[1990-01-03-AJPW-New Year Giant Series] The Fantastics vs Toshiaki Kawada & Ricky Fuyuki

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[FLIK]

All Asia Tag Titles. Fun match, one of those ones that kind of slow burns and isn't very special at first, wasn't going darn when I saw it was JIP 7 mins in but they just keep building with the guys getting more & more agressive as time goes and by the end I was really into it. For some reason thought it was hilarious that the announcer miss-calls a a regular power bomb as Tiger Driver.

[PeteF3]

This had some pretty fun moments--the reversing tombstones, the stereo planchas, the fight on the floor, and Fulton's awesome punches--and a pretty hot finishing stretch. All that said, this was kind of formless, with some bizarre awkward moments like whatever the hell Rogers was going for when he somersaulted off the top. He worked an in-peril segment that was getting pretty hot until a few punches to the gut broke it all up. A mostly-dead crowd didn't really help either.

[jdw]

I'd recommended this as part of the end run of the Footloose, who folks with the 80s set would have seen a decent amount in elevating the All Asia tag title into a relevant title on TV. They don't really go out with a bang, but that's sometimes how it goes. It felt like there needed to be "something" of theirs on here to bridge between the 1988-89 period where they dominated the AA title with good matches and the coming 1990-93 period where the title churned out a pretty fair number of good/really good! matches.

 

John

[Loss]

Yeah, the crowd didn't react much to this, which is too bad. I thought this was a really fun match. Bobby Fulton, for whatever people normally say about him, was excellent here. I love his little match-within-the match with Kawada that starts with the handshake diss, continues with the attempts to stomp tag team partners behind the ref's back and so on. He's not as athletically gifted as Rogers, but he brought the most personality to this of the four. I love how upset he gets about Fuyuki bringing a chair into the match, and starting a slapfight with Fuyuki was great! In spite of all this, he's the first to extend a handshake at the end. What a quirky motherfucker, I love it! This is the kind of midcard, high-workrate match that I know the long-time AJ fans grew to miss as the decade wore on. They did quite a bit with the time they had.

[benj]

A good addition to a yearbook project with great spots here and there. Rogers top rope flip butt buster, Fulton's punches, the Rogers-Kawada tombstone reversal spot, and the nice chair shot by Fuyuki. Fun match.

[Kevin Ridge]

Yet to see the 80's AJPW set so went into this cold. Still really enjoyed this match though. Fantastics did a bunch of tag team moves. Kawada goes for a suplex at one point but one Fantastic saves the other and they hit Kawada with a well timed double drop kick. Rogers climbs to the top rope at one point and it almost seems like Fulton distracted him as he loses his balance off the top and does a hopeless somersault into the ring. The crowd's response to this is probably their most vocal moment. Later though Fulton and Rogers combine for a rocket launcher type splash where Rogers gets some pretty good distance. Fulton got a really good looking/sounding punch in on Kawada. We get some use of chairs and the increase in aggression favors Kawada & Fuyuki towards the end of match.

[soup23]

I think the comments so far have summed up this match pretty perfectly. On its on it is a fun match but nothing special but in the conceptual framework of Footloose and AJPW in the 1980's from the DVDVR set and what the undercards for AJPW would begin to mimic in the 1990's, this shows a good amount of depth. Not seeing a Kawada match from now until I finished the 1994 set, it is jarring to see how much he advanced in 4 years. The crowd was pretty dead but I thought the work on Rodgers was solid and Fulton gelled with Footloose better than I imagined he would.

[Cox]

What do people normally say about Bobby Fulton?

 

I enjoyed this, it was a fun little tag match. I first watched this last night while I was really tired and falling asleep, and half-remembered watching Tommy Rogers' somersault to nowhere and thinking, "Did I really just see that?" Good to know that yes, Tommy Rogers really did do some sort of somersault off the top rope for absolutely no reason. Enjoyed Kawada being a dick to the Fantastics and yet begrudgingly giving his respect to them at the end of the match. Fun stuff.

[JerryvonKramer]

Now this is interesting. Two different worlds colliding. I've seen a ton of Footloose (AJ set) and a ton of Fantastics (Mid South, NWA), I really rate Tommy Rogers as a worker, and Kawada left a good impression on the AJ set.

 

Rogers has lovely hair here. Fuyuki's face is basically exactly the same as Greg Valentine's only younger and Japanese.

 

Rogers's matwork is surprisingly smart and well worked here, not something I associate with him. A lot of blow-job babyface stuff in the early part of this match, double dropkicks and all that.

 

Love the clotheslines into a back suplex from the Fantastics, then a great assisted frogspalsh from the top rope from Rogers.

 

Kawada gives Rogers a really brutal kick to the head at one point. Nice.

