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Match Of The Day

From the WWF/All Japan show on 4/13/1990. 

Jumbo Tsuruta and King Haku vs Curt Hennig and Rick Martel

 
No idea who Jumbo Tsuruta is, but thought it was an interesting match.


Kids these days.

Comments

  1. Martel certainly had his working boots on in that match. Also, seeing one of the toughest guys in THIS BUSINESS playing the face in peril was just weird, as I can't ever recall him working as a face?

    That would make for a pretty good thread actually; novelty instances where career good guys/bad guys played the reverse role.

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  2. It's okay Scott, 20 years from now there will still be kids who "Dont know who Kenta Kobashi Is..." or "Dont know who HiroShi Tanahashi is.."

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  3. Didn't The Islanders start off as faces when they debuted in WWF?

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  4. Correct! Just Googled it. Here was the heel turn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MndXVB7teUU A pretty weak way to turn for sure but I guess those were simpler times.

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  5. Still better than most turns these days.

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  6. A Jumbo Tsuruta? Isn't that the 14.99 sunday buffet special?

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  7. DC
    Like when Ricky Steamboat shot a man in Reno, just to watch him, die-?

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  8. Didn't Jim Cornette's SMW once have a match between a face Midnight Express and a heel Rock 'n' Roll Express?

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  9. Sake is a helluva drug.

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  10. Was Jumbo the guy that Harley slapped for suplexing Ric Flair?

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  11. Jumbo Tsuruta was the first Triple Crown Champion for All Japan and one of the best wrestlers of the 80s.

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  12. Really? Tell us more.

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  13. I have no idea who those guys are today!
    Kenta Kobashi I've at least heard of.

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  14. Jumbo Tsuruta, there's a blast from the past. Good to see YouTube is exposing a new generation to great wrestlers who WWE never mentions.

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  15. "These kids nowadays, with their filppity-floppity wrestlers and firecracker entrances and big television productions and cookie-cutter bodies... I remember back in the day when we'd watch two big, brawny, grown men exchange punches and kicks and holds for an hour... and WE LIKED IT... mainly because there were only three channels on the TV, and the other two had pansy shit on them. Those big city boys had FOUR channels, the pompous shits... (snore... snore... ) wha... HUH? Oh, yeah, wrasslin' back in my day. You little twerps don't know how good you have it. All we'd get to see on the picture tube were the big boys beating up on tin cans... if we wanted to see any REAL action we'd have to go to the arena, buy a ticket, and hope we could see the ring. And if the bad men got a little too rowdy, we'd rush the ring and beat the shit out of them. I got one or two of them bastards with this little pocket knife... (pulls out a rusted old knife, not quite clean...)... this here's where I sliced that piece of crap Anklebiter Mick after he nearly gnawed off Big Tom Porter's foot. Pissant had to spend ten days in the hospital with an infection. Yeah, Big Tom nearly took my head off with a punch right afterward, but that was probably an accident. You look like you could a little of Big Tom's teachins... he'd have made that little whore you call a girlfriend into a REAL woman by now.



    (Kid snaps, beats grandpa into a bloody heap. Walks away quietly, mumbling about snapped brain cells and crazy old coots.)

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  16. Also, mini-TJ: http://deadspin.com/sumo-match-ends-with-crushing-body-slam-1333597541


    Wow.

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  17. Wow very cool match.

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  18. Piper/Hogan Starrcade 96

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  19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo_Tsuruta

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  20. Along those lines Hogan & Flair had a few TV matches during the nWo run where Flair was a face and Hogan a heel. I don't think any were on PPV. I don't know if you'd count Flair as a 'career bad guy' in the same way though - he is mostly known for his heel work but he did have a few memorable matches and feuds as a babyface.

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  21. Yeah that's what I meant. Kinda like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGohuiR3Bok


    Ravishing Rick Rude as babyface jobber "Ricky Rood", the only match I've ever seen where the guy was a face.

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  22. Yeah, I see what you mean. Flair playing a baby face isn't really a 'novelty'.

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  23. I vaguely recall this happening in Memphis, but Memphis and SMW worked together a lot.

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  24. Martel in his AWA days was superb. If he didn't have the accent he could have done even better.

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