Welcome to the first edition of the awfully-named Retro Rambling. Join me, Captain Lou, author of the famous Captain Lou’s Reviews, as I take a break from modern-day Michael Elgin classics and dive into the New Japan World back catalogue to uncover 90’s wrestling gems. The rise of the Three Musketeers, Jushin Thunder Liger revolutionizing junior heavyweight wrestling, Vader reigning supreme as gaijin overlord, 80’s superstars like Choshu and Fujinami trying to keep their legends alive. The year is 1990 and all of this stuff is happening. Let’s check it out!
Riki Choshu vs. Tatsutoshi Goto (1/18/1990)
I have fond memories of Goto’s tag-team with Hiro Saito during the mid-2000’s Dark Ages of New Japan. Just two old dudes hitting a lot of Backdrops and sentons. Turns out their bromance goes back all the way to the early 90’s, as they were a part of a heel group called the Blond Outlaws and Choshu was having NONE OF THEIR SHIT! As a teenager discovering Japanese wrestling through the ’94 Super J-Cup and flashy junior wrestling, it was customary to hate on Riki Choshu. Part of growing up is realizing that the man was actually an amazing. What we have here is Choshu in the role of New Japan Hulk Hogan, the company’s super hero, taking on the new villains on the block in a god damned blood-soaked brawl. It’s brilliant while it lasts. Both Choshu and Goto blade and beat the living hell out of each other. Then the whole thing is thrown out when Hiro Saito gets involved and we get a crazy post-match angle where Choshu gets jumped by Super Strong Machine and Animal Hamaguchi. This was heading towards Memphis fist-fight glory but ended way too quickly. **1/2
Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Akira Nogami – IWGP Jr Heavyweight #1 Contendership (1/25/1990)
At this point in time we’re still fairly early in these guys’ careers, as they both debuted in 1984. You can obviously see a lot of potential in Liger, but Nogami just comes off as a generic dude slightly above young lion level. They wrestle a very by-the-book junior match with a bunch of capable chain wrestling to kick things off, which sets up Nogami wearing down Liger by going after his lower back. Nogami stays on offense for most of this and the crowd is just dead silent, even when he busts out some cool spots like a top-rope plancha and a flying elbowdrop. Poor guy. Liger makes a snappy comeback with a bunch of early 1990’s Cruiserweight Offense (they loved their flying headscissors back then), completely stops selling the lower back and then spits in the face of WRESTLING LOGIC by further destroying his own back with a top-rope senton atomico to the FLOOR (!) and then just zips back into the ring! For a guy that would become an absolute Master Seller later in his career, there were definitely some glaring issues earlier on. Liger gets the tapout win out of nowhere with an Atlantida backbreaker, which I’ve never seen him use before. Interesting look at two beloved guys at a stage where they were still figuring shit out. ***
Masahiro Chono vs. Big Van Vader (1/25/1990)
Vader was the IWGP champ at this point, but the match is non-title for some reason. This is the usual rock-solid David vs. Goliath-type wrestling you’d expect from a 90’s Vader match. He establishes his power advantage early on, crushing Chono with super stiff short-range lariats. Chono just bumps and sells his ass off until he figures out he can use his technical craftiness to break through the monster’s armor. He tries a bunch of different strategies to outmanoeuvre Vader, first by going after his arm, then by trapping him into the STF (which he sets-up with a sweet sliding drop-toe hold). None of it’s enough to get the job done. At various points in the match, I feel like Vader gives Chono almost too much offense? As cool as Chono is, dudes shouldn’t be able to slam or suplex BIG VAN VADER on their first attempt! There’s a great spot where Chono calls to the fans before laying into the big guy with punches. Chono was always great at working a crowd. They do a pretty good countout finish tease (very plausible during that era) and then Vader brings it home when he counters a sunset-flip by SITTIN’ DOWN~! Nowhere near AJPW-Vader level or anything, but a fine match nonetheless. ***
Naoki Sano © vs. Jushin Thunder Liger – IWGP Jr Heavyweight Title (1/31/1990)
After Tiger Mask/Dynamite Kid in the 80’s, Liger/Sano was the penultimate old-school New Japan junior rivalry. In stark contrast to the old Tiger Mask matches, which became famous for the innovative high-flying, the feud between Sano and Liger was based on PURE HATRED. With Sano getting poached by SWS shortly after this match, this would turn out to be the blowoff to these guys’ story, and it’s one hell of a finale. Liger comes in with unabashed cockiness and responds to a handshake offer by slapping the daylights out of Sano. 90% of this match is about him paying the price for that early arrogance as Sano gets royally pissed off and lays in an apocalyptic heel beatdown. Liger gets damn near knocked out by a series of Piledrivers and then Sano completely rips his mask apart and busts him open. The visual of a blood-soaked Liger with his mask barely hanging on by a thread will HAUNT YOU.
