Johnny Smith

[William Bologna]

Davey Boy Smith/Johnny Smith vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Samson Fuyuki (AJPW 5/13/1989)

It's nice to see the brothers reunited. The Smith boys were able to put aside their Stampede differences - I'm guessing they blamed it all on Dynamite and agreed to forget about the stick-whippings and accusations of egg-sucking - to unite against a common enemy, The Footloose! 

Man, I missed these guys. If ever there was a role Kawada was meant not to play, it's half of a babyface rock 'n' roll tag team. He's already as stoic as he got - maybe if you were sitting there in 1989 and didn't know what he'd become, it was less hilarious to see him in those teal and zebra tights.

And Fuyuki never should have left. He could go even years later when he was all fat and dissipated, and he brought a little bit of wildness. 1990s All Japan is the best thing ever, but that's not to say it wouldn't have been improved with some greasiness.

ANYWAY, this is just kind of there. Davey Boy is dinged up - I think his leg is bothering him - and he messes up repeatedly. Twice he goes for (I think) a spot where a Footloose reverses out of a suplex, but they just wind up falling down. In both cases, he recovers by doing a Northern Lights suplex, which I don't think I've ever seen him do before. Fuyuki does one as well - it's the superkick of 1989.

Neat finish. Davey Boy gorilla presses Johnny and throws him at Kawada, who rolls through and gets the pin.

That's two losses in two days for our boy. You better pick up the pace before they send you back to Canada, Johnny.

[William Bologna]

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Sumu Hara/Ron Richie (Stampede 6/24/1989)

Aw goddammit they sent him back to Canada.

I thought I was done with Stampede, but I forgot about this one. It is a breath of fresh air, though - the video quality didn't make me seasick, and Ed Whalen isn't there. Ross Hart is pretty bad, but his charming incompetence is a welcome change from Whalen's "this is the soundtrack of Hell" announcing style.

Hara is ahead of his time when it comes to instantly forgettable Japanese wrestlers. He's got billowy pants going into shooty-ass kickpads, and he throws those Mossman kicks everyone was doing. He'd fit right in on a WAR tape.

UPDATE: I looked it up, and he's Koki Kitahara! Holy crap I couldn't have been more right. Dude was forgettable on all kinda WAR tapes.

We're going to be seeing Smith and Dynamite working together a lot coming up here, and it doesn't look good for Johnny. You watch the two of them and realize almost instantly that Dynamite is much better. This is after back surgery and years of punishment, but he's just as crisp and vicious as he was beating the hell out of Fujinami in 1980. I don't know how he does it and why everyone else doesn't - his stuff just looks meaner than anyone else. It can't just be that was stiffing guys - plenty of people did that, but no one looked like Dynamite doing it.

This isn't quite a squash - Richie gets a hot tag after a weird transition where DK superplexes Hara but puts himself in enough of a daze for Hara to get away - but it's close. The British Bruisers get the win after a double headbutt off the second rope, which looked dumb, and then talk a bunch of trash about Davey Boy and Chris Benoit. Did you guys know Benoit stole Dynamite's wrestling boots? Right out of his bag.

[William Bologna]

Johnny Smith/Davey Boy Smith vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 5/17/1990)

There are big things happening in All Japan right now, and Johnny Smith is a challenger to the All Asia Tag Team titles and a bystander to history. Tenryu left in April to shill eyeglasses, start a couple promotions no one watched, and occasionally enliven Tatsumi Fujinami matches by stiffing him in the face. The response to this is to make Misawa a big deal: Three days ago he had Kawada take off his mask (he's still wearing Tiger Mask tights). After this defense, he and Kobashi vacate the All Asia tag titles because it's time to put away childish things.

Misawa actually forfeited this title twice: right after this and again in 1999 because All Japan's booking of its underneath titles was just unbelievably lazy.

I already spoiled the outcome of this match, and when you've read that you've read everything. It's not really interesting. Perfectly acceptable professional wrestling, but all four of these men have better things coming for them.

