WWF Mania Tour Night 3: Osaka Mania 05/09/94

Wrestle And Romance/World Wrestling Federation

Osaka-Jo Hall
Attendance: 7,120

Previously In WAR…

5/9 at Osaka Castle Hall (15,000 capacity) drew an announced 7,120, although no word on what the real attendance was

The last recorded handheld of the tour so successful WWF never did it again.

Headshrinker Fatu vs. 1-2-3 Kid

Still splitting up the tag teams for singles matches, as was the style at the time. After a respectful handshake (you know, from the respectful and human Headshrinkers), Kid lands his three kick combo which are ignored because SAMOAN HEAD HARD. Especially in Japan with the elevation. Fatu opens the ropes for Kid but then attacks him mid-entry and there’s the untrustworthy cannibal type we’re used to. Fatu slams Kid into guard rails while resisting the urge to put him in a pot and boil him as he’s too tender. After some multiple backbreakers soften him up, Kid continues to kick out which gets the crowd behind him. Match slows down (slow-cooking) but Fatu’s hard piledriver reminds the crowd to boo. Kid is getting nowhere until Fatu tries going up top and lands on his balls courtesy of Kid, who gets a crossbody for two, but decides to do it again and he gets Geese Howarded into a powerslam for two. Fatu ignores a headbutt and effortlessly powerbombs Kid for two as the crowd is really liking this. Kid then pops up with a Victory Roll out of nowhere at 10:12 to send the fans home happy if they decided to leave the show after one match.

Bret Hart & Randy Savage vs. Adam Bomb & Owen Hart

Crowd boos Adam Bomb and yet again Owen gets barely anything. Crowd loves Macho Man and yet again Bret gets polite applause. However that all changes when Bret tags in and demands Owen, with The Black Hart (Dammit) declining. Owen hams it up and gets more pop for posing and flexing than the mat wrestling that follows. Ah so they enjoy The Hart drama just not the wrestling? Well that’s understandable. Should have booked Bruce for the next tour. Owen teases running away until Macho drags him into the ring. Turns out these two never had a singles match, how about that. Bomb gets worked over (no don’t do that he might explode) until a sneaky knee from the outside allows Owen to start wrecking Macho. Double teams carry on until Owen accidentally sticks his screwdriver into Adam’s core, allowing Bret to tag in and get some revenge until he takes an Owendriver for two. Bret mostly ignores it because he’s the Best There Is and drops Adam with a clothesline to lock in the Sharpshooter submission victory at 13:35. Decent WWF tag house show match that the crowd enjoyed cheering and booing.

The Undertaker vs. Jinsei Shinzaki

OH HELL YEAH. Crowd is excited as I am as both men make their scary, dramatic entrances before standing perfectly still in their respective corners, staring. Then Shinja pulls out an Undertaker head to frustrate the Dead Man, who has to be calmed down by Paul Bearer, who presumably tells him “don’t panic, it’s just Bret with long hair!”

Undi lands the throat thrusts but Jinsei comes back with hard shoulder tackles which do not move The Dead Un. Undi sees another coming and utilises a drop toe hold of all things to set up a STF, which is very un-Undi. Jinsei oversells come chops and chokes, it’s not often he’s used to being the smaller man in matches. Undi scoop slams with one arm before scaring the ref. Undi misses an elbow but SITS UP as the crowd wildly approve. Jinsei can’t knock Undi down with dropkicks so goes up top and lands a Kamikaze one…only for Undi to SIT UP again. Crowd is OOooOooOing every spot so far. Then Jinsei tries a cross body which is converted into a Tombstone Piledriver to end it wayyyyy too quickly at 3:30.

Crowd is stunned but I’m a lot more forgiving at having a quick best-of match while existing in 2024’s obsession with artificially stretching match lengths. This was like Ronnie James Dio, short and fun.

WWF Women’s Title

Alundra Blayze vs. Bull Nakano

Alunda pushes Bull to start so she gets demolished by a clothesline that seems to hit all of her top body. Bull gets distracted by crowd heckling her so she calls for a test of strength, which Alundra really doesn’t want, but she somehow wins with a Northern Lights. Bull batters Blaze until Blaze sends her outside and splats her with a tope. Both women plod along until Bull delivers a super-Irish whip to set up a big ol’ lariat. You don’t see many people charging up an Irish whip. The beautiful Scorpion Crosslock gets locked in and I haven’t seen many people actually submit to that. Bull uses her nunchucks with the ref doing nothing cos it’s Bull. So far the pace has been more focused and slower than their sprint from a few days ago. Massive piledriver can’t pull away Blayze and a Frankensteiner pin can’t put away Bull. Sunset flip annoys Bull but Blazye shuts her up with a German Suplex. Well for 2.9 seconds anyway and then she’s back up trying to do roll ups. Blayze can’t Powerbomb Bull and drops her on herself and tries to cover with a cover…but then immediately goes up top and eats shit on a dive and the crowd’s like “no come on, you get one but we can’t let you have two. That’s just greedy” and laughs their arses off.

