William Bologna

Johnny Smith/Mike Barton/The Cedman vs. Taiyo Kea/Jinsei Shinzaki/Mohammed Yone (AJPW 9/2/2000) You'd be hard pressed to put together a more late-2000 All Japan match than this one. Maybe throw in a Tenryu crony from WAR. Gran Naniwa. Some old guy. We get five minutes of entrances here, most of which is Jinsei Shinzaki getting the full Buddhist Undertaker treatment. Once again: I love everything about it. The man is focused spiritually, and his traps are enormous. He comes out alone - Kea and Yone have to wait because they're not monks. Dynamite Kid told a story (I got it from Wikipedia) that Johnny Smith was such a nice guy that when a fan made him a vest that said "Jhonny," he went ahead and wore it. I think he's wearing it tonight. Mike Barton was in a peculiar situation as far as how to work. His claim to fame is that he knocked Steve Williams out in the Brawl for All and made Jim Ross blubber into his hat (Doc's on the card tonight, by the way. I wonder if they ever hung out or anything). So he's got a glove on his left hand, because it's the mighty weapon that felled Doctor Death. Watch out for the hand! Don't let him punch you with it! The problem is that dudes punch each other all the time in a wrestling match, and it almost never means anything. He can't punch because it would win him the match, a situation that's pretty rough on the old suspension of disbelief. He has to work around something he should be doing constantly, so he winds up doing all these chops, and it's like he has to stop himself from just punching. He has to save the punch for special occasions, one of which comes here when he slugs Yone in the stomach and powerbombs him for the win. Also he's boring. This wasn't any good. Maybe the participants lacked familiarity with one another, or maybe they just weren't that good. Most of these guys are fine, but there was no one driving things and making it interesting. Johnny Smith is again the most popular man in the match, but that's not saying much. The fans don't enjoy this any more than I do, but at least we get a little pop for the arm pump. This should be noted: Cedman does not screw up. I'm actually impressed. We saw him just last week messing up several times in a five minute clip. Here he wrestles three different guys, and he doesn't blow a single thing. I guess he's learning.

Johnny Smith vs. The Cedman (AJPW 8/25/2000) We get a little promo from Cedman and then a highlight package. We get to see two of the three offensive moves Smith managed against Fujiwara, and they tactfully cut it off right before he gets armbarred. Hoo boy it's the Cedman. You know the term "sprezzatura"? It is, according to some Italian guy quoted on Wikipedia, "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it." Doing something difficult without letting on that it's difficult, basically. The Cedman lacks sprezzatura. When he does a wrestling move, you can see him thinking real hard about how he's doing a wrestling move. You can tell he hasn't watched as many Johnny Smith matches as I have, since he doesn't get up after the dropkick. Johnny kips up and arm pumps and then has to bounce against the ropes a few times before he can do the clothesline. I don't want to come down too hard on him. He's an inexperienced wrestler who, through the machinations of Steve Williams and the desperation of a recently-great promotion, has been thrust into a role for which he is not ready. He really is bad, though. He kicks Johnny, who stands there doubled over waiting for Cedman to do something. Cedman does not do anything. Finally Smith puts him away with a British Fall. Cedman lands wrong on the setup. It really makes you appreciate Wolf Hawkfield.

Johnny Smith vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (AJPW 7/23/2000) Two minutes of perfect professional wrestling. Smith has a waistlock. Fujiwara fights it, but gets Germaned. Smith holds on, they fight over it for a while, and then he hits another German. Smith goes for the dropkick/kip-up/clothesline, but Fujiwara catches him in his eponymous armbar to get the win. The full match went twenty, and I wonder how good it could have been. Fujiwara is noticeably old (51 at this point), so who knows how he holds up going that long? But what we got was, as I said, perfect. Fujiwara's not jumping into those suplexes. He and Smith aren't trying to steal the show and entertain the AJPW Universe. They're fighting.

