William Bologna

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs.Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue (AJPW 2/20/2000) For whatever reason, they had Hansen and Smith take on all the real tag teams during this tour. They also had a match against Omori and Takayama. They didn't win any of them. There's an odd thread to this match where Hansen likes Taue. They almost won the tag league together a couple months ago, and I guess Stan remembers it fondly. Before the match, he goes over and shakes Taue's hand (not Kawada's), and early on he's got Taue backwards in the corner with his arm around the top rope, but he pats him on the back and backs off. You don't often see Hansen's sentimental side. I don't know what Kawada's problem is, but he once again has no interest in wrestling with Johnny Smith. Smith and Taue do some respectable grappling to get us to twelve minutes. Kawada tags in, and Smith puts on a body scissors. Kawada gets out of it and . . . just kind of lays on him. All the other top guys work great with Smith, but Kawada can't be bothered. In spite of that, this is a solid piece of work. Hansen still looks like a mean bastard when he's whaling on these guys and in turn being whaled upon. Taue puts Smith away with a chokeslam - the very turn events that cost Smith and Vader their chance at the tag league last year - and we all go home happy. I like all four of these fellows enough that they'd have had to screw up catastrophically before I didn't enjoy this match. It's too bad that we got through this little run of Hansen matches without getting to see him lay anyone out with a lariat.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Kenta Kobashi/Jun Akiyama (AJPW 2/12/2000) Hansen and Smith are back together! These guys had some good matches back in the day, with Stan as the Greatest Wrestler Who Ever Lived and Johnny as the Other Guy Who Doesn't Mess Anything Up and Usually Gets Pinned. One of those classic teams. But, look. Time marches on, and there's nothing you can do about it. This is Hansen's last year, and he's definitely looking kind of grandfatherly. His movements are short and strained, and when he and Kobashi have their big tough guy chop exchange, it looks uncomfortably like Kenta's bullying a helpless old man. Still, Stan is capable of doing some things; important things like punching guys in the face and yelling. This thread lately has been mostly about how broken-down giant Americans are still OK at wrestling. Don't ask me why, but first it was Steve Williams, then Vader, and now it's Hansen's turn. This match turned out to be a letdown. Smith usually works really well with these guys - Akiyama might be his best opponent - but he doesn't get to do much. Hansen tags him in, and Burning beats on him while we look at our watches and wait for Stan to come back in. It's like they teamed him back up with Hansen and he regressed to his 1995 self. We only get half of this match - maybe the good stuff didn't make the cut. Lame finish. Kobashi winds up for a lariat, but Stan catches him against the ropes from outside. The crowd reacts as though they're expecting something cool to happen, but all that happens is Kobashi lands a half-speed clothesline on Smith and pins him. Hansen tries to hit everyone with a chair afterwards, but there are just too many guys in AJPW tracksuits trying to stop him.

Vader/Johnny Smith/Maunakea Mossman vs. Kenta Kobashi/Jun Akiyama/Kentaro Shiga (AJPW 11/27/1999) This is the Vader show. He brutalizes Japanese guys to big reactions. He gets his comeuppance to huge reactions. He's so damn good in this environment, surrounded by rough dudes who expect to be brutalized because that's how you get people involved. He's in his mid-40s, and he's pretty fat, but it doesn't matter. Vader doesn't need to do a lot of moving around to make his stuff work. Johnny is overshadowed just like he used to be standing next to Stan Hansen in the middle of the decade, but it is interesting how his stock his risen. When he procures the cross-face chicken wing on Akiyama, his partners immediately rush into the ring as if it's a potential match-ender, and the announcer goes on and on about "Johnny Magic." He's clearly a bigger deal and a more serious threat than he was five years ago. Mossman, meanwhile, has frosted tips and red satin pants. Interesting finish. I thought they were telegraphing this as blatantly as they ever do: Mossman and Shiga are in there, and the other four guys chase one another around and pretend not to notice what's going on, so naturally I assumed that Mossman was about to put Shiga's skinny ass away. But when he hoists the little fella into a fireman's carry, Shiga gets out and rolls him up for the three count. Mossman can't believe it, and neither can I. This is the kind of thing that registers only because of All Japans' super tight-ass booking. Upsets are as rare as unicorns, which is an approach that has its problems and its benefits. This is one of the times it pays off.

Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Akira Taue/Jinsei Shinzaki (AJPW 3/28/1999) This is like a group project where two people are doing all the work. Smith and Shinzaki give us two fun stretches: They start the match with inconsequential but entertaining grappling, and there's a sequence later on with Smith trying to put Shinzaki away that's really good. Ace and Taue, meanwhile, are coasting and/or old. Taue in particular is really awkward. Yeah, I know "awkward" is practically Taue's epithet, but he truly looks as though he's not in full control of his body in this match. He also doesn't show any interest in match construction. The first thing he does when he gets in is try to powerbomb Ace outside the ring; he has to settle for a chokeslam out there, but either way, that's something you build to. They artlessly give away the result well before it happens. Once Smith is in there with Taue while Shinzaki and Ace chase each other around and pretend not to notice what's going on, there's no hiding what's going to happen. I do not know why they decided to put this match on TV.

Johnny Smith/Taiyo Kea vs. Steve Williams/Mike Rotunda (AJPW Real World Tag League 12/9/2000) All four semifinalist teams are in the ring to grab envelopes and determine seeding. Mike Barton really thinks about it. Kea just grabs one and then gets bumrushed by Williams! That leads to a hot start for the match, as Kea and Williams brawl and then botch a hurricanrana. That move may have been a little ambitious to attempt on year 2000 Dr. Death. This is only eight minutes since the 40-somethings have a wrestle the final after this, but that works in its favor, since the Versity Club is actually pretty good when they're not killing time. It lets them keep the heat up, too. Johnny actually looks mad when he comes into save Kea. He really puts some stank on a DDT, and he stomps Rotunda like he means it. But then the Versities take over, and Williams puts Smith away with a pretty cool backdrop. It's not the full on Kobashi-style where you land directly on the top of your head, but Doc whipped him back real fast and kind of spun around a bit. This marks the third time in this thread that Williams has pinned Smith with the backdrop driver. Johnny's Achilles heel is his neck. Williams and Rotunda go on to beat Kawada and Fuchi and win the whole thing, which I still find weird. They get to hold up a picture of Giant Baba in the middle of the ring and are front and center during the awards ceremony. Masahito Kakihara had Doc do the Triangle of Power thing with him. I wasn't expecting much, but all three of these 2000 RWTL matches were pretty good. Steve Williams clearly isn't the man he was, but it works. He still exudes menace and violence despite his pained movements, and even that gives him an aging gunslinger vibe. A few other notes on this tournament, which I skimmed through two hours of: I need to watch more Fujiwara. He does something cool every time I see him. Tricking Kakihara with the sneakiest submission ever, slapping Kawada straight in his face . . . he brings it every time. Dan Kroffat, on the other hand, looks extremely done. That guy fell off fast. Tenryu's teaming with Nobutaka Araya, and his fat boy moonsault looks just devastating. It probably is just devastating. I'm not sure about the wisdom of putting Kakihara and Mitsuya Nagai together. They do the same thing, but Kakihara is way, way better. It's a Vader/Bam Bam Bigelow situation. I didn't watch any Windhams.

Johnny Smith/Taiyo Kea vs. Steve Williams/Mike Rotunda (AJPW Real World Tag League 12/6/2000) We skip ahead to the penultimate night of the league and join this in progress. They must have had to fill some time because we get an endless heat segment on Kea - they could have cut this down a lot, and we wouldn't have missed it. Once they wrap that up, it turns into a pretty satisfying back and forth tag match. Kea and Smith show nice teamwork, and the “Versity Club 21” (per the prematch graphic) is a lot less boring when the other guys are on offense. Kea gets the pin on Rotunda, and this along with some other machinations sets up a four-way tie in the tag league. Stay tuned!