1990 doesn't sound old to me, but it is interesting to see that we haven't quite hit the famous All Japan style yet. The finish was abrupt - Kobashi powerbombs Johnny and Misawa frog splashes him for the win - and it came without the parade of kickouts and dramatic rescues that one expects. Also I've seen Misawa do that splash dozens of times, but I never imagined that he ever pinned anyone with it.

[William Bologna]

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala (AJPW 11/21/1990)

The move to All Japan has seen a definite increase in Johnny Smith's quality of opposition. We've seen Kawada, Misawa, and Kobashi, and now we get what I'm pretty sure the play-by-play guy called the "Black Power Combo." It's going to be a different kind of match.

The British Bruisers jump the BPC as they come to the ring, and Dynamite is actually the one who stabs first as he gets in some pokes on Abdullah. You can tell Johnny isn't a practiced hand at the this kind of thing - he reaches behind a table, picks up a non-folding chair, puts it back, then wanders off somewhere to find something better. He must have failed, because he comes back and grabs that chair again, which he and Dynamite use to hit Adbullah very gently. Abdullah is bleeding at 2:40, and that's including intros.

A. Butcher (it says that on his pants!) pokes Johnny in the throat and does his dance, but Smith turns the tables by monkey-flipping him. It actually went pretty well! I wouldn't have guessed Abdullah was capable.

Abdullah and Kimala are both wild men from Fake Africa, but their work is quite different. Kimala is a trained, mechanically conventional wrestler in spite of the gimmick, whereas with Abdullah it's always an adventure. He hits Smith with a neckbreaker that should not have been as difficult as he made it look; Kimala is much smoother.

The story of this match is that Abdullah keeps hitting Johnny Smith in the throat. This eventually gets his team win and two points (this is actually a tag league match), but not before Dynamite Kid bleeds all over the place.

This was kind of fun. All the tomfoolery was a nice change of pace after the pretty dry workratey matches we've had lately. I will say that I could have done without the long stretch of Abdullah standing motionless and digging his fingers into Dynamite's forehead.

You've come a long way since World of Sport, Johnny.

[William Bologna]

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Kenta Kobashi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (AJPW 4/6/1991)

The British Bruisers get a shot at the All Asia Tag Titles. That's not a big enough deal to make television, but fortunately an enterprising if somewhat twitchy fan is there to capture it.

This wound up being pretty good, and man was the crowd nuts for it. Dynamite was supposed to be washed up at this point, but I don't know. He didn't do much flying or bending at the waist, but he was still capable of bleeding and hitting, and those are more important anyway.

You miss his intensity when Johnny is in there, but Smith and Kikuchi work really well together. Also Kikuchi's tights are extremely cool, and the rising sun on his ass contrasts niftily with the Union Jacks on the asses of the Englishmen.

Kobashi does some stuff that he would later remove from the repertoire, and for good reason. He has Smith standing in the corner, and he climbs onto the second rope and DDTs him from there. Didn't work. He also hits Smith with the shortest distance moonsault I've ever seen. He went nearly straight up and down. Nothing wrong with that, just kind of odd.

Dynamite piledrives Kikuchi in a way that says "my back hurts and I don't give a shit about this guy anyway" and then headbutts him from the top to win the titles, even though Kikuchi wasn't actually one of the champs. It was Kobashi and Johnny Ace, but Ace was injured. Is Vince Russo booking this?

This was a hell of a card. In addition to this fine match, you had Jumbo vs. Kawada and Hansen vs. Misawa in Carnival matches. Gordy and Williams took on Furnas and Kroffat, which could have been good as long as the big guys didn't chinlock everyone to sleep. Plus Andre the Giant was there, and we got Dory and Terry Funk vs. Cactus Jack and . . . "Texas Terminator Hoss."

