Ma Stump Puller

The Yasuda Deep Dive has (almost) finished! I'll have a write-up to stick up soon, in the meantime enjoy this extended recommendation list: vs Hiroshi Hase 06/11/1994 vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan 01/08/1997 w/ Shinya Hashimoto vs Manabu Nakanishi & Satoshi Kojima 17/09/1997 vs Satoshi Kojima 01/08/1998 W/ Takashi Iizuka vs Kazuo Yamazaki & Osamu Nishimura 08/08/1998 vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan 09/08/2000 Basically all of his G1 2001 run, awesome stuff vs Yuji Nagata 16/02/2002 W/ Yutaka Yoshie vs Hiroshi Tanahashi & Kensuke Sasaki 24/03/2002 vs Yuji Nagata 05/04/2002 vs Tatsumi Fujinami 19/07/2002 W/ Yutaka Yoshie vs. Manabu Nakanishi & Shiro Koshinaka 20/07/2002 W/ Makai #1, Makai #2, Ryushi Yanagisawa vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Manabu Nakanishi, Yuji Nagata & Yutaka Yoshie 17/09/2002 W/Kazunari Murakami vs Michiyoshi Ohara & Shinsuke Nakamura 04/01/2003 vs Yuji Nagata 12/08/2003 vs Shinsuke Nakamura 14/08/2003 W/ Makai #1, Ryota Chikuzen vs Jinsei Shinzaki, Jushin Thunder Liger & Osamu Nishimura 03/11/2003 W/ Kazunari Murakami vs Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yutaka Yoshie 12/03/2004 vs Tadao Omori 10/10/2005 vs Naoya Ogawa 20/12/2007 vs Josh Barrett 29/06/2007 W/ Masahiro Chono vs. Shinjiro Otani & Takao Omori 29/04/2008 W/Shinjiro Otani vs. Minoru Suzuki & Yoshihiro Takayama 04/02/2011

This is a awesome late PWFG/Michinoku Pro hybrid match, though that's kinda obvious given Wilkins and Ishikawa are both here so it was expected. We start off with Hoshikawa and Wilkins: both of these guys have already had a great trio series together, so naturally this part is a lot of scrappy mat-work with Wilkins just being a beast with slams and aggressive play. Ishikawa also comes in to roll about, namely snapping on a nasty Achilles Tendon before Hoshi can do the same, and baiting the guy with a toe-hold before snatching a tight Bulldog choke when he tries running away. Hoshi tries to fight back against a returning Wilkins with strikes but gets headbutted and slammed back to the mat. Wilkins gets to show off with a rear naked choke and Sayama-style forward roll into kneebar. Nakajima comes in and you expect him to not be great at this kind of stuff given he's dressed as a fancy ninja (and his career didn't exactly light much on fire performance-wise) but he's actually solid at adding in a more showy element while knowing the gritty mat stuff, albeit a bit sloppy in places. Ishikawa gets over his more cocky nature as he smiles when he has Naka's knee trapped for a potential kneebar and refuses to take a Irish Whip because this is shoot style brother, that doesn't work. Naka also has some cool kicks on top of that when push comes to shove and Ninja spots like kip-ups and balancing head-first on the turnbuckle. Naturally Wilkins doesn't give two shits about this shindie Tiger Mask and beats the piss out of him with his own kicks, takedowns, even viciously headbutting the back of his head in back mount with the two M-Pro guys having to double-team him to get any leeway. Ishikawa and Noshi just start also beating the piss out of each other with super stiff slaps to the face to get the heat flowing. Outside of that, we get a few minutes of real solid Ishikawa mat-work and him being a bit of a petty prick with his strikes to the pair. Wilkins gets in to wreck Naka with headbutts and a brutal knee to the head that seems to legitimately rattle him a bit. Hoshi also eats shit as Wilkins smiles off his strikes and answers with a stiff head-spike backdrop, following up with a equally rough Capture Suplex. Ishikawa tags in just to stare over him during the 10 count like a complete asshole, so the two go to blows again with Ishikawa winning out with a head crank. The M-Pro duo eventually turn this into a pro-wrestling match with spots and whatnot to turn the tide; this part of the match is good in places but not nearly as good as the first half, even though Wilkins and Hoshi exchanging big scary Tombstones and German suplexes was rad even if rough and scrappy. We get some goofy double team spots that are a bit sloppy in places (like the double suplex was mistimed and the double Fujiwara armbar felt a bit too quaint for my liking) albeit the top rope dropkick into German combo was amazing, as was Wilkins just bumping huge for it. Lots of spots, even Ishikawa gets to dive to the outside after the M-Pro duo have their turn. Finish has Wilkins land his superplex into a terrifying looking side shoulder crank for the win. Ok, so the spotfest at the end comes out of nowhere and doesn't really add to much else but to allow the M-Pro guys to show their stuff in their element but it's a fun showing as is the rest of this: if you want to see Wilkins and Ishikawa just destroy Jr heavyweights for 15+ you'll love this, but this also had good selling in places when it was required, and it really meant something given the Wilkins/Ishikawa duo make sure to sandbag, act like pseudo-heels and then subsequently sell hard to really get over the momentum shift. Nakajima was fine enough for his role as the odd one out, Hoshikawa played a good fiery underdog that had a good balance of mat technique and big spots when the time came for it. Really solid if a bit disappointing they didn't stick with the (far superior) gritty theme of the first half.

Did watch this recently, amazing Inoki-Ism sprint, probably one of the best Inoki-Ism type matches I've seen anyway. Between this, the Nishimura bout and the Tana/Kanemoto stuff, Bas legit has a bunch of solid matches to easily draw back on, which makes it doubly disappointing he didn't stick with wrestling and instead we had to have Bob Sapp (who I still maintain ISN'T bad, for the record, just not world champion material) basically take his push, because he's such a natural when it comes to even the little stuff, like selling the fear of Nakanishi's slams and bombs.

....ok so I'm not counting this as a part, but silly me forgot some fancam matches to include on here so I'm adding them now retroactively: just pretend these were there all along =========== W/ George Takano Vs. Brazo de Oro & Brazo de Plata (06.09.1981) I really like the outdoor setting here: it's just in some random part of a rural town, people watching from balconies, scaffolding just casually laying around, etc. Mask's hand is still bothering him from the injury seemingly had at the time, so he tends to slow down a bit due to it. More early Brazo footage is always a treat though, even if they are mostly just here to bump around for the babyfaces as the foreign heels of the week shtick. There's a weird bit early where Sayama does his usual Tiger Spin spot but then he's like not moving on the mat afterwards and there's a awkward wait by Plata as he limply tags in Takano and then lays fairly still on the apron; I'm not sure if he was just a bit rattled (he wasn't injured afterwards either?) or he was testing out actually selling for once, either way it was pretty strange. As you might expect from a random house show this was mostly low-impact lucha grappling and some comedy, mostly by the Brazo brothers as they do a prototype version of their 90's shtick and bumble around each other trying to catch up with the babyfaces. All fairly by the numbers, but real enjoyable given who was involved. Young Takano pre-Cobra gimmick is fairly decent, working well with Plata and having some good agility up his sleeve when the match gets going a bit. He works about 80% of this with Mask coming it for the occasional big spot and then tagging out. The Brazo guys take up a few minutes to get over their own stuff with a good control sequence as they use some nice top rope moves alongside heel antics to beatdown on Takano until he makes the "hot" (I say that in quotations because this crowd did not care) tag to Mask, who runs over the two with his usual speedy sequences. The finish is pretty abrupt as Mask pulls the Mighty Inoue special with two flying senton splashes before getting the pin on Oro. This was a pretty average showing that was bar for the course for everyone involved, definitely not bad by any means but also not exactly something I'd be searching around for anytime soon. The Brazo lads are fine for their role and Takano and co are solid babyfaces, even if Mask barely shows up to do much at all here. RANK: Decent Vs. Gran Hamada: The Lost Match (06.03.1982) I was SERIOUSLY shocked when I discovered that Hamada and Sayama had actually faced off around this time but it wasn't televised (for a reason we'll see later on) so all we get is a decent quality fancam. The crowd loves Tiger Mask before they even lock up as he gets big chants. Being honest, I thought this was at times even better than their 1981 match, with some great back and forth action between the two as they seamlessly went though lucha/catch sequences following into each other. Hamada's mat-based style is intelligent enough to force Sayama to rely less on his big spots and more on focusing in on impressive counters instead, which is definitely something I would've liked to seen more out of him given the bulk of his 1981/83 stuff is not quite that most of the time. They've worked on their chemistry since the 1981 outing and it shows in how they interact. We still get those spots here, but Hamada isn't going to be made a fool of and subsequently does his own flippy shit to even the score. Hamada's holds are generally more balanced and interesting given he tries to really wear down his opponent on the mat, with the occasional big counter or escape. Hamada gets some chants here but they are just drowned out in insanely loud Tiger Mask counter-chants; it's clear even here who is the bigger deal. That said, I feel like the match itself is fairly balanced between the two: there's never really a instance where one dominates for ages, Hamada slaps on the occasional hold or two but he's always countered and forced back onto the defensive. As per the 1981 match we get escalation as Hamada tries for more strikes, but there's also a LOT of just hold-hugging here as Hamada drags things out with multiple headscissors and holds. Eventually he starts unloading with punches and whatnot, but Sayama counters with a nice Savate kick and we get a fast-paced sequence with some mild botching as Hamada misses his cue to counter a Irish whip into a corner crossbody, so they have to repeat the spot right after. Hamada takes a crazy bump up and over the ropes when he misses a follow-up splash, leading to a pretty nifty plancha by Mask in turn. Hamada tries to get back in, but he eats more blows on the apron. Now the finish....I have zero idea what happened. Sayama does a stiff dropkick and Hamada falls down, the ref looks at him and calls the match off (for some reason?) Hamada looks legit pissed off, Karl Gotch of all people comes out to calm things down, Sayama's just standing around confused, people running in, Hamada snatches the mic to say a few angry words....like the whole thing is just a clusterfuck and goes on for ages. Looking at it closely it seemed like the dropkick caused a fairly nasty looking nosebleed and the ref panicked, called it off early; everyone was just confused afterwards. That finish ruins the build of the match pretty badly, but if you can ignore that then this is a weird little hidden gem that isn't as spot-heavy like their other matches, but does have its own little things to enjoy: if only they had a proper ending to tie things up, this would be actually worth the watch. As it is, check it out only if you want to see some chaos. RANK: Bordering on Good, but the botched finish makes it a Decent ===========

Ok so I've sat down and watched a fair chunk of his stuff, mostly from his 2000's stint given that's where he gets most coverage (as opposed to his 90's days where he was a lot more occasional for televised appearances, and not many were worth really checking out) much like with Nishimura, I wanna record my thoughts on here just to see how a GWE case could potentially look like. 1. Yasuda most definitely is not someone who can go out and have a great match with everyone: he's not the wrestler for that, partly because he's not really someone who ever became "great" when it came to working against the norm, getting better than expected showings, etc. His workrate is steady for pretty much all of his career bar post-2007 where a alleged suicide attempt and general wear and tear really take a lot out of him to the point where he's barely working afterwards outside of obscure indies that weren't taped. You have to accept early on that there's a lot of matches that just aren't good or are flat-out bad because of the conditions, the work involved, or just general screwy stuff going on. 2. While the above is the case, Yasuda is also very good when it comes to the entertainment factor of putting on matches: he's solid at working either a undercard babyface battling the odds and getting the crowd hugely behind him, or as a cowardly heel who has to cheat with shtick to get his own way. In both roles he is good at emoting himself in the ring, and you always know how he's feeling, if that makes any sense. Whatever role he needs to put on Yasuda can do so fairly effectively, even more complex stuff like a comedic face/heel struggling to make ends meet (HUSTLE) or a tweener role where he does heelish stuff but never goes overtly over the top and still has fan support (G1 2001). He's pretty versatile when it comes to that end. 3. Heel Yasuda kinda has that Triple H quality in that he can dominate a match in a lot of places, but if you look back it never really feels as such because he's also very good at feeding for the babyface and just making them look great, either be his bug-eyed facial expressions or his really awesome big guy bumps for German suplexes and the like. Examples like his mini-series with a young Tanahashi or his upset against Nakamura show a distinct quality when it comes to really making the babyfaces look like killers, especially when it comes to the big momentum swings of a match. 4. Yasuda does have a number of great singles showings, but for me his tags are also a lot of fun, debatably even better in places. Early Yasuda excels as a lumpy ex-sumo who can move surprisingly well, can shift a match dynamic with big bumping on his side or just taking over with his big-man style, and throw in some crowd-popping moments to really get them loud for any finishing stretch. Heel Makai Club era Yasuda changes up to be this annoying dickhead who relies on his goons to do the dirty work, usually picking up their scraps or interfering to turn the tide. Not only does he get amazing heat, but he's also awesome when the tides turn and his antics finally catch up with him. Much like Triple H again, he stacks the deck so high that everyone is begging for it to get knocked over, and he's super solid when it comes to putting over that "oh shit I'm losing" side of things. Small stuff like eating shit from Nagata or trying to bully Liger with his size only to stooge and sell hard really sell that aspect. I would say overall that I definitely think Yasuda could fit on a top 100. Not from a "workrate" (whatever that means these days) aspect, but from a overall package, versatility and just knowing how to play roles super solid aspect of wrestling, he is fit for purpose. Maybe that'll change as I go though more Makai Club stuff but so far, pretty confident in what I'm thinking.

