Genichiro Tenryu vs Ashura Hara (07/04/86) - I needed a Hara fix so I went scanning through the Roy TV episodes and saw this one. Boy, it did the trick. It is not a long match but it's a very good one. These two are evenly matched. A worthy follow up to their match earlier. This felt big or innovative for '86. There's things, spots, that seemed ahead of their time. The pacing as well feels more like what we'd see in the 90's. It's not the Choshu/Hansen frenzy nor the "work a hold for 10 minutes" style either. Very good stuff here.
Jumbo Tsuruta & Tiger Mask II vs Yoshiaki Yatsu & Isamu Teranishi (07/05) Fun match where Yatsu's aggressive wrestling (as in actual wrestling) was really cool. It felt like he was kinda-shooting in on Tiger & Jumbo. Those segments felt really good. Otherwise this was good 80's wrestling. Exciting ring action, a couple cool moves but I'm sure an appetizer to a bigger match. I liked it though. It's good to watch simple wrestling done right.
Tenryu & Giant Baba vs Stan Hansen & Ted DiBiase (07/05) - An appetizer for the Stan vs Tenryu match later in July. This is one of those matches where Stan really lays in his shots on Baba. When that happens, it is on like Donkey Kong! And that is this match. Everyone is just excellent with their timing and urgency. And the spot that sets up the finish is wonderful! And the post match is a bonus treat...yeah this was a near classic tag match. It's not a long match, under 15 minutes but that is all they need. RECOMMENDED
Takashi Ishikawa/Mighty Inoue vs Goro Tsurumi/Ashura Hara (07/10) - I had to watch this lineup. It's too good to resist. Only 5 minutes is shown but we get a taste of the action: Ishikawa and Hara slapping the taste from each others' mouths, Goro Tsurumi doing a couple really cool moves, Mighty Inoue being the spark plug of All Japan juniors... yeah this was fun.
Tiger Mask II & Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Ted DiBiase & Pete Roberts (07/26) - Wow! What a sprint! 8 minutes of action. I was actually surprised Pete Roberts & Misawa didn't do anything slick. In fact, Ted was in quite a bit. This was just fast paced all action wrestling. Lots of rope running, quick roll-ups and organic sequences...I thought this was great!
Stan Hansen vs Genichiro Tenryu (07/26) - Two of the best to ever wrestle put on a great match for the AWA belt (I think this was one of the defenses Stan made with the "stolen" belt!). In either case, they beat the HELL out of each other. Stan blasted Tenryu a few times including a sternum crushing elbow drop. That's OK because Genichiro Tenryu is no wimp & gets payback...I'm pretty sure he got Stan in the face on an enzuigiri. I guess that makes it a gamengiri. What's notable beyond that is Tenryu really does a great job going after the Texan's lariat arm. Stan sells the heck out of it and once weakened, gets bloodied.
Hiro Saito vs Brad Armstrong (07/31) - A good match that's really just neat to see Brad Armstrong working in All Japan. This could have been something special but it's more a novelty than anything. Don't feel bad if you miss it but it's nice if you watch it.
Riki Choshu vs. Killer Khan (7/31) - A grudge match with Killer Khan's knee drops serving as the highspots. Other than that & the ringpost hits there were no spots or sequences of note. This did hurt the match but the intensity was there but, neither wrestler is dynamic or exciting enough to elevate this to something overly memorable. Maybe if there were a couple spots of note this would have been more than just a very entertaining match. I'm really not sure how this is a top 100 match of the 1980s when many matches listed above were better than this. Watch for yourself and decide 🙂
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