Johnny Smith/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Shigeo Okumura (AJPW 7/9/2000) Here we are in the second week of the new All Japan, a promotion where they don't have many wrestlers and even fewer good ones. It's crazy. One day you're on the Super Power Series wrestling Misawa and Taue; the next month you're on the Summer Action Series trying to figure out what to do with Yuto Aijima. Ishikawa's supposed to be really good, so I was excited to see what he could do. But they only give us four minutes, so I don't see him do much except throw his Inoki towel at Johnny and put old man Fuchi in a choke hold. Smith hits Okumura with a Suzuki-style Gotch-style piledriver and then breaks the losing streak with a British Fall (which is finally being called that). This went twenty minutes, and it probably wasn't very good. I'm glad I wasn't at this show - they still don't have enough wrestlers, so there are only five matches, and the last three are all twenty-minute tag matches. Giant Kimala & Mike Barton defeat Steve Williams & Wolf Hawkfield (19:26) Good lord. Imagine inflicting that on this audience. I'm surprised there wasn't a riot.

Johnny Smith vs. Maunakea Mossman (WXW 4/19/2000) I'm glad we get a Mossman feature. We've seen him as the lowest-ranked guy in tag matches, so he never got to do much. He was limited to throwing some OK kicks and doing that tornado DDT where it has a 50/50 shot of looking like a move he's doing rather than one the other guy is. That's his real name, by the way. I'd always wondered, and then I found him on a list of Hawaiian state wrestling champions. He has Nicole Bass with him. I don't know why. She doesn't do anything. We get a great opening, with some fast-paced hold exchanges capped by Mossman nailing Smith with kick. I think that's one of his problems - he always throws a whole bunch of kicks, which gives you the impression that they don't do much. Here he puts Johnny down with one, and it's a better look. They keep up the pace and space out the moves with more holds. It's a solid piece of work. They weren't telling a story or bothering to sell much, but everything was well done. Mossman wins abruptly with a TKO. That's six straight jobs for Johnny in this thread. I liked the play-by-play guy, though I have no idea who he is. English guy. He did a nice job of putting these guys over to an audience that would not have been familiar. He gives us some background and calls the action well. He does have a tendency to let everyone know that he's got tapes and knows who Nobuhiko Takada is, and he calls a Death Valley Driver a Burning Hammer, but I've forgiven Joey Styles for worse. This is from the Gary Albright memorial show. He died during a match in Hazelton, Pennsylvania a few months before this. RIP Gary.

Johnny Smith vs. Taz (ECW 10/5/1996) Johnny Smith on the WWE Network Gaiden continues and concludes with a submission match. Johnny Smith's AC joint is back where it's supposed to be, and he's out for revenge. Styles tells us that he's "developed a hatred for the human crime spree," and then we cut to Johnny in his corner looking as amiable as ever. "Smith is all business," Styles tells us, once again doing his damndest to cover up for the boys. The fault in this match, which is actually pretty good, is with Smith. He doesn't come off angry. He doesn't do anything with Bill Alfonso, who gets as much camera time as either of the competitors. After every rope break (it's a submission match, so there are many), he's right there screaming at Smith, and he doesn't nothing with it. Call him a wanker or something, Johnny. He lacks physical urgency and just generally acts like a guest who doesn't want to overstep. Be more like Stan! Anyway, decent match. Taz really does have some cool submissions, and the stipulation means they can't just throw bombs at each other. They even do a bit where they take turns getting on all fours and escaping (I didn't wrestle. I don't know what it's called, but I remember that Beavis and Butthead didn't think much of it), only for Taz to kick Johnny in the ribs. So anyway, Taz hits a nearly-botched wheelbarrow Tazplex (Joey calls it an Ocean Cyclone Suplex, which it's not. At least he didn't say Tiger Bomb) and wins with the Tasmanian Maniac Submission. He then resumes bitching about Sabu. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome, but the ECW experience is starting to grow on me: Styles is a pretty damn good announcer. Taz kind of impressed me. I can take or leave the suplexes, but he did some fun mat stuff. I actually enjoyed Bill Alfonso aside from the whistle. I know, I can't believe it either. But he's doing this thing where he maintains that he's a better announcer than Styles and every so often spits play by play into the ringside camera. I found it amusing. Also, he gets bumped into and Styles says, "Hopefully next time our cameraman bumps into Bill Alfonso he'll be driving a production van." I popped. Goddamn that whistle, though. That's turn off the TV heat right there.