[William Bologna]

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Satoru Asako/Takao Omori (AJPW 7/28/1993)

It doesn't take long to see the differences in Kid's and Smith's approaches. Smith starts out with Asako, and they do a bunch of arm holds and flips out of holds and kip ups and stuff. Then Dynamite comes in and beats the hell out him.

The Bruisers are unanimous, however, when it comes to Takao Omori. Omori is less than a year in and looks like a gangly teenager. He's in the young lion role here, which means that they give him almost nothing, and most of the match is him being beaten upon.

It's odd to see Asako as the team's senior member, but he gets to do some neat, Yoshinari Ogawa-style tricky stuff to gain the occasional advantage.

But as he tags in Omori and we see the progress bar reaching its destination, we know what's coming. Dynamite drops his forehead on Omori, and the Brits are victorious.

[William Bologna]

Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith vs. Jun Akiyama/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (AJPW 7/29/1993)

It's the very next day, the end of the tour at Budokan. 

Smith does pretty much the same routine with Akiyama that he did yesterday with Asako, but this is tougher competition for our boys than yesterday's rookie/jobber team.

The crowd, which is mostly sitting on its hands, is pretty hot for Kikuchi. They seem to really be looking forward to Dynamite beating him up, but it's not as one-sided as I expected as Kikuchi gets a number of fiery comebacks.

Dynamite looks bad, and that's even with this being a perfect situation for him. He has Smith to do most of the teamwork, and he's got Kikuchi to do the opponentwork. But his body is sufficiently shot that none of it looks good. His pain is obvious even when he's just walking across the apron to cut off Kikuchi's attempt at a top rope maneuver.

Akiyama gets the win, pinning Smith with a German suplex. This was fine. I like that Smith sold the hell out of that German - I wish you could still win matches with that move.

This is it for Dynamite. It seems he came in for the last two days of the tour and never wrestled for All Japan again. I was impressed with how good he still was back in 1991, but at this point it's clear that he's done.

So we prepare to fast forward a couple years and watch a bereft Johnny Smith team with pretty much every foreigner that ever wrestled for All Japan in the 90s. It's not like he won a whole lot of matches with his countryman. We'll see if he does better with Rob Van Dam and the Patriot.

[William Bologna]

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat (AJPW 1/9/1995)

What a lineup! "Hey, we need another match for this card. Any ideas?" "Make all the white guys fight!"

And fight they do. This is twelve minutes packed full of cool stuff.

• Williams and Hansen start out, which the crowd is immediately hot for. They hit each really hard.
• Smith reverses out of a piledriver on the floor only for Kroffat to clothesline from off the apron. Later Smith does the same thing to Kroffat.
• Kroffat hits Williams with two kicks, but Williams ducks one and socks him in the jaw. I'm not the biggest Dr. Death fan, but he has his moments. The moments where he punches a guy in the face.
• This is pre-haircut Johnny Ace, and my goodness. It's so luscious and buttery. I bet he cut it because the maintenance was just too much. I'm thinking 100 brushes every day, egg whites, the whole thing.
• Williams holds Kroffat up, and Ace jumps above Williams' head to hit a dropkick.
• Ace has Kroffat in an abdominal stretch (a really good one); Furnas comes in for the save, but Ace sees it coming and blasts him in the face with a boot.

I really liked that this match felt unrehearsed. They were clearly playing it by ear, and these guys are all so great that it worked. It wasn't always smooth, but it shouldn't have been. It was the opposite of a Private Party match.

When the end comes, though, they do start telling a story. The story is called "Keep Johnny Smith Away from Stan Hansen's Arm." Hansen tries to lariat Smith, but Williams hops up onto the apron and stops him. Hansen whips Smith into the ropes, but Ace trips his own partner to avoid the lariat. Hansen tries for a powerbomb only for Williams to clothesline him. Finally, Smith tries to fight back, but Hansen blocks an elbow and lariats Smith into bolivian.

