Genichiro Tenryu

[KB8]

Tenryu was my number 2 in 2016 and I'd expect him to land there again in 2026. There's almost no chance he drops out the top 3 no matter what, and I guess there's always the chance he finishes at the very top. I feel like I've written stupid amounts of words about Tenryu on this board and elsewhere already, and at this point there's not really a whole lot to say about him that hasn't been said by SOMEONE. His longevity is amazing and he's the gold standard for cantankerous old bastards in pro wrestling. He's one of those wrestlers that I'll watch no matter the setting, the opponent, the type of match, and almost always find something to like about his performance. On the surface he doesn't feel like a versatility candidate, because Tenryu is pretty much always Tenryu in the same way Hansen is pretty much always Hansen, but he takes that show on the road in lots of different ways once he becomes fully-formed as a performer. He has the classic precursor to King's Road, he has the lumpy potato-throwing crowbar-fests in WAR, he was perfect at doing inter-promotional wrestling, he was a master of the big spectacle, he did wild barbed wire and tables garbage brawls in an Onita fed - he basically took the Tenryu Show everywhere in Japan from 1989 to 1999 and did it in singles, tags and multi-man matches, ruling in every single environment. As he got older (or EVEN MORE OLDER) in the 00s he leaned further into the grumpiness and brought a sense of hostility to every contest. You could put him in there with a Kawada, a Kobashi, a Kaz Hayashi or a Kazushi Miyamoto and his unquenchable thirst for punching you in the throat would inevitably bubble to the surface. There was nobody better at the random outburst of violence, where he'd either come into the ring unprompted and kick someone in the eye or throw a water bottle at their face from across the ring. He had good matches with every motherfucker in Japan and great ones with a lot of them. If I could only watch one wrestler for the rest of my life, I would pick Tenryu, so, you know, that probably counts for something. And I'm not even close to being on the same side of the fence as folk saying he doesn't have a litany of great matches. I would obviously caveat this by saying my idea of a great match is probably different from most peoples', but I could rattle off 40 that I'd call great without hesitation, a number of them being all-time top 100 level, and there are still a decent handful of his most highly pimped matches that I'm yet to see. He was the man. 

 

GENICHIRO TENRYU YOU SHOULD WATCH (or check the Complete & Accurate):

v Riki Choshu (JPW, 2/21/85)

w/Jumbo Tsuruta v Riki Choshu & Killer Khan (All Japan, 8/2/85)

w/Jumbo Tsuruta v Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu (All Japan, 1/28/86)

v Stan Hansen (All Japan, 3/27/88)

w/Toshiaki Kawada v Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy (All Japan, 12/16/88)

v Jumbo Tsuruta (All Japan, 6/5/89)

w/Stan Hansen v Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura (All Japan, 11/29/89)

w/Stan Hansen v Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu (All Japan, 12/6/89)

v Hulk Hogan (SWS, 12/12/91)

w/Masao Orihara v Koki Kitahara & Great Kabuki (WAR, 7/14/92)

v Ric Flair (WAR, 9/15/92)

w/Koki Kitahara v Shiro Koshinaka & Kengo Kimura (WAR, 10/23/92)

w/Takashi Ishikawa, Ashura Hara, Koki Kitahara & Ricky Fuyuki v Riki Choshu, Tatsumi Fujinami, Hiroshi Hase, Osamu Kido & Takayuki Iizuka (New Japan, 2/16/93)

w/Takashi Ishikawa v Shinya Hashimoto & Michiyoshi Ohara (New Japan, 6/14/93)

v Shinya Hashimoto (New Japan, 8/8/93)

w/Ashura Hara v Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto (WAR, 3/2/94)

v Nobuhiko Takada (UWFi, 9/11/96)

w/Nobutaka Araya v Kazuo Yamazaki & Takayuki Iizuka (WAR, 11/9/96)

v Shinya Hashimoto (New Japan, 8/1/98)

w/Hiroshi Ono, Ichiro Yaguchi & Shoji Nakamaki v Atsushi Onita, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Sambo Asako & Shigeo Okumura (No Rope Barbed Wire Street Fight Tornado Double Hell Match) (Onita Pro, 6/27/99)

v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 10/28/00)

w/Nobutaka Araya v Taiyo Kea & Kiyoshi Miyamoto (All Japan, 4/27/02) 

v Katsuyori Shibata (New Japan, 11/13/04)

w/Jun Akiyama v Kenta Kobashi & Akira Taue (NOAH, 9/18/05)

v Tiger Mask (Real Japan, 3/18/10)

[Ma Stump Puller]

One match that I feel personally gets overlooked is his Champion Carnival match with Hansen in 2000. Hansen is a week or so away from retiring formally and barely managed to get past Shinzaki for the first round, and Tenryu knows that and goes into here aiming to kill his momentum early. There's some brilliant tension between the pair as Hansen's put on the backburner for once against someone who's equally as dangerous as him, and he has to use every trick possible to stay in the running. It's a great example of Tenryu playing that stiff bastard as he's so vicious with his shots here, debilitate in how he works over Hansen's shoddy back for leverage, and how he's able to show that malice in small stuff, like aiming his strikes exactly for that area beyond all else or just in how he delays his chops slightly so he can aim for Hansen's throat better. Small details and callbacks to older material together (like they outright steal the infamous Tenryu/Hansen v Baba/Kimura opening but somehow dial it up even more extreme than before) really add to the whole deal. Workrate wise it wouldn't be anything special, but the occasion, the history, and that extreme violence just come together to a great little bout. 

That's always something I noticed: the guy is great at the small little details that you wouldn't really notice first viewing, from his facial expressions to how he sells fatigue over time and whatnot. It's impossible to not put him in the top 10 for all of the reasons already above and more. A insanely intelligent wrestler.

 

 

 

[Boss Rock]

It's definitely a good match. Fitting conclusion to their rivalry.

[club]

I’ve been watching a lot of Tenryu’s stuff in between All Japan runs (so the 90s basically) and what's really struck me is his adaptability. He matches up well with just about anyone. He’s able to vary his style depending on the style and status of his opponent whilst remaining ‘authentic Tenryu’.

Gnarly tags aside, he has good to great singles matches with Ashura Hara, George Takano, Tatsumi Fujinami, Nobutaka Araya, Hayabusa, Kensuke Sasaki, Tatsuo Nakano, Great Muta, Yoji Anjo, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Randy Savage, Koji Kitao, Nobuhiko Takada, Keiji Muto and Atsushi Onita.

[Makai Club #1]

There is not much more to say about Tenryu. He's not only able to project this amazing character but create compelling matches from it in any format, in any role. He's capable of being one of the best sympathetic sellers, just as well as being one of the most sadistic ass kickers. And he was able to keep up that consistent quality in his performances for nearly 20 years, with a not too bad pre-peak and post peak either. A career to envy. Top 5 candidate for me. 

[Mr JMML]

On 5/10/2023 at 1:43 AM, Makai Club #1 said:

There is not much more to say about Tenryu. He's not only able to project this amazing character but create compelling matches from it in any format, in any role. He's capable of being one of the best sympathetic sellers, just as well as being one of the most sadistic ass kickers. And he was able to keep up that consistent quality in his performances for nearly 20 years, with a not too bad pre-peak and post peak either. A career to envy. Top 5 candidate for me. 

There's no way Tenryu ends up outside the top 10 in 2026, he was great for 25 years, very few wrestlers can say that when Genichiro Tenryu is at his best he looks like the greatest wrestler in the world.