Johnny Smith vs. Taz (ECW 9/14/1996) It's time for Johnny Smith on the WWE Network Gaiden! Also we're going back in time because I thought this happened in 1999. When we last saw Johnny in ECW, he was beating Louie Spicolli while Joey Styles told us friendly lies. This time the ring announcer gets the fibs started by telling us with a straight face that Taz weighs 248 pounds. I will say that both men are looking pretty jacked. Smith is just one of those guys where no matter how swole up he gets, he still looks like a CPA This starts out pretty good until it goes all ECW-ish. They do some silly mirror spot mat wrestling, then they do a little nifty mat wrestling, and then Taz starts acting like a dick and they slap each other. I liked this part - they were doing character work rather than moves, and I was getting involved. But then Taz started throwing Tazplexes (isn't it weird when someone pronounces it "Taz-play"?) and Smith gave up on transitions. They do some moves and stuff - Smith steals that dumb Kobashi thing where he whips the guy but holds onto his arm and knees him - until Taz sinks in the Tazmission (which is short for "Tasmanian devil submission"). Credit goes to Joey Styles, who's a bit strident for my taste but does great work in covering up faults in this match. For example: "We don't know how badly that shoulder is injured. He's hiding it rather well." That's when Smith isn't bothering to sell his Tazplexed shoulder. Also, Smith slips on his kip-up, and Styles is right there to tell us it's because of his shoulder. Nice save, Joey! Taz gets on the mic and says some swears and some almost nice things about Johnny, and they shake hands. Johnny leaves so they can start yelling about Sabu. And that's that. BUT WAIT! Back in the laundry room (didn't they film these Styles segments in someone's basement? Am I remembering that right?), Styles informs that Taz Tazplexed Smith's AC joint out of place. Smith missed an All Japan tour and a lot of money, and he wants revenge. This Saturday! The ECW Arena! And let's not forget that Johnny Smith trained in Stu Hart's basement (as opposed to this basement), and he wants a submission match! It's even money, folks! This had some potential. I wish they'd held off on the big moves for a few more minutes, and I wish that Bill Alfonso had found another line of work. Something where I'm not in earshot.

Johnny Smith/The Lacrosse vs. Johnny Ace/Maunakea Mossman (AJPW 9/6/1997) This is the first recorded pairing of the legendary Smith/Hawkfield team, but it's before Jim Steele was transported into the virtual world to become a video game character. Too bad they never paid that off with Johnny Smith/Wolf Hawkfield vs. Johnny Ace/Noob Saibot or something. This match confirmed by hunch: Johnny Smith got real good in 1997. He's adapting to the style, doing a bunch of the cute sequences that are becoming more common in All Japan. He's showing some confidence and fire, and he's getting weirdly huge reactions. I was not expecting this, but he's easily the most popular guy in this match. I'm all turned around on the Ace/Smith comparison. Ace was better in 1995, but now I'm thinking Smith should have gotten the push Ace got in 1998. Smith giving a valiant but doomed effort in a Triple Crown match against Misawa would have gone over pretty big. But the tall guy gets the push, and he gets the win here after a cute sequence results in a cobra clutch suplex. This is another good one. A surprising amount of heat, lots of hot moves and reversals, lots of kickouts. It's what you want from an AJPW tag match, even without any of the people you expect to give it to you. I bag on Virtua Fighter Wolf Hawkfield a lot, but he's been in an awful lot of good matches. The sad thing is that this is it for the All Japan we all know and love. I covered the rest of 1997 and all of 1998 back when I was skipping around, and everything I've got from '99 is in the States. We didn't see a lot of Misawa and Kobashi (I didn't realize how often AJPW filled out their cards with all-foreigner matches), but we'll be seeing none of them from here on. Johnny's on a hot streak. Can he continue it against the likes of Yoji Anjo and the Cedman?

