So I was scrolling Cagematch about a month or so back, as you do, and I found myself looking for some Masanobu Fuchi matches to watch, because sometimes you have an insatiable urge to watch some Old Man Graps.
This urge is how I ran across this comment -
"6.0 - Contrary to what some people are saying, Fuchi was not a successful singles wrestler. He was alright, but only had about one standout singles bout against Kikuchi. Where he really shined was in tag scenarios, where he was truly great at playing a more supportive role in league with more standout wrestlers, such as Tsuruta and Kawada."
Masanobu Fuchi has given professional wrestling 50 years of his life. He’s still giving us time off his clock TO THIS DAY, at 70 YEARS OLD. And the best you can say about him is he had ONE STANDOUT SINGLES MATCH??? This pissed me off so bad that I had to start a whole ass blog to talk about it hey hi hello welcome
Some might call him a mechanic. Others might call him a fall guy. And, yeah, he is those things. But if you take a look at the output Fuchi gave us in his career, the maligned and underfed division he carried on his back for the better part of a decade, and the love for his company he carried in his heart for the entirety of his 50 years and counting career…he’s worth being considered much more than just a good supporting player - he’s worth examining in his own right.
This is a five match primer for one of the undercover legends of the King’s Road, the ace of the junior heavyweights - Masanobu Fuchi.
---
That rep as a tag team specialist we’re trying to shake today starts pretty early for Fuch, as after some time as a young boy in All Japan starting in 1974, his career really gets cooking for the first time during a learning excursion in the United States for the CWA in Memphis in 1981. He’s brought in as part of a tag team managed by long time Memphis stalwart Tojo Yamamoto.
His partner? A fellow All Japan trainee you may have heard of named Atsushi Onita.
Wild things...you make my heart....sings...
Well before Onita was lighting up cigs and blowing up rings in FMW, Onita and Fuchi were smashing Southern pretty boys in the teeth with Tojo’s so-called “fighting stick”, winning the AWA Southern Tag Team Championships twice. One of those title wins came right out of the hands of Jerry "The King" Lawler himself!
…of course Bill Dundee is the one who takes the fall and it takes like a 20 person run-in on Lawler to do it but WHATEVER SCOREBOARD FUCHI OVER LAWLER PUT HIM IN THE HALL OF FAME TRIPLE H YOU BASTARD
*ahem* sorry
Most infamously, they take part in one of the Tupelo Concession Stand Brawls with Ricky Morton and Eddie Gilbert. I’d argue this is the best of the concession brawls despite being far less known - the boys go absolutely hell for leather here. They bash each other with glass jars, Onita blades heavy, Fuchi bleeds hardway from his ear, Tojo slaps the building owner’s wife for absolutely no reason. It fucking rules, go see it if you haven’t.
This kinda thing is said to have inspired Onita later in his career to start FMW. But Fuchi wouldn’t follow that same path.
After a year in Memphis, Fuchi and Onita spent some time in Championship Wrestling from Florida and had begun a short run in the Mid-Atlantic territory until Onita won the NWA International Junior Heavyweight title from Chavo Guererro. This lead Onita to a brief stint in Mexico before being summoned back to All Japan to become the new figurehead of Giant Baba’s brand new Junior Heavyweight division, with that NWA junior belt in tow.
Fuchi, meanwhile, gets to spend a little bit more time honing his craft in Charlotte, mostly doing job matches for their TV tapings. During this time, he gets to have a gem of a TV singles match with a legendary figure of the American territory days, in our first match of the collection...
Masanobu Fuchi vs Ricky Steamboat Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, 1-1-1983 Match Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-nysHP2iNg, Skip to 39:49
Eventually, Steamboat is able to find the correct counter, getting up to a base and attacking the knee of Fuchi with a series of pinpoint kneedrops. Now it’s Fuchi’s turn to sell and it’s masterclass - Fuchi makes it clear the knee has been completely charley horsed up, stumbling and locking his leg to the point where he’s almost wholly unable to stand, even taking a tumble to the outside off a Steamboat chop. From there it’s academic, Steamboat picks up the win with a Cobra Twist at 5:21. Would have preferred a submission on the leg there, but it’s a minor gripe all told.
