All Japan changed greatly, as it had some of the hottest matches in the world. All Japan, from its inception in 1972, was all about Baba and later Tsuruta beating the top American stars, who rotated coming into the country. Business had its ups and downs, with far more ups than downs. But even with the advantage of the name foreigners, by the early 80s, New Japan was clearly the most popular group, particularly when doing Japanese vs. Japanese main events, which really exploded when Choshu got hot and started feuding with Tatsumi Fujinami.
Choshu's move bolstered the All Japan business to where they were selling out most of their shows in 1985 and 1986, with Choshu's Army against Tsuruta & Tenryu, as well as the other All Japan stars. In early 1987, Choshu and his entire group ended up going back to New Japan. Baba's call was instead of going back to Tsuruta & Tenryu feuding with the top foreign stars, to put Tenryu with Hara and form his own group, called Revolution, and basically fill the slot in the promotion that Choshu's army had.
The Revolution group also included young wrestlers Samson Fuyuki and Toshiaki Kawada, who became the popular mid-card tag team The Foot Loose, named after a popular 80s movie and song, as well as Yoshinari Ogawa, Masao Orihara and Tatsumi Kitahara.
From an in-ring standpoint, it was the next few years where Tenryu went to yet another level. Tsuruta vs. Tenryu was the best in-ring feud of that era, whether in Japan or anywhere else. Tenryu also beat Hansen to win the PWF title. Hansen later beat Tenryu for both the PWF and United National titles, while Tsuruta beat Brody for the International title. The creation of the Triple Crown, merging the three belts, came on April 18, 1989, with Tsuruta as the first champion from beating Hansen. Tenryu won it on June 5, 1989, at Budokan Hall, in what is generally remembered as one of the biggest matches of his career.
When Choshu's army left, Yatsu, who Baba handpicked as a main event star, stayed with All Japan, to be Tsuruta's partner in a team called The Olympics, since both wrestled in the Olympics, Tsuruta in 1972 and Yatsu, as a teenager, in 1976. They went back and forth with Tenryu & Hara, and after Hara was fired over gambling problems, Tenryu & Hansen formed a team.
The program ended in 1990, when Hachiro Tanaka, the billionaire owner of the Megame Super Optical company, Japan's largest eye glass company, was looking at taking over the wrestling industry. It's notable that out of all the wrestlers in Japan at the time, his choice to build around was Tenryu. Tenryu was offered a multi-year contract at $800,000 per year, that made him, by far, the highest paid wrestler in Japan, and at the time, with the exception of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Ultimate Warrior, the highest paid in the world. Still, the move was heavily criticized as in Japanese culture, the feeling was that Inoki was a great wrestler, but his faults as a businessman were also well known and fans would cheer him similar to Hulk Hogan, as a flawed superstar who wasn't honest, but they had so many great memories of him that they would look past the obvious flaws. Baba, on the other hand, was viewed almost like a Pope, an honorable promoter, whose word was better than any contract. When foreigners switched promotions, that was okay because they were Americans. When stars left New Japan, that was okay because Inoki wasn't honest. But a Japanese wrestler who Baba took in and made a star, a category Choshu didn't fit into, leaving him over purely money, made him a mercenary, no different from the Americans. Tenryu lost a great deal of popularity while his bank account grew.
All Japan business seemed to be growing, with the new fresh tag team of Terry Gordy & Steve Williams rotating with Tsuruta & Yatsu and Tenryu & Hansen, and various incarnations of singles matches looked strong.
Then Tenryu not only left, but with his big money backing, was able to take Yatsu, The Great Kabuki, Ishikawa, Fuyuki, Kitahara, Orihara and Shinichi Nakano with him. He also hired the troubled Koji Kitao, a sumo superstar who was kicked out of the sport when he was its biggest star, and had also been kicked out of New Japan by that time.