Johnny Smith/Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Jun Akiyama/Hiroshi Hase (AJPW 7/25/1997) We enter All Japan's slightly weird phase. Hase is here, in what I guess is the first time someone switched between New Japan and All Japan since Choshu. Jinsei Shinzaki, an indy wrestler consumed by his gimmick, makes his debut. Pretty soon Hayabusa will follow, along with a number of other indy degenerates that they need to fill out the Tokyo Dome card. They never let these new guys win much, but they bring a lot to the table. Hase and Smith do some actual mat wrestling - Smith's busting out stuff he hasn't used since he was John Savage from the Isle of Man. Hase also supplies some heat. He trash-talks Johnny a couple times and plays to the crowd, which seemed weirdly out of place in this environment. It works, as by the end of the this Budokan is totally on board with this match. It must be an educated crowd; they know enough about Shinzaki that a chunk of the match is built around his silly rope-walking spot - it's over like it's a damn Tiger Driver. When he finally hits Akiyama with the full double-length rope walk chop, it gets a big reaction. (NB: When I say it's silly, I do not mean that it's not rad. I love this gimmick.) Shinzaki's not just there to test your suspension of disbelief. He's also good at getting beaten up. He takes a huge bump off the apron and flips over the timekeeper's table. Terrifying. Hase and Akiyama work on his gut for a while, and when he does his Vader bomb thing only for Akiyama to get his knees up, the way he drops himself belly-first looks brutal. He's also there to crack up his tag partner. Hase gets Shinzaki in the giant swing, and Jinsei prays the whole time while Smith laughs in the background. We come to Johnny, and he really brings it this time out. He's very good and very popular. He's won over the Budokan crowd. They explode for his dropkick/kip-up/arm pump and cheer on all his comebacks. He works really well with both of these guys - he and Akiyama work one hell of a sequence as we head to the finish. No win for Johnny, though. Hase and Akiyama do a nifty simultaneous uranage/exploder bit, and then Hase puts Smith away with the Northern Lights. This was a hell of a lot of fun.

I'll be damned. I can't find any footage, but he was in the 1994 tag league. I would pay upwards of five American dollars to see Dory Funk Jr. and Johnny Smith vs. The Eagle and The Falcon.

Man, I can't even remember that Jackie Fulton is George Hines. We had The Tornado a few matches up. That's Richard Slinger. I think that covers all the occasionally-masked foreigners.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith/Takao Omori vs. Steve Williams/Gary Albright/The Lacrosse (AJPW 7/20/1997) Lacrosse is Wolf Hawkfield. Imagine being called "The Lacrosse" and having that be only your second dumbest name. Steve Williams is the star this time. He briefly knocks Hansen out with a punch, then trash talks Omori and starts raking Stan's eyes. This gives Omori - who has done nothing memorable in any of these matches up to this point - a chance to come in a rescue his boss by raking Williams' eyes and then dropkicking him. Smith goes to work on him, and the contrast with Kawada is stark. Williams is selling his arm so hard Johnny doesn't even get to finish his standard set of moves. He puts on the leggy armlock (I don't know), and Doc is writhing around trying to get out of it. Eventually Williams hits this awesome backdrop on Smith. It was one of those Albright-type suplexes where the guy is trying like hell to get out of it, waving his arms around and stuff, and it looks all the better for its sloppiness. Doc pins Smith and then reaches out of the ring to try to slap Hansen, who responds with a bullrope swing. Man, these guys are great. Everything looks like a struggle, they're grunting and yelling all the time, and they're always working. None of the other four guys was bad or anything, but they got overshadowed real hard in this one.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Takao Omori (AJPW 6/29/1997) If you asked me before I started this who my favorite wrestler was, I probably would have said Kawada (I have my Tenryu days, as I'm sure we all do). I was looking forward to his appearances in the Johnny Smith Project, but he's done nothing but let me down. We saw him as the second-best guy in the Footloose in a listless match against the British Bruisers. Even worse was his completely uninterested performance on the opening night of the 1995 Carnival. Let's see how enthusiastic he is about eating a lariat and losing halfway through a lame-looking Korakuen show! The answer is not very, and this match is not any good until the finish because of it. I've decided that Johnny Smith isn't a great mat worker - he has a few nifty grappling spots, but he's not generally smooth or creative. That's not the real problem here, though. The real problem is that Kawada cannot be bothered to care when someone's wrestling on him. He doesn't try to get out, doesn't try to reverse anything, and doesn't even look like it's bothering him. He just sits there until the other guy gives up and moves on to something else. It's like he's sulking. So I was thinking to myself, "Wait a minute, does Kawada suck? Was Lance Storm right?" when all of a sudden he does the best leg sell I've ever seen in my life. He tries to backdrop Smith but fails, tags in Omori, and slumps in the corner looking like he's in real pain. With the team leader hobbled, it doesn't take long for Hansen to lariat both of them and win. It was a great visual - they were both just lying there lariated. No chance. Smith didn't even bother to get in the ring. To sum up, Kawada did two things well: He hit/kicked dudes really hard, and he sold his leg well. But it's not enough. The bulk of this match was not at all compelling, and that's on Kawada not bothering to pro wrestle very much. Also, as good as his selling was, it was kind of dumb. Hansen and Smith put in lots of work on his right arm, and he decides "Oh no my leg don't work no more!" after a kick. Why not do the arm? Putting this little effort while near-50-year-old Stan Hansen is on the other side of the ring working as hard as he can is pretty embarrassing.

