Jumbo Tsuruta vs Genichiro Tenryu (All Japan Pro Wrestling)

[SirEdger]

[KinchStalker]

The rivalry between Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu, a storyline which lasted on and off for nearly three years, is often hypercompressed into their iconic match on June 5, 1989. It’s easy to understand why this happens; people often watch 6/5/89 (and 12/16/88) as homework before the Misawa feud. But it’s a reductive treatment of one of the great All Japan feuds.

PROLOGUE: Early matches

There are a handful of Jumbo vs. Tenryu matches in the early years of the decade, before KakuRyu’s formation. Excluding a 1980 battle royal, the earliest one on tape is a 7/30/81 tag title match pitting Jumbo & Baba against Tenryu & Billy Robinson. Also of interest is an 11/30/81 RWTL match between B&J and Tenryu & Ashura Hara. As for singles matches, there were two. The first, a Champion Carnival match from 4/16/82, was a 30-minute draw, of which only 17 minutes aired. The second, another time-limit draw from 4/20/83, was untelevised. (This makes sense as, according to Kagehiro Osano’s 2020 Tsuruta biography, this match was a last-minute addition. Baba learned that television executives would attend the show to evaluate the program’s worthiness for primetime broadcast and punched up the card.)

Your mileage may vary with these matches, roughly proportionate to your feelings about early-80s Tenryu. None are great, but I am fond of the 7/30/81 and 4/16/82 matches.

1987

The rivalry proper starts in mid-1987, when Tenryu breaks up KakuRyu to reunite with Hara. The first match between the two is a June 11 tag, in which Jumbo enlists Tiger Mask II to face the core of what will be known as Revolution. These teams will have another match (broadcast JIP) in August, and I think both are solid, but they are the best of a weak crop.

The greatest flaw in the early part of this feud is the inconsistent quality of Tsuruta’s tag partners. One-off buildup tags with Takashi Ishikawa or Kabuki in Jumbo’s corner are one thing, but SIX of the Jumbo/Tenryu tags televised in the first sixteen months of the feud see him saddled with Hiroshi Wajima. Now, when I watched the television from this era in late 2020 I actually thought they worked around Wajima well enough for decent fare, but he prevented the material from soaring like it should have. (From my recollection, 7/26/88 was the best of this configuration.) It isn’t until Yoshiaki Yatsu joins forces with Jumbo to form the Olympians that this feud really gets cooking in tag situations.

Meanwhile, the first two singles matches of the rivalry proper take place in August and October. The former is superior; while not on the level of the best matches to come, 8/31/87 is a very good start. These matches do a lot to establish this new darker shade of Jumbo’s character.

On 12/4, the Olympians finally wrestle Tenryu & Hara in a RWTL match. It’s a solid tournament draw, promising a fruitful feud.

1988

They save the next singles match for October, and after an Olympians/Revolution rematch at the first show of the year, there aren’t even really any major tags for the first five months. However, a handheld recording of a 2/24/88 six-man suggests that, on the house show circuit, AJPW was using this feud to workshop the six-man tag formula that would pay such strong creative dividends for them in the early 1990s. More examples of this will make tape later in the rivalry, and it is the greatest contribution that new handheld footage could make to our assessment of it. (Also, while this match does not involve Tenryu, who skipped the last two dates of the tour after his double title match against Hansen, I do want to shout out the great Revolution vs. Jumbo/Kabuki/Ishikawa six-man from 3/11.)

The next major match of the feud comes on 6/4/88, a defense of Tenryu & Hara’s PWF tag titles. The Olympians will win to unify the company’s two tag titles against the Road Warriors six days later, and it is another strong match, but it’s just a tablesetter for what’s to come.

The murder of Bruiser Brody ruined the booking plans for AJPW’s 8/29/88 Budokan show, which was to feature a Jumbo/Brody vs. Tenryu/Hansen tag as the result of a fan poll. As the card was retooled into a memorial show, the main event changed to an Olympians/Revolution tag. Thing is, one had already been scheduled for the following night’s show, which was to end the tour. So, they would hold matches on consecutive nights, with Tenryu pinning Jumbo for the first time to win the first. The next night, Jumbo would return in kind, despite Ashura Hara’s attempt to cover his partner with his body (a bit which Kobashi would resurrect eight years later). In my opinion (and it is just that), these are the first two matches to fulfill the potential of the Jumbo/Tenryu feud.

This pairing has two more very good tags in it, and the long-awaited third singles match on 10/28/88 taps into a chaos that this feud will never quite have again, due to the shift in fan tastes which will necessitate a move to clean finishes in 1989 and beyond. However, Ashura Hara’s dismissal will significantly alter the feud’s broader dynamic into early 1989, as Tenryu teams up with Toshiaki Kawada. Despite this, a great upset in the 1988 RWTL is a fine start to this phase.

1989

Kawada’s promotion to the #2 of Revolution shifts the first big Jumbo/Tenryu tags of the year into a hierarchical mode. The first is a 35-minute tag on 1/20/89, in which the Olympians attack Kawada with all the deliberation of schoolteachers teaching kanji (to borrow an analogy from Weekly Pro writer Hidetoshi Ichinose’s match report). The following month’s 2/23/89 tag keeps working in this mode, but it’s a highlight of the feud to this point. Other footage of note is a ten-minute JIP of a strong 1/28/89 six-man (which got five stars from the Observer), as well as a Tenryu/Road Warriors vs Olympians/Shunji Takano sixer which, for my money, is the best match the Warriors were ever part of in their original All Japan run.

Things start moving in spring, though. Between the Jumbo/Tenryu/Hansen race to unify the Triple Crown and Tenryu’s alliance with Hansen, the rivalry gets a pair of notable matches: the first Olympians/“Ryukanhou” tag on 4/6/89 and the Jumbo Triple Crown defense on 4/20. The premature end of the latter makes the end result a regression in quality from 10/28/88, even if this will be more than made up for in its followup. Meanwhile, the Ryukanhou pairing relieves the tag end of this rivalry from constantly bearing the burden of seniority on Tenryu’s end, but the styles clash will become a source of creative frustration for Tenryu behind the scenes.

6/5/89 is the most famous match of the feud. It hardly needs me to pimp it. More interesting for me is the following tour. Yes, there’s another pair of Olympians/Ryukanhou tags, even if I consider 7/22 to be the most disappointing ‘major’ tag of the rivalry. But what this phase really adds is some “seniority matches” on Jumbo’s end. Kenta Kobashi’s starmaking performance in Korakuen Hall on 7/15 is most famous, but a 7/1 tag with Isao Takagi is a hidden gem. Another great Olympians vs. Tenryu/Kawada tag comes on 8/29, but it’s sadly the last of the configuration. There are also a couple good sixers on tape from the summer, even if one is clipped.

As we move into the last months of the year, a couple tags see Jumbo saddled with Kabuki, who I find effective in an ensemble context but a little dampening in regular tags. The 10/11/89 singles match sees Tenryu drop back the Triple Crown, but as far as I’m concerned it’s an excellent match in its own right. And the last match of the year, the Olympians/Ryukanhou RWTL final, might be the best tag in this whole feud.

1990

[to be written]