NJPW The New Beginning in Sendai
NJPW The New Beginning in Sendai (2/14/2015)- Sendai, Japan
SATOSHI KOJIMA & CAPTAIN NEW JAPAN vs. MANABU NAKANISHI & YOHEI KOMATSU- 2/10
reDRagon vs. TIGER MASK IV & JAY WHITE- 6/10
Wow. I was certain that this â€"Jay White†guy who I’ve never even heard of before was just in here to eat the fall, but they actually made look pretty good.
MASCARA DORADA & TIME SPLITTERS vs. THE BULLET CLUB (The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega)- 8/10
Total craziness and some insane spots, all crammed into just eleven minutes.
NWA WORLD JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Jushin â€"Thunder†Liger(c) (w/Tiger Mask IV) vs. Chase Owens (w/Bruce Tharpe)- 6.5/10
I’d like to see more of Chase Owens, and I MUST HAVE MORE BRUCE THARPE!
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- My Japanese is basically non-existent, but I’m pretty sure Liger and Tiger Mask agreed to have a title match at some point in the future.
NWA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Rob Conway(c) (w/Bruce Tharpe) vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan (w/Satoshi Kojima)- 6.5/10
KOTA IBUSHI & TETSUYA NAITO vs. KAZUSHI SAKURABA & TORU YANO- 7.5/10
Holy crap! A great Yano match! And it’s not like he hid in the corner, either. He was actually an important part of the match. They also seem to be building towards Ibushi vs. Sakuraba, which should be all kinds of awesome.
THE BULLET CLUB (Yujiro Takashi & Bad Luck Fale) vs. CHAOS (YOSHI-HASHI & Kazuchika Okada) (w/Gedo)- 6.75/10
HIROOKI GOTO, KATUYORI SHIBATA, & HIROSHI TANAHASHI vs. THE BULLET CLUB (Tama Tonga, Doc Gallows, & Karl â€"Machine Gun†Anderson) (w/Cody Hall)- 6.5/10
The Bullet Club has KISS facepaint. It’s dumb. The match was decently good, but not as good as I was hoping, considering the talent involved.
Apparently Togi Makabe has been stripped of the NEVER Openweight Title because he is sick tonight and can’t defend it. That’s lame. It’s barely even a PPV. I get that you don’t want the fans to feel cheated, but I’m sure they’ll understand. It’s not like no one has ever gotten sick and had to miss work for a few days before.
As a result, instead of Makabe defending the title against Ishii, who is one of the most overrated wrestlers I have ever seen, we will get a match to determine a new champion between Ishii and Honma… who lost his match with Kota Ibushi just a few days ago, and whose gimmick over the past ten months has pretty much been that he always loses… so why is he getting a title match? The other part of his gimmick is that he likes to do falling headbutts a lot but nine times out of ten he misses them. Honma is also pretty overrated. Not because he sucks or anything because he doesn’t. He’s certainly competent. It’s just that some people (read as: puro-snobs) seem to think that his headbutt gimmick is the coolest thing in the world.
The interesting part about all of this is that because Honma’s matches all tend to revolve around him trying to hit the headbutt (and usually failing, and apparently he is too stubborn to try a different move), they tend to have good psychology to them, whereas Ishii’s matches have atrocious psychology because he wouldn’t know what good psychology was if it walked up to him and hit him the head. So… can Honma’s good psychology overcome Ishii’s lack of psychology and horrible selling? Let’s find out!
MATCH FOR THE VACANT NEVER OPENWEIGHT TITLE: Tomoaki Honma vs. Tomohiro Ishii- -5/10 (yes, negative)
Just a few moves in and… the no-selling beings. First it’s no-selling a zillion forearms to the head. Then Honma starts selling them for a second, but then he makes comeback and knocks Ishii down. Honma then did his signature spot where he misses a falling headbutt… and then just completely no-sold it and got up to try the same exact move that had just failed… and of course it failed again… but this time he actually sells the move, as opposed to last time when he didn’t because… um…
Anyway, now his head is so hurt that little taps with Ishii’s boot are causing him severe pain. Now he’s getting forearmed a million times and selling it like he is getting knocked unconscious.