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Gary Albright/Takao Omori (AJPW 4/19/1997) Most of this is Smith vs. Albright, and they work well together. Johnny outwrestles him, hits him with a German, and pops Hansen in the face to clear the way for a top rope elbow drop. That may be enough to pin Maunakea Mossman, but Albright's a tougher customer. Smith discovers this the hard way as Albright reverses out of another German attempt and hits a much better German suplex of his own. Goddamn, Albright had one trick, but it was a good one. Hansen and Williams once again do the thing where they go outside and fight while the other four guys finish up. Albright ducks an enzuigiri, hoists Smith up by his trunks, and sends him straight to Hell with a dragon suplex. I repeat: Goddamn. Unfortunately, the ref calls it like a shoot and waves off the pin since Johnny's leg is under the rope. So Gary has to drag him in and pin him, which makes the finish kind of flat. Why in the hell did we only get three and a half minutes of this match? It was amazing. Everything about it was perfect until the finish. It used Gary Albright exactly right and made him look like an unstoppable monster; Hansen once again looked like the best wrestler that ever lived, which he may well be; Smith gets some shine here, and this one of your pro-Johnny crowds. Three and a half minutes! I guess we needed the airtime for that dumbass three-way Champion Carnival final.

Johnny Ace/The Tornado vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Yuhi Sano (AJPW 3/30/1997) A puzzling match. Sano has followed the Kodo Fuyuki career path: Quitting a major promotion, bouncing around the indies, and changing his name every so often. He's probably most famous as Naoki, the guy who feuded with Liger, but you may know him as Takuma Sano from NOAH. He's Yuhi here. I don't know. The puzzling thing is that he stomps around this match like a little tiny Bruiser Brody in kickpads, taking all the offense, not letting anyone else do anything, and winning. He kicks the hell out of Smith, then he and Tornado botch some stuff, and then Fuchi comes in and pins Tornado. I'm just not sure A. Who the hell he thinks he is, and B. Who the hell anyone else thinks he is. He worked two (2) All Japan matches in 1997. There was this one and another one in two weeks. He won both of them, and this one was on TV. I don't get it - was he considered an attraction? At this point his MMA record was 0-0 as opposed to the 0-4 it would wind up being, so I guess he could still act like a juiced-up little tough guy, but the whole scenario seems really out of character for All Japan. Letting a bad shoot fighter beat up your guys is more of an Inoki thing.

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Kenta Kobashi/Takao Omori/Maunakea Mossman (AJPW 7/9/1996) It's funny how Williams and Ace work as a team in these things while ignoring Smith. They do some double teams, no Smith. They clear the decks to prepare for a pinfall attempt, but Johnny's left behind. They even win this with a tag team finish - a doomsday device on Mossman - while Smith isn't doing any more in the match than I am. They spend a lot of team beating up on Mossman, which isn't a bad decision. He doesn't impress when he's on offense (other than a second rope moonsault that doesn't seem to have become part of the repertoire); and Williams and Ace are better. In particular, Ace pops Mossman in the mouth with a dropkick in the corner that's just brutal. He also boots dudes in the face and is generally clumsy and vicious. I had no idea he was so good. Maybe Dr. Death brings it out of him. Kobashi does his goofy Kobashi stuff, while Omori makes no impression at all. Smith doesn't either, aside from his being noticeably jacked. I've never seen him this lumpy, even in the anabolic environment of Stampede. This was fine, although it suffered from Kobashi's team having two guys who basically weren't allowed to do anything to Ace or Williams. These things are better when Hansen's involved, but he was busy teaming with Baba and Eigen in the old man comedy match.

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Patriot/Maunakea Mossman (AJPW 7/24/1996) There's a hidden feud going throughout these AJPW cards in the 90s - Hansen & Co. vs. Williams & Co. Williams always has Ace with him, but other than that the personnel is fluid. It's always great. Hansen and Williams make it a point to wale on each other, which is great wrestling and always gets a pop. In this case, that's pretty much all they do. They wind up going outside and doing their own thing while the other four guys have a match. Both the brawl and the match are good. We get an exciting finishing sequence, and Johnny Smith pins Mossman after a top rope elbow and looks pretty excited. Smith won one! I'm excited too. in the aftermath, there's bad blood between Ace and Patriot. Hansen seems disgusted with his team - we get a shot of him just heading for the door without getting back in the ring. No one wants to celebrate with Smith. Did Williams and Ace actually dislike him or something? We've had two matches with this lineup, and in both cases they want nothing to do with him after the bell rings. I'm proud of you, Johnny, even if no one else is.