Good hidden gem that I found while I was doing Yasuda's Deep Dive. This was a fairly hot Korakuen huge brawl that had the Makai Club use their antics to stay on top of the big babyface troop: as you might imagine this was messy, but you can't really help that when there's so many lads in the ring. Yoshie was surprisingly on point here as he has good, super scrappy stuff with Yasuda and the gang, throwing some hard forearm shots and having a really stiff brawl with Yanagisawa despite everything else going on, honestly was probably the best I've ever seen him in terms of outright performance and looking like a world-ender in his own right. Makai Club afterwards isolate out Tenzan with a dive from Makai #2/Ryota Chikuzen as well as utilising unfair team-ups and cutting him off from the other side of the ring. Outside of a slight botch where Makai #2 goes for a double wristlock and then randomly drops it to land a awkward knee, this bit is solid, as is Nagata's great hot tag when Tenzan is eventually able to recover and send Yasuda flying with his signature jumping wheel kick. He has a good back and forth with Yanagisawa with kicks before he springs for a cross armbreaker attempt, also wrecks Yasuda with a big belly to belly throw when he creeps in like a vulture to beat him down after he'd been softened up, was a great spot. The crowd also loves Nakanishi coming in like a brickhouse and just wrecking everyone with shoulder tackles and whatnot, especially a awesome double spear to the two Makai guys. Yoshie come in for his own stuff, but Yasuda uses his Makai Club goons to beat him down and they all hit him in the turnbuckle corner with different moves, including a lariat, belly splash, and a nasty jumping knee from Yanagisawa. The crowd thinks the match is over when Yasuda goes for the Butterfly Suplex but pop huge when it is instead a near fall. Yoshie lands a big German suplex and snaps on a Camel Clutch, but gets a brutal Maeda/Choshu-lite kick to the back of the head by Yanagisawa to break it up. With everyone brawling with the Makai Club, it's easy pickings for Yasuda to snap in and get the pin off said kick for the scummy victory. This was a really good sprint of a match that was designed to take advantage of the big crowd with lots of easy to get, digestible action, and it definitely paid off given the reactions. I think it also did a really good job of getting Yoshie of all people over as he remarkably leads the charge against the Makai bullies and takes it to them with some beefy slams and strikes. Guys like Yasuda, Yanagisawa, Nagata etc all play their parts great when they need to do so, and even the more limited guys do get to do their thing without it seeming much of a issue. Super good brawl that supremely took advantage of team dynamics between the two teams and did a considerably impressive job of getting everyone involved. I know the consensus was that early 2000's NJPW was the pits most of the time but this really didn't reflect that as this was a all action and no filler contest that didn't drag and had something for everyone.