RATING: ** 3/4
It’s a 5 minute TV match, so it’s a little silly to genuinely rate it with stars, but I really dug this one. Such a great compact little match, with both guys getting to highlight what makes them great and Fuchi really getting the lion’s share of the offense. It’s a shame we never got a 1v1 follow-up to this over in All Japan during one of Ricky’s occasional tours. They do meet again in tag action, but unfortunately this is their only singles encounter. Regardless, It’s a great appetizer course to who Fuchi is as a wrestler and a match you can intro him to anyone with.
---
A couple months later, in April of ‘83, Fuchi’s old partner Atsushi Onita suffers a freak catastrophic leg injury that would change the trajectory of both his career…and the career of his partner. Fuchi is swiftly summoned back to All Japan by Giant Baba to fill his former tag team partner’s role - to become a new star in All Japan’s junior heavyweight division. Fuchi picks up right where Onita left off, and quickly finds himself vying for All Japan’s top junior prize at the time, the NWA International Junior Heavyweight Championship against a standout from the Guerrero wrestling family - and former Onita rival - Chavo Guererro.
Masanobu Fuchi vs Chavo Guerrero
All Japan Pro Wrestling, 8-31-1983
Match Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieXuLyY1tbs
Here, we get to see a side of Fuchi we very rarely get to see during the majority of his later championship runs - he’s an underdog rather than an established threat, and he’s a pure and straight laced babyface here, defending the honor of both All Japan and his former partner Onita at ringside. We get to see him working as less of the grimy shortcutter we know in the 90s but more as a pure technician here.
This is such a smooth technical affair in the early going - Fuchi once again gets some work out of that short-arm scissors and they have a great series of exchanges, but the match is largely defined by Chavo being the first to decide to get nasty. An elbow straight to the nose starts Chavo’s mean streak, but it’s a failed Romero Special attempt that really turns things up. Chavo dumps Fuchi right on his head on the ropes, then chucks him to the outside.
From there, Fuchi tries to get things back into reasonably controlled wrestling with a head scissors, but Chavo has none of it, electric chairing Fuch into the turnbuckle and smashing him with a dive. This almost seems to wake up some fire within Fuchi who answers back by turning up the pace aggressively - backdrop, missile dropkick, but Chavo cuts off the rally and goads Fuchi into a strike exchange. Fuchi and Chavo trade submissions before Chavo fully takes control and starts throwing bombs at Fuchi, including a big German suplex. Fuchi rallies with one of his own that BARELY isn’t 3, a true 2.9 count false finish that the crowd fully bites on. We end up in a double knockdown. Fuchi gets up first and fires up, pancaking Chavo and setting him up for a big backdrop…but it’s the guile of the champion that wins out, Chavo catching Fuchi with a sunset flip that closes the affair at 17:01.
RATING: *** 3/4Chavo and Fuchi were evenly matched, going hold for hold, but it was when Chavo decided to turn up the aggressiveness that the tide really starts to swing in his favor. The opening of this is an electric technical affair, and the crowd really wants to see Fuchi get the job done for his partner…but unfortunately, Chavo’s just too mean and just too clever to go down. Fuchi will learn how to harness this himself a bit further down the road. But for now, disappointment and a handshake.
---
Fuchi would never find the success of his partner for the NWA International Junior title - his match against Chavo was his one and only shot at that belt. He briefly reunites with a returning Onita in 1984, who retires for the first time shortly thereafter, and Fuchi finds himself in the wilderness of All Japan’s lower midcard throughout much of 84 and 85.
Eventually, All Japan forms its own Junior Heavyweight championship in 1986 and Fuchi starts to get back in the mix - he’s unsuccessful in becoming the first champion, but by 1987 he finally finds success, besting Kuniaki Kobayashi after a violent feud to become the 3rd AJPW Junior Heavyweight Champion. And when finally Fuchi finds success, he latches onto it, becoming the de facto ace of the Junior Heavyweight division. His first run with the title stretches over two years before finally dropping the title to Joe Malenko in early 1989. The belt trades hands a few more times before Fuchi fully grabs hold of it for good in October of that year, embarking on a 4 year, 15 defense stranglehold on the Junior Heavyweight division.
It’s around this time that Fuchi partners up with longtime ally and heavyweight kingpin Jumbo Tsuruta and becomes one of the founding members of Tsuruta-Gun, a legendary group of grumpy bastards who act as valiant babyfaces when faced by foreign invaders, but gritty heels when faced with young up and comers like Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, and Kenta Kobashi. Alongside Tsuruta-Gun’s young boy, Akira Taue, it is here that Fuchi’s legacy is truly forged.