Not much team spirit in the aftermath. Hansen leaves on his own; Furnas and Kroffat come well behind with their arms around each other. Williams gets on the second rope and does a personal action, and then he and Ace congratulate each other like they didn't just lose. They should be attending to their partner and looking chagrined.

This was great, and it's a testament to the strength of the roster at this point. They just rolled this match out there without using a single native, and it delivered both in terms of quality and fan reaction.

We are more or less at the halfway point and surrounded by what's basically his competition, so it's a good time for a Johnny Smith Status Report.

Johnny Smith Status: Eh.

The question going in was: Who is the true Johnny Smith, the one I remember from that Misawa/Akiyama tag in 1997, or the one everyone else doesn't remember at all? It's starting to look like the latter.

Consider this match: Six guys in it, and he's the sixth best one. I thought that surely Johnny Ace got pushed when Smith didn't just because he was tall. That's not the case - Johnny Ace is turning out to be completely awesome, while Smith is turning out to be completely fine.

He's definitely not a bad wrestler. He doesn't screw things up or injure people or do stupid stuff all the time. But he stands out from the crowd so seldom, and his work is generally not as stellar as it looked that one time. I was expecting lots of tricky English stuff, which we know he's capable of. The arm-wringers and whatnot are there from time to time, but they're overwhelmed by stomps and elbows and unremarkable power stuff.

I do think it's going to get better. Based on my skipping around, Smith seems to hit his peak in the late 1990s, and we're in the middle of a long stretch of midcard All Japan stretching from '95 to '97. The competition's good, the fans are starting to respond to his kip-ups, and things are looking up. Even if Smith isn't any good in this stuff, there's enough Hansen and Misawa and Kroffat to make up for it.

[William Bologna]

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat (AJPW 1/2/1995)

Not a whole lot to this one. Hansen runs over the Can-Ams like they're a couple of AWA title belts, and Smith wrestles them. It's got that unrehearsed character, which I'm thinking we can attribute to Hansen (Hansen, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!), but it doesn't amount to much this time out. It is the first night of the tour; maybe everyone's rusty.

Kroffat manages to get Smith alone and pins him abruptly with a Tiger Driver. It's kind of odd to see a midcarder doing the same finisher as the top guy - and it's not like it's a generic move like a clothesline or whatever. I'm guessing - and a guess is all it is - that Misawa did it first. Pretty ballsy to borrow that one.

This is the tour that infamously includes Tommy Dreamer. They were running a tournament for the vacant All Asia belts, and Dreamer and Smith were a team in it. They didn't do well. And speaking of unusual tag partners, in the recently concluded 1994 tag league, they teamed Smith up with Dory Funk Jr. They didn't do well either.

[William Bologna]

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Johnny Ace/The Patriot (AJPW 6/30/1995)

Stan Hansen is a good partner. He's always yelling encouragement and instructions to his teammate - we open this match with him cheering on Johnny Smith, whose head is in a lock - and when he tags out, he makes sure the incoming wrestler has something to do.

It's very clear in this case, where he starts working on The Patriot's arm just before he lets Johnny in, no doubt knowing that arm work is something Smith is good at and that it would be a good thing with which to fill the body of this match.

He's a max effort kind of guy, even here in his mid-40s, and he gets across that he wants to win. I (kayfabe) feel bad for him that he's been tagging with Johnny Smith lately, which means he never wins.

But we all know that Stan Hansen is a great wrestler. What about Johnny Ace?

It's funny - I'm familiar with Johnny Ace. He took the fall in the first All Japan match I ever saw. I saw him lose a Triple Crown match.

But since I've started this thing, the inescapable conclusion is that Johnny Ace is rad. He throws himself full force into everything he does, whether it's his awkward terrible mule kick or a boot to his own face. He's barely in this match, but when he is in he and Hansen hit each other really, really hard, and it's the best thing about it.

My current theory is that maybe he started slowing down by 1997 and no longer had that explosiveness, which would explain why I didn't think anything of him. We'll see - there's a lot of Laurinaitis coming up.