Then Ishii brings him to the middle of the ring and lifts him up and gives him some forearms, which make him stagger backwards, so then Ishii charge off the ropes and hits him with a running forearm to the head. The whole point of charging off the ropes before doing this move (or any move) is, of course, that your running start gets you even more speed (and thus more momentum), plus the force you put into the ropes as you run at them which adds even more speed when the ropes shoot you back (and, again, thus even more momentum) to the move you are about to hit, making the impact harder, so it will hurt your opponent more.
NOT THIS TIME, THOUGH.
This time, being hit with a running forearm completely revived Honma, who didn’t sell the move at all.
Ishii then went back to regular standing forearms, which I guess I could give them credit for as that is its own asinine form of psychology (because the standing forearms were actually working and the running run didn’t, so it makes sense to go back to what was working)… except that Honma no-sold those, too.
Honma knocked Ishii down, but he immediately got back up again. They traded Irish whips into the corner, then Honma hit a running forearm in the corner. He then grabbed Ishii and hit what I guess was supposed to be a running facebuster except that they botched it so badly that it cannot possibly qualify as a facebuster because Ishii landed on his back. Process that for a moment.
Then Super Honma, who was just no-selling forearm shots to the head, misses another falling headbutt and starts to sell it. Ishii then picked him up so that they could over one straight minute doing nothing but throwing chops they barely sold until Honma staggered Ishii with a chop or two, then knocked him down with a running chop. Honma then finally hits the falling headbutt to the shoulder, and Ishii sold it like someone had driven over his shoulder with a pick-up truck. I know it’s taped up and all but COME ON! He had a separated should BACK IN AUGUST! The recovery time for a (non-surgery-requiring, which we know his was because he didn’t get surgery) separated should is at most twelve weeks. Even if we assume it took him more time because he wrestled with it for a few days, it has still been OVER TWICE THE RECOVERY PERIOD! It’s also funny how the shoulder, which probably hurts like hell if he is selling a headbutt like a shotgun blast, really didn’t hurt him that much after he and Honma had a battle trying to give each other vertical suplexes which was the very next spot (and which Ishii eventually won), and didn’t hurt him at all twenty seconds later when he lifted Honma up onto the top turnbuckle.
They did a few spots which weren’t offensively dumb, which was nice change of pace. Honma even sold a running forearm. Then Ishii chops Honma in the throat. The referee told him off, so of course he did it again right away. These guys are both supposed to be babyfaces.
Ishii then gave Honma what looked like the gentlest powerbomb of all time. Surprisingly Honma kicked out. I say surprisingly because with all of the stiff shots these guys didn’t sell, I figured they thought they were in some sort of Bizzaro-world and thus the gentlest move in the match would make sense as a finish.
Ishii then locked in some attempt at some sort of submission, but it didn’t look very good from the front, and it looked even worse from behind when the camera showed us that Ishii didn’t even have his hands locked, so as best I can tell he was just kind of squeezing Honma’s upper arms between his own shoulder and his body. Honma got to the ropes to break this hold, which he sold as being as painful to himself as it was for me to watch… except he wasn’t even selling his arms. He was selling his neck. What the f*ck?
Ishii easily lifted Honma up to the top turnbuckle again, and then hit him with a super brainbuster, which also apparently did not hurt his shoulder at all. Honma kicked out. Of course.
Ishii staggered Honma with a lariat, but Honma then ducked the next one and hit a sick looking DDT. It looked like Ishii broke his neck, and Ishii sold it that way for a few seconds. Then he started selling his other shoulder (not the taped up one) instead.
Oh. Wait. Never mind. Now he’s totally fine and up and running around again.
They trade lariats which they either don’t sell at all, or fall down but then get right back up again. They teased a suplex from the apron to the floor but it didn’t happen. Instead Ishii got hit in the back with a lariat which sent him into the post and down to the floor. Honma then hit a diving headbutt from the top rope all the way down to the floor, connecting with Ishii’s shoulder.
Then they actually stated selling some stuff and it wasn’t bad until Ishii hit a backdrop driver, that seems have to hurt him a hell of a lot more than it hurt Honma, as Ishii was selling like he was just shot with a shotgun by the time Honma had already gotten back to his feet. My guess is that this was him just getting all of the selling out of his system, because when Honma started laying in some strikes to the head, Ishii just no-sold them.