We're only covering Fuchi singles bouts today, but OBVIOUSLY, if you haven't watched any of the Super Generation Army vs Tsuruta-Gun 6 man tags, you ABSOLUTELY need to, they're quite possibly the best 6 man tags in wrestling history. I’ll specifically recommend the 5-26-90, 10-19-90, and 4-20-91 bouts. They’re classics for a reason, and Fuchi is a fixture in the series...but he isn’t the main character in them and they aren’t singles bouts, so they’ll have to wait for another day.
---
Meanwhile, on the singles side, Fuchi is commanding the Junior Heavyweight division…which is both a blessing and a curse for us here. You see, Baba didn’t prioritize the junior belt very highly during most of his time as the lead man of All Japan, and unfortunately this means a lot of the time, Fuchi’s matches get cut down for television time during All Japan’s weekly TV show. So as much as I want to talk about what looks like an amazing Fuchi vs Dean Malenko match here that finishes with a fuckin’ sick Stump Puller by Fuchi…sadly we only get about 6 minutes worth of it and it feels a little unfair to grade an incomplete match.
by the way, if this match exists in full out there I will give you 1 whole kidney for it thank you
Thankfully, there is one series of matches that survives almost in its entirety: Fuchi’s long lasting series with his greatest foe - one of his own dojo trainees, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi. Kikuchi debuted in 1988 and by 1990 quickly found himself in the mix with the Super Generation Army, frequently standing against Fuchi for the Jr title throughout the first half of the 90s. We’ll cover a couple of their standout bouts here.
Masanobu Fuchi vs Tsuyoshi Kikuchi All Japan Pro Wrestling, 4-16-1992 Match Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUIPHs_NC6Q&t=1s
When our ill informed Cagematch commenter talked about Fuchi only ever having one good singles match with Kikuchi, this is probably NOT the one they’re talking about - a Jr. title match during the final night of the Champions Carnival tour of ‘92. This match thankfully survives in its entirety thanks to fancam footage.
The bout starts respectfully enough with a handshake between the two rivals, but Fuchi has now hard learned the lessons from a decade ago, back when he was facing guys like Guererro and Kobayashi…be the first to get nasty. Fuchi wastes no time, nearly immediately dumping Kikuchi to the outside after an early shoulder block, and then swiftly doing it again after Kikuchi rolls back in. While Kikuchi avoids both initial attempts at outside brawling, put a pin in this spot for later. After a long headlock control sequence from Fuchi, Kikuchi absolutely clatters Fuchi with elbows that Fuchi sells brilliantly, stumbling and bumping at the force of his younger opponent’s strikes. Fuchi defiantly slaps back at Kikuchi, but cooler heads prevail and the men return to grappling, this time Kikuchi gaining and maintaining control for a time before Fuchi escapes and immediately once again dumps Kikuchi to the outside, this time succeeding in smashing Kikuchi into the guardrail and slamming him on the floor. This becomes Fuchi’s go-to strategy throughout this match - any time Kikuchi finds a sliver of hope and advantage, Fuchi chucks Kikuchi to the outside and does damage. A pair of backdrops score Fuchi a pair of near falls, but a slightly awkward powerslam reversal gives Kikuchi another opportunity…until Fuchi once again dumps him to the outside.
Kikuchi fights his way back in with a flying lariat, fisherman’s suplex, and a top rope dropkick that this time sends Fuchi sprawling out onto the floor. Kikuchi finally decides to indulge Fuchi in his floor brawling now that he’s at the advantage, bouncing him off the guardrails before bringing him in for a half crab that Fuchi fights his way to the ropes for. Kikuchi tries to build momentum with a series of roll-ups and dodging Fuchi’s enzugiri, but it’s Fuchi’s veteran craftiness and ring positioning that once again sends Kikuchi out to the floor, this time with a back body drop. And this time Fuchi finally makes his plan whole, smashing Kikuchi’s knee into the timekeeper’s table on the outside, drawing the rage of the Nagoya crowd.
From here it’s academic - Kikuchi’s knee is completely compromised, and despite fighting his way back into the ring, Fuchi immediately goes to the leg, torturing it with a half crab and an STF. Kikuchi stages one last rally, blocking a knee breaker with a German suplex, but his knee can’t hold the bridge and after a brutal basement dropkick, Fuchi finishes the job with another half crab at 19:39.