Johnny Smith/Taiyo Kea vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Masanobu Fuchi (AJPW Real World Tag League 11/19/2000) It's only a year later, but somehow the tag league feels . . . different. Off. Weird. I never get tired of the cobbled-together lineups of late 2000 All Japan, so this RWTL is like catnip to me. Barry and Kendall Windham are here. Broken-down old Steve Williams is paired up with Irwin R. Schyster. Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Dan Kroffat comprise the one real odd couple team. They put Mike Barton and Jim Steele together, which makes me wonder if they were trying to punish the fans by concentrating so much boredom in one place, or if they were doing us a favor by keeping it from infecting two teams rather than one. The tag league headlines its first night with our heroes and the current tag champs up against the men they defeated to win those belts in a match we only got to see a couple minutes of. All Japan has dumbed itself down. This is a reasonable and probably necessary response to the roster they're working with these days, but we see fewer big moves and clever reversals. These days it's more about beating up Fuchi until his exploded blood vessels are visible from orbit. This radical stylistic simplification manifests itself most prominently when Kea and Kawada are in together: They mostly do the thing where they stand still and take turns hitting each other and yelling. Daisuke Sekimoto is probably watching this and taking notes. Fuchi is just great in this. His backdrop suplexes look superb, and he's showing a lot of personality. I skimmed through a couple of digest videos of this tournament, and he's awesome all through it. All Japan should be ashamed of itself for letting him languish in the old man comedy matches for all those years. He should have been in there with Kenta Kobashi, not Rusher Kimura. Smith is clearly trying to show some fire, bless his heart. He and Fuchi work really well together (aside from one fumbling episode), and this is the first time we've seen Smith/Kawada interactions that didn't embarrass anyone. The finish comes as Kawada and Kea frantically exchange moves, and if I knew Japanese I would have known that we were heading for a time limit draw. Our competitors must console themselves with one point each and gentlemanly handshakes all around. Solid stuff. Fuchi was MVP.

Vader/Johnny Smith vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Yoshinari Ogawa (AJPW Real World Tag League 11/13/1999) Vader's in town! He fit so nicely into All Japan at this point, and I always liked watching Misawa wrestle him. Misawa had really good anti-Vader offense, if you will. When he tees off on the big man with elbows, you can just about feel them. He also throws in three German suplexes on Vader, which seems like a bit much. Ogawa, on the other hand, does not have a good anti-Vader offense. It doesn't matter, because Vader brought some amazing anti-Ogawa material. Ogawa flies like a bird as Vader casually suplexes him to the heavens. He chokeslams his victim like the Cyclops taking out a few of Odysseus' idiot henchmen. This is joined in progress and clipped, with the result that for the first half Johnny Smith is edited out of it like he's Chris Benoit. It's all Vader beating the hell out of Misawa's overmatched sidekick. I'm afraid that the clipping may also have taken us out of the match's narrative. Vader stops Ogawa from making a desperate tag, prompting Misawa to run in, knock him down, and drag his partner to the corner and tag himself in. This seems like the result of an escalating series of frustrations on Misawa's part, but we didn't see most of it so it doesn't register. The finish is a long and pretty fun sequence between Ogawa and Smith. Ogawa gets in his eye gouges and jackknives and jawbreakers, but eventually Smith hits him with the British Fall (not yet named) to pick up the two points. This was fun. Vader just great beating everyone up and yelling cusses. Smith and Misawa always work great together. There were a couple awkward moments with Ogawa, but it worked well enough.

