An Englishman in New Japan – DANGEROUS!

(Note: This is going up a day early so I can work on an Onita in New Japan review for some time this week.)

This week’s column focuses on appearances in Japan of members of one of my favourite stables of all time, the Dangerous Alliance! No Bobby Eaton, but matches featuring the other four.

The Enforcers vs. Michiyoshi Ohara and Shiro Koshinaka (Tokyo, Japan, January 4th, 1992)

The Enforcers had disbanded by this point so that the dream team of Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton could pursue the tag belts, but it’s Arn and Larry back together here. I don’t know as much about the Japanese guys, but Ohara is fucking stout, looking straight out of the amateur ranks and like he could flip anyone over his head. Larry is giving it the mouth from the start, taking his time as usual. It’s annoying but masterful. He misses an especially frisky move for him, a dropkick, and brings in Arn. Shiro comes in to double up on a double headbutt, but Arn knees him down and gets the Curt Hennig neck snap. He tries a divorce court, but Shiro goes to go down on his head for it, which looks nastier than it probably was. Larry returns for a pinfall account, then kicks the bottom rope when things aren’t going his way. He could pretty much do commentary for the match from the ring in a funny bit (“He’s choking me, jerk!”).

Arn comes back in, as does Ohara. Arn gets a boot in on a test of strength (Larry: “Kick the punk!”), but doesn’t get it down to his usual body scissors trap routine. Headscissors (Larry: “Rip the head off the punk!”), but Larry comes back in and gets trapped in headscissors himself. Shiro returns with a nice snap suplex, then a double clothesline with Ohara. Arn gets back in with a rare legdrop and neckbreaker. Larry gets a suplex (just about) that’s generously called as a brainbuster. Boston crab, so Ohara comes in and kicks him in the face. Arn gets his own with a head assist from Larry from the outside. Then Larry gets an assisted abdominal stretch with Arn’s help. Just classic heel tag team stuff. Arn sets up for the spinebuster, but Koshinaka kicks him in the head instead and Ohara gets in with a side Russian legsweep and goes for a Boston crab himself. Larry breaks that. Couple of powerful elbowdrops sets up a kinda clumsy one off the top rope (not enough distance away). Shiro comes back in with a pair of butt-butts to the heels. The shame if Arn had to job off that! Ohara comes back in and Arn gets the spinebuster after a shot from the outside by Larry for the win. I thought this would have styles clash written all over it, but it ended up being a lot of fun. ICHIBAN!

Ravishing Rick Rude vs. Masahiro Chono (Tokyo, Japan, August 12th, 1992)

The G1 Climax finals, with the vacant NWA World Heavyweight championship up for grabs. English language commentator Marc Warzecha screws something up in his introduction and they actually leave in the flub and him talking about redoing it, which is odd – surely they could’ve just started over or edited it out. Rude’s choice of tights here feature an ice cold woman licking a Rick Rude ice cream. Madusa gives him a pre-match hug while avoiding plunging her nails into his bacne. The Cowboy is at ringside, probably asking Dusty Rhodes and Hiro Matsuda “Who’s this Jap?”.

Rude starts with a slap after a minute of shit talking, so gets one straight back as well as a back body drop to go flying on and three clotheslines. Chono’s sarcastic hip swivels are… different. Rude comes back with forearms but runs into a boot and is grounded with a front facelock. Switch to a sleeper, but Rude breaks with a jawbreaker. Chono gets it back after ducking a clothesline, then lets go after Rude tries the same reversal as before and picks it back up on the mat. That was clever. Break after a pinfall reversal and Rude goes to his own side headlock. Into a headscissors, as the camera seems to fixate on the blonde MILF next to Watts, who I would assume is the wife he had after the first one took him to the cleaners. Working back up to their feet, Chono gets a kneebreaker and kicks to the back of the leg to start setting up the STF. Figure four, not perfectly applied, with Dusty looking on as if he could do any better. Rude reverses that on the mat then gets a clothesline and heads up. Chono catches him and slams him off and continues working the legs.