Part 4 Given 1983 (spoilers!) only lasts until mid-August, the next part will be slightly shorter than usual. =========== Vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi III (06.01.1983) This is the (unofficial) big ending for the trio of matches these two have had so far: after this they have a few more matches together but mostly just out of obligation to draw more tickets than anything else. Pre-match brawl with the two scrapping but don't be fooled: this is by far the most neutral and least chaotic match between the two as we start off with simple grappling rather than flailing strikes or whatnot. This part is however quite good: I did remark with the last match that the UWF-style is being clearly refined here with a mix of lucha transitions and shoot-style submissions and that's what we basically get here, with even a Crossface Chickenwing being used as a dangerous submission alongside double wrist locks and headscissors. Outside of the occasional spot sequences, you honestly could slot this into a really early UWF 1.0 card and barely tell the difference bar the final third stretch. Outside of Kobayashi's kinda meh strikes at points, the first 15 of this was solid and never really stalled too much in one style, always flowing between the more flashy spots and the grappling, even mixing them by having Mask go for a small package to counter a suplex only to hold after the pin and transition into a cross armbreaker, which was a pretty out-there bit to see out of the usually conventional by the numbers Tiger Mask formula. They get a bit too ambitious in places: there's a simultaneous "high kick/low kick" bit they try for that looks a bit dodgy: but they save it by having Sayama quickly take it down to the mat. Same with a weird lucha double leg lock that looks awkward at first but then they start throwing stiff slaps while stuck in a double handstand and that saved the whole thing for me, looked awesome. We get progressively meaner as the finish comes as the two start going for nasty slams, including Mask having his dive to the outside countered (ish) by getting smashing into the guardrail. The match plays with the audience as they tease count-out victories and near falls, but none of them are the true big ending until Mask lands a pretty rough German suplex on the outside, which allows him to just get out with a count-out victory. I felt like this lacked the insane heat of the second match, which I would put slightly above this one: while this was longer and had a conclusive finish, it also did get a bit messy in places and there's way too much no-selling and ignoring of the other person's stuff, which gets a bit overkill by the end when finishers are being thrown and they just ignore fatigue all together. The two still work really well and this is by far one of the better showings for this year in retrospect; while I sound very harsh about this match, it was still way ahead of its time in a good few ways and a stellar performance by both men, even if I think Sayama personally outworks Kobayashi once again here. RANK: Good W/ Gran Hamada, Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Los Misioneros de la Muerte (El Signo, El Texano & Negro Navarro) (14.01.1983) The pre-match for this lasts FOREVER as Los Misioneros de la Muerte and other goons beat down on the native trio for a few minutes before the match starts. Tiger Mask is especially a target given his champ status.....then we get another brawl as soon as the match starts just as things start to calm down lol. It does lead to some pretty good exchanges as Mask eventually outsmarts the rudos with some solid speedy exchanges, as well as Hamada getting the better of a pre-bald Navarro. We also get some comedic stuff as the Muerte trio can't get on the same page and knock into each other a fair bit here despite best attempts. No one really sells for long though; this is just one continuous stream of moves with occasional control bits when the heel lads get in charge, even then it's just a non-stop showcase of moves. Which is fine and all, however I tend to lose interest when a match is all just that and nothing else. Near the end we get Hoshino get beat down for a bit before the bigger names take the bombs (namely a nice spinning Tombstone from Texano) before him and Hamada go back and forth, with the latter having to use a quick roll-up for the win. It's a nothing match purely there to get over the later Muerte stuff over, and that's fine, it's just that this doesn't really do a whole lot for me besides that. If you are a fan of this kind of chaotic style then you'll probably enjoy it for what it was. RANK: Decent Vs. Negro Navarro (20.01.1983) Navarro is a good foil for Mask, even if he's nowhere near his (surprising) peak and reinvention in the 2000's. He's more of a power-based rudo here, throwing around and slamming his smaller opponent with ease, then smirking about it like a complete jackass. He's got some real old-fashioned cowardly bits as well, hiding behind trainees when Mask threatens a dive from the top rope or scampering away from a Tiger Feint with near-perfect timing. He also sells a inverse savate kick to the head like he's just died, it's great. Here's some occasional messy bit or botched (probably from the ever-present language barrier) but it never gets overbearingly bad and is usually covered well. Navarro has some nifty offence as well, including a reverse Torture Rack stretch and biting the boot when working it in a Stump Puller purely just to get extra heel points. Sayama's comeback is a bit weird as we get a stiff kick to the stomach before Navarro takes a suplex bump without him actually doing one. He goes for a surprising number of just slams and/or suplexes as opposed to fancy spots before the finish has him do a fake-out diving headbutt, entering into a forward roll before snapping into a nasty German suplex for the win, with post-match being him beat down once again by Los Misioneros de la Muerte before Kobayashi of all people chases them out! He's still not a babyface though as he stares down Mask and shoves him, but this shows that the two at least have a measure of respect for the other despite the vicious matches. Either way, this was a pretty fun filler singles for the two, with Navarro being a unique challenge with his more powerhouse offence though inevitably having to eat the loss to the ace. Mask looked about as good as he usually does albeit with some stilted moments as addressed above, however I don't think they were major enough to detract from the quality of the match. RANK: Good W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Black Tiger & Jose Estrada (28.01.1983) Jose Estrada once again somehow manages to show up in a match! This is a mostly nothing filler tag to establish Black Tiger for his title match in a little while, so he tags with the heel jobber for the two to mostly bumble around. Hoshino is fine as the face sidekick that gets in his usual spots, nothing great about him but he's a competent hand that knows his role in these tags as per standard. The usual structure has Sayama show off, get in danger as the heels gang up on him for a bit, including some decent interactions with Black Tiger. Sayama doesn't obviously sell for any extended amount of time, eventually just quickly taking the advantage and tags in Hoshino for his stuff, mainly him throwing some knee drops before Estrada uses some dirty eye rakes but fails to get a big lead. There's a goofy bit where Hoshino tries for a running sunset flip but fails to get the legs, so it looks like a weird back bump. They repeat the spot uber shamelessly after a quick pin and it goes off successfully this time. The finish has Estrada get pinned after a Tombstone/diving headbutt combo by Mask, with Black Tiger's foot being held by Hoshino to keep him from breaking it up. This is a real nothing filler match that pretty much just randomly happened to get televised, very by the numbers and not particularly interesting. Unless you want to see more Estrada bumbling (for some reason?) this is 100% skippable, the definition of filler. RANK: Forgettable Vs. Gran Hamada II (03.02.1983) This is a pretty solid match: the main issue is that it's babyface vs babyface, so there's not really that crowd heat you would get from a Black Tiger or Kobayashi showing. This is somewhat resolved by having Hamada be tactfully not 100% a face here as he's a bit more snappy, aggressive and at times perplexed at what he has to do to shut down Mask for good on the mat, which is where a good bit of this happens on: much like the last match with the two, Hamada flirts with heelish antics but never fully commits; this is a important story bit for later down the line. There's occasional spots and sequences but these are more of a fix to the slower parts than a means to a end, smartly done so as these two work a lot better with a slower pace. As a result, this is one of the more mixed major matches of Sayama's tenure: I definitely see people looking at this very long, drawn out leg and arm work (that's then not really worked much or sold, like at all, nor adds to the finish or match progression) and turning off from that, which is fine but I feel like you are missing some critical development as a mat-worker as a result of that. Hamada also has some great bits here where he's able to neutralise Mask from doing his fancy shit and force him back into escaping his tricky holds. Of course he gets his time in the sun but still, these bits were solid additions. Hamada gets more desperate over time as he throws out a near fall rolling reverse cradle and even a Triangle Choke (ish) to wear the guy down before we get a dive out of him to mix up his hold-wangling. The two go back and forth when inside the ring and Hamada throws Mask again to try for another dive, but gets met with a nice mid-air dropkick. The two have a dynamic finishing stretch, with Hamada going for a bunch of tricky pins in a last ditch attempt to grab a win before he gets countered when trying for another reverse cradle (something he'd done a few times already in the match for near falls as a clutch) with Sayama pulling down his arms to get a three count. Hamada is shocked and a bit annoyed afterwards but eventually accepts the loss, even if this doesn't answer the question of who was REALLY the better wrestler given Sayama never beat him conclusively. If their rivalry had continued, it would've been interesting to see how this dynamic would've developed. Either way this is one of the more nuanced Tiger Mask matches, more about mat-work than dazzling heat or crazy spots. Hamada is pretty damn good at this point and time; though he's not as athletic or flashy as his opponent he's still got lots of stuff in the tank to impress, mostly being super-fast counters or refined mat-work. His opponent is more or less the same in that regard, Sayama wasn't super spot-crazy here but showed off a more slower side with bursts of speed when needed, which I definitely do enjoy a good bit more than his more superhero spot-show approach. Either way, a uniquely fun matchup. RANK: Good Vs. Black Tiger V (07.02.1983) The last Tiger v Tiger singles matchup and it's....alright despite the conditions. The crowd are still somewhat into this matchup but the heat has obviously died down from their very loud and profitable first few outings; by this point this was old-news, especially with the more popular (and let's just face it, outright better) Kobayashi feud also orbiting around. Not to say the match itself was bad or anything, that was what I felt hearing the somewhat died-down reactions to this. The two pull off the same dynamic as expected, with some good callbacks to their earlier matches with each other (Sayama doing a fake-out moonsault as opposed to crashing and burning a few matches back, a low blow after a German suplex attempt) and a more scrappy aura as the two fire off a lot of strikes and Black Tiger tries to weaken his opponent with his usual roughhousing but of course can never keep his opponent contained for long. They get the crowd going near the end with Sayama doing a diving headbutt to the outside....that misses lol. Black Tiger tries to counter a apron suplex counter into German with low blows, but Sayama keeps blocking and shifting away from it until he just SMASHES the shit out of him with a great inverse Savate kick to the back of the head (which will be used more and more as Tiger Mask starts to lean into a kickboxing style) and a nasty German suplex for the win. This felt like the definitive end to their long-standing feud: even if Black Tiger had lost countless times before; having the clean win and his dirty antics finally be defeated was a really solid bit and kinda marked the end of their work together even if Rocco would continue to do the Black Tiger shtick for 7 more years, mostly as a reliable act to get ran over by bigger prospects. This wasn't a great match, was pretty solid all in all, even if it does lack the intensity from their earlier work until the very end where they tease Sayama actually losing. He doesn't obviously, but it's still effective, and as much as Black Tiger can bug people out in regards to the very scrappy style used by Rocco to communicate his differences to Sayama, I think he definitely stands out regardless which is never truly a bad thing unless it's the "uniquely bad" category. That said, big shame we never see Rocco/Sayama in Japan without the Black Tiger shtick being a thing. RANK: Decent Vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi IV (08.02.1983) Just a day after his Black Tiger match, Tiger Mask is immediately having to defend his title again from Kobayashi, which is super screwy if you think about it. This match is also a cut one, namely 11 minutes out of the original 16 runtime; my sources don't have these missing minutes so I imagine they weren't available. In my opinion this is also the weakest of the Kobayashi matches because it really doesn't try anything new with the formula but rather just repeats old stuff between the two with some small tweaks like Mask pulling for a really tight Muta Lock a decade before the aforementioned would actually coin the move for himself. Other than that it's just usual fun antics between the two with a lot of working-holds to pad this out, isn't anything you haven't seen done better before. The only really interesting bit to address is Kobayashi legitimately getting socked in the face with a savate kick from Sayama and him getting KO'd as a result for a few seconds until the ref wakes him up. He gets up immediately for his backdrop counter, which Sayama is nice enough to put his hand deliberately behind Kobayashi's head to make sure his landing is softer and to not make his head issues worse. He's obviously a bit shaken up by this and takes a lot longer to do stuff, they work off it slightly by having Mask do his inverse savate kick to his head as well for more head targeting. He lands a big dive to the outside and the two milk a potential count out but it never happens. We get the usual kicks and Fisherman's Suplex out of Kobayashi, with Mask kicking out at a 1 count if you can believe it. He lands his own dive and a backdrop on the floor, another tease at a count out loss by Mask but he gets back in anyway. Kobayashi tries for a second Fish Suplex, Mask gets out and counters into a rolling Prawn-style pin for a near fall, Kobayashi tries for a sunset but gets rolled up himself for the big win: yet another one of these screwy finishes to keep his opponent strong. Sayama gets a bit emotional post-match as he's rewarded the belt. There's definitely some good bits throughout here but the reduced time and real lack of creativity did make this weaker workrate-wise than prior showings, even if it still had some solid tension and built well to the frantic finish. Not necessary viewing but if you want to see more of these two then this'll definitely help with that despite the hollow structure. RANK: Decent W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Gran Hamada & Kuniaki Kobayashi (10.02.1983) Wait, isn't Hamada a face? Why is he tagging with the obvious scrappy heel then? Well Hamada had actually been tagging with Kobayashi for a good while and it seems to come to a head here as his true colours come out. This is a pretty good outing for being essentially a filler tag to build Mask/Kobayashi up more after their fourth singles just two days prior, namely because this had no foreign jobbers or goofy heels to distract from the action. Hamada is again really good here; if it wasn't for Sayama being a superstar and if he was just a few inches taller he'd be easily a big prospect for a heavyweight push, but we all know how his career really goes. Hoshino is...fine, but he's clearly the weaker man out of these four by a fair bit and does basically all of the sustained bumping for his partner, minus getting a spot or two to show off his skills a bit against the younger lads for the most part. The underlining story is that Mask and Kobayashi go tit for tat here so they interrupt each other's spots but never really tag in with each other to smartly build to their important outings. I do like how when Kobayashi is in he immediately goes for the mask, and Hamada (who had been noticeably scorned just a week or so earlier) actually helps the guy! Hamada even manages to slip the mask off his opponent a bit too fast so Sayama has to hold it in front of his face for dear life. He eventually recovers and him and Kob have a surprisingly meh back and forth, including a really bad botch where Tiger Mask did a Pele kick, completely missed, gets sold anyway. Mask goes though all of his signature stuff before Hamada jumps in to interrupt a pin off a diving headbutt, as well as removing his mask again. It's pretty entertaining to see Hamada and Hoshino just throw hands at each other, including a Roddy Piper-lite series of jabs and a hook by Hoshino that looked mega goofy. Dude just unravels on these two with full on punches out of the blue. I thought the crowd actually picked up well for his stuff, but he gets shut down with a brainbuster anyway. Mask gets in and lands his great inverse savate kick on Kobayashi, the heels gang up on him again and the match is thrown out after a amazing plancha to the outside by him to the latter onto a table on the outside which results in both being unable to answer the call for a double count out. The babyfaces still celebrate, but it's a hollow one given the beating and result. Now one would think this would lead to a heated rematch between Hamada and Sayama down the line for revenge, a series of big tags or a definitive winner between the two....nope. Hamada leaves for a extended UWA stint and Sayama is gone by the time he comes back, so this heated rivalry stops dead here, sadly. Shame as well because the two have the better exchanges here with some good back and forth work. Kobayashi does his usual shit and it's fine, I still think his kicks are weird and he can't really be taken seriously after all of these losses. Hoshino was actually a big hand in terms of the match as a whole and I loved him going full murder-mode with the punches, loads of fun there. Solid tag bout with some great heat in the second half. RANK: Good W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Abdullah Tamba & Mile Zrno (04.03.1983) This "Abdullah Tamba" lad is a oddity: virtually identical to the OG Abdullah bar the face and being slightly smaller, but throws high-flying stuff on occasion? Bizarre to say the least. Zrno I've never heard of but he has some nifty technical stuff in his pocket and works well with Hoshino doing old-fashioned hold to hold work, kinda reminds me of a 80's Alex Wright if that makes any sense, he's a lanky lad with surprising agility. Tamba is....well he's not exactly great offense-wise (outside of a half-decent leaping headscissors and dropkick) but he can bump quite well for his size and plays a good stooge to Sayama's amazing spots and antics, getting annoyed at chants and hiding in the ropes. One part in particular has him be so scared to fight Mask that he tries tagging Zrno from the outside, and the ref immediately makes him get back in and do it properly, which was a good little heel act. We do get some Zrno/Mask but it's a bit stilted in places and the two mostly don't really sell anything beyond some big bumps. Tamba and Hoshino work a decent big man/little man dynamic as he tries to topple the big lad, but Tamba takes over with some slams and a bottom rope splash, needing the babyfaces to team up to land a big backdrop to chase him away. Zrno gets hit with a Tombstone and slapped into the Cobra Stretch but Tamba breaks it up. Lead to the finish has Hoshino mostly bump around until he can get the tag to Mask, who is also beat down by Tamba until he dodges his terrible knee-first top rope splash and lands a scoop slam. Now the finish is interesting: Sayama does his moonsault, but mostly misses his target and hits Tamba's legs. Rather than go for the pin and look stupid, he instead smartly goes for a figure four instead for the tap-out given the fact, which I thought was remarkably intelligent for a finish adjustment. You can tell this isn't the original finish as well as both Hoshino and Zrno kinda stop brawling for a second to look over at the two and are noticeably confused. As a match this was mostly by the numbers and not amazingly well done by even NJPW undercard standards, but I thought this was enjoyable and Zrno and Tamba add some well-needed colour to the usual Jr acts Tiger Mask has to face, in particular Tamba being a lot of fun with his antics and Zrno impressed on occasion. Hoshino is a smooth sidekick as he always is and Sayama pulls out the usual tricks with the crowd are as expected loving every second of it. It's nothing ground-breaking at this point but definitely one I'd check out. RANK: Decent Vs. Chris Adams III (11.03.1983) Adams again and this time he's playing a overt heel, shouting at the crowd and doing dirty shit right off the bat. Unfortunately that means we see less of his fun Catch work and more him in the role of the usual "Tiger Mask against foreign stooge" act, meaning lots of bumping and selling on both sides without much real action. Adams takes over in the early stages with punches and basic offence, and then Mask will counter into his own stuff and vice versa. It's rather...aimless, and doesn't really try to do much than run the clock down, so it's a lot of "I'll just do a knee drop randomly and try for a pin" and shit like that, just complete filler. Adams goes for his superkick (which Sayama bumps great for) and misses his diving headbutt. There's no real hint of psychology: Mask lands a brainbuster, a piledriver AND a Cobra Stretch, but then Adams just wiggles out and takes over with no issues with a punch to the gut without even bothering to add any desperation or selling what just happened, even a Misawa head-shake would suffice. I think a general issue this match suffers from as well is that post-Kobayashi feud, there's been more "sweep the leg" spots, as well as messing around with the mask, and it does tire when nearly every match has some element of one or both in it. No longer is it a cool feature exclusively shown off now and then by nasty rudo brawlers or big acts, now virtually every match has someone trying to grab onto it for cheap heat, not even really trying to work it proper into the match or anything. The crowd chants for Mask as he gets beatdown by Adams, he makes a comeback with a big Savate kick and some suplexes. Adams escapes a Butterfly attempt and gets back on top again, so more punches and slow work. There's some holds in the second half but the pacing doesn't get any better regardless of that, and we even get some bad pacing botches as Adams kinda just sits in position while Mask tries to do something and they have to awkwardly reset. They finally get the crowd engaged with a step-up Enzuigiri by Adams, which Mask sells like a KO for about 20 seconds until he needs to do his comeback spot, ending in a leg sweep. Tombstone + Diving Headbutt for the easy win. This was a rough filler match, with the two mostly just doing shit to each other intertwined with hints of something with Adams heel work, but we never get much beyond that. Nothing to this at all, barely any holds and a real feeling of this just being on the spot, especially with the pacing here. This is everything people who don't like the guy think Tiger Mask matches look like, just a mishmash of moves with no pacing, selling, or psychology, super stripped down. RANK: Forgettable W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Chris Adams & Abdullah Tamba (18.03.1983) After their bad singles, I was somewhat dreading this tag given who was involved. We start off with some sloppy shit between Hoshino and Tamba as they generally aren't clicking and don't work well with each other, with some obvious timing issues and bad bumps. Things get better when Mask gets in and the heels double team him with a lot of strikes and whatnot. We also get a awesome spot where Sayama does his signature Wall Run off the turnbuckle corner, only doing it off Tamba's back after he missed a shoulder press and into his Savate kick, ending with a big dive though the ropes. More or less the entire match is just the above repeating itself a few times bar the occasional change or whatnot. Tamba also squishes Sayama with a nasty senton splash: unless the usual version where the person jumps slightly to elevate the actual impact of the move (as well as making sure the full mass isn't right on them) Tamba just goes flat on them full-force and it looks disgustingly stiff, doesn't help he was off slightly so he ended up mostly on his head on top of that. It's pretty crazy he eats that and just 20 seconds later is doing top rope moonsaults and flipping all over the place. Him and Adams are good enough as a pair and we definitely get some of the higher-quality stuff out of those two. Tamba gets to show off a bit here as well with a dropkick and floppy headscissors as per standard. We get a surprisingly good bit with Hoshino playing the underdog; great bumping on his part, especially with a slingshot spot where he flings himself head-first into the second rope turnbuckle. Of course he eventually dodges a Adams diving headbutt for a quick burst of Tiger Mask spots before he inevitably also gets brought down, and we reset back to Hoshino being on the backend after a superkick from Adams to even things out. It sounds fairly by the numbers but when Sayama gets in for the big climatic showdown with the heels the crowd explode in a chant, especially when he manages to scoop slam Tamba after a few kicks. The heels manage to maintain control with some cheating on Adams' part, but eventually Tamba falls after a big backdrop and brainbuster, ending with a standing moonsault onto Tamba's legs and a repeat of the finish from their last televised match: a figure four for a submission win. This is obviously not something era-defining and DEFINITELY feels B-show, however this had a good charm to it and there were no real bad weak links here, even if Hoshino did have some sloppy moments on his end. Tamba is a unique feature with his mix of big-man brawling and doing massive crazy big-man spots like dropkicks and flying headscissors, Adams is as always a good hand even if his shtick is a bit limited in his role. Sayama brings this up a few levels with his agility and spots from being tame to something actually fairly watchable bar the bad start. RANK: Decent Vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi V (15.04.1983) This is joined in progress with about 2 minutes shaved off. Mask is overtly using more of his UWF kickboxing here, aiming with a nasty head kick early on. This establishes him working with some good aggression, more aiming to hurt his rival than show off as normal. He even lands a lariat of all things, which is the first time I've seen him do such a move since forever. Kobayashi is ever the opportunist, having to fight and struggle for his moments to shine with rule-bending and his usual kicks. There's the usual stuff between the two like long cross armbreaker attempts and occasional stop/start pacing, with the two going from big sequence to then sitting in holds. Thankfully it's done fairly well and not insanely noticeable on a first watch. Sadly the gap between these two is quite noticeable workrate wise: Sayama's stuff just generally overshadows Kobayashi's more grounded style, and his kicks are immensely better than his, so we get a fairly lopsided match that doesn't really feel like two equal rivals at this point. Weirdly both men almost become their opposites as Kobayashi is the one being cheered on though the beatings while Mask is the dominant force keeping him in his place, it's rather bizarre especially with Kobayashi deliberately playing this up by consistently selling his groggy nature by stumbling over, tying himself up in the ropes Andre-style and throwing himself around. Eventually the match starts to pick up in the last few minutes, then it all goes downhill as Kobayashi is knocked out of the ring when trying for a Butterfly suplex; we get a awkward dive catch/half sell by the two before the match ends in a DQ after Kobayashi scoop-slams Mask onto a stack of chairs in the crowd. The two have a post-match brawl but the crowd is noticeably deflated, nowhere near as loud or as hot as they were for the first three matches they had together. This is pretty much the house-show equivalent of a showing between these two, and I'm seriously debating if this is weaker than their 08/02 bout: while that one had zero creativity and not a lot else to it beyond that fact, this one struggles from just having no real shtick to hook you in here, especially with the bizarre Kobayashi acting like a underdog deal that doesn't really get communicated well here. This does have some solid strikes though and Sayama puts on a more aggressive act to get over their bitter rivalry. That said, this most assuredly feels like the awkward Missing Link between their more conventional first three matches and their more proto shoot-style showings to come. RANK: Decent W/ Osamu Kido Vs. Caswell Martin & Kuniaki Kobayashi (19.04.1983) It's interesting seeing Cas here given his overall nature of being a brilliant WoS worker, but kinda fading in and out of stuff he actually did. This was his only NJPW stint and it was mostly jobbing to the bigger Jr heavyweight stars at the time, though he would also appear in UWF 1.0. It's a shame this is clipped, because what we see of him vs Kido is fairly interesting mat-work. Instead Kobayashi gets to beat him up mostly with his usual wonky kicks, Cas only comes in at the end for a generic scoop slam and missed leg drop. Sayama gets in to beat him up with strikes, even a piledriver (???) out of the blue. Despite Kobayashi interference and the two squaring up, it only takes a Butterfly Suplex and subsequent Tiger Suplex to easily get the three. This is way too clipped to really judge it fully but it mostly feels like run of the mill stuff with nothing much else to really acknowledge. RANK: Forgettable Vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi VI (15.04.1983) The start of this is super fun as Kobayashi forgoes the usual nonsense and immediately goes into bombs, including a spinning heel kick and big backdrop. Of course the two settle down after this and go into the usual formula of duelling cross armbreaker attempts. That said, they mix it up here with some great back and forth action with stand-up as the pair try to read the other to hammer in their shit, so we get some cool bits where it's just them battling it out with strikes to catch the other or dodging a shot to try to answer with another in response, it feels like a martial arts movie in places. You really get to see Sayama's kickboxing background in full effect as he just smacks the guy with sharp head and body shots. Much like some of their bouts already, this definitely flirts with a sort of proto shoot-style in places; we get the cross armbreakers as expected but now we get some stand-up kickboxing as mentioned above as well as the proper application of a sleeper hold by Mask when his Butterfly Suplex is unsuccessful. Even a backfist is used, albeit it doesn't look great. As with any repeat match there's definitely some moments which are just pulled wholesale from their earlier matches, and Mask gets a lot of his usual stuff in on top of that. However, there's also some great additions to their routine; Sayama blocks the Kobayashi step-up Enzuigiri this time when he catches his leg and Kobayashi in turn expertly counters the turnbuckle springboard crossbody by sticking his knee out for a gutbuster, which was paced to perfection. We get more escalation as Mask hurls out dropkicks, but Kobayashi dodges basically all of them, especially a nasty crash and burn bump off the ropes when he tries taking him off the apron with one in a Misawa/Tsuruta-like fashion. Kobayashi also pulls out a pretty nifty backwards crossbody to follow up as well. Even the extended armbreaker rest hold afterwards I'm fine with because Kobayashi sells like death for the thing and consistently struggles to slowly escape out of it. Mask beats him down with multiple big spots, including even pulling out the deep Inoki-style Octopus Stretch. The crowd gets super excited in the last few minutes as we get a good few near falls from Kobayashi, Mask stealing the Fisherman's Suplex and some drama with the two having massive fatigue, struggling for the big conclusive bomb. Finish has Kobayashi dodge a diving headbutt after eating a piledriver, but him desperately trying to stay in the game by grabbing the mask is his downfall as Sayama wiggles him into a Victory Roll for the three count. This is a great return to form for the two, and the crowd again is massively spilt with them siding with Kobayashi near the end in a kind of Misawa/Kawada dynamic. Sadly unlike other one-sided rivalries like the aforementioned he'd never get a major win until WAY after it meant anything, however it doesn't reduce the quality of this match and how well done it is overall; tons of tense stand-off bits and a real feeling of progression as the two step out of their box a bit to mix things up. Mask is on the ball but Kobayashi really steps things up to where you might just think he'll win this time. RANK: Great Vs. Fishman (12.06.1983) Ok I'm cheating a bit with this one because it happens in the UWA but I figured this would be worth adding on. This exists as clipped for many versions including the official Tiger Mask collection by NJPW and some terrible 240p quality YT videos, the full version can be found with some searching. Fishman and co have a pretty eh start, mostly focused around Sayama being grounded with mat-work. Fishman is mostly basic, fairly clever in how he approaches things, hooking legs and arms for whatever advantage he can get, and countering any attempts to push back with swift stuff; him pulling back while in a bodyscissors to try to force Sayama's shoulders to the mat for a pin was basic but surprisingly cool for a spot showcasing that technical knowledge. This has that classic stop/start pacing to it as Sayama will break free and throw out maybe a dropkick or two before getting caught back into more holds. I'm sure it would've been more endearing to this crowd (and it was, to be fair) but for me this style just feels very much like padding, especially when it doesn't really build to anything; Sayama eventually just gets out all of his (obviously amazing) spots and a Diving Headbutt for the first fall. Fishman feigns injury afterwards as he refuses to leave his corner until eventually he runs out. We get a LONG extended headlock spot with the pair before Fishman just recovers and lands a weird floaty suplex before missing a leg drop. We get a really wacky piledriver spot and Sayama missing a diving headbutt. Fishman lands some more floaty scoop slams and a pop-up spinebuster before a diving splash gets his fall. Sayama flings himself like crazy for some big throws around the ring by his opponent before some more offence, including a very lax cradle near fall. Fishman just at once after the kickout goes into a big lumpy senton splash. The two go back and forth with moves with not a ton of selling before we get more fancy stuff, including a surfboard stretch that almost ends in the two pinning each other at the same time to add some tension. Outside dive from Mask, Fishman just casually dodges a big springboard splash afterwards by just standing still. He's super confident after a tope and a dropkick on the apron stun Sayama, ends up caught after his apron suplex is countered into a insanely arched German suplex for the win. This got good, that being said the mat-work at the start didn't really define or do anything, it was just classic 80's "sit in holds" stuff to pad this out more; which is a shame because both guys here aren't bad at it and a more proactive pace could've made this a lot smoother. Sayama lands all of his offence as great as you could imagine and makes Fishman look equally great for all of his offence with some huge bumps even if his long-term selling is negligible. Fishman.....wasn't feeling him much at all here. He has some nice stuff however overall he feels very basic for a worker and didn't really do a whole lot that was actually entertaining until the very end; his pacing was logical, sure, as was the gameplan, at the same time after watching dozens of these roadblock-formatted matches it does start to tire a lot when you've seen the same stuff done way better and it most definitely doesn't help that Sayama just no-sells all of the leg work anyway lol. RANK: Decent =========== Part 5 will finish this off with some big changes.....and the inevitable biggest one of them all.

