Alexis Smirnoff & Super Destroyer #1 vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Giant Baba

[3.0] "The Goon is back! He's a masked Russian this time and he's brought one of the literal dozens of "I Can't Believe It's Not Ivan Koloff"s floating around the territories to team with him. Giant Baba's in-ring work has always been an acquired taste but this is the first bout in the AJPW TV timeline where I'd say he was outright bad. Tenryu was fairly low energy in this match as well. Neither The Goon nor Smirnoff were particularly good, either. In fact, this match was just kinda crap. At least Tenryu won clean."

[4.0] "Also am in belief losing the first two minutes does no harm. The rest of the match was just decent. Two stars. **"

[4.0] "The contemporaneous broadcast clipped out the first two minutes of this match, but that's no major loss, as this is clearly not a match of much significance. It follows the natives vs gaijin tag formula that we often see from AJPW matches like this to a tee. At this point, a match like this was an opportunity to give fans the Baba stuff they wanted while slipping in the Tenryu stuff they (or perhaps more accurately, he) needed, through showing them triumph over the gaijins of the week in a tag that often remained in first gear throughout. It succeeds in its function, which I think makes it adequate by definition, and it's always nice to see Tenryu moving up in the world, but there's not a single thing about this that made it relevant beyond when it was worked and then transmitted. The natives win when Tenryu hits an enzuigiri on Super Destroyer for the pin. **1/4"