[1995-03-26-WAR-Battle Angel] Genichiro Tenryu vs Yokozuna

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This was pretty sad to watch. Yoko could still do a few good things, but for the most part, he was shot by this time. WAR obviously had no confidence in him to work a good match, because they take lots of shortcuts -- blood, interference, foreign objects -- in an attempt to disguise him. In fairness, he hadn't worked since November so he may have been rusty, but this is not the same guy who was the monster heel in the WWF in 1993 and was more than capable. In 1993, this match would have been worlds better. In 1995, Yokozuna takes a bump outside and someone has to put a chair on the ground so he can step on it to get back in since he's too big to roll under the bottom rope.

[FLIK]

Ah, that's depressing to hear. On paper it does seem like something that should be pretty rockin.

[Tim Evans]

Yamaguchi San as Fake Mr. Fuji with face paint is funny. Other than that, this was pretty bad. Who was the guy that interfered? Didn't seem to affect anything except to kill time. Good thing the match wasn't even 10 minutes.

[Zenjo]

Surprisingly, the foreigner who was pretending to be a Japanese sumo wrestler didn't go down too well with the fans.

[PeteF3]

I'm honestly a little surprised that they got away with using the name Yokozuna here.

 

I didn't think this was BAD, but it was disappointing--there are glimpses of a good match here and it doubtless would have been if Yoko were to go down about 100 pounds. The bullshit was annoying and ultimately unnecessary. The interfering guy looked like either Isamu Teranishi or Kengo Kimura but I don't see what either would be doing in WAR at this point. Yoko still has some nice crunchy offense and big fat bumps, but he sort of blows his belly-to-belly suplex and can only do the Banzai Drop off the bottom rope.

[Steenalized]

Really disappointing match from when I saw the combo of Tenryu and Yoko on paper. Match sucked, to be frank, though understandable given Yoko's condition at this point. He's dwarfing Tenryu in there. Super odd to have him named Yokozuna and come in with a Japanese flag but then also not play it up? It looked like Yokozuna bending over after the first slams on Tenryu was supposed to be like a sumo getting ready for a match but they didn't have him go further with those mannerisms. Maybe a bridge too far, culturally? A lost opportunity in my eyes.

[CheapPop1999]

Once I saw this was 1995, I tempered my expectations quite a bit and I thought this was at least a commendable performance from Tenryu, who's essentially working with a bloated mess of a man who wasn't really known for having a deep bag of tricks to begin with. Tenryu bleeds and really does a lot to make the weight of Yokozuna look deadly early on, with a splash and a leg drop. The interference is meh, and there's not as much fire from Tenryu as you would like to make it truly FUN, in every sense of the word, but it's a near-superhuman performance from Tenryu to make this even passable, and that's worth something in my book.