Johnny Smith vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW Champion Carnival 4/8/2000) Johnny didn't get into a whole lot of Carnivals, so we're actually seeing every single time he wrestled Kobashi in the CC. What has happened in the six years since the last time? Johnny got better! You wouldn't expect Smith's mat wrestling ability to improve the farther he gets from his World of Sport John Savage the Manx Man roots, but watching these two grapple was kind of a chore in '94, whereas now it's downright charming. Johnny does all kinds of crafty limey stuff, and Kobashi is right with him. It's a nice change of pace, and while they do eventually get to the bombs, it does play into the finish. Speaking of bombs: I really want to like Kenta Kobashi. Everyone else does. Nobody works harder, he seems like a total bro, and he goes out of his way to make Johnny Smith look good (this match and that 1998 tag with him and Ace versus Smith and Hawkfield - they treated Wolf like a chump but put Smith over big). But I can't past his Elginisms. This match did not need two half-nelson suplexes that had nothing to do with the finish. Every time I see AJPW Kobashi after, say, 1996, he's throwing out the head drops like they're chinlocks. But this is really good anyway. The finish comes when Smith German suplexes Kobashi, who grabs Smith's arm while in the bridge and puts on a hammerlock for an immediate tapout. The finish really was nifty, but I have some issues with it. During the body of the match, Smith did more to Kobashi's arm than vice versa, so it should have been Smith pouncing on the weakness. And Kobashi has countless ways to beat Smith - why have him beat Smith at the one thing Smith is supposed to be good at? It would have been a perfect finish if only it had gone the other way. That kind of upset is the kind of thing you can do in a tournament setting like the Carnival, and the crowd was certainly ready for it. But this year they ran the Carnival with a single elimination format rather than round robin, so they couldn't do it. I like to think they wanted to. Is this Johnny Smith's best singles match? It's the only one that occasioned any discussion on this here website. There really isn't much competition. The Stampede stuff is garbage. My favorite is the post-exodus match with Fujiwara, but we only saw a couple minutes of that. It's better than the Mossman match from the Gary Albright memorial show or any of his ECW work. Smith figured it out at some point in 1997, I'm thinking, and from there until the split he was a really good All Japan-style wrestler.

Johnny Smith vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW Champion Carnival 3/29/1994) I kept this thing in chronological order for a long time, but that's out the window, so I need to remind myself where we are. This is actually our third Johnny Smith match from the 1994 Carnival. He took on Taue in a fun sprint on the last day of the tour (technically not a Carnival match), and on the first day he participated in the worst Toshiaki Kawada match I've ever seen. Johnny Smith in 1994: He's fine! This is the period where he's functional but overshadowed in 4- and 6-man tag matches a lot. He still has his Union Jack trunks, and man those are so much cooler than anything he wore afterwards. I wonder if something happened. Like, he got a call from the Queen telling him to stop wearing those because he was pretty much a Canadian. Anyway, we get the whole match, so we get to see how these guys fill time. It's very on-brand for Johnny Smith: Fine but colorless. He does a little bit of everything. Some matwork, some outside-the-ring brawling, power stuff, a little flying, some headbutts. He did some heelish things - Kobashi's the most likeable wrestler in history, so noisily shoving him against barricades doesn't make you look like the good guy - but it would have worked better if he'd gone all the way with it. This is friendly ol' Johnny Smith, though, so despite a bit of outré stuff during the match, he's a perfect hand-raising gentleman afterwards. We do not get the full AJPW parade of reversals and kickouts, but I can't say if this is owing to Smith's status or if the style hadn't gotten there yet. Kobashi wins with a moonsault, and we go to our post-game hosts, who show us these adorable hand-drawn Champion Carnival standings. I think Johnny's fourth from the bottom.

Johnny Smith vs. Satoshi Kojima (AJPW/MLW 1/3/2003) MLW is the John the Baptist of U.S. indies catering to puroresu fans. Satoshi Kojima holds their world title, and Johnny Smith gets a shot at it on this All Japan show. Kojima's entrance really makes you think. He's using the same music he uses today, which is reassuring. However, he's accompanied by a young Taichi Ishikari, whose wholesome appearance shows you that the future is unpredictable and you can never step in the same river twice. Joey Styles is calling this match, and that also makes you think. When Smith hits a sit-out powerbomb, Styles does not yell "TIGERBOMB," which shows us that it's never too late to improve ourselves. Sadly, though, when Kojima clotheslines Smith for the win, he screams "LARIATO" like some kind of moron, reminding us that perfection is unachievable. The match was kind of OK. Styles did make it feel like a bigger deal than the setting and the work would make you think, so kudos to him. They did stuff for a while, and then there was a finishing sequence where they went move/reversal/move for far too long; it felt like they were just going through the motions. And, it must be said, Johnny looks like he's done. He's sluggish and seems tired. And sure enough, a few months after this match he collapsed, went to the hospital, and then went home for good. It was clearly the correct move. I often think about the fact that in his last match, he teamed with Jerry Tuite/Malice/The Wall/Gigantes, who died a wrestler's death at the end of that year. Johnny avoided that fate and disappeared more or less completely. He may have become a cop in Calgary. He taught DBS Jr. some holds. He's kept his head down, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'd like to know how he's doing these days, but it's none of my business. Like Agamemnon talking about Odysseus, I praise him without knowing if he's alive or dead. So that's 61 Johnny Smith matches, and I thought I was done (which accounts for how morbid I got - endings always bring me down). But the internet is like Heraclitus' river or TJ Maxx: It's never, ever the same place twice. Many of the classics I enjoyed back in the middle of the year have disappeared, but new content has come to light. This is the risk you take when you wait five months to write up a damn MLW title match. So we'll watch a couple of Kobashi matches and see what we see before I come to any conclusions.

