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Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Yuji Nagata From New Japan Strong Style #95 9/10/99 Summer Struggle '99 Taped 7/21 Hokkaido Sapporo Nakajima Taiiku Center (6,500 sellout) |
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They worked this UWF style, and it was a strong technical match. In particular, the transitions were really strong with excellent counters into submission holds. Nagata has always been good at the "realistic" style, but since the UWF-I feud he hasn't had too many opportunities to have good matches in this style because the shootfighter types New Japan uses don't have much ability when it comes to working matches. Here he had Yamazaki, one of the most underrated wrestlers of the past two decades, to carry him through, so pretty much the only things that held them back were the length and the lack of heat. Yamazaki played things well here, as always. He's always able to get over his craftiness to make you believe he can win out of nowhere, and he's not afraid to bend the rules like not breaking a submission when he's frustrated that he wasn't able to win. His selling was really good. In particular, there was this one sequence where Nagata kicked his knee out so Yamazaki went down and that set up a submission portion. Actually, I pretty much always liked how they went between standing and the mat. It wasn't this randomness that we see in ARSION, it was a counter into a submission or knocking someone off their feet then trying to take the dominant position or apply a submission. They made the moves seem dangerous. When a submission was applied,
there was none of that Bolshoi sitting in it for 10 minutes, getting
to the ropes was a matter of life and death. The finish was pretty hot
with Nagata doing a uranage then running off the ropes, but Yamazaki
caught him with a high kick. However, Nagata fired back with a wheel
kick and both sold. Yamazaki tried to do a series of Takada knee lifts,
but Nagata sidestepped one and turned it into the Nagata lock II for
the win. 10:40
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