Yeah it's a really fascinating case of someone who just showed up out of the blue, basically showed up on a bunch of shows (including a 30 minute draw with him and Kobashi vs Taue and Honda that sadly was never filmed) and then vanished. This is to my knowledge his ONLY TV appearance as most if not all of his showings weren't filmed. Even the AJPW TV tapings at the time (which were usually fairly generous with heavyweight showings) were mostly occupied with the bigger shows, hell this only got shown because it was a Korakuen main event, if you could believe it. Maybe something will show up down the line with more and more rare footage showing up like with the GAORA archive series and the like.

Recorded via fancam of the event as Young Lion matches were almost universally not filmed outside of some here and there. This in particular is a great showing as it involves two guys who will go on to have strong careers: Ishizawa as the devious Kendo Kashin and Ishikawa as a straight laced ace shooter. Even this early in his career (not even a year) he's pretty great on the mat, and Ishizawa pre Kashin can't coast off his reputation and goofy antics as per standard so he has to do the same. The result is a pretty heated match that starts off with both men hurling out slaps and other strikes in a game of one-upmanship between them while occasionally losing their cool. This also makes the match a bit more interesting beyond it just being two guys aggressively rolling about on the mat, which is still solid, don't get me wrong, but versatility helps a lot here. The match itself is as you can imagine fairly heatless as the crowd only really pick up for the striking portions as they don't really care about these two much at all, so there's a lot of very silent grappling, but this in itself is pretty awesome as the two move at a brisk pace and are as smooth as butter moving from hold to hold. Ishizawa pulls for his signature cross armbreaker at one point from back mount but this is for a majority just them going for takedowns, passing guard and sitting in holds: the pace is what especially is great here as both don't hang around for long in any position, only pulling for submissions when they are 100% sure it could work: Ishikawa uses maybe three actual submissions here and all of them are close calls with the last one being the finish, so they feel threatening. It's really refreshing to see submissions used as tangible match-ending moves than just things to sit around in, with even the hint of a double wrist lock being immediately escaped from. There's some good heat bits as well given Ishikawa acts like a shit with random slaps and even punches in places: Ishizawa responds in kind with his own petty stuff. The middle half has a good bit where Ishizawa manages to force his opponent to break to the ropes due to countering a Achilles Tendon hold: his pettiness makes him immediately jump back to the same leg to work it over again only for Ishikawa to knock him down and use the tease of a toe-hold to snap on a kneebar instead which got the crowd super loud. Ishizawa second submission (a Grovit/front face lock) causes his opponent almost at once to sprint to the ropes to escape, but he doesn't break the hold afterwards and tries to choke him out; hits the ropes again. He tries for it a third time and succeeds, but Ishikawa is more than ready for it this time by catching him in a painful toe hold for the surprise submission win. This is probably my bias talking but this was a really good, short technical wrestling match that felt legit while not completely boring at the same time. Kashin shows off a lot of that technical wrestling excellence that's overshadowed by his trolly persona and Ishikawa is already extremely competent on the mat, balancing good takedowns with some surprising submissions at points. If this is your thing, it's absolutely worth checking out despite the trappings of Young Lion formats given the two push it as far as possible in terms of technical work, because for what could've been just a regular 7-minute rookie match, it was LEAGUES above the standard for these sort of things.

Clipped entrances, but shown in full beyond that. The obvious factor here, as you can obviously tell, is this Brian Dyette character: he's a really green talent, comes from American football, and was fairly hyped up given his size and youth at the time as well as being personally scouted and trained by Steve Williams; apparently according to Meltzer he was also in contention to be Kobashi's brand new tag-partner as the young gun Gaijin rookie (which would've made them essentially GET 2.0, or even the original Burning?) This unfortunately wouldn't come to much as he'd basically stop working after two months (apparently due to health issues/not liking the constant travel) so it's a bit awkward seeing him with guys who are clearly far beyond his capabilities, feels really ham-fisted. Kobashi and Misawa obviously have some solid exchanges here and turn up the workrate right at the start: each have their number already and dodge multiple attempts at offence in a surprisingly fast sequence between the two for such a match. Dyette is the odd one out and quite green by his basic offence and clunky notions at times but I think he looked alright here, especially for a guy who'd done maybe a month of actual practical ring work at this point. Akiyama is great: he pulls out the fire from Kobashi in fierce strike exchanges but he also sells some leg work and has a good dynamic with Dyette, which they work into the match rather nicely; despite Akiyama himself not being a vet, he really looks after Dyette like one. There's some good moments here like a reverse lariat into a Half Nelson Suplex which Misawa super-sells for, basically does a full blown rotation in the air lol. Dyette also hits a really sharp lariat of his own that's rather stiff and looked convincingly rough with these three. The finish is pretty badly botched however as Dyette is too gassed to get Akiyama up for basically a Razor's Edge-like powerbomb and they fall down flat on their ass mid move. He gets it off the second time with some help from Akiyama but that doesn't get the pin. Akiyama eventually recovers and nails two Exploder Suplexes to win the match. This slows down a LOT when Dyette is in the ring but never gets bad: he holds his own (or maybe that's just everyone else taking care of him) and it's obvious why they were so high on him given his performance and look, he had good atheticism and had clearly something that could've been drawn out with some more development. Everyone else is great and there's some excellent action between Akiyama/Kobashi as well as Misawa; basically Kobashi is the GOAT, we kinda know that though. Underrated overall, definitely worth checking out if you want something a bit exotic and out there for a Misawa/Kobashi pairing.

I was equally gutted to see NJPW kinda pass by such a brilliant act like Villano in favour of just rotating out talent, so instead you mostly get guys who couldn't get nearly as good results (with the occasional outlier like Black Man or whatnot). I'll also say that the "quasi-shoot style" that you do sorta see emerge definitely becomes more and more apparent as time goes on: in fact his later 1983 matches as I'll cover soon (ish) almost feel like really early Super Tiger showings as most of it is just scrappy stand-up kickboxing, mat-work, and the occasional one or two spots, though this might have something to do with his bad knees than anything else. The Kobayashi matches really showcase that change in tempo as time goes on, really fascinating going though them and seeing that slow mutation of styles.