Johnny Smith/Rob Van Dam vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 11/18/1995) They love giving Johnny weird partners for tournaments. He gets RVD for this year's tag league (they wind up with 2 points). Last year he got Dory Funk (2 points). They put him with Yoji Anjo in 2001 (3 points!). There was also the All Asia tag league with Tommy Dreamer. Anyway, this is a nifty five minutes. Smith and Misawa work really well together, and Johnny is as over as he ever gets in Korakuen. There a biggish pop for his dropkick/kip-up, which is how you judge Johnny Smith's popularity. Van Dam is there mainly to get his ass kicked, and does he ever. I figured it was over when Kobashi blocked a split-legged moonsault and clotheslined the hell out of him, but there was another solid minute of punishment coming. He gets backdropped, frog splashed, and finally pinned with a Tiger Driver (while Kobashi nearly simultaneously powerbombs Smith) for a weirdly flat finish. No opening night RWTL upset for Johnny Smith this time. Give it two years.

Johnny Ace/The Patriot/Johnny Smith vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat/Mike Anthony (AJPW 10/25/1995) We join in progress to see Kroffat lightening the mood. He does a perfect flip out of a bodydrop to land on his feet; Ace offers a hand, but Kroffat does the old fake out where you slick back your hair. Ace takes the initiative, hits a sunset flip, and shows everyone Kroffat's ass. It's a full moon in the Budokan tonight. Johnny Smith has downgraded his gear. He had been wearing the Union Jack trunks and red tights, and it really made him stand out. It coordinated so well whenever he was in there with Kikuchi or the Patriot. Now he's just got these lame light blue trunks. It's like he got demoted to Young Lion. Whoever put this television program together absolutely does not care about Johnny Smith. He does his dropkick into a kip-up and then clotheslines someone - the camera's looking at something else. He suplexes Anthony off the top rope, but we cut to an action-free shot of Furnas prone on the outside. I'm pretty sure this isn't the same Mike Anthony from Van Halen, although they do have something in common: Neither man is actually named Michael Anthony, and in both cases the real name they're not using is Slavic. The wrestler is Lozansky, and the bass player is Sobolewski. I didn't know anything about Anthony. I looked him up and I still don't. He was a little guy, and he threw some effectively awkward kicks. We only get five minutes of this, so no one but Kroffat really gets to show off. Ace pins Anthony with a Doctor Bomb, which I didn't know he did. Later in the evening, the fans got that awesome Kawada vs. Albright match and Misawa vs. Kobashi. These Budokan cards were no joke.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Chris Youngblood/Mark Youngblood (AJPW 7/24/1995) The Youngbloods were in All Japan on and off for five years, but I've never seen a match. I'm not even sure I'd heard of them. I think I saw their dad once. I kinda liked them. They were all about cohesion: Matching outfits and double teams, some of them goofy. Such as when one Youngblood picked up the other one from behind so Johnny Smith could bounce off his boots and then atomic dropped his brother onto a supine Smith. This is the last time we're going to see Smith and Hansen as a two man team, and it's too bad. Not only are they starting to gel, but there's not much better than watching Hansen put dudes through the ringer. He really lays into the Youngbloods here, they give it right back to him, and I'm happy as a clam. I know it's not an original observation that Stan Hansen is great, but I could watch 40-something Stan go full tilt in ten minute tag matches forever. Hansen matches often have another great feature: Cool finishing sequences built around the lariat. Here he yells so we know he's going for it. He whips a Youngblood into the ropes, but his brother catches him, and they give Stan a double kick to the face. The legal Youngblood presses the advantage and charges only to run into the lariat. AJPW midcards are turning out to be much better than I assumed they were. I gather that the quality dips as the 90s wear on, but they're looking pretty rad here in 1995.

