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.