EL DANDY~! Tape Review-Three In One

-Thank you to todos who read my review of the Jumbo comp and were like, “Jumbo kicks ass, and so do you.” I appreciate that. If you haven’t read it, go here: Jumbo Review. I really hope that you like it as much as a lot of other people have. Right now, I’m gonna tackle some puro stuff I’ve watched recently and break it down somewhat. No full reviews, but you’ll definitely get insight. Two are from All Japan, and one is from New Japan. Let’s go to the tapes!

All Japan New Years Giant Series 1995-1/19

–Tommy Dreamer vs. Akira Taue-Yes friends. Tommy Dreamer was in ALL JAPAN. Him, RVD, Sabu, they were all in All Japan. But TOMMY DREAMER? And against Taue? What’s funny is watching Dreamer having to actually wrestle, when he’s only a guy who swings chairs and uses garbage cans for a living. He hits two Erik Watts-level dropkicks that would make me want to see more of Erik Watts. Then he hits two tackles that look horrible. And Taue has to sell ALL of this. Taue thankfully ends it with the Nodowa Otoshi (Chokeslam) and this match comes to a close. 3/4*

–Stan Hansen, Dan Kroffat, and Doug Furnas vs. Steve Williams, Johnny Ace, and Johnny Smith-The usual gaijin six man tag from All Japan. But Stan, like usual, is surly and wants to whoop ass so it’s fun when he and Dr. Death go at it, because they have history and all that. Smith plays Brit in peril and he’s good at that. It was somewhat memorable because after Smith and Hansen are left alone in the ring, Smith gets introduced to Mr. Lariat and he takes a long nap. I like me any kind of Hansen, so I liked this. *3/4

–Takao Omori, Jun Akiyama, and Tamon Honda vs. Mitsuharu Misawa, Giant Baba, and Jumbo Tsuruta-No, that is NOT a typo. This dream team actually did come together. It’s truly something to behold. Not often do you find a team after Misawa is established that it is HE who gets announced first for the team (For those who don’t know, the less established wrestlers are announced first, so in this case, Misawa, who’s the main active wrestler, is announced first only because legends are on his team.). The match is pedestrian until young Honda gets his ass WHOOPED and bleeds all over the mat, taking him out of the match. And he bleeds like a young punk SHOULD bleed…leaving a HUGE red mark on the mat. I kinda expected something like that in the Dreamer match. So, yes, not only are they facing perhaps the greatest and most historic face 6-man tag in history, but they fight them A MAN DOWN! They sell the Baba chops like crazy, I love me a surly Jumbo, and Misawa is Misawa so I liked watching this. Misawa with the Tiger Driver. **1/4

–Triple Crown-Toshiaki Kawada © vs. Kenta Kobashi-The reason why most people got this tape in the first place, and it’s because it’s a sixty minute draw. It’s a historic match, a great match, but not a super classic ***** affair at all, really. It’s basically, sadly, an excuse to advance the storylines along. Kawada beat Steve Williams for the belts after Williams beat Misawa for the belts, thus continuing the “Kawada can’t beat Misawa” story. This is Kawada’s first and only defense, as he would then lose it to Stan Hansen after this match, ending his reign with one not so successful defense, meaning that his first run with the belts was far from memorable. They do know how to craft a draw like this. Kawada goes after the bad leg of Kobashi, which sets up the 6/9/95 match after that leg was bothering him, where that leg is wrapped up and it gets MURDERED. Kobashi, in turn, goes after Kawada’s bad left wheel, which was injured a little over a year prior, and it’s just an old injury that gets beaten up a bit. What I don’t like is that after all the leg work and all the submissions, they forget to sell each of their legs. That might be my only quiff about this match, which is very good as it builds to the big moves. Powerbombs lead to the Stuff Powerbomb and Jackknife Powerbomb, respectively. Kawada uses the Stretch Plum, and even busts out the Dragon Suplex. They each do the neck breaking Germans and such, but Kobashi also takes two VERY safe Dangerous Backdrops for some reason unforseen by me. Kawada sells Kobashi’s regular backdrop like DEATH. Thankfully in the 6/9/95 tag, they MAKE him take a neck bump, with a little help from Taue’s Nodowa, of course. It’s really nice how they lay the spots out, too. They trade chops, and then after a couple of tradeoffs, Kawada chops Kobashi in the throat, or Kobashi goes to Kawada’s knee. It’s the little things that count. Also, it’s Kobashi and Kawada in 95, so it’s definitely good. Kobashi drawing Kawada advances the “Kobashi hasn’t pinned Kawada in a singles match” story, and the legwork sets up 6/9/95. Of course, it’s very well worth while to get this match, but don’t expect it to be the classic match that everybody goes crazy about. Just a great match by two of the great wrestlers of all time. ****1/4

-I’d go get this because it has a great sixty minute draw and it has the dream face team of Misawa, Baba, and Jumbo on it. It’s not a hard tape to find and it’s worth it. Go pick it up somewhere. This is the commercial version, as the regular version has more matches on it.