As I mentioned earlier, Liger’s selling could be on and off in the early 90’s, but his performance in this match is world class. Liger works the match as if he was just ran over by a truck, just constantly struggling to survive. His comebacks ooze of pure desperation and he always goes back to selling the accumulated damage whenever he gets in any offense. My only beef with this match is that some of the near-falls look thrown together one after the other rather than worked into the match in interesting ways. Sano just unloads all of his suplexes and Liger kicks out of all of them. Logically, it did work with the story of Liger being dead on his feet and unable to counter with anything, but I could’ve done with a few more rope breaks or reversals.
Nitpicking aside, the last few minutes of the match are genius: Sano flips out of a back body drop and goes for a Hurricanrana right away but gets caught into the LIGERBOMB for a massive near-fall that has the whole place shaking. Liger follows this with a Tombstone piledriver and pins Sano with his legendary Shooting star press, which he hadn’t used since his Keiichi Yamada days. In retrospect, this had more in common with old-school Lucha brawls than the usual New Japan junior matches. Buckets of blood, mask-ripping, Piledrivers treated as death moves, all-out hatred and a super emotional performance from the babyface. It’s not flawless, but it still holds up to this day and remains one of the must-see Liger matches from that era. ****1/4
Big Van Vader © vs Stan Hansen – IWGP Heayvweight Title (2/10/1990)
A real life Kaiju fight to the death. Two larger than life space monsters, the baddest gaijin wrestlers of all time, rampaging through the Tokyo Dome. My friends, how do you like hyperbole? If that’s your thing, you’re in for a treat. The opening minutes of this thing are some of the most brutal wrestling of all time: super heavyweight behemoths struggling for position and potato’ing each other with unprotected closed-fist punches to the face. Vader almost loses his GOD DAMN EYE and it barely phases him. The moment where he has to take off his mask to pop his eye back into place is one of most transfixing scenes in wrestling. Hansen’s selling and body language are so ridiculously good in this. His facial expressions tell the whole story of the match at any given time. He is either IRRATE and ready to kill a fellow human being in the name of pro-wrestling, or reeling from the Nuclear powered-shots that Vader throws at him.
I cannot overstate how much this match feels like real fight. There are maybe 4 wrestling moves throughout the whole thing (including a SWEET VADER DROPKICK) and the rest is just pure violence. Keeping that in mind, I always loved how Stan Hansen is able to make elbow drops look like completely legit bar fight offense. And the crowd eats it ALL UP. Tokyo Dome crowds were notoriously tough in the 90’s, but they go bonkers for all of this. The match ends with one of the very few satisfying double countout finishes in all wrestling. After Vader survives the Western lariat, there’s nothing else to do but to take the action outside and just brawl it out. It’s actually the perfect finish for this match. These two bastards simply could not be contained by a wrestling ring. Essential 90’s Japanese wrestling viewing. ****1/4
Antonio Inoki & Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Masahiro Chono (2/10/1990)
This is the main event from the same Dome show as Vader/Hansen, and it feels like a total blockbuster. The Shin Nihon OG’s taking on two thirds of the up and coming Three Musketeers, with LOU THESZ as the special guest referee. Like Choshu, Inoki’s one of those guys that I disliked heavily as a 15 year old Toryumon aficionado, but that I’ve grown to appreciate as a 31 year old adult who spends too much time writing about New Japan Pro-Wrestling. The guy is a concentration of pure charisma that will get any crowd to lose its shit with a simple look or just the way he moves around the ring. He slaps the crap out of a journalist during the pre-match interview, so you know he means business in this one.