Bull misses a leg drop and takes a German Suplex to end it at 15:10. Like Desean Jackson in 2008, they were close to making the end zone but dropped the ball at the last possible second. Still a grand encounter with Bull bringing out the best in Blayze but you just can’t ignore that big of a fuck up. Like Desean Jackson.

Yokozuna vs. Genichiro Tenryu

Pretend sumo takes on proper sumo. Dramatic staredown to begin, with Tenryu overselling everything while Yoko does sumo poses. Mr. Wrestling takes a breather on the outside but when he returns and gets a wristlock, Yoko dunks him outside again. Tenryu’s so great at making any opponent look like Galactus. It helps that Mr. Fuji is at ringside to twat him for good measure. Crowd hates Fuji, presumably because he’s killed more people than his Mountain relative. Yoko halts a Tenryu charge with a Sambo Suplex and holds on to keep Tenryu grounded, like a big fat dude should do. Then Tenryu lands three enziguris and Yoko refuses to fall down. A Blind Elbow gets two before Tenryu attempts a Powerbomb (!!) but yeah that ain’t happening, Tenryu’s great but he ain’t Ahmed Johnson. Yoko splats Tenryu with a Hulkbuster and crowd is stunned when Tenryu kicks out. Tenryu knows he’s got the crowd in the palm of his hand so he starts kicking out of everything and lands three lariats to knock Yoko out the ring. Both men brawl outside with Tenryu slamming Yoko into the ring-steps, with Fuji getting a slap for good measure. And you can tell Tenryu was in AJPW as the ref can’t stop them from brawling and counts both men out after three minutes of brawling at 14:20.

Tenryu’s pissed and makes a mess of the ringside table before Yoko yells something in Japanese (because he’s Japanese) and dares Tenryu to get in the ring. He doesn’t. Still, the match was great and don’t let anyone tell you that Yokozuna was bad because they’re wrong.

Then J.J. Dillon thanks the fans for showing up and the crowd viciously boo him. Oh my God what did Dillon do?

Osaka Royal Rumble

OK this is a House Show Royal Rumble so you’re not going to get amazingly detailed play-by-play, even if it is only 18 wrestlers.

Rick Martel and Bob Backlund start off, with Bob doing his leg thing that The Butcher in AEW still does when they remember to book him. Shinzaki’s next and doesn’t seem to grasp the whole Battle Royal concept as he saves Bob from falling outside. Adam Bomb shows him how it works by doing the slow grapple over the top that never works. Kid can’t do anything as this slows down until Aoyagi shows up fresh as a daisy and throwing strikes on anybody not sweating. Bomb smothers him with his own gi so Aoyagi can calm down a bit, but then Japan’s favourite wrestler Tatanka shows up so Aoyagi takes a hilarious oversell from Backlund’s Atomic Drop to get the fuck out of there quicker than Custer.

Billy Gunn and his mullet show up but nothing’s really happening. Tatanka nearly punches Martel off the apron but he rolls back in. Hirai appears and yeah, he’ll liven this up. As soon as Bart Gunn appears, Shinzaki charges and absolutely launches himself out the ring courtesy of Kid.

I’m suspecting the Japanese wrestlers took their instructions of when to leave the ring as “as soon as so-and-so comes in, leave IMMEDIATELY”. Sure enough, Owen appears and Hirai gets clotheslined over the top. You can set your watch to it. Bigelow appears and crowd goes wild. He doesn’t do anything. Savage is next and casually tosses Billy out. Bart sends himself over Bam Bam as he can’t live without Billy. That turned out to be true. Undi is next and immediately sends Martel out. Backlund escapes Bigelow’s grasp and does his old man crazy dancing to antagonise him. Bret shows up to grapple mad with Owen but crowd is more into Backlund holding onto the bottom rope as Bigelow kicks him to death. People start throwing each other out with Backlund getting a respectful pop. Bret and Owen take each other out Holmes/Moriarty style.

Final Four are Savage, Bigelow, Undertaker and uh Samu. Bigelow whips Savage into Samu who dunks him outside with a wonderful toss. Undertaker keeps on sitting up and side-steps a Bigelow charge to send Samu flying. Both men taunt to build their spirit meters up. Bigelow tries every move he knows but Undi shrugs them all off, avoids a headbutt, delivers the worst non-Hogan chokeslam of his career and clotheslines Bigelow out to win at 46:15.

