[1987-06-08-AJPW] Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara vs Takashi Ishikawa & Hiroshi Wajima

[GOTNW]

Neat neat neat! Exactly what I had hoped for-Tenryu-Wajima is the biggest match-up, and they smartly tease it, and while they do so Ishikawa carries the workload, not only does he bust out awesome chops and knees, he even makes the sloppy middle kicks seemingly everyone in 80s All Japan did look great. Hara is just so on point here too-really bringing the violence, his Headbutts looked vicious here, and his chops and Lariats are just on another level, he's like a whole smashing into something. Wajima is hardly a super worker, but the crowd buys into him and he has solid offence, that's enough to reach greatness when everyone else is so good. Loved how he and Tenryu provoked each other, how they played mind games by tagging out, when they finally got their hands on each other it was exactly as rough as gritty as you'd expect, they were getting into these awesome positions that are really hard to explain, something between sumo and wrestling, just getting into each other's face, it ruled so much. I also loved the sequence where Wajima just dared Tenryu to chop him and after he'd failed to cut him down Tenryu just sweeped his leg. ****

[G. Badger]

Kudos for going through 1987 AJPW! Its a very Wajima - Ishikawa heavy year plus random NWA gaijin. Definitely going to check this match out based on your review. Hara is a total overlooked talent. BTW from what I've seen '87 AJ Dibiase is good stuff as well.