[1999-06-09-AJPW-Super Power Series] Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Johnny Ace & Mike Barton

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. Bart Gunn is now in the WWF as Mike Barton. Yeah, Jim Ross never had a problem with him or anything. They use his knockout punch for drama in the match, which is a great thing. He does look more than a little out of his league though. Akiyama pulls a Misawa and drags Kobashi closer to his corner so he can tag himself in, but he doesn't drag him far enough, proving that he's no Misawa. Action looks good but not great. They seemed to kind of overdo it with the nearfalls. Ace and Barton win the tag titles.

[soup23]

Action here looked pretty good but I can't believe that Ace and Barton won the belts here. Of all of the gaijin tag teams in All Japan lore, this feels pretty low on the totem poll.

[Tim Evans]

Ace looks pretty out of shape here. It's crazy that Gunn went from losing in a minute to Butterbean at Mania to tag team champion in All Japan 3 months later. Was he still under WWF contract?

[Zenjo]

The legendary Johnny Ace wins the tag straps again, this time as team leader. I remember Barton having a random excellent match against TenKoji in 2001. He was a mediocre gaijin otherwise.

[PeteF3]

Answering a question from two years ago: Gunn had been released in a post-WM purge along with Public Enemy, the Oddities, and some others. Barton looks out of place a few times but isn't offensive or anything, and I love how over his left hand is. Ace pins Akiyama after several near-falls and a million different Ace Crusher variations in what had to have been a pretty major upset. The foreigner well was drying up, so you have to give it the ol' college try with somebody, I guess. All in all a fun finishing stretch here.