Just a House Show Battle Royal with staggered entrances and nothing notable apart from the Japanese wrestlers’ wild self-eliminations.

Overall: Probably the best of the three recorded shows if you ignore the main event, with the match quality jumping up along with the curiosity factor.

But the big question coming out of these shows was if these were a success for WWF or not?

The four-show World Wrestling Federation tour of Japan, which concluded on 5/11, on the surface has been widely called a major flop as none of the four shows came close to even half-filling large arenas. But in looking deeper, that may not paint a complete picture, which is why upon completion of the tour, WWF officials announced a return tour in the fall.

Although WWF officials released crowd figures that were largely inflated (something hardly new in Japan, or by wrestling promoters anywhere), the tour opened on 5/7 with about 4,500 fans in the 17,010-seat Yokohama Arena, followed by about 2,500 fans in the 13,000-seat Nagoya Rainbow Hall on 5/8, about 4,000 fans in the 15,000-seat Osaka Castle Hall on 5/9, and finished up drawing about 2,300 fans in the 10,000-seat Tsukisamu Green Dome in Sapporo. In all four cases, it was by a wide margin the smallest wrestling crowd ever in that specific arena.

In addition, the shows themselves were a major disappointment to those attending based on virtually every report. While the Japanese fans, particularly in Osaka, Nagoya and Sapporo, are fans of hard, athletic style wrestling, which partially explains the smaller crowds for the more entertainment-oriented WWF style, those who attended largely knew not to expect athletic wrestling. But they were still disappointed with the match and show quality. As mentioned last week, among the problems was a lack of cultural understanding of what the audience wanted. Those who attended realized the match quality wasn’t going to be of All Japan standards, but were expecting shows laden with special effects such as laser light shows, pyrotechnics, videos, etc., similar to the WWF PPV shows that Japanese fans had seen via the home video market. Instead, that didn’t take place.

In addition, the finishes left much to be desired and largely showed a surprising ignorance of its audience, surprising since Japanese finishes are so simple to come up with it’s pathetic and it hardly takes a rocket scientist to figure out what won’t work, and WWF almost did its best to make sure what it did wouldn’t work. WWF Japanese rep Akio Sato was a booker and wrestler for years with All Japan, although that was in the pre-clean finish era. Apparently either he has lost pace with the current trends in his native country or was overruled by someone without a clue. J.J. Dillon, who was in charge of the tour, certainly has had enough experience dealing with Japanese style wrestling over the past five years to avoid the most obvious pitfalls, which they fell into. On every show there were finishes which completely turned the fans off and resulted in strong negative reactions, including chants of “refund” by an audience that rarely reacts in such a manner, whether it be quick counted pinfalls and quick submissions (where the losing guy doesn’t struggle before the bell is called for), or what are considered outright b.s. finishes such as a 4:00 count out with Undertaker vs. Yokozuna, a double count out with Tenryu and Yokozuna and ending the tour on the perfectly stupid note, to a chorus of boos as Yokozuna got disqualified for Mr. Fuji hitting Bret Hart with a flagpole in the title match in Sapporo.

Still, the tour was not a financial flop although it must have come nowhere close to garnering the expected income. With high ticket prices ($200 ringside) and enough hardcores interested to buy the expensive tickets, the gates, even with the low crowds, were much larger each night than WWF can draw in the United States, or even in Europe nowadays. Even 2,300 tickets if the average price is $75 is more than $170,000, and 4,000 tickets at that price is $300,000. Merchandise sales were excellent, with merchandise selling out at every show. Japanese fans are into wrestling merchandise far more than their American counterparts, the tour attracted a hardcore audience seeing this as a rare opportunity to purchase the merchandise. WWF officials tried to salvage publicly the small crowds by claiming they didn’t sell any discounted tickets or paper any of the houses. It is accepted practice in Japan for the promotion to sell tickets at 70% of face value to companies who then distribute or sell at face value or less than face value those tickets, similar to group sales for major sports franchises in the United States. Many spot shows are purchased from the major companies for a set fee and the local promoters distribute tickets as they see fit, often times giving away many of the tickets to their friends to act as big shots. Still, when even the second and third level women’s promotions and a tiny independent like Michinoku Pro can draw more fans to its major Tokyo shows than WWF can for a heavily-hyped Japan-Mania card at the Yokohama Arena, it is a sign that the general wrestling fans simply aren’t interested in what the WWF has to offer.

Doesn’t Dave know that the house (show) always wins?

I’ve been Maffew and I’d want to end a match quick if I’d seen my own head