wrestling / Columns
Into the Indies 05.24.11: Macho Man in Japan
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Into the Indies, the column that is ready to snap into it.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five days, you know that the “Macho Man” Randy Savage passed away unexpectedly in a Pinellas County, Florida automobile accident on May 20, 2011. Like a lot of people who write for and read this site, I grew up watching the Macho Man, he was one of my favorites, and, even though he has been out of the professional wrestling industry for many years, I still feel like something is now missing from the world of everybody’s favorite pseudo-sport.
As a result, I figured that, this week, I would pay a little tribute to Randy Savage, and I wanted to make it different than the other tributes to Randy Savage that are cropping up across the internet. Thus, this week we take a brief look at the brief Japanese professional wrestling career of the Macho Man.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Randy Savage was never a regular foreign wrestler for a major Japanese company. Most of the biggest US wrestling stars of the 1970’s and 1980’s were also a big deal in the Land of the Rising Sun, with some prime examples being Terry and Dory Funk, who were simultaneously legends in both the NWA and All Japan and Hulk Hogan, who was actually a main event level star in New Japan some time before he became a main event star in the AWA or the WWF. Savage, on the other hand, got his first major wrestling exposure in the Memphis area and then went straight to the WWF, never really making a connection in the early days of his career that sent him to a Japanese promotion on a regular basis so that he could make his own name there.
Thus, when Randy Savage did finally set foot in Japan, it was not as though he had to start from the ground up and establish his reputation there as most wrestlers setting foot into a foreign ring do. Rather, he had already become a major star with the World Wrestling Federation, so he was truly an outsider and somebody who fans were intrigued to see in person after hearing of his success in America.
One of Savage’s first major appearances in the Eastern Hemisphere occurred on a joint show that will almost certainly never be replicated, as New Japan Pro Wrestling, All Japan Pro Wrestling, and the World Wrestling Federation sent members of their respective rosters to the Tokyo Dome on April 13, 1990 for a show dubbed the “Japan-U.S. Wrestling Summit.” The card was headlined by the WWF’s Hulk Hogan defeating All Japan’s top foreigner Stan Hansen, but Savage was also in a key singles match, as he went head to head with All Japan legend (and occasional WWF guest star) Genichiro Tenryu. The Macho Man did not fare nearly as well as his MegaPowers tag partner Hogan, as Tenryu was able to pin Savage in just under eleven minutes with a powerbomb. The card could be considered nothing less than a success, as it drew a sell-out of over 50,000 fans to the Dome.
The WWF involvement on the Japan-U.S. Wrestling Summit show was due in large part to a working relationship that the WWF and New Japan enjoyed from the 1970’s through the late 1980’s. This was the same relationship that resulted in Antonio Inoki regularly popping up on WWF Madison Square Garden shows and in Hisashi Shinma being the figurehead WWF president in the days before Jack Tunney. For whatever reason, that relationship fell by the wayside in the early 1990’s when a major Japanese corporation – which oddly enough had eyeglasses as its main product – decided that it wanted to fund a new professional wrestling organization to rival NJPW and AJPW. This lead to the formation of Super World of Sports (SWS), which stole away the aforementioned Tenryu to serve as its biggest star. SWS kept its doors open for only three years, but, in that time, one of the major coups that it scored was becoming the primary international partner of the World Wrestling Federation.
This resulted in several WWF and SWS co-promoted cards in Japan, two of which featured Randy Savage. On March 30, 1991, he returned to the Tokyo Dome to pin Japanese wrestler George Takano in singles action. That particular show had 36,000 fans in attendance. Takano may be familiar to fans of the 1980’s WWF, as he had a handful of matches as part of the company’s oft-forgotten junior heavyweight division under a mask as the Cobra. Savage was back in SWS on June 7 of the same year to team up with his former opponent Genichiro Tenryu, as the two took on Yoshiaki Yatsu and Haku in the main event of a show which drew a respectable crowd to the legendary Sumo Hall. In a twenty minute match, Haku, who enjoyed a higher position in Japanese promotions than he did in the United States, won things for his team by pinning Tenryu.
In the year 2000, Savage would have the only major match of his career in which he went to Japan as a free agent and not because a major U.S. promotion sent him there. His contract with WCW had expired in 1999, which prompted New Japan to book the newly independent Macho Man for a few shots. Once again, Randy Savage set foot into the Tokyo Dome, and this time around his opponent was another American, namely former WCW and IWGP Tag Team Champion and NJPW legend Rick Steiner. Much like the Tenryu match in the Tokyo Dome a decade earlier, this was part of a card which drew a 50,000 person sell out.
Perhaps Randy Savage’s most significant run in Japan, however, came in 1996. At that time, he was under contract with WCW, which had forged a working relationship with NJPW at around the same time that the WWF’s deal with New Japan had fallen by the wayside. Savage, along with a host of other WCW wrestlers, were sent to the Orient for a group of three different shows. At the first, held on April 29, Savage took on Hiroyoshi Tenzan, who was also his opponent in the United States for the 1995 version of Starrcade. Savage won that match with a cradle and would return to Japan on July 16, where he wrestled Ric Flair. Flair and Savage had a very hot program against one another in WCW around this time, and taking their act on the road to Japan was quite successful.
