Triple Crown Overview

Here is a link to a post over at Pro Wrestling Only.  If you aren't a member there, what the hell are you waiting for ... get on it.  The thread itself is really very informative about some of the history of the Triple Crown.

Here is kind of the import and informative bit from historian John Williams.

All Japan's "World Title" in the 80s was the NWA World Title. Same in the 70s. All Japan was a territory, just like Mid-Atlantic / JCP.  The US Title in JCP wasn't their "world title". It was the top title in the territory, and when the NWA Champ came through town, that took precedent.

Anyway...

The titles were basically this:

International Title = Rikidozan's Title

It was the top title in JWA. Rikidozan dominated it. He died and it lay dormant for a while.

When they brought it back, Baba got it which was a sign that he and not Toyonobori was the top dog in the promotion. Toyonobori got the picture and eventually left.

When Baba jumped from JWA to create his own promotion, it went to Oki. JWA died, and then it had an indifferent life in Japan.  Oki didn't defend the title in Japan between the close of JWA in 1973 and 1980, when he made a trio of defenses in IWE.  Instead, he jobbed in an NWF Title match to Inoki in 1974, and then jobbed his old Asian Title (another old Rikidozan title that had passed on to him) to Baba in 1977 in a PWF Title vs Asian Title match.

Baba bought it essentially for Jumbo to chase, then win.

United National Title = Inoki's Title

A secondary title to give to Inoki since he wasn't getting the Int'l Title around Baba's waist.

Inoki got fired from JWA, and it went to Sakaguchi as Baba's #2.  Sak jobbed this on the way out, and it ended up around Takachiho's waist as JWA died in one of the funnier historical footnotes of the era.

Baba in All Japan brought it back, and it was the secondary title of All Japan for Jumbo. Similar role as the belt played in JWA.

PWF Title = Baba's Title

This actually was a World Title when it was created as Baba didn't yet have the NWA deal, which was still with JWA.  When the JWA died, Baba got the NWA deal over Inoki, and Brisco came over on tour in early 1974.  NWA vs PWF Title match, DCOR, and Baba stopped calling the PWF Title a "world title".  Pretty safe to suspect that in January they knew the payoff to the deal was that Brisco would come back in December and do a title turn around with Baba. I get that Jack liked to pretend that the US NWA didn't know this was going on and that he (Brisco) got paid nicely by Baba to do this... but that's not credible. Baba was in the deal an NWA member. You don't fuck with the NWA Title with a real change in those days without the NWA signing off on it. Baba also grew to be one of the more powerful and respected NWA promoters... you don't do that if you're screwing with the title without agreement of the home office and money going that direction.

Anyway, the PWF Title was the #1 title in All Japan in that period.

Where it gets murky is that there was a transition period in All Japan where Jumbo was getting elevated to being the Ace.  There wasn't a moment where Jumbo wasn't the Ace one day, and the next day he was the Ace. I've gone over it in other threads, but it's a gradual thing with a series of events.

In turn, there isn't a clear moment where Baba says, "I'm not the Ace". It's the same gradual thing.  Baba kind of booked it nicely so that in the stretch where Jumbo was cementing himself as the Ace, Baba had passed the PWF Title over to Hansen.  Once Jumbo was more clearly the Ace, Baba took one last spin with the PWF Title before phasing himself more fully downward.

Timelining it...

The PWF Title was #1 from the time it was created until the Int'l was bought.  The PWF and Int'l were then roughly on par until the PWF went to Hansen and the Int'l went to Jumbo on the same series. People might not think that based on how the Int'l was elevated from later on, but it's really how it was placed.  The only time the belts were defended on the same card in that 1981-83 period, Baba-Race was above Brody-Dory.  Even as late as 1984, the major Sumo Hall card had Baba-Hansen at the top with the Martel-Jumbo AWA Title rematch in the semi, while the Martel-Jumbo Int'l Title match was six days earlier on a lesser card.

After that... the Int'l was #1, the PWF was #1-A, and the UN was the secondary title for Tenryu.  The PWF got a pretty respectable push in 1986 around Choshu: good buildings relative to the Int'l title, and a good match ups. It faded down the stretch of 1986, and was pretty pedestrian in Hansen's run the next year until they heated up Stan vs Tenryu which eventually lead to the PWF and UN getting unified.  Which across a year led to the Triple Crown.