Johnny Ace/Doug Furnas/Johnny Smith vs Giant Baba/Stan Hansen/Tamon Honda (AJPW 7/22/1995) They fired up the random team generator, so we get the long-awaited face-off between Johnny Smith and Giant Baba. We get it twice, in fact, and neither time does it go well for Johnny. He takes the worst DDT I've ever seen and gets his coconut crushed twice. I didn't think much of it, but the crowd goes nuts for Baba's every halting, pained action. It's the Giant Baba in the 90s Experience. I liked watching Hansen carry this team, which consisted of him and two people who are capable of nothing. He keeps things moving, keeps everyone on the same page, and makes this a really enjoyable match. Is Hansen an underrated tag team wrestler? I don't remember seeing it prominent among his many good attributes, but he always impresses when he's part of a team. Rough times for Smith in this match. In addition to getting Baba'd, he tries something from the top rope only for Hansen to stop him. Smith falls off the turnbuckle and lands right on his face. This did not look like a planned bump, and Hansen really has to drag him out of the ring. If he was selling, he was doing a hell of a job. Smith also takes the pin, and I know it's a stupid thing to care about, but I don't like seeing him get pinned by Tamon Goddamn Honda. Honda was bad and looked like he knew it - he came off like he was too ashamed to look anyone in the eye. The German suplex he polished Johnny off with wasn't even any good. The bridge was bad, and his feet were splayed all over the place. Regardless, I dug this. These random midcard All Japan matches have been a lot of fun.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Johnny Ace/The Patriot (AJPW 6/30/1995) Stan Hansen is a good partner. He's always yelling encouragement and instructions to his teammate - we open this match with him cheering on Johnny Smith, whose head is in a lock - and when he tags out, he makes sure the incoming wrestler has something to do. It's very clear in this case, where he starts working on The Patriot's arm just before he lets Johnny in, no doubt knowing that arm work is something Smith is good at and that it would be a good thing with which to fill the body of this match. He's a max effort kind of guy, even here in his mid-40s, and he gets across that he wants to win. I (kayfabe) feel bad for him that he's been tagging with Johnny Smith lately, which means he never wins. But we all know that Stan Hansen is a great wrestler. What about Johnny Ace? It's funny - I'm familiar with Johnny Ace. He took the fall in the first All Japan match I ever saw. I saw him lose a Triple Crown match. But since I've started this thing, the inescapable conclusion is that Johnny Ace is rad. He throws himself full force into everything he does, whether it's his awkward terrible mule kick or a boot to his own face. He's barely in this match, but when he is in he and Hansen hit each other really, really hard, and it's the best thing about it. My current theory is that maybe he started slowing down by 1997 and no longer had that explosiveness, which would explain why I didn't think anything of him. We'll see - there's a lot of Laurinaitis coming up. Meanwhile, The Patriot might be the rich man's Wolf Hawkfield. He's big, and he looks like a million star-spangled bucks, but his work isn't memorable. This was only eight or nine minutes, though, so you don't want to rely too much on it. I feel like Smith is coming into his own. The crowd is starting to like him - he gets a big underdog spot where he takes out both opponents, and they're right there with him. He does cool arm stuff to Patriot and a lovely fisherman suplex to Ace. Maybe pretty soon he wont be eating the pin every time.

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat (AJPW 1/2/1995) Not a whole lot to this one. Hansen runs over the Can-Ams like they're a couple of AWA title belts, and Smith wrestles them. It's got that unrehearsed character, which I'm thinking we can attribute to Hansen (Hansen, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!), but it doesn't amount to much this time out. It is the first night of the tour; maybe everyone's rusty. Kroffat manages to get Smith alone and pins him abruptly with a Tiger Driver. It's kind of odd to see a midcarder doing the same finisher as the top guy - and it's not like it's a generic move like a clothesline or whatever. I'm guessing - and a guess is all it is - that Misawa did it first. Pretty ballsy to borrow that one. This is the tour that infamously includes Tommy Dreamer. They were running a tournament for the vacant All Asia belts, and Dreamer and Smith were a team in it. They didn't do well. And speaking of unusual tag partners, in the recently concluded 1994 tag league, they teamed Smith up with Dory Funk Jr. They didn't do well either.