This week, we’re going to pay particular attention to the third match of that series, a unique contest that pitted Savage against none other than NJPW junior heavyweight legend Jushin “Thunder” Liger. The match seemed like a natural on paper, as both men were considered excellent in-ring performers as well as wrestlers who had revolutionary high flying styles for their respective eras and territories. The match came the day after the Flair bout named above, and was something that intrigued me from the first day that I learned it was happening. So, enjoy the link below to the match in its entirety, followed up by my review.
I don’t know where NJPW found the version of “Pomp and Circumstance” that gets used for Randy Savage’s entrance, but it’s pretty well the best one I’ve ever heard. He seems to have a limp as he’s walking into the ring, most likely left over from the Flair match the night before, which came to an end when the Nature Boy submitted Savage with the figure four leglock. Liger’s out, and he’s one of about five people in the world who Savage could look at and say, without sounding like a hypocrite, “Dude, you need to pick a less gawdy outfit.” I should also note that this is the period at which Savage was at one of the lowest weights of his big league career, so he and Liger aren’t all that far apart in size as they might have been if this took place just a few years later.
The crowd cheers both men at the start, and they give each other a handshake before the opening bell. Both guys go to the mat quickly, and Liger gets the better of it, causing the Macho Man to show him a little bit of respect. Liger grabs a headlock when the action resumes, and he also manages to knock Savage down off of his feet when the American slips out of the hold. Randy regains a vertical base and looks to go on the offensive, but, in a great spot, Liger baseball slides underneath his legs and takes him down with the KOPPO KICK when he pops out from the other side. A dropkick sends the Macho Man down to the arena floor and Liger starts to charge for a tope suicida . . . and Savage does a GREAT job of selling how much he wants to avoid taking the move, DIVING up and over the top of the guardrail and in the crowd in order to get away from him. Liger sees it, and, instead of executing the tope, does a back handspring off of the ropes.
Savage voluntarily returns to the ring, where Liger works him over in the corner, takes him down, and applies a submission hold on his bad leg. “Ask him!” Liger yells to the referee. The Macho Man is doing a great job selling the hold with his vocals and body language, which is a detail that is harder to pick up on when you watch him on shows produced by WWF or WCW. New Japan uses camera angles that are better for catching those sorts of things. Eventually Savage makes it to the ropes. Liger offers a clean break but does try to go back after his opponent as soon as possible, though Savage catches him off guard, grabs him by his bodysuit, and throws him down to the floor.
The Macho Man gives chase and lays into Liger with fists in front of the crowd, but the masked man responds by kicking him the bad wheel and giving him a KNEE CRUSHER on to the guardrail. Savage moves like hell to get back to the ring to avoid the referee’s ten count, which might be a bit of a miscue since it’s Japan and he really would have had until twenty to get back in if he so desired. Liger continues to dominate back inside the ropes, taking Savage off of his feet again and ramming his bad leg into the ring post before applying the Funk family’s spinning toe hold and then the figure four. Savage immediately gets the ropes this time, but Liger isn’t quite as generous in terms of immediately breaking the hold.
The Macho Man hobbles around ringside for a bit before getting back to the ring, where he is body slammed and hit with a Liger frog splash for two. The Japanese star positions his opponent for a top rope superplex, but Savage fights him off and creates an opening to hit his flying double sledge. He takes a second to sell the bad leg since he landed right on it and then goes up top for the flying elbow. It MISSES as Liger rolls out of the way, pops up, and connects with not one but TWO massive Liger Bombs, which Savage somehow manages to kick out of. Now Savage eats a fisherman buster, but he’s STILL kicking out at a two count. Liger looks for a German suplex, but Savage elbows out of it and hits the ropes. SHOTEI by Liger connects, but it only gets him a two count! The wrestlers hit the ropes again, and this time it’s Savage who gets the better of it, as he catches his man with a short lariat. With Liger temporarily stunned, Savage has just the opening he needs to hit the fastest top rope elbow drop I’ve ever seen him connect with. That’s enough to get him the three count.
The two men raise each other’s arms after the bell, and Savage even briefly gets on the mic to proclaim “OOHHHH YEAH! Thumbs up from the Macho Man to Liger!”
Match Thoughts: Could these two have a better match against one another? Yes, probably. However, wrestling isn’t always about going out there and putting on the best match humanly possible. More often than not, it’s about having the best match for the particular context in which it is being presented. In this particular case, Liger and Savage were wrestling in the opener of a card which featured several of the biggest stars from NJPW and WCW, including a bout between Shinya Hashimoto and Ric Flair for the IWGP Heavyweight Title. In that sort of situation, Liger and Savage should have held back a little bit, giving the crowd just enough that they would be up for the rest of the show but not so much that they would outshine the feature attraction. That’s exactly what occurred here, as this shorter opening bout was highly entertaining but not quite something that would cut it as a main event. Both wrestlers turned in awesome performances for the time that situation which they were given, with Savage in particular being surprisingly selfless in terms of the amount of offense that he gave Liger in order to make the masked man look like a major star in front of his home-country crowd. Every move was executed near perfectly, Savage did a great job conveying emotion, and everything was timed impeccably. Overall, a very fun and unique matchup that is worth your ten minutes to watch, though we would expect nothing less from the Macho Man at this time in his career. ***
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