They did a spot where Ishii was just marching forward and forcing Honma back across the ring, despite the fact that HONMA was the one throwing forearms to the face while this was happening. When he had forced Honma almost all the way back to the opposite corner, Ishii threw one forearm which knocked Honma down. Then Ishii sold his shoulder because throwing that one forearm apparently hurt him more than taking a million f*cking forearms to the face.
Ishii lifted Honma up to the top rope and hit an even bigger super brainbuster than before, and now he started to sell both his head and shoulder again. Honma kicked out. Of course. Lariats by Ishii. And another kickout. Then Honma ducks some stuff and takes over with a running headbutt, then he hits a fantastic-looking brainbuster which Ishii sells well, but Ishii kicked out. Then another short exchange including a headbutt to the back by Honma and Ishii reversing the piledriver than Honma called for before Honma finally hits the piledriver… and Ishii kicks out. Of course.
Honma connects with a falling headbutt, but then misses a diving one. Honma is somehow up first and whips Ishii into the corner, but Ishii gets a boot up when Honma follows him in, then hits a big German Suplex… which Honma no-sells. Forearm by Ishii. Also not sold. Enzugiri by Ishii. Apparently that works, though. Ishii goes for the cover, but Honma kicks out at one.
AH! So that’s why the match hasn’t ended yet! Because they didn’t do that â€"kick out at one†spot that Ishii likes to have in every single one of his matches. Then Honma hits a lariat and goes for the cover, but Ishii kicks out at one, which wasn’t even surprising at this at point because he does it in EVERY MATCH and Honma had just done it four seconds ago.
Anyway, not that Ishii has gotten all of his sh*t in, hopefully this catastrophe can end.
They lariat each other and both fall down and sell it, which seems really silly when you both just kicked out at one after full-force moves to the head. More forearms and bad selling. Now it’s a slap-fight. Now we get a lariat by Ishii and a kickout by Honma. Finisher tease. Reversed. More headbutts from both guys. Big sliding lariat right to the side of the head. And another kickout.
MAKE IT STOP!.
Brainbuster by Ishii. And that’s the finish. If I had known it was that easy I would have screamed a long time ago.
This match F*CKING SUCKED. It was that damn Ishii-Shibata sh*tfest all over again. In terms of selling and psychology, this match was actually better, although that’s like saying it’s better to be tortured to the brink death and then killed by being smothered with a pillow than it is to be tortured to the brink of death and then killed by being burned alive. I have given this match a lower rating, though because of the â€"face?â€buster botch and because while that match only went twelve minutes or so, this one went over twenty- and it felt like even more than that.
IWGP INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Shinsuke Nakamura(c) vs. Yuji Nagata (w/Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima, & Manabu Nakanishi)- 8.25/10
Nakamura’s character seems to have taken an interesting turn this year. It used to be that he was a great wrestler who had some goofy mannerisms that probably really annoyed his opponents, and would make anyone else come off like kind of a jerk, except that Nakamura exhales charisma, so those mannerisms were fun and endearing instead. This year, though, starting with his Tokyo Dome match against Kota Ibushi and continuing here, he seems to have taken a subtle turn for the more arrogant. He always has to get in that one little shot- not a hard one, but just that one extra taunting shot to just show everyone how in control of the match he is. He’s not just out to beat his opponents: he’s out to upstage them (I think this is what Dolph Ziggler’s â€"show-off†gimmick was supposed to be, but WWE flubbed it).
This sort of thing pisses his opponents off even more than usual, and you can totally understand why, so you really get behind them when they fire up, but as soon as Nakamura is in trouble you start to root for Nakamura again because he’s still Nakamura and he is the most charismatic person ever. It sets up this wonderful dynamic where you want to see him win and you pop when he does, but you also just instinctively know that when he finally loses the belt, you’ll pop even bigger because he is kind of a jerk and his arrogance costing him the title would be his just desserts.
This played a big factor in this match, with Nakamura taking on the world’s most grizzled veteran, Yuji Nagata. It was good thing they had that story to carry this match, but because Nakamura really could have sold his arm a lot better at times. Still an awesome match, though, with a few great false finishes, including one that had me completely convinced that one of New Japan’s big three was actually going to lose to a talented but still decently old (by active wrestler standards) man.