The actual match has a ton of interesting stuff happening, and then ends super abruptly before it can reach its peak. All four guys work stiff as hell and everyone’s completely uncooperative, which makes every sequence look like a proper struggle. Despite both being way past their prime, both Inoki and The Guch come off as legit threats, stretching the rising stars with carny submissions or judo throwing them around. The sight alone of the young Musketeers taking on the legends feels important. The mid-portion of the match is kind of aimless and then once the action really gets going, Inoki clocks Chono with an enzuigiri and Thesz possibly messes up the finish by counting to 3 even though Chono clearly gets a shoulder up… What a bummer. Still a fun match, but I feel this had the potential to be a lot more. **3/4
Masa Saito & Shinya Hashimoto © vs. Keiji Muto & Masahiro Chono – IWGP Tag-Team Titles (4/27/1990)
Having all three Musketeers in the same ring is a pretty special thing and this match fully lives up to the potential of such a gathering. The crowd is nuclear right from the start and they go especially rabid for Muto who just returned from his big WCW run and is now the hottest thing in Japan. There’s no clear-cut storyline here, it’s just a bunch of rock-solid tag-team wrestling with incredible-looking runs of offense from everyone involved and molten crowd heat. I am very OK with this. I cannot stress enough how impressive Keiji Muto was in the early 90’s. Every single thing he does looks freaking amazing: the rolling savates, a god damn CATTLE MUTILATION 10+ years before American Dragon and Poison Sawada JULIE, the craziest jumping legdrop I’ve ever seen. Total star.
On the other side of the ring, Hashimoto comes off as a stone cold KILLER, the guy that constantly turns the tide of the match by beating the ever-loving hell out of people. The true heir to Inoki’s vision of Stong Style. Masa Saito is also a big-time revelation here. Love the chubby armdrags, the amazing hulking-up spots and all the Backdrop sequences. The ending stretch is beautiful in its simplicity, yet so effective and well put-together: Hash accidently clocks his partner with a kneel kick and Muto capitalizes right away by flying off the top-rope for the kill.
The camera shot of the entire crowd getting up from their seats to witness THE MOONSAULT is incredible stuff. A simple but supremely enjoyable match where the Musketeers all came off as stars, while Masa Saito convinced me to start tracking down his 80’s work. ***3/4
Riki Choshu vs. Shinya Hashimoto (5/28/1990)
Not quite the all-out war I was expecting, but still a pretty captivating battle between two New Japan legends at completely different points in their stories. Like the previous tag match pitting Hashimoto against Inoki and Guch, this was very much a clash of generations with Choshu holding his ground and proving to be a difficult challenge for young Hashimoto. Both guys work super stiff and lay the foundation of all those future Hashimoto slug-fests. Choshu makes Baby Hash look like a mega threat for most of the match, selling huge and eating ALL THE KICKS. But everything turns around during the second half when old Riki starts firing back with lariats and damn near kills Hashimoto with a nasty Watermill drop on the floor. They do a good job teasing countout finishes and things start looking really bleak for Hash as Choshu digs deep in his arsenal and pulls off a FLYING KNEEDROP off the top turnbuckle to a huge reaction. I really liked the finish: Hash manages to win by the seat of his pants and Choshu still looks strong in defeat. Like those early Jumbo/Misawa matches, the finish signaled the arrival of a new star while showing that Hashimoto still had ways to go before defeating Choshu in more convincing fashion. ***1/2
Coming up next: KOJI KITAO! The Hansen/Vader rematch! Muto/Chono as tag champs! A MUTA BLOODBATH and so much more.