AJPW 20th Anniversary

-This starts off with a press conference, and the calling of every name on the AJPW roster. It’s fun. Misawa gets drunk and leads us in song. Now THAT is fun. If Kawada had started singing “Danger Zone” or something, I would have died right then and THERE. Just so you know, this is the event that happened the same day as the conference. So if I remember right, the first singles match for the TC between Misawa and Kawada isn’t on here. Oh well…

-You get to see lots of clips to start this off. None of them are really worth noticing. I mean, in all reality, it’s just an excuse to get the old guys out there.

–Toshiaki Kawada and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Jun Akiyama and Yoshinari Ogawa-Kawada is no Kobashi and Akiyama/Ogawa aren’t exactly the Can-Am Express, so my expectations of this diving into a 1986 Southern Continental United States tag match are gone. Akiyama is one the biggest cloud 9 a newbie can be on at this point after having a helluva debut vs. Kobashi, and Ogawa is not yet the piece of scum that you see in NOAH if you watch the Japanese TV. Kawada is still Toshiaki Kawada and he still rules the whole damn world at this point (even if Baba says he doesn’t) so of course, for a match of this type, it’s good. Akiyama and Ogawa take turns playing Condrey and Eaton (with Condrey played by Akiyama for he has the better hair, Ogawa has the better punches, therefore being Eaton) as Kikuchi is reliving May of that year again, well, sort of. The way he sells a sleeper is just AWESOME. Akiyama gets his butt whooped, too. Ogawa sucks here. He doesn’t really not suck until a couple people drag some good matches out of him seven years after this. Kawada then sells MIGHTILY for young Ogawa with Ogawa busting out a not-so-green Fisherman Suplex and his backdrop hold. Kikuchi with MAD PHAT AIR on the Swandive Headbutt. Akiyama missile dropkicks Kikuchi right into a tag to Kawada, which is a big no-no, as Kawada kicks him into oblivion and locks in the Stretch Plum for the win. This was fun. **3/4

–Stan Hansen, Johnny Ace, and Johnny Smith vs. The Miracle Violence Connection and Richard Slinger-I’m indifferent to Slinger. Smith is good, Ace is good, Hansen is surly and ready to whoop ass, the MVC are great, and yeah. Hansen and Gordy tie up big time and Hansen punches Terry right in the mush. The heels work Smith’s leg. Ace does the superpower out of the heels corner until they ALL get clubberin’ and such. Ace gets worked over on the outside by Dr. Death. Ace gets worked over by Slinger’s KICKS OF DEATH until he does the superfluous rolling tag to Smith, who does the British Bulldog offense himself, what with the Dynamite clothesline and the Davey Boy delayed vertical. Slinger elbows Hansen to break a tag, so Hansen goes apeshit on him with the cowbell. That’s fun. Slinger is taking his ass beating like a KING. Hansen comes back in and destroys him some more. Hansen with a DDT and a kneelift right out of Texas. Ace with a delayed powerslam. Hansen again with a great kneedrop and a great powerbomb. MVC gets tossed, and then trips Slinger on the Lariat attempt, sending Hansen over the top to the floor, where he gets stomped upon. Back in, Slinger gets molested AGAIN by Hansen. Slinger avoids a Smith missile dropkick and tags in Williams, who goes for the Stampede, but Ace breaks it and stomps on his face. Gordy gets kicked in his face by Hansen. Lariat for Hansen, Ace with one for Gordy. Gordy looks for a powerbomb, but Smith with a Fisherman Suplex for 2. Gordy comes back with the powerbomb for the win. Man, that match was good because Slinger got his ass WHOOPED by Hansen, and I mean WHOOPED. Oh, and Gordy and Williams weren’t afraid to be dicks. Smith and Ace were kinda just…there. **3/4

