AJPW TV Episode #1 (1/7/1984)

Giant Baba and Great Kabuki def. Umanosuke Ueda and Goro Tsurumi

Again, this is all new to me so I gave a look at Ueda and Tsurumi to put this match in a greater context. Tsurumi was 11-75-5 in 1984 and Ueda was 4-42-6. So these guys are essentially jobbers in the All Japan landscape. This looked like it was clipped up. Kabuki took a beating before Kabuki and Baba picked up the victory. Not a bad match at all. This was your basic formula match to get you rooting for the good guys.

Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu def. Kelly Kiniski and Steve Olsonoski

At this point and time Tsuruta and Tenryu are probably the top two native talents in All Japan. Kelly Kiniski is the mediocre son of legend Gene Kiniski. He never amounted to very much in wrestling. Honestly, he's probably best known for being a job guy in the WWF during the mid 80s. Olsonoski had some decent success in the early 80s.

This was a pretty fun match, I thought Kiniski and Olsonoski did a good job of keeping up with Tsuruta and Tenryu. I liked how the teams went for payback on double team moves through out the match. This was pretty basic in it's structure like the previous match. Tenryu took a lot of the beating and Tsuruta came in and out things away for his team. I think this was a good showcase for Tenryu and Tsuruta. If this was your first ever AJPW show, I think it would give you a good idea of where they're at on the card.

Lizmark won a battle royal for 100,000 yen

It seems like battle royals are a little different in AJPW. There didn't appear to be any throwing over the ropes. You got eliminated by pinfall or submission. Lizmark and Magic Dragon are the last two men standing in this one before Lizmark takes home the prize. This was a battle royal so it kind of sucks by just existing.

This era of AJPW is largely unknown to me other than the big matches so I gave Lizmark a look for this run. He's surprisingly heavily protected in this run. From what is recorded he doesn't lose many if any matches during this run.

Overall:

I think if you wanted to ever just pick up AJPW in the 80s that this is a pretty good starting point. This episode gives you a peak at the top native talents in Giant Baba, Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu. You also get to see a diminished by still relevant Giant Baba for a few years until he starts his final climb down the card. It also gives you a couple of decent tags that aren't overly long. And the tags are very different from each other as well. Nothing on this show is going to change your life but I think it was a fun episode overall.

1984 AJPW Pregame Show

I waned to give a little context to All Japan at the time of these shows. I'm a big context guy, hence why I'm going through the TV instead of just watching the big matches, so I just want to provide an idea of where All Japan is at during this time period, who the champions are and the hierarchy of the main singles championships.

Giant Baba has started to decline physically in the 1980s. His awkward body is starting to catch up to him. He's getting slower, his offense is starting to look a little worse and he knows it. Unlike a lot of promoters, Giant Baba actually willingly steps aside and moves down the card before he becomes counter-productive to the ability of the promotion to draw. When you look at the history of professional wrestling, this is a fairly unique event. Wrestling is littered with promoters and bookers putting themselves over at all costs but here you had a promoter setting up his successor over a long period of time and there being a pretty seamless transition of the company ace.

Enter Jumbo Tsuruta. Jumbo was the no. 2 guy for the late 70s and early 80s and has now become the top star in AJPW. There isn't a single event that you can point to and say, that's where Jumbo became the no. 1 guy in the company. It was a gradual series of events over a number of years. But 1984 is definitely the year where Jumbo is the no. 1 guy in the company and Baba has slid his way down to being the no. 2 guy. I'm going to pin the official start of the Jumbo era of AJPW to two events in 1983. On 8/31/1983 Jumbo Tsuruta defeated Bruiser Brody to become the NWA International Champion and then on 9/8/1983 Stan Hansen defeated Giant Baba to become the PWF Heavyweight Champion.

Speaking of those championship belts. There are three singles championships in AJPW at this time. The NWA International Championship, PWF Heavyweight Championship and United National Heavyweight Championship. These belts will eventually be unified into being the Triple Crown Championship that still exists to this day.

At this time the NWA International Championship is the top singles belt. It dates back to the Japan Wrestling Association and dates back to the late 50s. The belt laid dormant after the JWA closed in the early 70s. Giant Baba purchased the title in the early 80s. This move was designed to give Jumbo a belt to chase and win.

The PWF Heavyweight Champion is the second most important title of the bunch. This would be the equal of the World Heavyweight Championship in the WWE during the 00s. This was the most important AJPW belt of the 70s but it took a backseat to the International belt once Jumbo won that and Baba was no longer holding this belt. So these belts just flip flopped position right before the TV is going to begin for this blog.

The United National belt was always a secondary championship. Jumbo was winning and contending for this belt as he was moving up the card and during this time frame Genichiro Tenryu will be doing the same thing. It seems like they use this belt to groom future main event native talent. Which is smart booking. Give the up and coming talent a chance to work in championship caliber bouts without doing jobs.

The NWA World Heavyweight Champion will also stop by well into 1989. I haven't mentioned it yet but AJPW is a member of the NWA until 1989. So you'll see the likes of Ric Flair or Harley Race pop in to make some title defenses. They also have a working agreement with the AWA and the AWA Champion will stop in to make some title defenses as well.

Before I close out this post let's do a champion roll call:

NWA International Champion: Jumbo Tsuruta
PWF Heavyweight Champion: Stan Hansen
United National Heavyweight Champion: Ted Dibiase
NWA International Junior Heavyweight Champion: Chavo Guerrero
NWA International Tag Team Champions: Giant Baba and Jumbo Tsuruta
All Asia Tag Team Champions: Ashura Hara and Mighty Inoue

Going forward

Monday will be my first post on AJPW TV in 1984. My plan is to post an episode review on Tuesdays and Thursdays. These are not going to be play by play type of reviews. I'm going to try and give some context on the matches and talk a bit if I like the match or not. I also plan to build lists of the best matches per year and a notable matches list. I will keep those updated as I progress through the TV. I will also post video of the matches if I can find them. I will also be posting a classic AJPW match from the 70s on Saturdays. I still want to work my way through those discs but I also want to work my way through those old matches as well.

