I love Tenryu. I have nothing but respect for Jumbo and I do enjoy his matches (I have often said from 86-90, Jumbo is the best wrestler in the world). But of all the wrestlers who made their home in All Japan at various points during the 1980's, I would say that Tenryu is probably my favorite. He is remarkably able to blend and adapt to different styles of matches, whether they be brawls with the likes of Stan Hansen and Bruiser Brody, or a more traditional technical strong style match with opponents like Jumbo. Whatever the type or style of match, he never seems out of place.
Sadly, this will be one of the few Tenryu matches in the Triple Crown series. In the Spring of 1990, he departed All Japan to form the Super World of Sports promotion. While this deprived us of his skills and abilities in All Japan during the 1990's, it forced Giant Baba and All Japan to radically change their internal hierarchy and push wrestlers like Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada and Kenta Kobashi well before he typically would. But the end result of this sequence of events was the greatest series of wrestling matches ever, as we will document here.
This match is from April 20, 1989 in Yokohama and is the first defense of the newly established All Japan Triple Crown. For years, Jumbo and Tenryu were partners and allies in fighting the Riki Choshu lead invasion of All Japan. But after Choshu's departure back to New Japan, Tenryu and Jumbo have had a rivalry and engaged in multiple high visibility tag and singles matches, including a match later in this series that is without a doubt one of the greatest matches of all time.
The friction between the two is obvious immediately as Jumbo offers his hand in sportsmanship while Tenryu wants nothing to do him. This sets the tone for the match and at times, just the looks between the two, with Tenryu often displaying somewhat of an aloof attitude, is enough to get the crowd going. I loved the first few minutes of this match, with the two working hard to kick and beat the other into a sense of submission.
The match eventually settles into a lull in the middle, with an extended chinlock sequence. But it does pick up again and includes an awesome suicide tope from Tenryu that is remarkable for a man of his size. After a bit Jumbo is able to gain the upper hand and take control. Soon he moves into position and begins what appears to be a false finish sequence. He gets Tenryu up for a power bomb of sorts, but botches it and not only doesn't get Tenryu up very high, but drops him on the back of his head for the spot, instead of onto his back and shoulders. It appears that he completely knocks him out with this move and Jumbo is forced to end the match prematurely with a pin, instead of what I assume was going to be a more dramatic set of false finishes from both men, before either would eventually get the win.
I don't know if my assessment is correct. But do note that this does play huge into the next match of the series.
The crowd wasn't expecting the pin to come this quickly, and it is rather anti climatic. Afterwards, Jumbo, the ref and everyone else in the ring are continually checking on Tenryu as this finish was obviously unexpected. I am not sure I have ever read anything in depth on what happened here, so I can only assume that this wasn't planned and the match ended prematurely. But the ending does indeed play into and add to the drama of what will unfold at their next encounter.
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