NJPW Tadakai no Wonderland ~Chosenshi Gekiko Hen~ #748 |
6/25/95 Saitama Omiya Skate Center: Shinya Hashimoto & Junji Hirata vs. Osamu Kido & Akira Nogami 10:41. Nogami worked the majority of the match, giving a valiant effort though largely getting destroyed. He got some offense in on Hirata, but simply had no chance against Hashimoto, as Nogami had to get a running start to simply match Hashimoto’s standing impact, and then Shinya would just kick Akira in the gut. **
7/7/95 Hokkaido Iwamizawa Sports Center, Best of the Super Junior II Koshikisen: El Samurai vs. Wild Pegasus 30:00. An excellent match, but almost on talent alone. It was very obvious these two are great wrestlers who were on top of their physical game, but disappointing that they didn’t utilize the extra time to incorporate any semblance of a mental game. This should have been a great match, in fact it would have been if they simply did their regular length match starting with the portion where Pegasus brutalizes Samurai. I love long matches, but while the final 17 minutes were top notch, the first 13 were merely above average because rather than tell a story and/or set up the body, they essentially just lengthened the technically fine but not particularly meaningful or inspired mat portion. They didn’t make any mistakes, and the fact they were able to maintain such clean execution throughout one of their most draining matches of the year, which obviously required them to dig a lot deeper into the toolbox, is extremely impressive. ****
