Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Match # 10: Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (9/11/80)

The fourth and final from the first set between these two. A good man and member of the committee that selected the matches for this set told me to hold on. He said that last one was his least favorite, but this one had something special. We shall see.

This starts out nuts. The stare each other down, start criss-cross running the ropes, Hansen misses the lariat and eats a drop kick. Hansen’s got to work out of a heap of trouble on the mat early. He drops elbows and knees on Inoki to counter. His strikes are tough as hell, and maybe more pronounced here than in past matches. I’m glad that Hansen is beating the crap out of Inoki, because Inoki sure as hell doesn’t sell is big beating. Inoki does a sick bridge up out of a pin by Hansen. Inoki kicks Hansen’s knee and you better believe that big fu%$% sells the hell out of it. Then Inoki targets the lariat arm with submission moves.

Inoki is still an unsympathetic babyface to me, but this match is working. Hansen gets another control segment and at one point bodyslams Inoki so hard you see Hansen wince when he throws him, as if to say, “I wish I could have stopped that one”. Hansen completely makes Inoki’s strikes and then sudden submissions work. He is the reason this match is working, and the others were decent, boring, but above average. But that said, Inoki as the human head butt bullet when getting back in the ring was BOSS. Someone commented on it recently, but it’s totally true that when Hansen threw someone into the ropes the crowd buzzed, expecting a game changing lariat.

The match has a lot of back and forth, sometimes quick, and sometimes the trading of control segments. Hansen unloads a bunch of big moves on Inoki for near falls, including a weird torture rack thing twice. Inoki outsmarts Hansen and beats him by count out in 17 minutes, so Hansen lariats Inoki from behind and takes out all his underlings. He then refers to himself as the number one stud. Agreed. 3 ¼ and 6.4/10.