Meanwhile, The Patriot might be the rich man's Wolf Hawkfield. He's big, and he looks like a million star-spangled bucks, but his work isn't memorable. This was only eight or nine minutes, though, so you don't want to rely too much on it.

I feel like Smith is coming into his own. The crowd is starting to like him - he gets a big underdog spot where he takes out both opponents, and they're right there with him. He does cool arm stuff to Patriot and a lovely fisherman suplex to Ace. Maybe pretty soon he wont be eating the pin every time.

[William Bologna]

Johnny Ace/Doug Furnas/Johnny Smith vs Giant Baba/Stan Hansen/Tamon Honda (AJPW 7/22/1995)

They fired up the random team generator, so we get the long-awaited face-off between Johnny Smith and Giant Baba. We get it twice, in fact, and neither time does it go well for Johnny. He takes the worst DDT I've ever seen and gets his coconut crushed twice. I didn't think much of it, but the crowd goes nuts for Baba's every halting, pained action. It's the Giant Baba in the 90s Experience.

I liked watching Hansen carry this team, which consisted of him and two people who are capable of nothing. He keeps things moving, keeps everyone on the same page, and makes this a really enjoyable match. Is Hansen an underrated tag team wrestler? I don't remember seeing it prominent among his many good attributes, but he always impresses when he's part of a team.

Rough times for Smith in this match. In addition to getting Baba'd, he tries something from the top rope only for Hansen to stop him. Smith falls off the turnbuckle and lands right on his face. This did not look like a planned bump, and Hansen really has to drag him out of the ring. If he was selling, he was doing a hell of a job.

Smith also takes the pin, and I know it's a stupid thing to care about, but I don't like seeing him get pinned by Tamon Goddamn Honda. Honda was bad and looked like he knew it - he came off like he was too ashamed to look anyone in the eye. The German suplex he polished Johnny off with wasn't even any good. The bridge was bad, and his feet were splayed all over the place.

Regardless, I dug this. These random midcard All Japan matches have been a lot of fun.

[William Bologna]

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Chris Youngblood/Mark Youngblood (AJPW 7/24/1995)

The Youngbloods were in All Japan on and off for five years, but I've never seen a match. I'm not even sure I'd heard of them. I think I saw their dad once.

I kinda liked them. They were all about cohesion: Matching outfits and double teams, some of them goofy. Such as when one Youngblood picked up the other one from behind so Johnny Smith could bounce off his boots and then atomic dropped his brother onto a supine Smith.

This is the last time we're going to see Smith and Hansen as a two man team, and it's too bad. Not only are they starting to gel, but there's not much better than watching Hansen put dudes through the ringer. He really lays into the Youngbloods here, they give it right back to him, and I'm happy as a clam. I know it's not an original observation that Stan Hansen is great, but I could watch 40-something Stan go full tilt in ten minute tag matches forever.

Hansen matches often have another great feature: Cool finishing sequences built around the lariat. Here he yells so we know he's going for it. He whips a Youngblood into the ropes, but his brother catches him, and they give Stan a double kick to the face. The legal Youngblood presses the advantage and charges only to run into the lariat.

AJPW midcards are turning out to be much better than I assumed they were. I gather that the quality dips as the 90s wear on, but they're looking pretty rad here in 1995.

[William Bologna]

Johnny Ace/The Patriot/Johnny Smith vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat/Mike Anthony (AJPW 10/25/1995)

We join in progress to see Kroffat lightening the mood. He does a perfect flip out of a bodydrop to land on his feet; Ace offers a hand, but Kroffat does the old fake out where you slick back your hair. Ace takes the initiative, hits a sunset flip, and shows everyone Kroffat's ass. It's a full moon in the Budokan tonight.