 

Tombstone reveral fucking ruled. I like how Footloose turn up the violence. Nice snap suplex from Kawada. Knee from the top from Fulton looks nasty and the piledriver he follows it up with. Fallaway slam! Shades of Tatanka there! Kawada doesn't have many of his teeth does he.

 

Stare down between Fulton and Fuyuki is cool and I like how they stiff the crap out of each other. Hottag to Rogers and a powerslam. This is a good match. Double suplex from the Fantastics. Footloose catch them trying the frogsplash spot again.

 

Powerbomb! Shit. German suplex for the three!

 

Properly good match, at least **** for me.

[Loss]

  Cox said:

What do people normally say about Bobby Fulton?

The line on Fulton, deserved or not, has been that he brought down the Fantastics and that Tommy Rogers was way better. Athletically, Rogers was better, but I like Fulton's charisma and think he always put forth a really strong effort.

[JerryvonKramer]

Fulton vs. Robert Gibson would be an argument I'd like to see.

 

From what I've seen, Fulton brought more to the Fantastics than Gibson brought to the RnRs.

[Zenjo]

I got the sense that Tosh didn't want to be doing Junior stuff like this anymore.

 

The Fantastics had some spectacular offence but hadn't figured out how to properly utilise it in a Japanese setting. They used stretch moves as throwaway offence during the build for instance. Despite this problem I thought they were a well oiled unit and it was a decent contest. Shame the crowd sucked.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I dug this. It's strange seeing the Fantastics in Japan, but was a fun match that got better and better as it went along. I've been to funerals with more noise from the crowd than this.

[stunning_grover]

This was extremely good. Kawada & Fuyuki were the AJPW All Asia Tag Team Champions. They won that championship by defeating Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas in October 1989. Tommy Rogers was so athletic and he truly was an underrated worker. Bobby Fulton did a lot of good stuff too. It was not all about the Fantastics though, because Footloose gave a very good performance as well (even though it wasn’t the best Footloose performance ever). I liked the bumping and selling by everyone involved. I didn’t really mind the lack of crowd heat (although it would obviously have been nice if there was more response from the crowd). The Fantastics had a decent match with The British Bulldogs later that month.

[Laney]

I really enjoyed this match and it is my favorite on the set thus far. It came across to me like The Fantastics were the better team here as they were constantly going for the double team to stay in control, but Footloose were able to maintain the advantage the longer they kept it one-on-one in the ring. In the end Footloose was able to finally string some offense together as a team to pull off the win. Great match; not so great crowd.

[tylerj19]

I enjoyed this match. It wasn't something that blew me away, but it was nice enough that I wouldn't mind watching it again. This made me want to watch a little more of The Fantastics, though.

[Bix]

Good run to the finish but the bulk of this felt like an exhibition of literally all of The Fantastics' trademark spots.

[kingliam]

Kawada's tombstone was legitimate cringe moment. A fun match, which took a little while to get going, but definitely got me invested in it by the end.

[Smack2k]

NOthing to do with this match...but I find it funny that Kawada can be in both the non-toughest and the toughest sounding tag team matches during his career:

 

Fantastics vs. Footloose - Yeah, not tough sounding at all.....

 

Miracle Violence Connection vs. Holy Demon Army - Can't get any tougher or scarier than that!

[Zero]

I had a hard time getting into this. I agree with Bix on the run to the finish being fun though.

[bradhindsight]

I went into this one completely cold - except that Loss mentioned the Fantastics work in Japan on the PTBN Tag Summit pod so I had an inkling this would be enjoyable. I liked this a lot, I guess maybe because I haven't seen the DVDVR AJW set? These teams were fresh for me - loved a number of spots (the assist out of the suplex, the reverse tombstone, the planchas) and the general tag work (breaking pins, frequent tags).

 

Easy **** for me.

[bradhindsight]

  FLIK said:

All Asia Tag Titles. Fun match, one of those ones that kind of slow burns and isn't very special at first, wasn't going darn when I saw it was JIP 7 mins in but they just keep building with the guys getting more & more agressive as time goes and by the end I was really into it. For some reason thought it was hilarious that the announcer miss-calls a a regular power bomb as Tiger Driver.

I didn't catch this as JIP at all? Has the intros and the start of the match?

[garretta]

Nice to see the Tastics slowly morph from a babyface Southern team to a buttkicking All-Japan team during the course of the match. If I recall correctly, the All-Asia belts are the third most important tag title in All Japan, basically (as one poster has already said) the TV tag title. Being mostly a WWF watcher during this period, and knowing what constituted a tag team TV main event for Vince, this was a (welcome) case of culture shock. Can't wait to see more!

[PeteF3]

Technically yes, they were #3, but the first two had already been unified at this point, so in essence they were 2nd.