Thanks John for the great info!!

Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs. Terry Gordy - Triple Crown Championship Match 8

I am back.  Hope I was missed, at least a little!  I got burned out on writing about wrestling (see the DKP 2011 and 2012 annuals) and took a 2 year break.  But diving back into the All Japan matches is important for me and so here we go.

The match between Jumbo and Terry Gordy takes place on June 5, 1990 and is perhaps the start of the most famous week in AJPW history.  This match essentially takes place because Jumbo needs to loose the belt before his upcoming match in three days with Mitsuharu Misawa.  As we noted on our last post, Tenryu has recently left to form Super World Sports, and Giant Baba is elevating Misawa to main event status.  On the previous tour, Misawa, then wrestling as Tiger Mask II, ripped off his mask mid match, and challenged Tsuruta.  That match will take place at Budokan Hall on June 8, and Baba does not want it to be a title match.  So he needs to get the title off of Jumbo and decides to give Gordy the rub with a short term title run.  I am not sure the exact reasoning why all of the events of the week take place, but I will go into them more over the next post or so.

Also kind of cool is we get a few short snippets of Misawa watching this match from afar.

Back to the match at hand, it is our second look at Gordy.  I like Gordy, but of all the wrestlers who compete for the Triple Crown during the 90s, he is one of my least favorites.  I loved him as a Freebird, and I think the Miracle Violence Connection with Steve Williams is a great AJPW tag team.  But as a single, Gordy just isn't my favorite.  And that is odd, because he is a good worker, moves well for a big man and works stiff as hell.  His style is one I like too, wearing your opponent down and then throwing big bombs.  I suspect it is more personality based, as on his own, I think Gordy tends to be rather bland.  Teamed with the personable Michael Hays or the imposing Williams, then it is an act I can dig.  On his own, not so much.

This match is kind of what you expect from Gordy.  Hot start with each trying to hit big moves.  It then moves into Gordy on top controlling the mid portion of the match trying to keep Jumbo down.  Once Jumbo takes control back, they move into trading big moves with Jumbo hitting a piledrive, his power bomb and his backdrop driver.  Meanwhile Gordy hits a big lariat, a nasty power bomb of his own and eventually a DDT for the win.   When he hits the move and gets the three count, the announcer goes absolutely insane and Freebird starts to blast through the arena.  Jumbo beats a hasty retreat and Gordy celebrates with Williams, his tag team partner.

A fun short match.  More important historically than being a super match.  But one you should check out.

Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs. Genichiro Tenryu - Triple Crown Championship Match 7

This is somewhat of a sad moment for me.  The last big match (I am sure there a few more tag matches) between Jumbo and Tenryu.  If you have read this far, you know of my love for both, and how the June 5th match of the previous year is in contention for greatest match of all time.  Shortly after this match, Tenryu leaves (and takes some of the All Japan roster with him) to form Super World Sports.  This radically changes All Japan for the next decade (for the good).

This match takes place on April 19, 1990 at the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium. Again, this one is nowhere near as epic their match from the precious year, but it is truly great and incredible in its own way.  Before the match even starts, Stan Hansen attacks Tenryu on his way to the ring.  The attack ends with a Hansen Lariat to Tenryu in the corner to take him out.  What is important to note here is since his arrival in the early 1980's, the Hansen Lariat has been sold as death.  If he hits it, no one gets up.  It is the ultimate finishing move in the promotion.  Now what really makes this strange is that the previous year Hansen and Tenryu were tag team partners.  I don't know what caused the split, since just 9 months before Hansen was celebrating a Tenryu Triple Crown win.

Hansen does get on the mic and say since he just took Tenryu out, he should get the title match.  I do not know if this is all there is to it, and Hansen wants the title shot, or there was a genuine split.  But Jumbo arrives and drives Hansen off.  Tenryu eventually rolls into the ring and Jumbo goes to check on him.  Tenryu slaps Jumbo right to the face and then the war is on.  Time has certainly not tempered the battle between these two!