I was fairly hyped for this given Yasuda and Nagata historically have pretty good chemistry and will have a great trio of matches in the next year or so. This kinda sparked that pairing given this is their first major showing against the other, and it starts great with Nagata rushing in for a surprise rolling kick and German suplex combo in the first 10 seconds! The crowd pick up for a full-mount beatdown and a cross armbreaker; Yasuda just about escapes to the ropes. This shakes Yasuda up enough that when he manages to get in his clinch in the turnbuckle he really lets rip with some good-looking knees, as well as just choking Nagata out with his boot. Crowd reacts strongly to him shoving the ref out of the way and threatening the guy; while Yasuda had been a heel in his earlier G1 showings, he wasn't THIS much of a overt heel and this was pre Coward Shooter gimmick so he wasn't full on cartoony villain yet. They brawl on the outside and we get a great spot where Nagata slaps on the Nagata Lock on the apron to really bend back Yasuda's arm. The middle part of this is a bit slower as the two work on the mat: Yasuda isn't amazing but he can hold his own, as shown by him pushing with clinch work and defending against a rear naked choke and triangle armbar respectfully. We get a good spot where Nagata tries for a dropdown Guillotine choke, Yasuda is able to pop his head out mid-fall, beating him up for a pair of rear naked choke attempts. Nagata impressively counters the second with a figure-four no-hands heel hook, which gives him the leverage to go into a full-on Achilles Tendon lock. This is followed up with real sharp kicks from Nagata to work over the leg as well. Nagata sells the shit out of Yasuda snapping up his arms in a clinch before doing the usual sumo chops followed up with a Guillotine and Butterfly Suplex and the crowd really shit themselves when Yasuda tries for another Guillotine, Nagata is just about able to spring his leg up onto the ropes. The finish is excellently done as Yasuda gets a near fall with a sit-out Tiger Driver however Nagata counters a final push for a Guillotine with a Fujiwara Armbar set-up before just pounding the guy with knees to the head to set up Crossface variation of the Nagata Lock, which gets the big win. This was really strongly built throughout with some great scrappy stuff at the beginning before settling down into a good pace between the two as they scramble on the mat. Yasuda is a menace with his clinches and dangerous submissions, and Nagata shines under pressure to deliver a solid babyface performance with tons of teases and fire to get the crowd right into this. Super fun for what it was and definitely worth watching if a fan of their existing trilogy of matches, maybe wanting something a bit less gimmicky than Yasuda's usual Coward Shooter stuff.

I'm horribly biased and don't watch a ton of modern stuff but quick list for the lads Kaito Kiyomiya vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (12.02.2022) Have more detailed review in the usual places but this was just 40 minutes of really good, really minimalistic wrestling. Ogawa is in his mid-50's and is arguably even better than he was in AJPW 20+ years ago and Kaito is a fun act with lots of babyface fire when it matters. This went by in a flash despite the heavy reliance on holds and transitions. Kaito Kiyomiya vs. Keiji Muto (16.07.2022) Limited by Muto's wear and tear, but a pretty great match that took advantage of that fact and built on their prior matches beautifully; Kaito just completely shutting down Muto and blasting him to death was really something to see and Muto for everything you can say negative about him really made the guy look like a world-ender. For the last truly solid big Muto performance, it definitely paid off. Hideki Suzuki vs. Kenoh (19.08.2022) Suzuki when motivated can do really amazing stuff and this in particular was a ton of fun to go though: usually 30 minute draws are really badly telegraphed and overblown but this was paced smartly and never felt like a draw would be a big deal until the last 2 minutes. Really smooth mat-work paired with brutal strikes when it mattered. Naoya Nomura & Hayato Mashita vs. Super Tiger II & Shingo Suzuki (16.10.2022) Stole this off Jetlag's blog and gave it a watch: I'm generally pretty sceptical about modern shoot-style because it either looks like UWF cosplay or really boring attempts to look as legitimately like MMA as possible, but instead this was a really nailed-down sub-10 match that removed the filler in favour of some great action and genuine unpredictability I hadn't really seen since the days of wacky Inoki-Ism. Definitely sleeper hit. Hideki Suzuki vs. Kazuyuki Fujita (17.08.2022) Fujita is in his prime element....doing a 70's Dory Funk match? This should be GOAT'd just for that, but I thought this was actually pretty great given the stakes; Fujita is fairly good doing his more aggressive amateur-style mat-work and Suzuki being stuck on the mat more means he can't just bounce off with Billy Robertson spots the whole match, so what we get is a slow but very measured technical match, even if it does border into grapplefuck tier at moments. Akitoshi Saito & Mohammed Yone vs. Satoshi Kojima & Takashi Sugiura (10.11.2022) Funky Express in a actual competitive match sounds like a bad idea, but it actually isn't, because Yone and Saito are still real great at playing their underdog roles respectfully, and of course Sugiura and Kojima turn this into a real stiff beating despite Express's stubbornness. Saito's still got it, which is impressive given I'm not his biggest fan. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tomohiro Ishii (01.05.2022) Now this could've been just another Ishii match which I'd be fine with anyway, but Tana and co really flipped the formula around, especially given Tana isn't much of a strike-heavy wrestler at this point and time so things were a bit more...unpredictable. Also Ishii does a Slingblade so 5+ stars Shingo Takagi vs. Taichi (25.04.2022) Most KoPWC matches are bad, was fully expecting this to be a bad gimmick-laden match with Taichi goofing off a good chunk and then ripping off Kawada for the other half. It wasn't, thankfully, and they actually do some great job selling and getting over the 30-count stipulation, like regular moves getting 1 or 2 counts and finishers getting 3+. Shingo is super on the ball here getting this really stupid championship over despite being capable of a lot more. Sheamo vs Gunther is better than Paul/Reigns ngl. One revitalised a near-dead belt with a super sharp focus back to just hard-hitting shots and a great redemsion story for Sheamus while the other was a fun athletic spectacle that never really got to "oh shit Logan might actually win this" tier, which was the whole point of the match really. I will say Reigns sold the fear of losing when it got sticky, but for me I was never convinced of the same. One accomplished the mission at hand, the other didn't: for me that drags it down given it reflects massively on the quality.

These two definitely have their detractors but this for me personally was a great showing. This was the kind of match that you would inevitably expect from both men as they mostly go into Koji's bombs and strikes vs Nishimura's old school limb work, namely to the legs where he can snipe Koji off his feet and wear the man down due to having one leg taped up at this point and time. Koji's selling is also pretty good; he's always been pretty solid at emoting pain and frustration, and he does so a ton here to really showcase Nishimura's control segments well while never going massively into the usual screaming and shouting shit that he can just default to doing in any hold. At one point Kojima lariats Nishimura's leg in a gloriously goofy spot. This match is also helped a lot by a very hot crowd who are firmly behind Nishimura: again making the claim that he "lacks charisma" immensely silly. The guy gets frenzied chants off getting stuck and then struggling in a single leg Boston Crab, you really can't get more over than that unless you want prime Hogan levels. We get some nice bombs here and there with a top rope Koji Cutter; the spot where Nishimura finally drops the gameplan and goes for a big top rope dropkick and Koji no sells and just has his sinister expression on his face like "you fucked up" was amazing, as was the crowd exploding when Koji missed the following lariat and got caught in a Cobra Twist. Nishimura gets wrecked near the end with a number of bombs including a rough rebound lariat, but his bad leg stops him from making the pin fast enough so he gets a 2.9. Crowd AGAIN goes ape-shit and finally bursts as Nishimura dodges a second lariat into a Cobra Twist cradle for the pin. This is a pretty good match that helped a ton by the crowd just eating every little bit up and going crazy for Nishimura's antics. Kojima lands some solid bombs and works great as the straight-laced antagonist to shut down hope spots and keep this firmly under control with his usual explosive style. It's a fairly shortish match for Nishimura standards as well (sub-20) so it feels immensely fresh as a result and not too muddled in Nishimura getting his shtick over with numerous extended sequences. Big highlight out of binge-watching Nishimura's G1 outings.

Idk I watched most of his AJPW New Blackjacks RWTL run and it was....fine? Like it wasn't amazing or top 100 whatever unless getting Bobby Duncum Jr to a half decent match is that standard. Giant Kimala II has more of a case in AJPW than him lol. They have a few ok showings against the likes of GET and Triangle of Power, but having "ok" quality matches with two great teams like that is definitely not a metric of much success.

Holy shit this match was LONG as anything, like 30 minutes long from me just eyeballing it. This is basically NOSAWA's big last singles match before he seemingly retires in the new year, we'll see if that actually is the case when it happens. As you might imagine this was basically a Ogawa carryjob (given NOSAWA sucked even when he wasn't 45 years old and carrying lots of wear and tear) so he dominates things with headlocks and the like while his opponent just kind of struggles to plod along with shitty punches or selling for the other guy. Most of the middle section is just Ogawa leading with arm work, which is as per standard pretty varied and probably the best part of this match as he finds a ton of ways to either bend or crank the arm in ways that you just don't see usually. Naturally this is all superfluous: NOSAWA just shakes it off after a few low blows to go into a ho-hum comedy spot with the ref: but in isolation, naturally it is quite good. We get some real meh offence as NOSAWA goes for his own arm work; it isn't nearly as good or as interesting as before so it just feels weak all together. There's some more limb work in the form of leg work from Ogawa, which like before is really fun and unique, with him using the very structure of the arena alongside submissions to wear it down, alongside just booting it in places. As per the arm work before it's as good as it can be in these conditions. Doesn't help we get a long figure four spot that basically dragged the pace down even further. NOSAWA sells the leg like he's basically drunk: he can put weight on it but then shambles around like he's Giant Gonzalez when said leg is kicked, doing these cartoony punches on top of it so it just looks like he's had a few too many than anything to do with his leg fatigue. He eventually gets the advantage with some throat chops and a decent leg-slap kick after a pin attempt, but then goes for a limp kick to a kneeling Ogawa before somehow doing a worse one for a near fall. I would get them looking bad if this was in part due to selling the leg (so the execution looks dodgy, or at least has a excuse for it as he can't do the move 100%) but at the same time these are used for near falls, so if that is the case, it really isn't communicated that way. NOSAWA falls though with a decent Shining Wizard and a cradle, but Ogawa holds the ref's hand to stop him from counting the three; this is a common spot out of him but it never fails to look cool. Ogawa then counters a second Wizard attempt into a figure four for the submission win. This wasn't great! Ogawa really tries all of his usual tricks to make this a watchable experience, but he can only do so much good if his opponent can't do a whole lot, and NOSAWA, well, can't. His selling isn't terrible when he's on the mat but his selling of the leg is dreadful and borders on cartoony at points. His actual offence throughout this entire thing was some strikes, a cradle spot he spammed four times over, and a Shining Wizard. That's it. That's all you get out of him. The rest is just him laying on the mat or bickering with the ref. It's just a really poor performance out of someone I've never really liked as a worker anyway, but this was especially egregious. The long post-match standoff between the two maybe suggests this was a Michaels/Flair (stay with me) kind of deal, maybe NOSAWA acting like the old vet who just can't go anymore and can only drag this out with his endurance; even if that was the case, it doesn't save it from just being a poor outing that does nothing for either man besides just showing how much raw effort Ogawa did on his side to make this at least watchable.

It's sad that it's been a full year since this was stated and it's still the case right now, only Kaito instead of being a good wrestler is now a good wrestler doing a bad Muto impression. Every title defence since winning the GHC has felt like his opponent was more prominent than him. Keeping with the NOAH theme and trying to add something new, I'll say Yoshiki Inamura with five years of the quality of matches he's been having over the year or so definitely is a contender, awesomely energised hoss with a lot of potential.

Short and to the point Mura squash, but quite enjoyable. Ashino will become a decently awesome talent, but at this point he's a generic Muto-trainee with not much else to give. Mura beats him down on the outside and inside. He walks with a violent swagger as he kicks and beats down both his opponent and the ref for good measure. Ashino lands generic forearms to the chest, Mura does his crazy face and hits him with a stiff slap to knock him down into shape. Him going for multiple pins, letting them go, clapping with the audience as they try to motivate Ashino's comeback, it's all peak dickhead antics. Ashino inevitably makes his comeback after Mura goes for a overtly lax kick, allowing him to catch it and go into a decent belly to belly. He also lands some TERRIBLE full mount forearms, Christ they were bad even for rookie standards. Mura takes over with punches and his corner stomp, Ashino tries for more shitty forearms before Mura socks him mid-run for the pin. This was a funny case in that it was essentially Ashino with all of his bad-puro teachings (sustained bad forearm strikes, limp "fighting spirit" sections, no flexibility) failing to help him against a asskicker who doesn't give a shit about any of that and just wants to make the dude suffer, and he can't do anything about it because his offence is so bad. Ashino learns a painful lesson here about imitating the greats and how just copying them move for move doesn't make you great as a result. Loads of fun for squash even if it wasn't much in terms of action, Murakami kinda carried this to something way better than it should've been.