–Giant Baba, Kenta Kobashi, and Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue, and Masa Fuchi-Well, you know what Baba brings to the table. The heels are all a bunch of surly bastards. Kobashi is up to two knee braces. Misawa is the MONEY man. Kobashi and Fuchi do mirror stuff, then Taue comes in and whoops Kobashi’s ass until Misawa comes in and stops that nonsense. Then the tag to Baba, and here comes Jumbo and it’s HISTORIC~! Jumbo can’t hang with Baba, I guess, so Taue comes in and HE can hang with him. Tag Kobashi, and Taue whoops his again, and like, it’s cool like this for a while because Kobashi gets his ass whooped by the rudos. Then Fuchi comes in and he’s weak and stuff, so Kobashi can tag Misawa, but Fuchi tags in Jumbo and it’s HISTORIC~! again. Jumbo gets beaten pretty badly by the future tag champs, but soon, Jumbo tags out and Misawa is getting his butt whooped. His left arm is worked on until he can tag Baba in, who gets all choppy with Taue. He busts out a FUJIWARA ARMBAR, and then an STF! BABA~! In 92!!! He increased his workrate like 20 fold. Fuchi breaks both up and then Kobashi comes in with a half crab on Taue until Fuchi comes in and dropkicks KOBASHI’S knee. IRONY! Then the rudos get busy with Kobashi and it is SO great. Kobashi is in DEEP shit after an STF from Jumbo and then the Figure-Four from Taue (broken up with a slingshot splash from Misawa which was cool), and then Jumbo with the half crab and the tag to Fuchi and then all of a sudden, Kobashi is all Fighting Spirtish and stuff…until Fuchi dropkicks the knee again. WHAT A DICK. Baba gets the tag and he’s ready to whoop ass, but Taue and Jumbo stop that. Baba gets the Neckbreaker Drop. Kobashi and Misawa work over Taue. Jumbo comes in and whoops Kobashi’s ass with the Jumbo offense we all know and love. Kobashi with a backdrop to Jumbo for IRONY. Misawa beats up Jumbo for a while, and then Kobashi is back in and eats a powerbomb straight out of 1988 for 2. Fuchi tags in and gets a great piledriver for 2, but then Kobashi comes back and gets the Rolling Cradle and such, and then the Moonsault for the win. This was fun and as always, AJPW brings the good in the 6-mans. ***1/4

-I don’t know. It’s a mixed bag. It’s historical, but it’s kinda one just to have to complete a collection. The actual wrestling show with the Kawada/Misawa TC match is much better than this. There’s some pretty good stuff, but nothing you REALLY need, here. Go get it if you want to, I guess.

–New Japan Tokyo Dome Show-1/4/98-“Final Power Hall in Tokyo”

-This is also known as the “Riki Chosyu Retirement Show” and is actually quite hard to find for some reason. The nWo is in full swing and all that. Chosyu has decided to retire with a 5 on 1 single elimination series, where he fights five fighters, one by one, and when either he beats one of them or one of them beats him, they go to the next fight.

–Part 1

–IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title-Shinjiro Otani © vs. Ulitmo Dragon-A very good match, but not as good as the J*Crown classic. Ohtani isn’t as big a dick in this match as I want him to be. Good matwork in the beginning, as is the norm, and then Dragon gets all lucharesu with his whacked out south of the border submissions, including the one famously known as “Mr. Salty.” The race to the finishers is very cool, as they bust out every one they can. Dragon does some sweet variations on La Magistral. Ohtani is all springboardy and does some good suplexes, even teasing a Super Dragon Suplex, which at that point would have made the usually quiet for Juniors Tokyo Dome fans explode. Dragon gets his Dragonsteiner, but La Magistral can’t put Ohtani down, so Ohtani hits two Dragon Suplexes to retain. Just a great match, and they had the crowd going big time with all the false finishes. This didn’t look like the J*Crown match because the psychology wasn’t as good, and it really ended up looking like a late 90s All Japan match, but it was some great wrestling with all that. ***Ѕ

–Osamu Nishimura and Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Manabu Nakanishi and Satoshi Kojima-Nishimura makes his return after his work overseas to become more of a complete wrestler. He’s so Muga it’s not even funny. Nishimura makes his return wearing an nWo t-shirt, shocking the crowd and Fujinami in the process. This really ain’t too much. Nishimura does his usual spots like the knucklelock and the roll-ups and the legwork. Kojima looks good, Nakanishi looks like Nakanishi, Fujinami is old, so you don’t get much here. Nishimura does hit a nasty German, though. Nishimura with the Northern Lights Suplex. *1/2