The move was thought to be a disaster for All Japan. While Tsuruta and Tenryu were always booked as equals, Tenryu was the bigger star by the time. He had been Japanese Wrestler of the Year in 1986, 1987 and 1988. He was never thought to have Tsuruta's talent, but he had the hard chops in the comeback, worked stiffer and more believably, and showed more fire. Tsuruta was so good he could coast, which he regularly did, but Tenryu wasn't as good naturally, and his success came because of his work ethic, which the Japanese fans could more easily relate to.
The departures forced Baba to elevate a new crew, Mitsuharu Misawa, Akira Taue, Toshiaki Kawada and Kenta Kobashi. Misawa and Kobashi became gigantic draws in the major cities. Misawa & Kawada formed a top young star team, Tsuruta took Taue as his partner, Gordy & Williams and Hansen & Danny Spivey were the top foreign teams. Even after losing Tsuruta, whose career ended a few years later due to Hepatitis, which ended up leading to liver problems that ended his life, All Japan was on fire, at one point selling out more than 200 straight shows in Tokyo.
Super World Sports, Tanaka's new company, made a business deal with the WWF, so had WWF stars on every tour, and the biggest stars came for its signature events at the Tokyo Dome. But fans never took to the promotion. They were criticized for not being as good as All Japan and New Japan, which they weren't. After just two years, incurring huge money losses, SWS folded.
The promotion was most notable for big shows on March 30, 1991, at the Tokyo Dome, which drew 36,000 fans for a dream match where The Road Warriors beat Hulk Hogan & Tenryu via count out. On December 12, 1991, they drew 30,000 for Hogan vs. Tenryu. WWE had agreed to allow Tenryu to win clean, since Hogan wasn't WWF champion at the time, and SWS was struggling and a win by Tenryu over Hogan should have helped Tenryu regain his former popularity, which the company badly needed at the time since it's momentum was negative. But Hogan got to Japan and refused to lose, and Tenryu, for the good of the show, since a 60 minute match was impossible, agreed to take the loss. SWS died a few months later.
Tenryu and his brother-in-law, maintaining the business ties to WWF, formed Wrestle and Romance, or WAR. Tenryu maintained an alliance with WWF, including wrestling Ric Flair for the WWF title at the Yokohama Arena. Over the next few years, Tenryu, the star of WAR, would, either within his own group, or going to other groups, face the top stars of the time like Keiji Muto, Masahiro Chono, Tatsumi Fujinami, Choshu, Shinya Hashimoto and even Antonio Inoki from New Japan, Atsushi Onita in FMW and Nobuhiko Takada.
He had huge matches with all of them. He beat Choshu before 53,500 at the Tokyo Dome, beat Inoki before 48,000 (making him the only modern Japanese wrestler to beat both Baba and Inoki, and he was also the first Japanese wrestler to win both the Triple Crown and IWGP heavyweight title), beat Fujinami at the Dome, and as the outsider, lost his IWGP title to Sasaki in 2000 before a sellout 53,500 in the match that really elevated Sasaki. He sold out Kawasaki Baseball Stadium with 55,000 beating Onita, and lost to Takada before 41,000 at Jingu Stadium in Tokyo.
Between 1987 and 1996, Tenryu was awarded the Wrestler of the Year award four times and Match of the Year seven times. His winning matches were August 31, 1987, against Tsuruta, July 27, 1988 against Hansen, June 5, 1989 against Tsuruta, December 12, 1991, against Hogan, January 4, 1993 against Choshu, March 2, 1994 in a tag match with Hara against Onita & Tarzan Goto, and September 11, 1996 against Takada.
As respected as Tenryu was as a wrestler, he was even more respected as a boss. He learned from Baba in that way.
"WAR was a great company to work for and Tenryu was likely the best boss I ever had," wrote Lance Storm. "I'm not sure there is a man in the business I have more respect for than Genichiro Tenryu. Tenryu treated his people like they were his people, not just wrestlers who happened to work for him. We all traveled together on the same bus and Tenryu was completely approachable and easy to talk to. I got regular raises working for WAR and Tenryu always checked up on us to make sure we didn't need anything. Tenryu had worked in the U.S. before so I think he appreciated the hardships of being in foreign country and always looked out for us.
