1988 WWC

TNT def. Black Ninja by DQ in 17:56

Since we’ve seen some of Muto recently and just heard Arn Anderson talk about 1989 Great Muta, I thought it would be fun to go back to his earlier days in Puerto Rico as Black Ninja. Here is working the future Savio Vega, still TNT in Puerto Rico. The irony of Muta facing the future Muta rip-off, Kwang in the WWF, isn’t lost on me. Black Ninja was pre-mist Muto as he was on his learning excursion and worked several territories while away from Japan. As much as people say that Muta could be lazy at times, you can see why in this match. Ninja worked the crowd a ton and really got them going with minimal effort. Here, he put on various submissions, including a half crab and bearhug for long periods of time, and the Puerto Rican fans were into all of it because TNT was so fucking over with the locals. The announcers were trying to build this up as a karate battle on commentary, but there weren’t many traditional pro wrestling martial arts moves, and it was worked more like an old-school pro wrestling match. TNT locked on the cobra clutch, and Ninja appeared to be going out when Mr. Pogo ran in for the DQ. The match was slower than you’d probably expect from these two, but they worked the crowd and kept them into it. Muta wasn’t the fountain of silent charisma he’d be in WCW a year later, but you can see him putting together how to get a match over with a live crowd. **1/2

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