It's all in the lawsuit.

Jay White made an interesting observation about accents: He pointed out that Americans talk with really open mouths. And sure enough, if I try to talk while opening my mouth as little as possible, it sounds kind of like a New Zealand accent. This also explains why, as an American, singers tend not to sound foreign when they're singing. When I was a kid, it blew my mind when I found out the Beatles were English.

I don't have that match - it's not on the Network or anything. I could see Smith being a good foil for RVD. I knew what I was in for when I picked the world's most obscure wrestler, but the record is so spotty. I can't even find that 2000 Carnival match against Kobashi anymore.

Genichiro Tenryu/Yoji Anjo/Koki Kitahara/Arashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Johnny Smith/Nobutaka Araya/George Hines (AJPW 10/18/2001) Weird gimmick in this match. Kitahara and Arashi are the All Asia champs; Tenryu and Anjo awkwardly won the World titles last time. Both sets of championships are on the line, but don't ask me how it works beyond that. There's a lot of intensity in Korakuen tonight. There's a dude reading the official title match proclamation at the beginning, and he reads the hell out of it. I didn't understand a word, but I was already all revved up. Then Kodo Fuyuki shows up, grabs the mic, and yells something until Kawada kicks him off the apron. Fuyuki's dragged away while Kawada and Tenryu start clubbering and the fans throw streamers. We're off! Tenryu acts like a total dick throughout this. He whips Araya into the barricade, then drops a chair on him and boots him in the face. This sets the tone for poor Araya, who winds up being the main punching bag. It's nice to see Kawada energized. He's been pretty checked out in every appearance he's made throughout this thing, but there's something about Fuyuki that just sets him off. Fuyuki makes another appearance during the match, and Kawada can't stop himself from running after him and beating him up on the floor surrounded by cameramen and Fuchi. The champs take turns beating up on Araya and then Anjo pins him after a knee, so we don't need to worry about the stipulation. This was clipped - we never saw Johnny Smith in the ring - but what we got was a lot of fun. Tenryu was great, Kawada was vicious, and Fuyuki may have been the MVP despite not being in the match. Even Arashi, in his XXXL-sized husky boy's Rikidozan pants, did a top rope dive that was really something to see. The word that most often comes to mind for post-split All Japan is dispirited. Everything's dim and bored and boring. This was a thrilling exception.

Johnny Smith/Taiyo Kea vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Yoji Anjo (AJPW 7/14/2001) Tenryu has brought in notorious shoot-style dickhead Yoji Anjo to be his partner as he mounts a quest for the tag titles. They're a fun team, in that they're both dickheads who hit guys really hard. If you have some kind of beef with Taiyo Kea or especially with Johnny Smith, this is the match for you. Our boys really get put through it this time out. The psychology revolves around the punch. It's against the rules, but not so against the rules that you're going to get disqualified for it. Tenryu and Anjo exploit this gray area to, well, punch Johnny Smith a lot. They do get something of a comeuppance, as we wind up with both of the champions punching the downed challengers for a while, but it's not enough to stop a title change. This had its moments, but it wasn't actually good. I think some wires got crossed while they built to the finish, and everything seems off. Maybe Smith got a concussion or something. The finish, Anjo defeating Smith with a spinebuster, looked improvised. Something went wrong.

