[1987-11-22-AJPW-Real World Tag League] Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara vs Tiger Mask & Shinichi Nakano

[fxnj]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMuMIHLXS1Y

 

Hell of a competitive squash here. You know coming in that Misawa and Nakano have no chance, and appropriately enough most of the match has them selling a rough beating from Tenry and Hara, only getting in enough offense to keep it interesting. I dug Nakano's performance in this as a sort of proto-Kikuchi, spending most of the match getting beat up but still insisting on getting into strike exchanges that you know he has no chance of winning. This is also the closest I've seen Tiger Mask look to the ace he would later become. In othermatches, he often sits in holds like he has no has no idea what to do. But here he wrestles exactly like you'd want a younger version of Misawa to be like, dishing out hard strikes, taking equally equally hard strikes, and hitting spectacular moves almost all cleanly. I say almost because he does seem to hurt his lower back later in the match attempting a bridged german suplex, but even that arguably adds to the drama of the match for how he has to tag out right when he gets some good momentum going. Good showcase overall for the lesser ranked team and great work also by Tenryu and Hara helping get their opponents over in defeat. ***3/4