A very good show from New Japan, marred by one absolutely horrendous match.
SATOSHI KOJIMA & CAPTAIN NEW JAPAN vs. MANABU NAKANISHI & YOHEI KOMATSU- 2/10
reDRagon vs. TIGER MASK IV & JAY WHITE- 6/10
Wow. I was certain that this â€"Jay White†guy who I’ve never even heard of before was just in here to eat the fall, but they actually made look pretty good.
MASCARA DORADA & TIME SPLITTERS vs. THE BULLET CLUB (The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega)- 8/10
Total craziness and some insane spots, all crammed into just eleven minutes.
NWA WORLD JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Jushin â€"Thunder†Liger(c) (w/Tiger Mask IV) vs. Chase Owens (w/Bruce Tharpe)- 6.5/10
I’d like to see more of Chase Owens, and I MUST HAVE MORE BRUCE THARPE!
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- My Japanese is basically non-existent, but I’m pretty sure Liger and Tiger Mask agreed to have a title match at some point in the future.
NWA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Rob Conway(c) (w/Bruce Tharpe) vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan (w/Satoshi Kojima)- 6.5/10
KOTA IBUSHI & TETSUYA NAITO vs. KAZUSHI SAKURABA & TORU YANO- 7.5/10
Holy crap! A great Yano match! And it’s not like he hid in the corner, either. He was actually an important part of the match. They also seem to be building towards Ibushi vs. Sakuraba, which should be all kinds of awesome.
THE BULLET CLUB (Yujiro Takashi & Bad Luck Fale) vs. CHAOS (YOSHI-HASHI & Kazuchika Okada) (w/Gedo)- 6.75/10
HIROOKI GOTO, KATUYORI SHIBATA, & HIROSHI TANAHASHI vs. THE BULLET CLUB (Tama Tonga, Doc Gallows, & Karl â€"Machine Gun†Anderson) (w/Cody Hall)- 6.5/10
The Bullet Club has KISS facepaint. It’s dumb. The match was decently good, but not as good as I was hoping, considering the talent involved.
Apparently Togi Makabe has been stripped of the NEVER Openweight Title because he is sick tonight and can’t defend it. That’s lame. It’s barely even a PPV. I get that you don’t want the fans to feel cheated, but I’m sure they’ll understand. It’s not like no one has ever gotten sick and had to miss work for a few days before.
As a result, instead of Makabe defending the title against Ishii, who is one of the most overrated wrestlers I have ever seen, we will get a match to determine a new champion between Ishii and Honma… who lost his match with Kota Ibushi just a few days ago, and whose gimmick over the past ten months has pretty much been that he always loses… so why is he getting a title match? The other part of his gimmick is that he likes to do falling headbutts a lot but nine times out of ten he misses them. Honma is also pretty overrated. Not because he sucks or anything because he doesn’t. He’s certainly competent. It’s just that some people (read as: puro-snobs) seem to think that his headbutt gimmick is the coolest thing in the world.
The interesting part about all of this is that because Honma’s matches all tend to revolve around him trying to hit the headbutt (and usually failing, and apparently he is too stubborn to try a different move), they tend to have good psychology to them, whereas Ishii’s matches have atrocious psychology because he wouldn’t know what good psychology was if it walked up to him and hit him the head. So… can Honma’s good psychology overcome Ishii’s lack of psychology and horrible selling? Let’s find out!
MATCH FOR THE VACANT NEVER OPENWEIGHT TITLE: Tomoaki Honma vs. Tomohiro Ishii- -5/10 (yes, negative)
Just a few moves in and… the no-selling beings. First it’s no-selling a zillion forearms to the head. Then Honma starts selling them for a second, but then he makes comeback and knocks Ishii down. Honma then did his signature spot where he misses a falling headbutt… and then just completely no-sold it and got up to try the same exact move that had just failed… and of course it failed again… but this time he actually sells the move, as opposed to last time when he didn’t because… um…
Anyway, now his head is so hurt that little taps with Ishii’s boot are causing him severe pain. Now he’s getting forearmed a million times and selling it like he is getting knocked unconscious.