Johnny Smith/Taiyo Kea vs. Manabu Nakanishi/Yutaka Yoshie (AJPW 6/8/2001) They're really milking this New Japan invasion thing. You can't blame them - they'd run through all two of the fresh matchups for Tenryu. What else is there? So once again we see foreigners in the role of stalwart defenders of Giant Baba's legacy. Which, once again, who else is there? They have Kawada, Fuchi, some guys who were in WAR six months ago, and the dudes they fly in. Smith has been there forever; Kea's never been anywhere else. So it's understandable that the regular AJPW Budokan crowd is more inclined to see them as the home team than Araya and Okumura or whoever. Today they're defending the tag titles against a couple interlopers as part of what looks like a pretty hot AJ vs. NJ card. Kawada vs. Tenzan. Muto vs. Tenryu for the titles. The long-awaited showdown between Team 2000 and the Varsity Club. It's pretty good. It's very snug, and the crowd is into it. They hate these New Japan bastards, and I don't think Johnny's arm pump has ever gotten a bigger pop. It's nice to hear after that Tokyo Dome debacle, where the crowd reaction was so lacking that I frankly felt embarrassed for the West Texas Rednecks and their brother-in-law. Nakanishi does some fun power stuff, including throwing his partner into an opponent and then getting down and counting the pin along with the ref. Yoshie is known for being fat and pink. Here he's not very fat and not pink at all, but he does have the worst haircut since Johnny Smith's Mongol job back in '89. It looks like if you signed up at the monastery but the dude who does the tonsures was drunk that day. Kea has branding now. He's got orange-red gear and a really nifty sun logo, but he's not there yet. His body language is hesitant, and he does nothing with authority. He is over, though. The finish is abrupt. Kea makes a comeback, Smith runs over and grabs Nakanishi, and Kea polishes off Yoshie. Huge pop. So yeah, pretty good, and really helped by the crowd's enthusiasm. I do think there was some untapped noise in that audience. Someone more practiced at getting emotion out of them could have gotten things really loud. So, All Japan wins this installment of the feud. They won most of them actually: Williams and Rotundo felled Team 2000. Nagai and Kakihara made sure the All Asia Tag titles stayed home. Kawada beat Tenzan. But New Japan got the last laugh, as Muto won the Triple Crown from Tenryu. But then All Japan got the laster laugh when they poached Muto and some other guys. But then New Japan got the even laster laugh after that when Muto proceeded to run All Japan right into the goddamn ground.