Johnny Smith has downgraded his gear. He had been wearing the Union Jack trunks and red tights, and it really made him stand out. It coordinated so well whenever he was in there with Kikuchi or the Patriot. Now he's just got these lame light blue trunks. It's like he got demoted to Young Lion.

Whoever put this television program together absolutely does not care about Johnny Smith. He does his dropkick into a kip-up and then clotheslines someone - the camera's looking at something else. He suplexes Anthony off the top rope, but we cut to an action-free shot of Furnas prone on the outside.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the same Mike Anthony from Van Halen, although they do have something in common: Neither man is actually named Michael Anthony, and in both cases the real name they're not using is Slavic. The wrestler is Lozansky, and the bass player is Sobolewski.

I didn't know anything about Anthony. I looked him up and I still don't. He was a little guy, and he threw some effectively awkward kicks. We only get five minutes of this, so no one but Kroffat really gets to show off.

Ace pins Anthony with a Doctor Bomb, which I didn't know he did. Later in the evening, the fans got that awesome Kawada vs. Albright match and Misawa vs. Kobashi. These Budokan cards were no joke.

[William Bologna]

Johnny Smith/Rob Van Dam vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 11/18/1995)

They love giving Johnny weird partners for tournaments. He gets RVD for this year's tag league (they wind up with 2 points). Last year he got Dory Funk (2 points). They put him with Yoji Anjo in 2001 (3 points!). There was also the All Asia tag league with Tommy Dreamer.

Anyway, this is a nifty five minutes. Smith and Misawa work really well together, and Johnny is as over as he ever gets in Korakuen. There a biggish pop for his dropkick/kip-up, which is how you judge Johnny Smith's popularity.

Van Dam is there mainly to get his ass kicked, and does he ever. I figured it was over when Kobashi blocked a split-legged moonsault and clotheslined the hell out of him, but there was another solid minute of punishment coming. He gets backdropped, frog splashed, and finally pinned with a Tiger Driver (while Kobashi nearly simultaneously powerbombs Smith) for a weirdly flat finish.

No opening night RWTL upset for Johnny Smith this time. Give it two years.

[William Bologna]

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Patriot/Maunakea Mossman (AJPW 7/24/1996)

There's a hidden feud going throughout these AJPW cards in the 90s - Hansen & Co. vs. Williams & Co. Williams always has Ace with him, but other than that the personnel is fluid.

It's always great. Hansen and Williams make it a point to wale on each other, which is great wrestling and always gets a pop. In this case, that's pretty much all they do. They wind up going outside and doing their own thing while the other four guys have a match.

Both the brawl and the match are good. We get an exciting finishing sequence, and Johnny Smith pins Mossman after a top rope elbow and looks pretty excited. Smith won one! I'm excited too.

in the aftermath, there's bad blood between Ace and Patriot. Hansen seems disgusted with his team - we get a shot of him just heading for the door without getting back in the ring. No one wants to celebrate with Smith. Did Williams and Ace actually dislike him or something? We've had two matches with this lineup, and in both cases they want nothing to do with him after the bell rings. I'm proud of you, Johnny, even if no one else is.

[William Bologna]

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Kenta Kobashi/Takao Omori/Maunakea Mossman (AJPW 7/9/1996)

It's funny how Williams and Ace work as a team in these things while ignoring Smith. They do some double teams, no Smith. They clear the decks to prepare for a pinfall attempt, but Johnny's left behind. They even win this with a tag team finish - a doomsday device on Mossman - while Smith isn't doing any more in the match than I am.

They spend a lot of team beating up on Mossman, which isn't a bad decision. He doesn't impress when he's on offense (other than a second rope moonsault that doesn't seem to have become part of the repertoire); and Williams and Ace are better. In particular, Ace pops Mossman in the mouth with a dropkick in the corner that's just brutal. He also boots dudes in the face and is generally clumsy and vicious. I had no idea he was so good. Maybe Dr. Death brings it out of him.