Chono switches to a cross armbreaker. Rude tries to stand up out of it, but gets it rolled back into an arm stretcher. Eventually he gets back up and stomps and elbows Chono before hitting a piledriver. That gets two. Even though he made his bones as a heel, Chono has a really good “I’m hurt!” style of selling, nothing overblown. Rude gets a bit of an anti-climactic forearm shot off the top and a clothesline, stopping to wiggle before going to a rear chinlock. Eventually, Chono lifts him up in the electric chair, almost losing him en route, and drops him back to break. Chono goes to the top himself, but Rude swats him out of the way on a flying shoulderblock, then goes back up himself and gets a missile dropkick for two. DDT for two. Swinging neckbreaker, which was Rude’s old Memphis finisher, and always a strange one to keep for me when he was using a far better neckbreaker as his finisher. Chono catches him going up again with a superplex. I catch sight of El Samurai as one of the young boys at ringside, someone who was a favourite of Sir Oliver Humperdink on the old Ring Warriors redubs that played on Eurosport in the nineties. Rude gets his own superplex when Chono goes up too. Rude’s been building a heavy veneer of sweat and his hair has been getting more of a mess as the match has gone on.

Rude hoists Chono up for a tombstone, but Chono just about reverses it. Things get a bit lost here as Rude calls spots on his back to Chono. Chono goes to go for the rear naked choke, but Rude backs out and gets Irish whipped instead. Reversal into a sleeper by Rude. Chono climbs the ropes like Bret Hart and springs back for an attempted pin. They grab one another’s ears for a bit, then Chono goes for the yakuza kick a few times, but Rude won’t go fully down. Chono gets the STF in the corner, but Rude can reach the ropes to break. Rude gets another piledriver and goes to finish with the flying kneedrop. He hits it, but it’s only one because the referee was too busy jawing at Madusa. Chono then goes for the STF again, but in the middle now, with Rude valiantly crawling towards the ropes for a break. Enzigiuri and abdominal stretch into a pinning hold, but it’s only two. Rude grabs the tights and throws Chono out, but Chono springs right back up, rushes to the top rope and hits the flying shoulderblock for the win. Bit of a mixed one here, because you can see how they were chunking it into three parts, but things kind of broke down in the third part and there were spans of standing around and waiting to get back on track that affected the quality of it. It’s basically like a trilogy with two really solid parts and a disappointing conclusion (Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man). Still far better than their Halloween Havoc snoreathon. ICHIBAN!

Stunning Steve Austin vs. Masahiro Chono (Yokohama, Japan, September 23rd, 1992)

Austin, before becoming the biggest star of the nineties, was the junior member of the DA but considered the crown jewel as far as the long term went, even though Rick Rude was the lead heel. This is a match that’s famous for one moment in it that we’ll get to. Cutting his hair short was a good move, but in retrospect he looks like a muscular Bobby Heenan. Similarly, Chono was wise to ditch the handlebar moustache, but that mullet he grew out was awful. Austin gets a very early Stun Gun, but doesn’t go for the pin, so gets kicked down when he goes for another. Chono gets the STF equally quick. Austin escapes outside, so Chono follows with a flying clothesline from the apron. Steve flips out of a suplex and gets a pair of dropkicks, proving why he didn’t do them often because they were terrible. He almost hits his knees on the apron going for his own running clothesline from the apron. Back in, a stalemate.

Chono controls Austin on the mat for a few minutes. The colour commentator, who again I believe is Masa Saito, sounds like Sylvester the Cat with a mouthful of feathers. Not especially interesting stuff going on, but it is wrestling. I never begrudged that in a match because often it was where it gave the announcers a chance to get a few things across. Bit of a weird non-starter where Austin goes for a kick but Chono holds back, then Austin kicks him anyway. Austin’s short white boots with nothing on his knees looks really weird. Austin suplex for two, then a body breaker. Chono flips out of it with the assistance of the corners, leading to some pinfall attempts. Austin goes for a Boston crab in a weird manner, with Chono making equally weird noises where it sounds like he’s shivering to death. Some bad stomps on him when he gets the ropes, bearing out Jim Cornette’s frequent criticism that stomping a mudhole looks like shit, but was at least over. Miscommunication in the corner on a charge, as this match just isn’t moving through the gears in the right manner, so Chono goes for a rear naked choke while doing his sheep impression. Enzigiuri is pretty nice. Chono starts firing up and hits a yakuza kick. Neckbreaker for two. Tombstone reversal spot, which is where this match becomes notorious, because Austin drops to his arse, in a similar fashion to Owen Hart five years later, and Chono receives a neck injury too. You can tell he’s immediately shaken up and he won’t move for anything. He trips Austin and gets the worst STF ever for an initial submission attempt, then a much better but far from perfect one for the submission victory. Goes without saying that it’s a bad match already without the injury, but that’s pretty much the dinglecherry on the whole, pungent, rear end chocolate cake. BUST!

Melting it down: An OK tag match, a — match with high stakes, and then an infamous match to finish.

Back next week with some WWF heels from the eighties!

Also, if anyone has any suggestions for matches to look at featuring international stars in New Japan put them in the comments section, I’m open to ideas.