Johnny Smith/Jim Steele/George Hines vs. Curt Hennig/Barry Windham/Mike Rotundo (AJPW 1/28/2001) All Japan has to put on a Tokyo Dome show, and they decide to capitalize on the popularity of Jurassic Park by trotting out a bunch of dinosaurs. Onita. Abdullah. Kim Duk. Santo & Mil. The Destroyer. Seiji Sakaguchi. Terry Funk. And these three. Between September of 1998 and right here, all four of the West Texas Rednecks worked in All Japan (Curly Bill doesn't count). Both Windhams were in the recent tag league, and IRS won the damn thing with Dr. Death. Tenryu was a weird booker, and this card is Exhibit B. Exhibit A is having VK Wallstreet win the tag league. On the other side of the ring, we see that Jim Steele is no longer a video game character, but he manages to look sillier without the gimmick. Sega may have decided on his gear when he was Wolf Hawkfield, but he picked out these zebra print tights all on his own. George Hines is the poor man's Johnny Smith: Having hung around the mid-card for years, he was thrust into relative prominence when the talent left. Like Johnny, he's pretty good and may have deserved better than he got. The match is fifteen minutes of nothing much. Hennig's timing is all off. He does try a little bit, but everything looks bad. He sets Johnny up for a big comeuppance clothesline, but he starts falling over before it makes contact for a swing and a miss. Barry Windham isn't real interested in the proceedings. He'd rather sit in holds than let Steele get his shit in (I'm not saying that this isn't what you should do with Jungle Jim Steele). Mike "Rotundo" Rotunda is actually pretty good. He's in shape, he's moving well, and he sets things up. He momentarily outsmarts Hines and makes this great, maniacal Bruce Campbell face, resulting in a crowd pop when Hines gives him his comeuppance. He spent more time in All Japan than I thought - he winds up working a pretty full schedule for the next couple years, and he's clearly more comfortable in this environment than either of his partners. The highlight of this match is when the announcer calls Smith Johnny Ace and then corrects himself. I don't know Japanese or anything, but it was pretty obvious, and his embarrassment bridged the divide between languages and cultures. Eventually, and to near-total silence, Steele hits Windham with a really bad Doctor Bomb for the win, which prompts "Machinehead" by Bush to start playing. As if the match weren't bad enough! This was lame, very much in keeping with the rest of the card. We get no title matches. Tenryu has to be in the drama-free main event, after all (Kawada/Tenryu vs. Sasaki/Hase - gee, I wonder who's going to take the fall in that one!). Taiyo Kea's busy, so we don't have a tag title match - someone needs to job to Muto. This is not only All Japan's biggest show of the year, it will wind up being their biggest show the decade, century, millennium, and geological era. It's astonishing that this was the best they could do. The Dome was half full (or, I suppose, half empty), and they never came back.

I recently had a dream where I decided to throw a party for Johnny Smith, but I wasn't very good at putting it together and felt bad about how lame the party was (fortunately, Johnny didn't mind. He had a beer and told us Steve Williams stories). I'm more than a little disappointed in my subconscious for going with something so obvious.

Johnny Smith/Taiyo Kea vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Taiyo Kea (AJPW 1/14/2001) I had to dig up a VCR for this one. I felt like a damn archaeologist. It belongs in a museum! The tag team titles remain vacant, but they don't bother to have a tournament for this one (maybe New Japan wasn't willing to send over enough guys for them to do it without the Cedman). I guess these two teams top the All Japan Power Rankings. We don't get much of it. It's odd - as I was forwarding fast, I saw all kinds of dreadful stuff in complete form. Stan Hansen's last match was uncut, but for this we get introductions and then a couple minutes of action out of a 24 minute match. Kawada's barely in it. We know some things happened. Fuchi's chest is spangled with exploded blood vessels, and Smith has blood coming out of his mouth. Anyway, Tenryu uses his one All Japan booking trick: Make them think Kawada's going to win and have him lose. They take turns beating up on Fuchi, Kea Hawaiian Crushes him, and the celebrations begin. It's awkward. Smith and Kea interact like they've never met. They do the classic move where one guy goes for a handshake and the other one goes for a high five and they run into each other before they figure it out. Both men have their hands full with two belts each, but then someone hands them trophies, and they have to improvise. We get a backstage interview. Johnny tells us that this is what happens if you never give oop. Kea says some cusses (on his opponents: "Tough fuckin' guys. Shit."). Johnny did it! An All Japan regular since 1989, he finally wins some gold (the All Asia titles don't count). This is just the beginning for Kea, who would wind up winning these belts seven times with seven different partners. I'm happy for the guys, but All Japan has never looked lower rent (excluding any matches involving the Cedman). The half-assed attempts at pomp emphasized how far they've fallen.

The only thing I can think of is a singles match against Kengo Kimura where he jumps Kimura when his back is turned and whines to the ref about Kengo using closed fists, which he wasn't. He's kind of a jerk in that one. I looked around to see if he played the bad guy during a guest spot in another promotion, but no dice. I dug up a WAR match from 1993 - Fujinami/Hase vs. Tenryu/Ishikawa - where Hase tries to get some heat going, but Fujinami was a perfect gentleman. He gets some boos when he breaks up a pin, but that's it. He even yells something into the mic after the match, but that only gets him respectful applause.