Technically very solid but I get why this is so divisive. Funaki can still go when he wants (like seriously, the dude looks pretty good for someone in their 50's when he's bothering to actually wrestle and do stuff that isn't just weaker material from his AJPW days) but Sakuraba was never a amazing wrestler, just a very gifted technical worker; even back in UWFI and Kingdom this was the case more or less. At this point he's just kind of there, a lot of good mat-work but with none of the showmanship or psychology that Muto had to make that grounded style click (obviously he doesn't wrestle shoot-style, but you get the point, his work feels more impactful despite it functioning mostly as filler with limited importance) lots of just hold wangling and shoot-style fundamentals with the occasional Sakuraba goofy moment. But yeah, the crowd were IN to this as soon as the bell sounded and they started going back and forth, definitely one of the hotter matches in terms of just people shouting and stuff. The mat-work was intelligent but nothing that made me go " wow" it just felt like these two having a exhibition more or less than a battle for one of the biggest titles in NOAH, which has felt like that a ton with Funaki matches generally, it's just a prop that Funaki has before and after the match. Saku was a bit all over the place here but if you've actually watched his PRIDE stuff then you know it's par for the course for that lad. There wasn't much build-up for the end, it just had Saku get mauled in stand-up by Funaki's sharp kicks and palm strikes before he slapped on a side-Darce for the quick win. It's definitely a bit weird but I didn't think this was that bad, just lacking in tension. Saku as much as I love the mad lad for everything he's done in MMA and beyond is admittedly kinda washed these days and felt lethargic here (gassed up pretty quick, which wouldn't matter that much if this wasn't a three minute sprint) as opposed to Funaki who was very much on point, loved the front Grovit he randomly threw out near the end for a submission attempt. I wish we at least got a few more minutes of these two mat-working but I get what they were going for here, it just felt lacking in actual content: the general rule is that if you are going for a super short sprint/early finish, you need to make the actual sprint be at least interesting or with some undercurrent of tension, like it could end at any point like a Fujita match or whatnot. Maybe don't structure big title bouts like early PRIDE undercard matches lol. This is definitely one of those matches that I can get people liking in a specific context, but it just doesn't translate well at all for me.

I definitely think Bret's case is hurt by how little he has to work with in comparison with Cena, who practically had a boatload of talented acts to work with (with the occasional carry-job like with Khali or old-man Kane) on big stages and feuds as opposed to Bret who still obviously had good work, but his range of guys who didn't need a overt carry was much smaller and of course post-WWF Bret wasn't always in the mood to actually go.

This is insanely short and only really built around Ogawa jobbing out to Butcher to build up his rep for the tag with him and Kimala. That said, it's a surprisingly good 5 minute bloodfest as Ogawa makes the mistake of attacking Abdullah before he even gets to the ring and ends up gushing with blood. I'm dead serious, he's just pouring with the stuff and it quickly makes his entire face look like a tomato, nasty stuff. Ogawa hurls and bumps all over for the bigger guy to get the crowd behind him, selling a table being dumped on his prone body like he'd just been burnt with hot coals. Abby plays well with the cameras and the crowd throughout by stabbing and poking at his bloody face, making sure everyone gets a good view of the whole thing in his trademark manner. Ogawa tries for some big comebacks with punches and even raking the face himself in a proto-Ratboy move, but ultimately gets overpowered and pinned with a running elbow. I really liked how they milked that elbow for everything it was worth, with Abby taking a especially long pause to tease the audience that Ogawa (might) dodge or escape, but that obviously doesn't happen and he eats the job. The long staredown he gives Baba in the audience afterwards was really well done and tense: Abby just kneels there for nearly a minute just staring at the guy without blinking, so even if you don't know the history between the two, you definitely get their general vibe just off this interaction. Afterwards he attacks the ref and answers with extra elbow drops. This should be pretty samey as a Abdullah squash match but Ogawa even as early on as this adds a lot to this with his bumping and selling, absolutely getting over the threat of his opponent while making sure to squeeze in some hope spots at just the right points to get the crowd reengaged. It's a solid example of a basic match with a lot of small, smart elements that make it much better than it has any right to be in the first place, something Ogawa naturally will excel at.

Yeah from what I seen of him and Rocco without the Black Tiger shtick (even the match with him and Sayama way back in WoS) the two of them seemed pretty good and certainly could've done a lot more if they were presented with the same opportunities as Dynamite was. That's definitely one thing that I learned from going though this run: Dynamite was certainly great, but you do wonder how much of that was his own brilliance and how much was the fact he was pushed a lot harder and given a lot more leeway than other equally great wrestlers. Same with seeing guys like Villano III and Negro Navarro (who even from my admittedly limited experience were far bigger deals than presented).

Sounds reasonable, I don't think they were too interested in giving him much to work with in the first place given how this is the only time he shows up on tape. Thanks! I would highly suggest checking out the Villano match if you can find it, very solid. Glad you are enjoying it.