–Masahiro Chono vs. Shiro Koshinaka-Koshinaka is ASS MAN! His ass is so powerful that Rikishi couldn’t stop it. Chono is your Emperor of Kings. Since Baisden ain’t doing too much anymore, I’ll just adopt it for now until he tells me otherwise. This match is really not that great until the big moves start coming. And then, they just start dropping each other on their heads with powerbombs. I mean, seriously. The powerbombs on this match are like Lou Thesz style bombs. Koshinaka takes the Yakuza Kicks like a MAN. He breaks out of the STF and uses his ass to come back, but then he LEANS INTO A YAKUZA KICK LIKE A KING and gets beat. That last Yakuza Kick was the SHIT. **1/4

–Naoya Ogawa vs. Don Frye-This is a shoot style fight. Ogawa comes out in a judo gi. They show what happened up to this. This isn’t much, really. Ogawa does hit a NASTY backdrop and a couple of STOs. Frye goes low and then makes Ogawa tap. Whatever.

–Riki Road Final Message 5-Chosyu faces five wrestlers one after the other. First, he faces Kazuyuki Fujita, who would go on to do well in the shoot aspect. Fujita does some stuff to Chosyu, but he puts in one too many headlocks, and Chosyu drops him with a backdrop. Riki Lariat and bye-bye. Next is Yutaka Yoshie, who is LUMPY. He ain’t too lumpy here, though. No matter. He faces the same fate as he gets clobbered by the Riki Lariat. Next is Tatsuhito Takaiwa, who is in the middle of his, “I wanna be a heavyweight phase.” Poor Takaiwa not only eats the Riki Lariat, but gets put in the Sasukegatime (Scorpion Deathlock) and taps. Takashi Iizuka is next and actually does a good job with Choshu, going after him technically and getting him in a kneebar, making him tap with Lyger cheering him on. Lyger comes in and he gets in his juniors offense on a flustered Chosyu. Chosyu actually hits a FAT MAN’S PESCADO. I mark out. Lyger survives one Riki Lariat but not two. It was unique, to say the least. *1/2 Chosyu ends the night 4-1. They have a nice ceremony afterwards, and I really liked the video package showing his career. I need to get the G-1 Climax from 96. I heard he does great things in that tournament.

–Part 2

–Kendo KaShin vs. Koji Kanemoto-This match is pretty forgettable. I mean, they don’t like each other, which is obvious, but I can’t really remember anything from this match that I’d want to tell people about. Kanemoto does his usual, but KaShin is tricky with all those ways to slap on a cross armbreaker and he gets Koji to tap out. *1/2

–Yuji Nagata vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan-Nagata is fresh off a run to WCW and he gets to face off against one of the young guns for the nWo in Tenzan. Nagata only has one Nagata Lock at this point, and his offense is still very submission based. Tenzan is all chopping and Mountain Bombing and headbutting. Nagata is able to avoid all this and get the win with the Nagata Lock (reverse Figure-Four). *3/4

–Shinya Hashimoto vs. Dennis Lane-Yet another shoot-style match. Remember, this was during that time where Hash and Ogawa were trying to one-up one another. It wasn’t too heated yet, but it was slowly burning. This ends quickly after Hashimoto takes Lane down and his knee buckles. I think Lane might have torn something. I won’t rate it. No I won’t.

–IWGP Heavyweight Title-Kensuke Sasaki © vs. Keiji Mutoh-Mutoh is all nWo tonight. He’s very loose coming to the ring. I think you, my grandma who knows nothing about wrestling at all, and my unborn children know who will win this match. Chosyu is having his retirement night, so his protege is going over whether we like or not. So what does Mutoh do? He mails it in. Of course he does. This is the basic Mutoh lazy match. He does a few things outside of the usual like a missile dropkick and such, but it’s so dropkick/dragon screw/figure-four it’s not even funny. Sasaki ain’t really liking to sell, of course. Moonsault doesn’t do it, and we do see the debut of a version of the Shining Wizard to cancel the Northern Lights Bomb attempt, but Sasaki eventually gets the NLB twice to retain the belt. The first one was suitably GNARLY. Nothing too great. **Ѕ

-There ain’t much outside of the Dragon/Ohtani match. Like the 20th Anniversary Show, it’s good for historical reasons. Good trading tape, too. You can go get lots for this, I’m betting.

-There you go, folks. I’m gonna go work on my next comp now. See you then.