RATING: ****
I love this match primarily for its structure - Fuchi clearly has a plan and he sticks to it, and he uses his ring positioning to get his man in the position he wants him, on the outside. It takes him awhile, but once he finally executes getting Kikuchi to the floor and brutally smashing his leg, it works like a charm. Love this match for Fuchi’s deviousness, selling, and strategy, even if it starts a little slow and has a couple wonky spots.
---
If there’s one thing we learned in the last bout, it’s that Kikuchi is a fighter. Over the course of the next year he fights his way back to Fuchi once again for a return bout in February of 1993. And ooooooh boy is Kikuchi gonna need to fight....
Masanobu Fuchi vs Tsuyoshi Kikuchi
All Japan Pro Wrestling, 2-8-1993
Match Link: https://youtu.be/jZHgMVbdxSU?si=hNf-xMXgLe41ZeVp
When our ill informed Cagematch commenter talked about Fuchi only ever having one good singles match with Kikuchi, THIS is probably the one they’re talking about, a rather famous matchup toward the end of Fuchi’s monolithic 3rd Jr. title reign. But all the same…dude was right about exactly one thing - this match FUUUUUUCKS.
This time Kikuchi is the one who decides on an early strategy - turn this match into a sprint. He smashes Fuchi with a dropkick and early suplex. Kikuchi is in FULL control in the early going, trying to catch Fuchi with diving headbutts and dropkicks. Fuchi desperately tries to hang on, and he eventually stops the onslaught with a clever German counter into a key lock, driving Kikuchi’s shoulder into the mat and shutting down Kikuchi’s opening rally.
Fuchi takes control of the arm and punches away, but Kikuchi is still trying to make this a race, he counters into another German and some more offense before Fuchi catches him slipping on a running dropkick. It’s at this point that Fuchi decides…you know what? FUCK THIS KID. Any pretense of sportsmanship goes out the window as Fuchi straight kicks Kikuchi in the mush, drops him with a punch, then ASSAULTS Kikuchi with three straight backdrops. Fuchi has had enough of this guy, the venom in his face tells the entire story.
After another backdrop, Kikuchi grits his teeth and tries to come back swinging, but he is met with the wall of another backdrop and knuckle arrow punches, eventually getting put down with an enzugiri. From this point on, it’s a desperate struggle for Kikuchi to survive - any time he shows even a bit of fight, Fuchi snuffs it out with another kick. Eventually, Fuchi just decides to try and break Kikuchi’s damn neck with two more dangerous backdrops, to the point where Kikuchi is crawling on Fuchi’s body just to stand. Fuchi meets this with THREE MORE BACKDROPS.
My dude had infinite finishers turned on and no regard for Kikuchi’s health and well being here, and it’s another series of shocking backdrops that finally shut Kikuchi down at 11:03.
RATING: ****1/2
I really thought about the full 5, I decided against it since I can see some people finding the match maybe a bit repetitive? But this scratches the same itch for me that, say, Brock Lesnar vs John Cena at Summerslam 2014 does - it’s an absolute mugging of a beloved babyface, and both guys carry it off brilliantly. Fuchi in particular is such a killer here, there is an anger and a viciousness that makes this such a convincing and stunning performance.
---
From here, with the Four Pillars and Kikuchi all established as champions, it feels like time for the old guard of men like Fuchi to fade off into the night. Fuchi doesn’t have a singles match in the entirety of 1997. He mostly participates in midcard 6 man tags throughout the latter half of the 90s, only having a grand total of 4 singles matches in the back half of the decade. It sounds as though Father Time is beginning to call Fuchi’s name, and in normal circumstances, maybe it does end like this for All Japan’s most decorated junior heavyweight. But fate, and the rising waters, would lead to a very different story for Fuchi.
---
The great NOAH exodus of 2000, lead by Mitsuharu Misawa, absolutely shatters the All Japan roster. Of All Japan’s native stars, Misawa takes nearly all of them, 24 of the 26 Japanese workers signed with Misawa’s faction. All Japan swiftly loses its television deal to Misawa’s new upstart promotion. All, frankly, seems lost.
Only two men decide to stay behind and rebuild after the flood that built the Ark.
Misawa’s greatest rival and heavyweight division centerpiece, Toshiaki Kawada.