Part 3 =========== Vs. El Polaco (02.07.1982) This definitely isn't one of Sayama's better "roadblock" formatted matches but I think it's not as bad as some existing matches already covered. Sure, definitely a B-show performance and a chance for Mask to slow down in the lead to his match with Ultraman, but Polaco works in some tricky transitions: he doesn't, say, slap on a side headlock Dory-style for multiple minutes, he actively makes an attempt to mix things up and slow down Mask in a environment he's not massively impressive in. They also balance the more fast-paced stuff in quite well, of course Tiger Mask just astounds casually even in these very minimalistic matches. They get over WHY Polaco is so keen to keep things slowed in the middle as he just gets ran down with flips to the outside. Polaco isn't particularly "good" as a wrestler but he plays his role as clunky rudo just fine even if his range is rather limited. The crowd was fairly invested with chants and whatnot even if it was obvious who was winning. Good lead into the finish, which is a admittedly weird one as the ref calls this off despite no pin being counted. The best suggestion I can give is to add some drama to the Ultraman/Mask title bout by having Polaco be seemingly injured by the Tiger Suplex....shame that doesn't come into play whatsoever in the actual match itself but still. While this is a slow match and built around that fact, it works as a lead-in for the Ultraman rematch and gives the audience a conventional match with some nice bits thrown in here and there. That said.....it's still pretty slow and Polaco is not really close to being a particularly strong counterweight to Tiger Mask, so discretion will vary between this being decent or just not worth the watch. RANK: Decent Vs. Ultraman II (06.07.1982) The return of Ultraman! This time the two do noticeably better, namely because both men have run the B-show gauntlet and gotten a better chemistry as opposed to right at the start. That being said, Ultraman is still leagues below Sayama and it utterly bears stating that because this was almost all carried spot-wise by his opponent. Ultraman brings some decent arm work and the occasional nice spot but he's still a really weird performer that Sayama consistently has to either tangibly make more effort to look presentable or just look stupid for going along with his bad offence. Ultraman also socks him with a Enzuigiri that legitimately hits him fairly hard as he immediately just lays down and awkwardly waits. A lot of this is just typical B-show Tiger Mask formula, occasional big spots with a lot of hold-hugging. Things pick up in the last few minutes with a outside dive and some more complex sequences. They also repeat the top rope crossbody spot that was horribly botched last time, only they get it right here by having Mask instead dropkick him mid-air instead of trying to catch the guy. Of course they still fuck it up because Mask goes for one himself and Ultraman doesn't catch him whatsoever so he ends up falling onto his knee instead, which must've hurt bad. Ultraman goes for a neckbreaker and gets countered into a German suplex for the win. All in all, the pair of Ultraman matches are a perfect example of how chemistry can be improved with practise and patience, but nevertheless I just don't think the two work very well with the other, and Ultraman is a pretty poor worker; he would've been fine maybe a decade or so ago where the pace was a lot less strenuous but at this point his work is so antiquated, he just doesn't fit well here at all even with a prime Sayama throwing himself around. But yeah, this spells the end of the short lived Tiger Mask/Ultraman feud, thankfully. RANK: Forgettable W/ Kengo Kimura Vs. Bret Hart & Dynamite Kid (16.07.1982) With these four working a match you expect good things, and that's what we get here. This was a pretty heated affair that had trunk pulling and a whole batch of just scrappy shit, including a great fish out of water spot with Kimura and Kid as they battle hold to hold. The dynamic is that Bret is essentially the sidekick to Dynamite, so he's a weak link that needs the more experienced partner to balance the books. Bret also seems more confident here; even though he's nowhere near as good as the real main players, he can still function as a B-role which fits him a lot better than when he was pushing for the title solo. Kid here is just fantastic: dude takes insane bumps, dishes them back out, and his aggression is so authentic, even small things like a scoop slam and his signature snappy headbutts ooze bad intentions, it's something you don't really see much these days. Kimura is what he usually always is, he's a #2 guy that can go competently and occasionally flashes moments of brilliance but it's just that, flashes. Things get wild in the middle as Dynamite does a Tombstone on the outside and we get more tense sequences, but there's not really a build towards anything beyond hyping up Kid/Mask for their singles about a week later so the two typically go back and forth with no real winner. Kimura is the lad bumping for most of this as he pulls off occasional hope spots before the two isolate him. Kimura's "comeback" is more or less just him sloppily running to his tag corner with whatever he has left, which I felt added some good tension here as he was spent as opposed to trying to get some random shit in before doing so. I thought there was a bit too much of a overuse of piledrivers as Kid gets hit with TWO in a row + Kimura top rope knee drop and still can't be pinned, which felt off. I guess it made sense given the heels kept using interference to stay in the game. They finally lose control after Kid hits Bret with a dropkick by accident, Mask lands a big crossbody dive to the outside, the lads eat it but then they just dump him with a slam anyway lol. He's out, Kimura tries to fight back with some fiery underdog offence but Kid holds his legs at the top rope, allowing Bret to recover. Bret then does the same by holding Kimura's lower section down so Kid can hit a mean diving headbutt for the win. Not a great watch if you are going into this looking for Kid/Mask interactions that you couldn't get in their singles series, but this was generally a solid tag with lots of smart psychology and plentiful workrate by its lonesome to keep you sated. I'm still not convinced about early Bret being much of a fit but this was his best showing so far. RANK: Good Vs. Bret Hart II (30.07.1982) This suffers from the same issues that the last Bret title match did, namely that Bret is A. Not a credible challenger in the slightest B. Not inclined to a Jr style of wrestling Both of which drags this down a fair notch. The wrestling itself is not bad at all given who is involved bar the occasional bit where Bret's inexperience means he flubs a spot or just shakes off offence way too quickly, but the issue is that said wrestling is rather heatless, and lacked any tangible tension to be found. Bret's offence just seems like he's doing stuff so that Sayama can counter into his more fancy work rather than being his own tangible style. That's not a bad thing by itself but it does reduce this to more or less the crowd waiting for the stuff they want to see rather than actually getting invested into the match itself and who wins. Seeing Bret do undercard heel pratfalls and extended rest holds just felt....wrong as well, like something against nature. We do get some decent bits as Bret's backbreaker and piledriver are pitch-perfect, as are his punches, and of course Sayama's eventual comebacks are done mostly as smooth as butter, but simply having good-looking moves does not a good match make, and this never really kicked off third gear anyway. They try to add some elements of tension with Bret cheating with some choking and then Mask uncharacteristically starts choking him back, but that goes nowhere. There's a very distinct part of the match that basically spells out exactly the problem with it where Bret is just endlessly landing big moves for pins over and over for at least a minute and a half; the crowd don't bite whatsoever for any of his attempts, but then Sayama doing a goofy handstand after a apron Hotshot into a dive to the outside gets them going by itself. The finish is especially weak as Dynamite Kid tries to interfere, him and Bret bump heads by mistake and Mask takes advantage with a quick German suplex for the three. It kinda protects Bret while making him look like a goof at the same time, it's a weird situation. Like the last match together, I just don't feel early Bret at all. RANK: Forgettable W/ Kengo Kimura, Tatsumi Fujinami Vs. Bret Hart, Dynamite Kid & Greg Valentine (31.07.1982) This is recorded in full, a rarity at the time for matches like these. We start off with some competent feeling out sequences, with the foreign trio using a lot of strikes and scrappy stuff in comparison to the more pure wrestlers on the NJPW side. Valentine is definitely a required taste but if you like his more refined, old-school pacing then you'll definitely get something out of here with his sharp elbows and big slams, he's a surprisingly good fit for NJPW's style at the time. They repeat the Kimura spot from the 16th tag by having him get beat down before just running to the corner to hot tag Tiger Mask, as well as Kid tagging out as soon as he comes in. Of course Bret is the one to take the majority of the beatings from the trio given he's by far the less experienced (and the best seller, to be fair). They all take turns working the leg for a bit before Kid gets in to land some dirty headbutts to even the score. The middle admittedly is rather heatless as everyone kinda just gets in, bumps a bit, tags out, repeat etc. There's not really any attempt to push much apart from the other trio working the leg of Kimura after Valentine counters a side-headlock with a great delayed shin breaker. Bret doesn't have the experience to keep the limb work going, so he accidently ends up letting Kimura go during the leg work. The crowd only really gets going when Sayama returns to land lots of mean kicks to Bret alongside a cross chop. Crowd bites for a Kid near fall as he goes for a mean Tombstone on Mask. Fuji and co both land big backdrops on Kid because he can bump for them well (though seeing HOW well he takes them and the height, you do start to realise why his back troubles would get as bad as they would) but Bret gets in to land a dirty closed fist on Kimura to knock him to the outside. Kid lands a nasty apron knee drop to Kimura as well as just hurling the fucker over the guardrail, which costs them the first fall by DQ. The heels use this to their advantage as Kimura is still the legal man, meaning Valentine is just free to hunt for his bad leg; despite some close calls he's able to eventually get a tap with a figure four for their first fall. They beat down on him afterwards until Kid goes for a single leg Boston Crab and gets wrecked with a running kick by Mask, leading to a Fuji hot tag which he does fairly well. The finish comes tremendously quick as Mask lands a dive though the ropes, Fuji gets the win on Bret with a backdrop/Enzuigiri for the win. This was basically a standard house show tag, and while it wasn't the most bonkers spot-wise, it's a smartly worked match with certain things to enjoy about it, especially given everyone involved knows how to work pretty well at this point. Nothing to brag but I'd say this is alright for what it is. RANK: Decent W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Bret Hart & Dynamite Kid (03.08.1982) Another tag between these four, another decent showing. They work the usual spots with Tiger Mask here against Bret; it's all up to standard, it's nothing you haven't seen either. Hoshino gets scoop slammed onto the mat but then basically no sells to run the ropes and go for a sunset flip. I thought it was weird seeing Hoshino just outright out-wrestle Kid overtly but hey, it got a decent pop for what was mostly arm work and a running headbutt. Kid gets Mask outside for a disgusting scoop slam where he just drops Sayama mid-move on the outside, the splat noise made is shiver-worthy. Hoshino helps Mask get into the ring to avoid a count out, but also spends a while getting worked over by Kid and co. Bret is nowhere near as competent, but there's a good spot here where Mask teases getting the hot tag after tripping him over, only for Bret to spin around and catch his legs just at the right moment to cut him off; simple, but effective at getting over the heels trying their hardest to keep control. Sayama's selling is actually fairly good in this control segment however of course he quickly snaps out of it for the actual hot tag, which is just the two doing backdrops to Kid again lol. At least we get to see Hoshino work a backbreaker as a submission? The match kinda hits a lull at the second half as they just reset and go back to heels working on top, only with Hoshino instead. Mask gets in for some of his usual spots, Kid backfires when he tries to knock around Hoshino on the outside when he gets thrown right up and over the guardrail for a messy bump. Sayama jumps for a (barely recorded) top rope dive to the outside and gives Kid a beating for his troubles, landing scrappy elbows and hurling him around with gusto. Bret tries to take him solo but quickly gets rolled up and over during a apron suplex for the win. Acceptable tag that mostly is bar the course, but there's some really nasty bumps here and they make a good job of hyping up Kid/Mask battling it out once again for the title as the two get ugly with the other in scenes we won't quite see until later in the year with Sayama's new major feud. Bret and Hoshino were fine for what they were doing here but I never was particularly impressed by either, they just kinda exist. RANK: Decent W/ Tatsumi Fujinami Vs. Black Tiger & Pete Roberts (27.08.1982) This is designed to get Black Tiger some heat for his upcoming title shot two days later. Pete Roberts and co have a unique dynamic where Roberts, a old-fashioned British gent, doesn't approve of his partner's heel antics and tries to keep things clean with his ye oldie British Catch work. Sayama is OVER like shit here, as soon as he's tagged in there's big chants and the crowd explode for him outmanning both men with his sensational spots, we are definitely getting to the peak of his popularity. Eventually Black manages to get the advantage with hair pulling with Fuji and throws in some snappy back elbows. Roberts and co have some more solid mat work; again it's going to be a matter of taste, but considering I mark out for Osamu Nishimura copying this shit bit for bit decades later I was probably going to like it and yeah, this was fairly good as it actually balanced some showmanship instead of just being a dry "let's grab holds" segment as the two battle for control. We get a nice small bit where Black Tiger cheats with the tag rope and the ref notices, causing him to have a small tantrum and freak out to the amusement of the crowd. He tries to take over from Mask again, gets outsmarted after his second piledriver is reversed into one on him instead. Mask also works with Roberts in a surfboard spot before refusing to entertain him anymore and casually flips to escape it with ease. Black Tiger gets in for some illegal interference with closed fists. This happens a few times until he is dumped over the top rope to the outside and Roberts soon joins him after Fuji makes him go flying in the usual "run around the ring to escape the hammerlock" bit. He's still full of gas as he runs back in to hit Fuji with a knee to the head inevitably getting countered with a O'Connor Roll with a bridge for the quick pin. This was a competent build-based tag: I was worried the two Tigers wouldn't have heat after their pretty conclusive match just a few months ago, but they manage to get some of that back here and you want to see the two scrap again after seeing their limited interactions, even if Rocco's shtick isn't for everyone. Roberts is a solid hand alongside Fuji just being solid in general: of course Sayama is on form even if this is one of his less intensive affairs workrate wise, more about re-establishing the stakes than showing off. RANK: Decent Vs. Black Tiger III (29.08.1982) Sadly the only recording of this in existence is a tinny 80's tier fancam of the match itself, which does make viewing a bit difficult if you have motion sickness or generally don't like watching matches in 144p quality lol. This is kinda how you'd imagine a battle between the two would exist in-within the house show format: there's a lot of that classic Tiger Mask "x does a move, y flips and escapes, staredown/reset, repeat" shenanigans for about the first 8 minutes or so. It's fun enough given it's a prime Sayama showing off with bonkers near perfect timing and spots, but it's not particularly interesting, alongside a lot of just holding arms and limbs. I think the main problem with the match is that it feels....uninspired, you know? Like it's just the two being careful, landing some perfectly alright back and forths alongside the standard arm work, but there's none of the chaotic stuff you got from the last two singles between the two, where it felt like the match could just explode with violence at any point. It almost feels.....neutral, like the two have made up almost and this is just a exhibition for the crowd. It gets a bit exciting as Black pulls for a top rope knee drop, but misses and sells his knee afterwards. They don't do anything with that and instead Sayama gets to be a cocky shit by laying down on the middle rope and relaxing. Black takes some mean bumps on his head and neck throughout with a stiff Tiger DDT and a missed top rope back elbow both causing some issues. That doesn't really excuse the fact that this is more or less a less tightly paced version of their singles match from before, only with way less tension and no real value to it given that fact. It picks up near the end as Black lands a dive to the outside and a superplex that does cause the crowd to bite slightly for a upset win. The finish comes when Black crossbodies the two to the outside, they brawl until Tiger reverses a piledriver into his own and gets into the ring for the count out win. Sayama sells he's like near death, but I didn't quite buy that here given the lackadaisical pacing and him just casually relaxing mid-match. Again, these two had a way better match a few months ago with a ton more heat and workrate: this by comparison feels like a touring version, which is fine, but it didn't really get going until the very end. The two still have something between them: by comparison to the last two matches this felt like a downgrade. If you are really wanting a more snappy look-in between these two then I guess this works as a lean version of that. RANK: Forgettable Vs. Villano III II (03.09.1982) It's a bit of a shame that Villano has went from being a seriously dangerous threat from their match last year to the shortest lasting title contender at just seven minutes (a bit is shaved off this but it doesn't appear to be much at all) because the two really clicked the last time round. We start off with a botch as they try for the deadlift backslide spot but they mess up and awkwardly hold each other for a bit. They make up for that with a good back and forth as Sayama cycles though his signature stuff. Villano pulls out a Stump Puller (of all things? ) but gets reversed and Sayama takes over with some beautiful arm drag takeovers and a Savate kick to send the guy outside. There's some weird miscommunications throughout: both men will stand around at times not expecting stuff to happen until it actually happens, and Sayama has to noticeably pace himself slower and do some weird pauses to get around this issue, even neglecting his Tiger Wall Flip spot on the turnbuckle in favour of a weird running hug instead. Villano also feels a lot more lethargic than last year: maybe he's just working more of a traditional rudo this time but at the same time he is a bit iffy, albeit never gets overtly bad. Sayama milks a vicious slam off a reverse Frankensteiner attempt good enough to get a big crowd chant, as well as Villano taunting. He counters a throw into the air with a amazing pair of flying headscissors before his opponent no sells, gets his back suplex countered into a German instead for the quick win. I mean this isn't amazing but as a pure and raw showcase of Tiger Mask magic, it's terrific and nearly perfect bar the communication issues. Sucks that Villano has to be reduced to just being fodder but hey, he did alright with what he was given and was on the ball admittedly when he had to match the fast pace with his own, even if it was obvious that the language barrier was a tangible issue between the two. RANK: Decent Vs. Pete Roberts (10.9.1982) There's a GREAT bit to start this off as Black Tiger gets in and starts brawling with Sayama, and both him and Roberts decide "fuck it" and team up to get rid of the scamp and have a good, clean fight between the two despite their differences. As you might expect this is the closest to a Sammy Lee WoS performance as Tiger Mask that you're going to get as a lot of this is paced behind creative technical work and counters as they stick mostly to the mat. They pace out the actual crazy athletic spots well with a lot of just good Catch mat-work that you'd never really see these days because those fundamentals aren't taught or used very often outside of the occasional Yoshinari Ogawa schooling. Like they actually make stuff like hammerlocks, headscissors, and tests of strength mean something to the match and to the audience. While I love the usual Sayama formula with the crazy flips and kicks (and believe me, they are here as well) these kind of matches force him to work less off what he can do in his sleep in favour of a more grounded, reasonable format where he has to utilise more than just that. As a result, his opponent actually seems like a tangible threat here as Sayama sells and gets manhandled at points by Roberts' arm work, having to really scratch and claw around him to get the definitive edge. Not quite Steve Wright levels, but