Then Ishii brings him to the middle of the ring and lifts him up and gives him some forearms, which make him stagger backwards, so then Ishii charge off the ropes and hits him with a running forearm to the head. The whole point of charging off the ropes before doing this move (or any move) is, of course, that your running start gets you even more speed (and thus more momentum), plus the force you put into the ropes as you run at them which adds even more speed when the ropes shoot you back (and, again, thus even more momentum) to the move you are about to hit, making the impact harder, so it will hurt your opponent more.
NOT THIS TIME, THOUGH.
This time, being hit with a running forearm completely revived Honma, who didn’t sell the move at all.
Ishii then went back to regular standing forearms, which I guess I could give them credit for as that is its own asinine form of psychology (because the standing forearms were actually working and the running run didn’t, so it makes sense to go back to what was working)… except that Honma no-sold those, too.
Honma knocked Ishii down, but he immediately got back up again. They traded Irish whips into the corner, then Honma hit a running forearm in the corner. He then grabbed Ishii and hit what I guess was supposed to be a running facebuster except that they botched it so badly that it cannot possibly qualify as a facebuster because Ishii landed on his back. Process that for a moment.
Then Super Honma, who was just no-selling forearm shots to the head, misses another falling headbutt and starts to sell it. Ishii then picked him up so that they could over one straight minute doing nothing but throwing chops they barely sold until Honma staggered Ishii with a chop or two, then knocked him down with a running chop. Honma then finally hits the falling headbutt to the shoulder, and Ishii sold it like someone had driven over his shoulder with a pick-up truck. I know it’s taped up and all but COME ON! He had a separated should BACK IN AUGUST! The recovery time for a (non-surgery-requiring, which we know his was because he didn’t get surgery) separated should is at most twelve weeks. Even if we assume it took him more time because he wrestled with it for a few days, it has still been OVER TWICE THE RECOVERY PERIOD! It’s also funny how the shoulder, which probably hurts like hell if he is selling a headbutt like a shotgun blast, really didn’t hurt him that much after he and Honma had a battle trying to give each other vertical suplexes which was the very next spot (and which Ishii eventually won), and didn’t hurt him at all twenty seconds later when he lifted Honma up onto the top turnbuckle.
They did a few spots which weren’t offensively dumb, which was nice change of pace. Honma even sold a running forearm. Then Ishii chops Honma in the throat. The referee told him off, so of course he did it again right away. These guys are both supposed to be babyfaces.
Ishii then gave Honma what looked like the gentlest powerbomb of all time. Surprisingly Honma kicked out. I say surprisingly because with all of the stiff shots these guys didn’t sell, I figured they thought they were in some sort of Bizzaro-world and thus the gentlest move in the match would make sense as a finish.
Ishii then locked in some attempt at some sort of submission, but it didn’t look very good from the front, and it looked even worse from behind when the camera showed us that Ishii didn’t even have his hands locked, so as best I can tell he was just kind of squeezing Honma’s upper arms between his own shoulder and his body. Honma got to the ropes to break this hold, which he sold as being as painful to himself as it was for me to watch… except he wasn’t even selling his arms. He was selling his neck. What the f*ck?
Ishii easily lifted Honma up to the top turnbuckle again, and then hit him with a super brainbuster, which also apparently did not hurt his shoulder at all. Honma kicked out. Of course.
Ishii staggered Honma with a lariat, but Honma then ducked the next one and hit a sick looking DDT. It looked like Ishii broke his neck, and Ishii sold it that way for a few seconds. Then he started selling his other shoulder (not the taped up one) instead.
Oh. Wait. Never mind. Now he’s totally fine and up and running around again.
They trade lariats which they either don’t sell at all, or fall down but then get right back up again. They teased a suplex from the apron to the floor but it didn’t happen. Instead Ishii got hit in the back with a lariat which sent him into the post and down to the floor. Honma then hit a diving headbutt from the top rope all the way down to the floor, connecting with Ishii’s shoulder.
Then they actually stated selling some stuff and it wasn’t bad until Ishii hit a backdrop driver, that seems have to hurt him a hell of a lot more than it hurt Honma, as Ishii was selling like he was just shot with a shotgun by the time Honma had already gotten back to his feet. My guess is that this was him just getting all of the selling out of his system, because when Honma started laying in some strikes to the head, Ishii just no-sold them.