And…Masanobu Fuchi. Even half a decade removed from his greatest triumphs, Fuchi made his career defending Zen Nihon from foreign invaders and young hotshot upstarts, and he wasn’t about to stop now.
Most old men allegedly past their primes would have simply hopped onboard the boat. But not Masanobu Fuchi. He was going to swim. And in the first show post-exodus…Fuchi decided to swim upstream against Dangerous K.
Masanobu Fuchi vs Toshiaki Kawada
All Japan Pro Wrestling, 7-1-2000
Match Link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7t7c2h
I would love to be able to tell you that this match is an all time classic. A forgotten, little known epic in the wider canon of the King’s Road.
It is not. For the most part, this is Toshiaki Kawada putting an ass whooping on a nearly 50 year old man. Fuchi hasn’t wrestled a match on this scale in years. Kawada has had his iron sharpened for a decade by the other 3 Pillars of Heaven. Frankly, it should be this way.
But what I love about this match, and why I think you should watch it, is for Masanobu Fuchi’s short but fevered acts of defiance.
In the beginning of the match, Fuchi acts respectfully. He surprisingly breaks clean on tie-ups, perhaps age and lack of singles contests over the past half decade have softened him somewhat. He has forgotten the lessons of brutality that his decades of experience in the mat wars has taught him. Kawada, still performing at a high level, doesn’t afford him the same mercy - he ruthlessly kicks away at Fuchi, chops and completely welts Fuchi’s chest. Fuchi is outmatched and outgunned and clearly so.
But every so often…Fuchi will rise with a short series of slaps. He’ll grind his forearm into Kawada’s face after Kawada reaches the ropes. He’ll turn Kawada over out of a submission and punch away at him. These don’t really hurt Kawada, if anything they just serve to piss Kawada off. But Fuchi is refusing to go down without a fight.
The one that really gets to me though, that makes my breath catch into my chest, is this sequence. Masanobu Fuchi, desperately trying one last flurry, reaches back to perhaps his greatest triumph, his destruction of Kikuchi. Labored, he attempts to string together a series of 3 backdrop suplexes, one as arduous as the next. They’re not as crisp as they were nearly a decade ago, but Fuchi still delivers a painful series of three and Kawada…
Kawada kicks out at 1.
It’s over. We all know it is.
We know All Japan, as it is, has to end. It cannot survive its catastrophic losses in the wake of the NOAH defection. It has to change in order to survive. This version of All Japan Pro Wrestling is gone, as good as dead.
But Masanobu Fuchi is defiant in the face of this ultimate demise. This whole match, I would argue, is a singular act of defiance. Fuchi here is the last beating heart of the old way of All Japan Pro Wrestling, the last surviving soldier carrying a torch and the red stains of war, desperately trying to make it back home before falling into the dirt.
For one night, one final time, we get to watch the old way, the way of the 1970s of All Japan, the way it all started, desperately raging against Father Time itself. This match is Masanobu Fuchi standing straight up at the face of the tidal wave, NOAH’s ark at the crest, and screaming out loud:
But Fuchi delivers on his statement of intent. He survived. Just like All Japan will.
Kawada shakes his hand and helps him up, as if to thank him for reminding him of All Japan’s enduring spirit. These are the two men that will carry All Japan through one of its darkest hours.
RATING: *** 1/2
That score is me trying to be objective. The match itself is mostly a decently executed, old school ass whooping with some occasional nice hope spots. That's the match. As a message? It’s like 25 stars. I love this match. Fuchi is so defiant and does such a great job of making me BELIEVE that this promotion isn't completely cooked. It needs help, no doubt. But it ain't dead.
So who is Masanobu Fuchi? He may not be Giant Baba, he may not be a pillar, but what he is, is the living, breathing soul of All Japan Pro Wrestling. A direct link from damn near the beginning of the promotion, a man who has seen every high and felt every brutal downfall. But throughout all of it, through 3 exoduses and from every fall from grace, he has stood by it and fought to protect it.
Even still, at 70 years old, he still occasionally fights for All Japan Pro Wrestling. He wrestled for 20 minutes with young upstart Yuma Anzai in January of this past year. Is it a great wrestling match? No, not really. The man is 70 years old, what do you expect?
But still, no matter his age, no matter what Father Time tells him, he fights. He fights for All Japan. He stands with All Japan. And he, in many ways, is All Japan.
So yeah, he had more than one good singles match, Cagematch dude. Taste it.
No comments:
Post a Comment