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TAKA Michinoku vs. Tiger Mask 12/11/95 Aichi Nagoya Shi Nakamura Sports Center |
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This match was not that similar to their 11/23 match even though these guys were wrestling every night on small shows. The match started with TAKA working on Tiger's knee, and that was to be his focus in this match. TAKA unfortunately lost his balance on the top rope when faking his springboard plancha, which resulted in him landing on his head when he tried to backflip into the ring. TAKA didn't let that mistake get to him, he seemed psyched up after that, if anything. Due to TAKA hurting himself, Tiger decided to take control by laying in the kicks to knock TAKA to the floor then delivering his tope suicida. TAKA came back with elbows to the knee when he caught Tiger's kick then hit his Michinoku driver II for a 2 count before going back to the knee. Tiger hadn't really learned how to sell submissions yet, which hurt the match some. This is something that's typically hard for masked wrestlers since you usually can't do much in the way of facials, so you have to sell it with your body movements. "I totally agree with this observation. While Tiger was working to get out of the holds, he wasn't able to properly convey the urgency of his situation or his struggle to get free," wrote Mike. I like how TAKA forearmed Tiger after his showy climb up backflip from the corner, but Tiger needed to go down from this. Instead, he back body dropped the charging TAKA to the floor, with TAKA taking an incredible bump, then delivered a plancha. They teased a count out there, which made since due to that being the way the original Tiger Mask's programs were continued since they were wrongly afraid he'd lose his super hero aura if he was pinned or submitted. Luckily, both men got back in the ring just before 20. Tiger got a near fall with a great diving headbutt, but TAKA brushed his missile kick away and went back to the knee. "I didn't like Tiger's selling leading up to the diving headbutt. Prior to the errant plancha, TAKA had used some great spots to debilitate Tiger's knee. After TAKA missed, Tiger totally forgot about his knee, even going so far as to do moves where broke his fall (his plancha) or landed with all his weight on them (jumping tombstone). All of TAKA's legwork was basically for naught," wrote Mike. TAKA hurt his own knee when he jumped high and far on his springboard plancha, but Tiger wasn't home. He managed to squirm back into the ring to beat the count, only to have Tiger kick him in the back of the bad knee. The next part was done wrong in my opinion, as they should have shown that the bad knee was the reason that TAKA couldn't regain the advantage. They could have done this by having TAKA only be able to get up to his good knee, making him easy prey for Tiger's kicks. Instead, TAKA kept standing up and Tiger would kick him down, which meant that even though kicks were to the bad knee, his problem was not really the knee because a guy with a good knee would probably have gone down from those kicks as well. Instead, his problem seemed to be that he simply was not able to recover and attack or get out of the way in time to avoid the kick. TAKA came back with a German suplex, but couldn't hold the bridge because of the knee. Tiger kicked the knee out again and used the hizajujigatame twice. TAKA got to the ropes the first time, which was fine. He refused to submit the second time, which made no sense because Tiger then stomped him in the face and made TAKA submit to a heel hold. If TAKA wasn't going to submit at all then not submitting to the hizajujigatame would have been acceptable, but not submitting to a move that did damage to his weakest body part and then five seconds later submitting to a move that did damage to a body part that had not been worked on at all was totally illogical. In a shoot it's possible that this could happen, but in a work it just renders the storyline you've been working at useless. The work was excellent and up the finish it was a strong, focused storyline. Overall, the match was pretty much what a junior match should be. They did a lot of nice moves, but that was hardly the match. "My biggest gripe about the match was its placement on the tape. Even though the story and focus of the matches were different, several of the sequences were almost identical to the previous match. While this is to be expected given the way these two were paired off during that tour, I think that placing the second match later in the tape would have helped make them seem more like two totally separate matches and less like two variations of the same thing," wrote Mike. Special thanks to: Mike Barnes 14:37
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