They did a spot where Ishii was just marching forward and forcing Honma back across the ring, despite the fact that HONMA was the one throwing forearms to the face while this was happening. When he had forced Honma almost all the way back to the opposite corner, Ishii threw one forearm which knocked Honma down. Then Ishii sold his shoulder because throwing that one forearm apparently hurt him more than taking a million f*cking forearms to the face.
Ishii lifted Honma up to the top rope and hit an even bigger super brainbuster than before, and now he started to sell both his head and shoulder again. Honma kicked out. Of course. Lariats by Ishii. And another kickout. Then Honma ducks some stuff and takes over with a running headbutt, then he hits a fantastic-looking brainbuster which Ishii sells well, but Ishii kicked out. Then another short exchange including a headbutt to the back by Honma and Ishii reversing the piledriver than Honma called for before Honma finally hits the piledriver… and Ishii kicks out. Of course.
Honma connects with a falling headbutt, but then misses a diving one. Honma is somehow up first and whips Ishii into the corner, but Ishii gets a boot up when Honma follows him in, then hits a big German Suplex… which Honma no-sells. Forearm by Ishii. Also not sold. Enzugiri by Ishii. Apparently that works, though. Ishii goes for the cover, but Honma kicks out at one.
AH! So that’s why the match hasn’t ended yet! Because they didn’t do that â€"kick out at one†spot that Ishii likes to have in every single one of his matches. Then Honma hits a lariat and goes for the cover, but Ishii kicks out at one, which wasn’t even surprising at this at point because he does it in EVERY MATCH and Honma had just done it four seconds ago.
Anyway, not that Ishii has gotten all of his sh*t in, hopefully this catastrophe can end.
They lariat each other and both fall down and sell it, which seems really silly when you both just kicked out at one after full-force moves to the head. More forearms and bad selling. Now it’s a slap-fight. Now we get a lariat by Ishii and a kickout by Honma. Finisher tease. Reversed. More headbutts from both guys. Big sliding lariat right to the side of the head. And another kickout.
MAKE IT STOP!.
Brainbuster by Ishii. And that’s the finish. If I had known it was that easy I would have screamed a long time ago.
This match F*CKING SUCKED. It was that damn Ishii-Shibata sh*tfest all over again. In terms of selling and psychology, this match was actually better, although that’s like saying it’s better to be tortured to the brink death and then killed by being smothered with a pillow than it is to be tortured to the brink of death and then killed by being burned alive. I have given this match a lower rating, though because of the â€"face?â€buster botch and because while that match only went twelve minutes or so, this one went over twenty- and it felt like even more than that.
IWGP INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Shinsuke Nakamura(c) vs. Yuji Nagata (w/Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima, & Manabu Nakanishi)- 8.25/10
Nakamura’s character seems to have taken an interesting turn this year. It used to be that he was a great wrestler who had some goofy mannerisms that probably really annoyed his opponents, and would make anyone else come off like kind of a jerk, except that Nakamura exhales charisma, so those mannerisms were fun and endearing instead. This year, though, starting with his Tokyo Dome match against Kota Ibushi and continuing here, he seems to have taken a subtle turn for the more arrogant. He always has to get in that one little shot- not a hard one, but just that one extra taunting shot to just show everyone how in control of the match he is. He’s not just out to beat his opponents: he’s out to upstage them (I think this is what Dolph Ziggler’s â€"show-off†gimmick was supposed to be, but WWE flubbed it).
This sort of thing pisses his opponents off even more than usual, and you can totally understand why, so you really get behind them when they fire up, but as soon as Nakamura is in trouble you start to root for Nakamura again because he’s still Nakamura and he is the most charismatic person ever. It sets up this wonderful dynamic where you want to see him win and you pop when he does, but you also just instinctively know that when he finally loses the belt, you’ll pop even bigger because he is kind of a jerk and his arrogance costing him the title would be his just desserts.
This played a big factor in this match, with Nakamura taking on the world’s most grizzled veteran, Yuji Nagata. It was good thing they had that story to carry this match, but because Nakamura really could have sold his arm a lot better at times. Still an awesome match, though, with a few great false finishes, including one that had me completely convinced that one of New Japan’s big three was actually going to lose to a talented but still decently old (by active wrestler standards) man.
A very good show from New Japan, marred by one absolutely horrendous match.