Kobashi does his goofy Kobashi stuff, while Omori makes no impression at all. Smith doesn't either, aside from his being noticeably jacked. I've never seen him this lumpy, even in the anabolic environment of Stampede.

This was fine, although it suffered from Kobashi's team having two guys who basically weren't allowed to do anything to Ace or Williams. These things are better when Hansen's involved, but he was busy teaming with Baba and Eigen in the old man comedy match.

[William Bologna]

Johnny Ace/The Tornado vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Yuhi Sano (AJPW 3/30/1997)

A puzzling match. Sano has followed the Kodo Fuyuki career path: Quitting a major promotion, bouncing around the indies, and changing his name every so often. He's probably most famous as Naoki, the guy who feuded with Liger, but you may know him as Takuma Sano from NOAH. He's Yuhi here. I don't know.

The puzzling thing is that he stomps around this match like a little tiny Bruiser Brody in kickpads, taking all the offense, not letting anyone else do anything, and winning. He kicks the hell out of Smith, then he and Tornado botch some stuff, and then Fuchi comes in and pins Tornado.

I'm just not sure A. Who the hell he thinks he is, and B. Who the hell anyone else thinks he is. He worked two (2) All Japan matches in 1997. There was this one and another one in two weeks. He won both of them, and this one was on TV.

I don't get it - was he considered an attraction? At this point his MMA record was 0-0 as opposed to the 0-4 it would wind up being, so I guess he could still act like a juiced-up little tough guy, but the whole scenario seems really out of character for All Japan. Letting a bad shoot fighter beat up your guys is more of an Inoki thing.

[William Bologna]

Steve Williams/Johnny Ace/Johnny Smith vs. Stan Hansen/Gary Albright/Takao Omori (AJPW 4/19/1997)

Most of this is Smith vs. Albright, and they work well together. Johnny outwrestles him, hits him with a German, and pops Hansen in the face to clear the way for a top rope elbow drop.

That may be enough to pin Maunakea Mossman, but Albright's a tougher customer. Smith discovers this the hard way as Albright reverses out of another German attempt and hits a much better German suplex of his own. Goddamn, Albright had one trick, but it was a good one.

Hansen and Williams once again do the thing where they go outside and fight while the other four guys finish up. Albright ducks an enzuigiri, hoists Smith up by his trunks, and sends him straight to Hell with a dragon suplex. I repeat: Goddamn.

Unfortunately, the ref calls it like a shoot and waves off the pin since Johnny's leg is under the rope. So Gary has to drag him in and pin him, which makes the finish kind of flat.

Why in the hell did we only get three and a half minutes of this match? It was amazing. Everything about it was perfect until the finish. It used Gary Albright exactly right and made him look like an unstoppable monster; Hansen once again looked like the best wrestler that ever lived, which he may well be; Smith gets some shine here, and this one of your pro-Johnny crowds.

Three and a half minutes! I guess we needed the airtime for that dumbass three-way Champion Carnival final.

[William Bologna]

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Takao Omori (AJPW 6/29/1997)

If you asked me before I started this who my favorite wrestler was, I probably would have said Kawada (I have my Tenryu days, as I'm sure we all do). I was looking forward to his appearances in the Johnny Smith Project, but he's done nothing but let me down.

We saw him as the second-best guy in the Footloose in a listless match against the British Bruisers. Even worse was his completely uninterested performance on the opening night of the 1995 Carnival. Let's see how enthusiastic he is about eating a lariat and losing halfway through a lame-looking Korakuen show!

The answer is not very, and this match is not any good until the finish because of it. I've decided that Johnny Smith isn't a great mat worker - he has a few nifty grappling spots, but he's not generally smooth or creative. That's not the real problem here, though. The real problem is that Kawada cannot be bothered to care when someone's wrestling on him. He doesn't try to get out, doesn't try to reverse anything, and doesn't even look like it's bothering him. He just sits there until the other guy gives up and moves on to something else. It's like he's sulking.