"Did WAR or Genichiro Tenryu ever stiff me on my money? Absolutely not. I was paid every dime Tenryu ever promised me and on a few a few occasions even got bonuses. In Japan, a man is measured by his honor and Tenryu is a great, great man. On a scale of one to ten, Tenryu was an 11, and I can't think him enough for two of the greatest years of my career."
Giant Baba would never book Tenryu after leaving him, but when most of the company left All Japan after Baba's death, due to problems between Misawa and Motoko Baba (Giant Baba's widow), she called Tenryu back in 2000 and his return led to sellouts at Budokan Hall, and most notably a singles feud with Muto.
He was still considered a serious top star well into his 50s, even having a run with NOAH, before becoming an older comedy figure in the Hustle promotion and mostly working smaller nostalgia based shows for the past several years.
Tenryu's final show was positioned as the end of an era. It was symbolic that before the show started, they played Baba's entrance music. The first thing on the show was rock star Masayoshi Takanaka, the 62-year-old who is considered one of the greatest rock guitarists ever in Japan, came out and played "Thunder Storm," which he wrote in 1981 for Tenryu and it has remained his entrance music for 34 years. This should have been played for his last ring introduction as opposed to the start of the show. During intermission, they played Inoki's theme.
In many ways, the show was more about the clips from all the different promotions throughout his career on the screen, and musical entrances of people like Jushin Liger, Kabuki, Shiro Koshinaka, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Minoru Suzuki, Choshu, Stan Hansen and Terry Funk. When Hikaru Sato won, they played the UWF theme, which got a big pop from the older fans, and many of the younger fans didn't recognize it at all.
The crowd wasn't much into a lot of the underneath stuff with the indie guys, and were far more into the older guys and the nostalgia.
It wasn't always the best. Kabuki, at 67, got a big reaction for his entrance, his nunchakus spinning and blowing the mist. The crowd popped for everything he did. But his punches were slow and he had no speed or flexibility in his legendary thrust kicks. When he tagged out, he held onto the ropes like he'd collapse otherwise.
After intermission there were some good matches, largely based on the work of Suzuki, Tomohiro Ishii, Ryuichi Kawakami, Yuji Okabayashi and Daisuke Sekimoto.
The match with Okada was not pretty. Tenryu's stamina was gone early. Once, when trying to execute a power bomb, a move he popularized and became a trademark, he tried to put his back against the turnbuckles to help him keep his balance lifting Okada. But he couldn't hold him, and dropped him, almost right on his head. As the match wore on, the chops, formerly his trademark, were feeble. The punches were even sadder still. He was bumping near the ropes, so he'd be able to use the ropes to help him up.
It appeared every step he took was painful. The great positive was just how respectful a crowd this was. There were no catcalls. There was no laughing. He could barely get Okada up his snap brainbuster. Okada had to sell for horrible looking punches. Okada also ended up busted up, as Tenryu kicked him too hard in the face. He knew his job was to make Tenryu look as much like the Tenryu the fans wanted to see as possible. But even though he's one of the best wrestlers in the business, and the crowd was very willing to go to any lengths possible to suspend even the most ridiculous suspension of disbelief, it couldn't be hidden. After a second Okada dropkick, he could barely stand. Okada then hit a third dropkick. Tenryu took a bump for it, and got up for the last time as Okada hit the rainmaker and at 17:27, Tenryu's career was over.
All the wrestlers on the show surrounded the ring. The crowd, the majority of which weren't even alive when Tenryu started in All Japan Pro Wrestling, and some, not even alive for his classic matches with Tsuruta, gave him the respectful reaction he deserved. Stan Hansen, Terry Funk, and his daughter came out. The bell rang ten times. And Tenryu sat down, as he was clearly having trouble standing by this point, while the rest of the wrestlers on the card got to have their picture taken with him as a lifetime highlight of being on the show.
Hopefully he gets better for WK.
Long read but worth it 
Dudes you would not want to fukk with.