Johnny Smith VS Michiyoshi Ohara (AJPW 10/21/2000) Team 2000 invades All Japan! New Japan's unlicensed NWO successor group is here, and it's their year! Can Johnny Smith defend his adopted home against Michiyoshi "No Not Goto The Other One" Ohara? I'll say this: Ohara does his best to make everyone hate him. He gives the fans the bird. He spits at Johnny. He kicks him in the dick. Smith brings a little, but only a little, of the kind of anger you like to see in this kind of scenario. He does get all mad when Ohara spits at him, but other than that he displays the same bland friendliness that Joey Styles had to announce around in that Taz rematch. It's a decent little match. They do some solid enough matwork, and Ohara's wrongdoing keeps it from being boring. Johnny defends Giant Baba's memory with a British Fall.

Johnny Smith/Masanobu Fuchi/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Stan Hansen/Steve Williams/Wolf Hawfield (AJPW 10/28/2000) It's not the worst five minutes I've ever seen. It's not even the worst five minutes I've seen from All Japan Pro Wrestling in October 2000. Fujiwara tries to do some stuff with Hawkfield, continuing his streak of doing something cool in every match I've ever seen him in. Smith gets the win with a British Fall on his old partner, who gets to stop pretending to be a video game character next month. The memorable thing is that this is Stan Hansen's last match, and I'm not capable of giving him the sendoff he deserves. Hansen has been the MVP of this project, it's not close, and we didn't even see him until he was in his mid-40s. Every time he's in there, he does something that adds to the match. We've been sitting through some pretty uninteresting six man tags lately. We've seen how boring these people can be when there's not a dynamo like Stan keeping things moving. He never stops working. He never stops convincing you that he wants to win these matches. He yells, he throws up the horns, and he hits guys hard enough to get himself arrested in any other context. The Johnny Smith Project ran into some hard times when we were stuck in Calgary; things got better once we got to Japan, but they didn't get great until we hit the stretch of randomly-paired foreigners pitted against one another over and over, and that's because Hansen was usually there. He was the straw the stirred the drink, and he was also the huge, ill-tempered fake cowboy that blasted people with lariats. He was right to get out when he did. I watched this and his penultimate match, in the Triple Crown tournament against his old buddy Tenryu. I wish I hadn't. His body let him down, as everyone’s does sooner or later, and I don't think he was selling when he appeared to be in a lot of pain. It wasn't a fun watch. He seems to have done well since. He took over the James Blears role for while, awkwardly reading from a piece of paper before title matches. He wrote a book, did some shoot interviews, and every once in a he while flies to Japan and gets his picture taken with Kenta Kobashi. It could be worse. In wrestling, it nearly always is. Things worked out for Stan Hansen, and you can't say he didn't earn it.

I was at that show. Chikara guys had been showing up at the local indy shows, and they were clearly a cut above. The Osirian Portal in particular got over like crazy. I was thrilled when we got a full-fledged Chikara show at the Du Burns, and I had a blast, but they never came back.

Johnny Smith vs. Shiro Koshinaka (AJPW 10/14/2000) All Japan is discovering - not by choice - that you can still run wrestling shows without any talent. The problem is that they don't have any champions. No one thought to have Mossman put Kobashi in a sharpshooter and then ring the bell back in June before everyone left. He could have shown up on Noah TV and thrown all three of those belts in the trash! So they have to run a tournament, and man is it slim pickings: Mike Barton Stan Hansen Toshiaki Kawada Shiro Koshinaka Jinsei Shinzaki Johnny Smith Genichiro Tenryu Steve Williams New Japan sent over Koshinaka so they wouldn't have to put the Cedman in it, but they still can't come up with eight guys without including Smith and Shinzaki. They have Hansen, but he's 50. (To be fair, Tenryu's also 50, but being 50 didn't seem to affect Tenryu.) So in the first round we get Smith vs. Koshinaka, and it's terrible! I don't get it. This is kind of a big match, but neither one of them acts like it. They roll around and then Koshinaka hits Smith with his ass a couple times and powerbombs him. I was looking forward to this, but that was before I realized that not only does late-2000 AJPW not have many good wrestlers, it also makes the good ones crappy. I want my money back, you lazy dicks.