What This Blog Is

I've been watching Japanese wrestling since late 2001. I first became interested by watching WCW programming in the late 90s. They would often bring New Japan talent in and I found guys like Chono, Liger and Muta to be really interesting. I was also just fascinated by the idea of a foreign wrestling company. Games like Fire Pro Wrestling further added to this curiosity.

Fastforward to college and I took the plunge and bought the 1994 and 1995 Super J Cup shows. If you haven't followed Japanese wrestling those are the two shows most Americans start with when getting into the Japanese scene. I was pretty instantly hooked. I started buying New Japan shows on a regular basis and I've stuck with New Japan pretty consistently since 2001.

All Japan is a very different animal. I've seen the big bad matches from the 90s that get all the hype and praise. But I've never really taken the time to get to know the promotion. I've never watched the promotion with any kind of context to it.

That's where this blog comes in. I saw that I could get All Japan TV dating back to 1984. This was really appealing to me because it was just a new adventure for me to take. I could watch Jumbo Tsuruta dominate the 1980s and pass the torch over to Misawa and company in the 1990s. I could get a real feel for the context of All Japan over a really long period of time.

I decided to watch a number of the All Japan Classics DVDs first. I wanted to get an idea of what All Japan was like during the 1970s with Giant Baba on top. Once I worked my way through some of those I was going to start All Japan TV starting in 1984.

This blog is going to chronicle my travels through the world of All Japan Pro Wrestling. I intend to post videos of the matches when it's possible and to give some history lessons when I can. I don't intend for this to be a review of these matches and shows. I'm not going to do play by play and I'm not going to hand out star ratings. When I talk about matches, my plan is to just discuss what I liked and didn't like and maybe throw in some context when I can.

My goal is to update this blog a couple of times a week. I'll probably watch an episode or two of the TV a week when I get to it.

The Destroyer vs. Mil Mascaras (10/9/73)

This is for the PWF United States Championship. Now, why Japan had a U.S. Title is beyond me but this belt essentially existed as a title for the Destroyer during the 70s. The Destroyer was probably the top Gaijin wrestler until Stan Hansen really started taking off in the 80s.

This match is a tale of two ends of the spectrum. The Destroyer is well regarded and considered to be a great worker by those that have seen him wrestle a lot. Mil Mascaras on the other hand is no well regarded by fans or his peers. Mascaras is considered to be selfish in the ring and just not very good in general.

This is a rare good Mil Mascaras match. The Destroyer really brings out the best qualities in him and Mascaras seems willing to put in his best efforts. I think The Destroyer is probably the best opponent that Mil Mascaras ever had. They have a continued rivalry throughout the mid 70s in All Japan and the matches are usually enjoyable.

PWF Title Match: Giant Baba (c) vs. The Sheik (4/28/1973)

Another Giant Baba vs. the Sheik match. Baba had just won the inaugural PWF Championship back in February so this was probably one of his first defenses of the belt. Baba's initial reign with the belt would last from February 27th, 1973 to June 1st, 1978.

This is largely an extension of their first match from Detroit. Baba doesn't become intimidated by the Sheik and uses some of his own brutal tactics against him. I like seeing this side of Baba in these matches. He usually comes across very stoic and business like in his matches. But you can tell that he just hates everything about the Sheik. That gets communicated very well in both of these matches and it's a nice change of pace to see Baba just brawling and getting mad at what his opponent is trying to do.

As I said previously, I see this as an extension of the previous match. I think I liked the first match a little more but this one was fun as well.

Giant Baba vs. The Sheik (9/20/1972)

Now here's an interesting match. This Giant Baba vs. The Sheik match actually predates the formation of All Japan Pro Wrestling by about 2 weeks. This match took place in what I'm guessing was Detroit since that was the Sheik's territory. You'll see this from time to time with important matches that are relevant to AJPW. They took place in the U.S., get dubbed with Japanese commentary and were shown in Japan.

The Sheik's gimmick as that he was a sadistic wildman. Typically he just brutalizes and intimidates his opponents. I'm not a big fan of The Sheik's matches as a rule. It gets old watching him choke guys and stab them repeatedly with his pencil. He doesn't really try to have matches with people. It's usually just some mess that ends in a double count out or someone getting a Fireball in the face.

Giant Baba did make this match interesting if you know The Sheik's MO. He shows little fear when dealing with the Sheik and he uses a lot of his brutal tactics against him during the course of the match. Baba really made this a fun brawl due to doing this and it's quite the brutal little brawl. This is probably the best Sheik match I've seen.

They also have a rematch the next year for Giant Baba's PWF Title and that match is equally as entertaining for the same reasons.

Giant Baba and Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Bob Backlund and Bob Roop (7/25/1974)

I'm preparing an introductory post but in the meantime let's take a look at Giant Baba and Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Bob Backlund and Bob Roop. Tsuruta is just a rookie here and you can see it in how Backlund and Roop try to target him instead of Baba. You can see Tsuruta's potential even at this point. His selling is pretty good and his comebacks work really well.

One of the things I really enjoy about the AJPW Classics series is you get these weird team ups from guys that had little to do with each other in the United States or were even rivals. It's also the best resource for 70s footage.

I thought this was a good quick tag. They went a little faster paced than some other matches that I've seen on these discs. I really liked how Baba and Tsuruta put them away in 2 straight falls. You don't see that often enough in 2 out of 3 falls matches.