As incredible as the pre match is, with Tenryu and Jumbo, you know the actual match itself will be great too.  The match itself is a sprint, only going about 14 mins.  The work is stiff and Jumbo wins at the end with a Backdrop Driver.  Since they are only going a short distance, there are no rest spots, it is all action.  I was surprised that it was so short, and also somewhat surprised at how quickly they built to the end, without a whole lot of drama.

The post match is great, as Jumbo calls out Hansen who shows up again and the two have a pull apart brawl.  Hansen laying out various All Japan Young Boys has always been one of my favorite sights, and this brawl features some of that.

So this is a much watch.  The match itself is fun, but the pre and post match antics make it an overall excellent experience.

This match leads to one of the most famous moments in wrestling history, which we will cover in our next post!

Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs. Barry Windham - Triple Crown Championship Match 6

I will state right up front, this may be my least favorite Triple Crown title defense of all time.  It is certainly not a bad match.  As I have mentioned, at this point in time Jumbo is one of, if not the, best in the world.  And throughout the 1980's, Barry Windham was one of the best as well.  This match is from early 1990, and Windham has not yet suffered many of the injuries that would eventually take him down.

The match itself is fine.  Nothing spectacular, but solid wrestling.  It's fault is it only goes twelve minutes and never really gets going, when suddenly Jumbo hits a side suplex / backdrop driver and the match is over.  Except for when Windham dropped Jumbo crotch first on the guard rail, the crowd never really got into the match. Overall, it hardly seems worthy of a Triple Crown title defense, especially at Budokan Hall.  Looking at the card from this night, it was second from the top with a Double Tag Team Title Match (Stan Hansen and Genichiro Tenryu versus the Miracle Violence Connection) as the Main Event.  So I am sure Giant Baba did not want to upstage the tag team final and had this match go short and in rather subdued fashion.  But still, in hindsight it is rather disappointing.

The best part of the match happens before the action even begins, with Lord James Blears reading the title proclamation.  Blears, as the head of the Pacific Wrestling Federation, the kayfabe sanctioning body of All Japan Pro Wrestling.  As the commissioner, Blears helped  give a sense of legitimacy and formality to the All Japan titles as well as helping promote AJPW as a legitimate promotion and the matches as real and genuine sporting events.

Genichiro Tenryu (c) vs. Jumbo Tsuruta - Triple Crown Championship Match 4

Once again we have Jumbo versus Tenryu for the Triple Crown Championship.  However, unlike their past matches, this time Tenryu is the champion.  In their previous match, one of the greatest of all time, Tenryu finally got the big pin on his long time mentor and then rival.  I really enjoyed this match, although it was obvious from the opening that the crowd was not as hot as their last match, and the dynamic between the two had changed a bit with Tenryu finally having defeated Jumbo.  I would consider their last match, nearly perfect in every regard.  So even if the atmosphere of this encounter is not quite at the same level, it is by no means anything short of excellent still.

I think a very strong case can be made that from the mid 80's through say 1990 or 1991, that Tenryu was easily in the top five wrestlers in the world.  And I would argue that Jumbo was the very best (sorry Ric Flair and Keiichi Yamada).  There was a point in the mid 80's, about a year after Riki Choshu and his army invaded All Japan, that Jumbo went on offense attacking Choshu's ribs after one match, and then again before the next, that Jumbo's character and personality seemed to take on a new dimension.  He eventually evolved into the surely veteran that we saw in the early 90's, but for the remainder of the 80's, he had an edge to him, that in my view made him the best in the world.

So any match up between two of the top 5 wrestlers is going to be excellent, and this match up certainly showed it.  Each wrester tried to hit big moves to the start the match, Jumbo with his knee and Tenryu with the enzuigiri, but the other was able to avoid.   There was still a clear amount of disdain between the two and that was evident throughout the match.  Jumbo may have shown a bit of new found respect for Tenryu, but still the two men tore into each other with a definite amount of hatred.

What I loved about this match, as I do many All Japan matches, is the struggle.  Throughout the match, Tenryu kept trying to hit his big power bomb for the finish.  Yet each time, Jumbo would struggle to avoid getting hit with it.  As I watched, I kept expecting Tenryu to wear him down enough to finally get the move.  Yet Jumbo kept battling out, and as the match progressed, the crowd kept getting hotter and hotter.  After numerous attempts, Tenryu seems to FINALLY get Jumbo up, only for Jumbo to pull over sort of a poor mans hurricanrana and shockingly get the pinfall.

