NJPW World Pro Wrestling Immortal Fighting Spirit Tradition #159 7/12/06 |
12/11/90 Nagoya Rainbow Hall: Tatsumi Fujinami & Shiro Koshinaka & Takayuki Iizuka vs. Riki Choshu & Osamu Kido & Kuniaki Kobayashi 11:43. With Fujinami, Koshinaka, Iizuka, & Kobayashi you basically had a who’s who of (former) juniors who are quick and willing to push the pace, but don't possess great offense. Choshu isn't as athletic, but bursts of energy define his heavyweight tag style. The offense was expectedly pretty basic, but the pace could have been a little better, especially since the match was on the short side. The heat was on Fujinami vs. Choshu, and they worked with each other enough to content the crowd, with Kobayashi, Iizuka & Koshinaka doing most of the running around. A decent effort and match, but nothing substantial. **
12/13/90 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan
Masa Saito vs. Ax Demolition 6:05. There wasn’t even an instance of skill on display in this WWF style match where Ax kept escaping to the floor for breathers, 6 minutes being a real iron man challenge and all. The match finally started when Saito went to the floor too for some brawling then they did some more punches in the ring and it mercifully ended soon after that. DUD
Keiji Muto & Masahiro Chono vs. Crusher Bam Bam Bigelow & Bad News Brown 13:18. A huge disappointment. Muto & Chono weren’t bad, they simply had little opportunity to do anything useful since Bad News was in full WWF street fighter gimmick and Bigelow was choosing to be lazy and join in the punching and headbutting. The gaijins were on the offensive for 85% of the match, with Muto & Chono mainly standing around waiting to get hit. As the match was merely striking, and they weren’t even exchanging strikes, it was incredibly methodical with no timing or flow. There was one good spot where Bad News hit his ghetto blaster on Muto but chose to taunt, allowing Chono to sneak up from behind with one of his own, but that was about it. *
IWGP Tag Title Match: Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki vs. Shiro Koshinaka & Takayuki Iizuka 21:11. Could look like an excellent match with the right editing, but the structuring was somewhat crude and it took too long to get going. The majority of the match was disappointing, technically sound and certainly not bad but rather slow and not particularly intense. The main theme was Iizuka working on Hase’s knee, but without much in the way of a transition, they dropped the matwork and picked the pace up five notches, exchanging signature spots. Almost all the NJPW matches of this period had finishes that were much faster paced and more spot oriented than the rest of the match, and the crowd was really hot for this final portion. It's not that it wasn't quite good, but it was one of the most offensive examples of the general problem with the promotions matches of the period in that it really had little to do with the rest of the match. ***
