn't transcend the fundamental imbalance to produce compelling theatre. 7. Genichiro Tenryu vs Yoshiaki Yatsu - Yatsu put me to sleep with some of his control segments on Tenryu. He was great as Jumbo's underdog partner, but the crowd didn't buy him as a threat to the Triple Crown and neither did I. Tenryu could have won me over by ramping up the violence, but he gave a desultory performance as well. What a flat first title defense.