So in the last Triple Crown match of the 80's, Jumbo wins back the title and is the new champion.  This will set the stage for perhaps the greatest decade of title matches in history.

Genichiro Tenryu (c) vs. Terry Gordy - Triple Crown Championship Match 4

Watching this match really made me sad. It reminded me just how awesome Terry Gordy was, especially when he was in All Japan. He was great in Texas and Mid South, but it was in All Japan rings were he truly demonstrated his complete skill. He was truly ahead of his time as a mobile and athletic big man who could deliver quite the beating. Terry is definately one who left us way too early.

Our setting for this match his Budokan Hall, Sept 2, 1989 and is Tenryu's second title defense. We get the amazing Lord James Blears reading the Title Match proclamation, including the match being sanctioned by both the National Wrestling Alliance and the Pacific Wrestling Federation. And once the reading is done, the streamers hit and Tenryu attacks Gordy's second (I couldn't tell who it was although I think I should have known) and gives him a power bomb. Gordy then attacks Tenryu and gives him a power bomb of his own. An amazing start to the match.

The match is itself is really good, very strong and stiff, although a bit short. It probably goes 12 minutes, so it certainly isn't an epic.  And although the crowd is into the match, they never become unhinged.  But with that said, it is a fun 12 minutes.  Gordy is on offense for most of the match and we can see how versatile he is.  He moves great and throws some crazy stiff clotheslines during the match.  As much as I like Tenryu, I really think it is Gordy who shines here and his offense just looks so great.

They build most of the match around the two trying to maneuver the other into position for a power bomb.  Eventually, Tenryu hits it, but Gordy kicks out!  Tenryu then gets him up again, but Gordy reverses it and kind of rolls through the attempt.  But Tenryu holds on and gets him up again and hits it, bringing the match to an end.

Really great stuff and it is too bad Tenryu soon left AJPW because this could have been a great rivalry with sequences of matches that continued to build upon one another.


     

Genichiro Tenryu (c) vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu - Triple Crown Championship Match 3

This match is from July 18, 1989 and is AJPW Triple Crown Champion Genichiro Tenryu's first defense of his newly won Triple Crown Championship.  For those not familiar with Yatsu, he was a former Japanese Olympian in wrestling who started with New Japan in the early 80's.  When Riki Choshu jumped to All Japan in 1984, Yatsu was one of those who jumped with him.  The two formed a very successful tag team in battling many of the AJPW regulars.  But when Choshu jumped back to New Japan, Yatsu ended up staying and formed a new team with Jumbo Tsuruta which was also very successful, in fact one of the most successful in AJPW history.  So since 1985, Tenryu and Yatsu have been battling each other nearly continuously, usually in tag match.  Jumbo and Tenryu versus Yatsu and Choshu are some of the best tag matches of all time.  And the finals of the 1988 Real World Tag League with Tenryu and Toshiaka Kawada versus Yatsu and Tenryu is one of the matches of all time.

So with Tenryu having just defeated Jumbo for the titles, his first defense is against Jumbos own partner Yatsu.  This match was very good, but not extraordinary like the previous match.  I can usually tell which buildings each match is in, but I wasn't quite sure where this took place.  The heat and crowd involvement was so/so but they never really got really into it until the end.

Both are dressed in black and have similar structures, so at times during the match, it is hard to tell who is who.  The first two thirds is filled with mostly mat wrestling, chops and enzuigiris, with Yatsu getting most of the offense in.  I think my favorite spot is when Yatsu slips to the ropes and Tenryu gives him multiple hard kicks until he falls to the floor.

At about the 15 minute mark the two end up outside where the match turns into much more of a brawl and involves Tenryu dropping a table on Yatsu which opens up a nice cut on his head.   Once back in the ring they move to the finish, where Yatsu gets a couple of nice near falls on Tenryu before Tenryu reverses with an enzuigiri and then his power bomb for the win.

So a nice 18 minute or so match but nowhere near as good as the previous Jumbo and Tenryu match.