Genichiro Tenryu vs. Stan Hansen

[Boss Rock]

Elliot asked this a while back on the GWE forum and it nearly drove me insane. Have fun!

[Tetsujin]

I remember this one from the GWE forum, and to me it's Hansen any day of the week. Much better offense and selling, more great and elite matches, better gimmick... Both were pretty consistent throughout two whole decades, and Tenryu might have been more versatile (althought I don't really like some of his out-of-confort-zone stuff, like his work with Onita), but anything great you can have with Tenryu, Hansen can give it to you better. Also, Hansen was the best worker in their matches together. To put it in ranking language, Tenryu is a top 50 to me, Hansen is a top 10.

[Matt D]

Bear with me here for a minute.

I was watching a random trios tonight (not random since I'm watching everything in order, but just on paper, it'd seem random) from January 1990: Tenryu/Footloose vs Jumbo/Kabuki/Mighty Inoue. What made that match interesting? Inoue. He was rarely, if ever, in the mix with these guys up until this point. Also, you get the sense from the Takagi feud and how he worked with Tiger Mask II in this period (remember that Misawa was out for most of 89 with an injury) and some of the stuff that @KinchStalker has translated for us that he was a little tired of the endless feud with Jumbo and the usual suspects, that he was very much up for battling new opponents.

The first real time they get in there, he lets Inoue come back on him and lets him hit a few things: a monkey flip, a headscissors take over, etc., good looking, interesting stuff that felt earned because it came after a little bit of a beating. At the end? A punch from the ground that just crushed Inoue and that let his team take back over. But he gave him that and the match was better for it. It let Inoue have a presence in the match with some of his stuff, with some of what he could do, with some of what he brought to the table.

If Hansen had been in there instead, Inoue would have been fighting to stay afloat with whatever punches and kicks and strikes he could have gotten. Maybe he would have been able to land a few blows and seem valiant; maybe he would have gotten a little bit of shine and he might have been able to express himself due to whatever color of toughness and defiance he had that made him unique. Maybe. And eventually, if Hansen did allow him anything or if Inoue was able to take anything with those blows, it'd end with an eye-rake and it would fit the same narrative moment of the match.

But, it would have been the exact same bit that Hansen would have gotten from any other opponent. You'd have barely gotten to see what Inoue could bring to the table except for in the most primal and subtle ways. It might have felt real and maybe even gripping, but if you'd seen it once, you'd seen it a hundred times and it was less, from a worked pro wrestling sense, then what Tenryu was able to evoke in him by giving him an honest moment to shine as the wrestler he was and the wrestler he could be before crushing him with a fist, instead of just making him fight for scraps and reducing him to just another piece of meat in the ever grinding churn of yet another poor bastard facing Hansen. 

Hansen might have higher highs (and I have a lot more to watch before I can say that) but if I have to watch a whole bunch of one wrestler or another, I'm going to be more interested to see a bunch of Tenryu.

[Childs]

For all my Hansen love, I don't disagree with your point at all. Tenryu produced many, many more interesting moments against random opponents. I do believe he worked with a generous spirit and that it played a significant part in his longevity. These were my No. 1 and No. 3 wrestlers in 2016, so there's not a lot to separate them. I could see Tenryu turning the tables on Stan in 2026, but I'm not ready to rule. 

[ohtani's jacket]

In an alternate reality where Hansen leaves AJPW, invades New Japan, and has death matches with Onita, and Tenryu stays and wrestles the "Pillars", who has better matches?

[elliott]

1 minute ago, ohtani's jacket said:

In an alternate reality where Hansen leaves AJPW, invades New Japan, and has death matches with Onita, and Tenryu stays and wrestles the "Pillars", who has better matches?

This is an interesting thought experiment. 

Probably Tenryu. I do wonder how Hansen would have aged if he'd gotten to work shorter main events. He didn't  need to be working 25+ minute main event singles matches in 1996, but there he was. Conversely, I wonder how Tenryu would have aged if he had to work in that mid 90s AJPW world where every big match went 25+ minutes. 

I really want to watch Hansen vs Hashimoto & Onita now hahaha. 

[DylanZero]

There's also something to be said for Tenryu able to still work on a WOTYC level into the 2000s. Although one could argue that Hansen had more longevity, the difference between going from the 70s to the 80s was significantly smaller than the 90s to the 2000s. Even Hashimoto struggled afterwards and was broke down (with a few awesome moments) and he was much younger than Tenryu and didn't face the epics of AJPW. For someone like Tenryu to pull that off in his 50s has to be a huge boon to him being one of the best ever.

 

Hansen was awesome and ranks high on the Bull Nakano scale of "no matter what match you watch he's guaranteed to do at least one awesome thing no matter what that makes you love wrestling" but as an overall worker I think I prefer Tenryu. Even in terms of highest highs his match vs. Jumbo was my favorite of either of these guys careers. Hansen is an all time great and I don't have too many real negatives but yeah I go with Tenryu here. He was in my top 3 last time and if he's not in 2026, he won't drop out of the top 5.