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat (AJPW 1/9/1995) What a lineup! "Hey, we need another match for this card. Any ideas?" "Make all the white guys fight!" And fight they do. This is twelve minutes packed full of cool stuff. Williams and Hansen start out, which the crowd is immediately hot for. They hit each really hard. Smith reverses out of a piledriver on the floor only for Kroffat to clothesline from off the apron. Later Smith does the same thing to Kroffat. Kroffat hits Williams with two kicks, but Williams ducks one and socks him in the jaw. I'm not the biggest Dr. Death fan, but he has his moments. The moments where he punches a guy in the face. This is pre-haircut Johnny Ace, and my goodness. It's so luscious and buttery. I bet he cut it because the maintenance was just too much. I'm thinking 100 brushes every day, egg whites, the whole thing. Williams holds Kroffat up, and Ace jumps above Williams' head to hit a dropkick. Ace has Kroffat in an abdominal stretch (a really good one); Furnas comes in for the save, but Ace sees it coming and blasts him in the face with a boot. I really liked that this match felt unrehearsed. They were clearly playing it by ear, and these guys are all so great that it worked. It wasn't always smooth, but it shouldn't have been. It was the opposite of a Private Party match. When the end comes, though, they do start telling a story. The story is called "Keep Johnny Smith Away from Stan Hansen's Arm." Hansen tries to lariat Smith, but Williams hops up onto the apron and stops him. Hansen whips Smith into the ropes, but Ace trips his own partner to avoid the lariat. Hansen tries for a powerbomb only for Williams to clothesline him. Finally, Smith tries to fight back, but Hansen blocks an elbow and lariats Smith into bolivian. Not much team spirit in the aftermath. Hansen leaves on his own; Furnas and Kroffat come well behind with their arms around each other. Williams gets on the second rope and does a personal action, and then he and Ace congratulate each other like they didn't just lose. They should be attending to their partner and looking chagrined. This was great, and it's a testament to the strength of the roster at this point. They just rolled this match out there without using a single native, and it delivered both in terms of quality and fan reaction. We are more or less at the halfway point and surrounded by what's basically his competition, so it's a good time for a Johnny Smith Status Report. Johnny Smith Status: Eh. The question going in was: Who is the true Johnny Smith, the one I remember from that Misawa/Akiyama tag in 1997, or the one everyone else doesn't remember at all? It's starting to look like the latter. Consider this match: Six guys in it, and he's the sixth best one. I thought that surely Johnny Ace got pushed when Smith didn't just because he was tall. That's not the case - Johnny Ace is turning out to be completely awesome, while Smith is turning out to be completely fine. He's definitely not a bad wrestler. He doesn't screw things up or injure people or do stupid stuff all the time. But he stands out from the crowd so seldom, and his work is generally not as stellar as it looked that one time. I was expecting lots of tricky English stuff, which we know he's capable of. The arm-wringers and whatnot are there from time to time, but they're overwhelmed by stomps and elbows and unremarkable power stuff. I do think it's going to get better. Based on my skipping around, Smith seems to hit his peak in the late 1990s, and we're in the middle of a long stretch of midcard All Japan stretching from '95 to '97. The competition's good, the fans are starting to respond to his kip-ups, and things are looking up. Even if Smith isn't any good in this stuff, there's enough Hansen and Misawa and Kroffat to make up for it.

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Jun Akiyama/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (AJPW 7/29/1993) It's the very next day, the end of the tour at Budokan. Smith does pretty much the same routine with Akiyama that he did yesterday with Asako, but this is tougher competition for our boys than yesterday's rookie/jobber team. The crowd, which is mostly sitting on its hands, is pretty hot for Kikuchi. They seem to really be looking forward to Dynamite beating him up, but it's not as one-sided as I expected as Kikuchi gets a number of fiery comebacks. Dynamite looks bad, and that's even with this being a perfect situation for him. He has Smith to do most of the teamwork, and he's got Kikuchi to do the opponentwork. But his body is sufficiently shot that none of it looks good. His pain is obvious even when he's just walking across the apron to cut off Kikuchi's attempt at a top rope maneuver. Akiyama gets the win, pinning Smith with a German suplex. This was fine. I like that Smith sold the hell out of that German - I wish you could still win matches with that move. This is it for Dynamite. It seems he came in for the last two days of the tour and never wrestled for All Japan again. I was impressed with how good he still was back in 1991, but at this point it's clear that he's done. So we prepare to fast forward a couple years and watch a bereft Johnny Smith team with pretty much every foreigner that ever wrestled for All Japan in the 90s. It's not like he won a whole lot of matches with his countryman. We'll see if he does better with Rob Van Dam and the Patriot.