So I was thinking to myself, "Wait a minute, does Kawada suck? Was Lance Storm right?" when all of a sudden he does the best leg sell I've ever seen in my life. He tries to backdrop Smith but fails, tags in Omori, and slumps in the corner looking like he's in real pain.

With the team leader hobbled, it doesn't take long for Hansen to lariat both of them and win. It was a great visual - they were both just lying there lariated. No chance. Smith didn't even bother to get in the ring.

To sum up, Kawada did two things well: He hit/kicked dudes really hard, and he sold his leg well. But it's not enough. The bulk of this match was not at all compelling, and that's on Kawada not bothering to pro wrestle very much. Also, as good as his selling was, it was kind of dumb. Hansen and Smith put in lots of work on his right arm, and he decides "Oh no my leg don't work no more!" after a kick. Why not do the arm?

Putting this little effort while near-50-year-old Stan Hansen is on the other side of the ring working as hard as he can is pretty embarrassing.

[William Bologna]

Stan Hansen/Johnny Smith/Takao Omori vs. Steve Williams/Gary Albright/The Lacrosse (AJPW 7/20/1997)

Lacrosse is Wolf Hawkfield. Imagine being called "The Lacrosse" and having that be only your second dumbest name.

Steve Williams is the star this time. He briefly knocks Hansen out with a punch, then trash talks Omori and starts raking Stan's eyes. This gives Omori - who has done nothing memorable in any of these matches up to this point - a chance to come in a rescue his boss by raking Williams' eyes and then dropkicking him.

Smith goes to work on him, and the contrast with Kawada is stark. Williams is selling his arm so hard Johnny doesn't even get to finish his standard set of moves. He puts on the leggy armlock (I don't know), and Doc is writhing around trying to get out of it.

Eventually Williams hits this awesome backdrop on Smith. It was one of those Albright-type suplexes where the guy is trying like hell to get out of it, waving his arms around and stuff, and it looks all the better for its sloppiness. Doc pins Smith and then reaches out of the ring to try to slap Hansen, who responds with a bullrope swing.

Man, these guys are great. Everything looks like a struggle, they're grunting and yelling all the time, and they're always working. None of the other four guys was bad or anything, but they got overshadowed real hard in this one.

[Robert S]

53 minutes ago, William Bologna said:

Lacrosse is Wolf Hawkfield. Imagine being called "The Lacrosse" and having that be only your second dumbest name.

I always have to look up who was The Eagle and who was The Lacrosse, somehow I always mix up the masked Jim Steele and Jackie Fulton gimmicks.

[NintendoLogic]

For those who aren't aware, Wolf Hawkfield is a character from the Virtua Fighter series of fighting games. They gave Jim Steele the gimmick to cross-promote the All Japan video game, which featured Hawkfield as a playable character.

[William Bologna]

3 hours ago, Robert S said:

I always have to look up who was The Eagle and who was The Lacrosse, somehow I always mix up the masked Jim Steele and Jackie Fulton gimmicks.

Man, I can't even remember that Jackie Fulton is George Hines.

We had The Tornado a few matches up. That's Richard Slinger. I think that covers all the occasionally-masked foreigners.

[Robert S]

2 minutes ago, William Bologna said:

Man, I can't even remember that Jackie Fulton is George Hines.

We had The Tornado a few matches up. That's Richard Slinger. I think that covers all the occasionally-masked foreigners.

Steve Armstrong wrestled a couple of tours as The Falcon. Considering that he was replacing The Patriot and was teaming with The Eagle, I would assume that we was masked as well.

[William Bologna]

15 minutes ago, Robert S said:

Steve Armstrong wrestled a couple of tours as The Falcon. Considering that he was replacing The Patriot and was teaming with The Eagle, I would assume that we was masked as well.

I'll be damned. I can't find any footage, but he was in the 1994 tag league. I would pay upwards of five American dollars to see Dory Funk Jr. and Johnny Smith vs. The Eagle and The Falcon.