enough that the crowd at least semi-buys Roberts as a threat. The finish is partly borrowed from their prior tag match as Mask escapes a hammerlock by sending Roberts flying to the outside, he gets in and tries for a sunset but gets a near fall before his backbreaker attempt is countered into a O'Connor Roll w/ bridge for the win. This was a neatly paced match that for 15 minutes never really dragged any despite having a lot of holds, namely because the two worked actual tangibly agency so it felt like they were actually struggling to survive and get in their own work here without giving too much leverage to the other. Roberts especially excels in such a format, and I thought he had some really good old-school stuff while using some occasional fancy atheticism to even the odds. Not a conventional Tiger Mask match, but all the better for it ultimately. RANK: Good Vs. Chris Adams II (17.09.1982) We get the return of Chris Adams here for another decent match with Tiger Mask. The two do have some iffy moments (especially with a goofy Tiger Spin early on that was badly botched on both ends, Adams for some reason just can't take that move right) but for the most part is pretty competent. We start off with some nice acrobatics by both to escape arm wrenches before Adams uses some questionable tactics (namely throwing Mask out of the ring and slamming his head on the ring post) to get a edge. Sayama does well to get over the work done to him before exploding with kicks, ending with a signature savate to knock Adams to the outside. Probably the main highlight of this match is Adams stealing Mask's "back dropkick to escape Surfboard" spot only he's a bit too lanky to get it right, so he slightly botches it by kicking Sayama right in the face, which causes him to bleed from his mouth. The lads do a decent job working off this as Adams focuses in on the head with closed fists and his signature superkick. He goes for a diving headbutt but misses, allowing his opponent to take over with a big dropkick and reckless dive to the outside, which lands pretty much perfectly. Finish comes soon after with a apron brainbuster and a top rope moonsault. This was fairly by the numbers for Tiger Mask B-show matches, Adams is a competent opponent albeit fodder at the end of the day. Nothing really stuck out for me and I definitely felt like their match from last year was more exciting, albeit this did slow down after the dropkick spot (which is understandable given the conditions). RANK: Decent W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Black Tiger & Villano III (19.09.1982) This is a build match designed to get Black Tiger over for his incoming title shot against Tiger Mask. As such, he gets extended time to beatdown on Hoshino here and avoids interacting with the champ bar some small encounters here and there. Villano also does a fair bit of bumping for the pair as he bumps and flips all over the place for the face duo. Sayama is insanely over here, like even just a little back and forth with his evil counterpart gets huge chants: like it isn't far out of the norm now but Jr heavyweights getting better and louder chants than heavyweights was rather unheard of at this point and time. Most of this is pretty standard, there's a fun spot in the middle where Hoshino does the Andre lean spot into the ropes and Black Tiger eggs the crowd on for a dropkick, but it misses as Hishino escapes and he bounces off the ropes in a comedic manner. In terms of chemistry Tiger Mask and Villano have some real good lucha sequences, mostly seemless outside of the occasional slower move but still really well put together and "clean" if that makes any sense, there's no feel of it being fake or overtly planned out and felt more reflective of their 1981 showing in terms of how it was paced out. The middle half goes into the heels taking over with, well, heel work, with some outside brawling and a low blow to Tiger Mask to keep him under control. This control segment is bleh, a lot of bad no selling (Villano takes TWO piledrivers in succession from both men but gets up and is fine in about 15 seconds) and the action being fairly meh. The finish is just Sayama landing a crossbody and a gutwrench backbreaker for the win on Villano. There's some good moments here but this definitely felt house-showy just how it was formatted, even if the action was better than average. No real stakes being thrown in here alongside everyone taking it fairly easy makes this a pretty nothing showing; if you want more Villano/Mask interactions then this'll definitely do the job. RANK: Decent Vs. Black Tiger IV (21.09.1982) This is clipped down in both versions of the Tiger Mask NJPW collection that I'm using to about 10 minutes, and seems to be the case with the original television broadcast of the match as well. They work off the last matches by having Black Tiger escape the dreaded moonsault that ended him the last time, as well as landing his top rope back elbow unlike the last time. He is more confident here as he wears down the champ with his usual brawling style. Some Sayama botches also unintentionally add to this as he's fatigued and struggling to pull off his usual hope spots to save the day, having to focus more on his kicks, which were slowly crawling into his matches more and more as he got confident in firing them off and became more interested in kickboxing ventures outside of wrestling. He tries for a diving headbutt (I think? ) but Black dodges and Sayama falls knees first, with them bouncing off the mat; not the usual kind of bump where they just bang off the side of the shin or the usual bump he takes, it's a full on direct hit and it looks like it hurts like a motherfucker because he's just stuck in that position for a while. The lads noticeably adjust what they are doing for it as they fail a scoop slam and Mask gets thrown out of the ring for a breather. We get a figure-four that is almost immediately rolled into the ropes and onto the outside, albeit Sayama refuses to take a bump on his crappy knees and he just slowly stands up and then falls down again. We get a apron gutbuster to the ring by Black Tiger, which was awesome. We get a repeat spot as Mask counters around a German and flips over but gets caught with a low blow. He tries for a brainbuster, but Tiger Mask counters into a quick rolling O'Connor Roll for the pin. This was shaping up to be a pretty solid outing until the knee spot, where things very noticeably slowed: Sayama has already had a bad history with knee troubles, and this was to continue to plague his career as already stated. That being said, it added some drama into things as we had a more grounded affair that did manage to be somewhat engaging in its own way. However the crowd themselves never bit into Black Tiger winning, especially after a streak of losses: the fire for their feud is nowhere near the peak in the middle of the year even if they still cheer positively about the match itself. That being said; this felt stunted and a bit dull overall, with no real big showings to entice people to watch this over their far better first two matches. Sayama would work some extra shows after this but would noticeably take a break for a few weeks to recover. A disappointing step backwards in their feud though not completely the fault of the two involved. RANK: Forgettable Vs. Marty Jones (08.10.1982) Marty already knows Mask well from (presumably) his WoS stint, so the two scrap it out here in another grounded Tiger Mask showing. I wouldn't be lying in that I thought their UWF match from two years later is flat-out superior in terms of just how well it was worked. Jones adds in a small unique flair with his consistent pulling of the mask for leverage, as well as just flinging Sayama around here like a 80's Joshi-squash match. The two did have some miscommunication in places where Jones would either not be in position or kinda fumble when trying to find stuff to do next, but it isn't massively noticeable bar one or two points during the whole thing. I know Marty Jones has a ton of love in certain circles, but he just didn't really fit in much here, feeling like a relic from the 70's with his very slow, pedantic punch/kick sequences, a very basic moveset consisting of not particularly dynamic moves...like maybe he's great in the WoS style and I'm missing a lot (which given I did watch a bit of his stuff beyond this, it seems like there was definitely a lot missed) he didn't impress here, even if he does land a somewhat random top rope senton for a near fall. It feels like Jones is just here to fill the role of yet another scrappy Gaijin baddie rather than as a definitive opponent, and as such we get a very muted version of what he can do here. The finish is particularly just there as Jones flings Sayama out of the ring a few times for big bumps before he just abruptly wins with a sunset flip when Marty tries to get him back into the ring. We get some ice packs on the leg post-match as well, which was weird as Jones hadn't worked it over at all; maybe this was Sayama's leg injuries flaring up again? It seemed possible given this was his first match back after a break off, presumably because of those same injuries. Idk, this match just felt really weak for me, Jones and Sayama don't meld well in the ring and have a really slow and dull affair with nothing of much interest whatsoever. At least with the B-tier lucha guys we got something good in terms of hold-wangling, this was just creatively void and felt like a template for a Black Tiger match, only replaced with Marty instead. W/ Osamu Kido Vs. Johnny Londos & Les Thornton (15.10.1982) This is predictively another house-show formatted match, but not too bad all things considered. Londos looked ancient for someone who was only 43 here. As you might expect from the individuals involved, this match is a LOT of just holds, transitions into holds, or milking the crowd with minimal actual work. The work itself isn't bad certainly; there's a lost art in being able to work holds in a match and keep the attention of the crowd in doing so, especially these days. Of course we get the usual Sayama big spots and the foreign lads looking bad in the process, it's all done well but nothing you can't see elsewhere. Kido and co bring a real Gotch-influence into this with their focus on athletic showcases of getting around tricky holds and whatnot. They seem to be building Les/Mask again (which would make sense given the frequency of repeat matches) but due to a incident between the pair on their 22/10 singles match where Sayama would legitimately stiff Les with a roundhouse to the back of the neck and essentially kick the shit out of him after he no-sold the finish, this didn't seem to lead anywhere: Les goes back to jobbing for the rest of the tour and then never returns to NJPW. Notice how that whole story was far more interesting than this match? Says a lot. Londos plays a good stooge against Sayama, bumping a ton while playing the bewildered Gaijin role perfectly fine. His ring-work is fine, albeit his psychology is lacking: he takes Kido out of his own tag corner to right next to Mask for no reason for a backbreaker, which screws him over just seconds later as Kido inevitably tags in his partner right next to him. He does make up for that with a lovely headscissors transition into a cross armbreaker, as well as a Goldberg-style swinging neckbreaker. The finish is just the lads speedrunning as Sayama drops a top rope crossbody and Tombstone to pin Londos. This wasn't bad, but it's very slow and not particularly exciting stuff. I like more mat-based matches but this just felt like the lads wanted to pad this out because it was a B-show, with only really Sayama putting in any effort to make this a enjoyable experience for the crowd. Les was meh again and Londos was a fun addition, shame we don't see him again. Kido is really kinda plain and unexciting, a good wrestler sure but tremendously dry. RANK: Decent Vs. Les Thornton II (22.10.1982) I already covered this match here, so no need repeating myself. RANK: Decent Vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi (26.10.1982) The Kobayashi feud starts now! He's been a little shit for the past while, attacking Tiger Mask and being generally just being a huge annoyance, now he gets a title match and the chance to finally put his skills to the test. Now what I love about this first off is the rawness of it: Sayama isn't going for fancy tricks or trying to show up his opponent here like he would normally, he's immediately wrestling him to the mat, taking the back mount, hurling elbows, etc. These two aren't playing here, they just want to hurt the other. Of course we still get those athletic spots that look great between the pair (especially as Sayama is not able to just seamlessly power though Kobayashi and gets actually out-gunned a few times when they go into the faster-paced sequences) but it is all to build to mat-work as the two try to really wangle the other. It feels really frantic in places as Kobayashi is very freestyle, throwing all sorts of kicks and strikes when the opportunity arises; sometimes it's a kick, sometimes it's just a headbutt, basically whatever he can get in. Not everything looks good per-se, but it functions well for what this is trying to communicate. What works about it is how the sense of franticness, and how the two have to really dig deep in their respective arsenals to get the lead. There's some elements wherein things are iffy: I feel like Kobayashi is a league or so below Sayama in terms of raw atheticism, which really hurts him in some of the exchanges. Unlike Dynamite Kid, his stuff is a bit more herky jerky by comparison and not as refined. He's still quite good mind you, but the gap exists and is tangible between the two. Some of the transitions are a bit off as well, like Kobayashi will no sell some stuff but then be right down after some relatively light counters, including kicking out of a diving headbutt at a fast 1 count, which was dodgy even by these two's standards. The finish is also classically screwy as well as despite the two landing dives and teasing Mask losing the match, he manages to get in only for Kobayashi to get him in the corner, mess with his mask and kick him repeatedly, which causes the ref to DQ the lad after he shoves him in turn. This isn't bad but definitely feels like the, well, feeling out match for the two as they get used to their (very over! ) dynamic. Kobayashi is a great heel and Sayama in turn amps up the intensity to match the challenge, resulting in a more free-flow match with less complex lucha spots and more logical scrappy sequences to get over the two's respective styles. It's not their best match by a fair mile, however. It's still fairly strong for what its worth and like the first Black Tiger showing, it's more here to set up the dynamic for the general audience so they can then go full tilt the next time, which they most definitely will. RANK: Good Vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi II (04.11.1982) This match kicked ass. This starts amazingly as Mask does his usual top rope entrance before immediately bouncing off there for a dropkick and a insane dive to the outside while still having the title belt on! Great establishing of the stakes here: Sayama is pissed and is hunting for blood after the beatdown the last time. It's interesting how despite being the heel here, Kobayashi gets a immediate starting chant when he goes for a goofy high kick; sure he's the bad guy, but the crowd respect his guts to at least give him that and cheer him on at points, which is bizarre for someone who's a clear heel. But yeah, the crowd is bonkers loud for this even for just a basic sleeper getting applied and Mask doing his signature gag-sell. What I thought was really fascinating about this was the amount of pseudo-shoot style we got out of this: lots of UWF style submissions, some kickboxing between the two as they paced around and threw coordinated shots, etc. Like they don't just use a cross armbreaker for a rest hold like we've seen aplenty in more lucha-inspired showings, it's a legitimate match-breaker that the two have to struggle with each other to escape. We also get some really smooth sequences between the two that go more fast-paced naturally, and those are really well done to transition into or out of the more grounded work; it doesn't just feel awkwardly stuck in for the sake of it, they actually work it into the two by incorporating respective key locks and arm drags into the whole thing. There's a especially good bit where Mask flings off the second rope in the corner for a arm drag up and over Kobayashi which he then immediately transitions into a key lock, was slick as anything. If you aren't a fan of extended hold wangling then this probably won't be for you, but for me it really was the meat of the drama and the crowd loved it. Eventually Kobayashi powers out of a key lock by just picking up his opponent a la Gotch/Inoki and having the two tumble to the outside in a surprisingly safe bump. Mask lands a piledriver after stopping Kobayashi from messing with his mask, but they very smartly build off the last match by having Sayama do a fake-out diving headbutt, instead doing a forward roll (this would be the first of a good few times he uses this as more wrestlers would dodge his diving headbutt) but still gets caught with a gut kick and Fisherman's Suplex for a very close near fall. The finish is slightly abrupt by having Kobasyashi slam his opponent to the outside after dodging a dive before then just losing it and famously ripping Sayama's mask right off, so he loses via DQ again. The two have a brawl despite the exposed mask and Kobayashi basically gets his comeuppance with a beatdown; this would basically write off Sayama for a bit as he would be in the US for a short stint in the WWF. This is a pretty direct upgrade over their last match: the stakes are bigger, the crowd is louder, and the two really push full-gear with some really fast and dynamic work, but also balance that out with surprisingly compelling holds, which is the clincher in terms of how these two get over the differences between them as Mask is clean while Kobayashi yanks and bites and is generally a dirty player. Kobasyashi is arguably the best at dragging out all aspects of Sayama's Tiger Mask and getting him out of just doing spots over and over, allowing for a more hate-filled match that really feels ahead of its time. You could stick this on today and people would still think it was a solid outing. RANK: Great Tiger in WWF: A Short History So basically Sayama would spend all of November and the start of December in the WWF, mostly wrestling jobbers and defending his Jr Heavyweight title. Given he only had about half a dozen matches televised, we might as well fit it in here as well. Vs. Mac Rivera (16.11.1982) This is a overt squash match that barely goes past one minute. The only real novelty is the actual squash itself, alongside the fact that Vince gets to go nuts on commentary as he legitimately is lost for words in places from Mask's fancy spots. There's some awkwardness stemming from Rivera kinda struggling to keep pace but it mostly goes off without any issues, and Mask squashes Rivera with a (mostly missed) moonsault for the win. If you like squash matches then I think there's something maybe here, but honestly you can find much, much better, even on this same tour. RANK: Forgettable Vs. Curt Hennig (17.11.1982) This was a dark match but the wrestling gods smiled on this day so the footage for said dark match is available. Now obviously we all know the man Hennig will become, but at this point he's a very young 24 year old with only a year of experience, probably the earliest existing full match of the lad. One might think this would again be a squash, but thankfully these two actually have a semi-competitive match. Obviously he's a bit green in places but he's mostly pretty smooth, and gets over the danger of Tiger Mask's sensational offence as well as you would imagine, scrambling for the ropes a few times but always maintaining a good babyface underdog charm as he keeps the match clean. Sayama himself gives Hennig a good bit of leg-room to show off and even get on the offensive a few times with holds, which is practically what this entire match consists of basically outside of a few scoop slams and a good dropkick by Hennig himself. That said, it's a surprisingly strong outing that has a ton of enjoyable yet simple mat-work between the two that was dynamic and never went too far into hold-hugging. The finish keeps this simplisity by having Hennig's third scoop slam be countered into a rolling Victory Star pin, which manages to cost him the match. This was good enough to get a pretty uninterested and fairly rough-sounding crowd to a big applause at the end, especially with the post-match as the two show some legitimate respect for the other with a handshake. All in all, a surprisingly strong sprint that didn't go that long despite the entire thing being mat-based: even this early on you can clearly see Hennig has something special as his work is incredibly smooth, and he bumps and sells tremendously well for his opponent, who in turn gets to show off his usual big spots and some occasional counters we don't usually see out of him. Might be a bit much for praise but I did think this was legitimately the best match of the tour, or at least drawn with another we'll cover as well. All in all, definitely seek this one out. RANK: Good Vs. Jose Estrada (22.11.1982) Jose is just a enhancement talent lad for Sayama to run over basically as we've already seen him in action back in NJPW; and run over he does by going though all of the usual Tiger Mask spots at the time pretty seamlessly. Estrada isn't a great wrestler or anything but he's pretty well known for being a very competent hand; you can tell he's holding back a fair bit and making his stuff as undynamic as possible so his opponent shines as a result. So it's basically 50% big fancy spots and then 50% rest holds and just sitting in them for a while; as you can imagine, it's not the most exciting thing bar those moments where the match picks up. The finish is good as Mask does a fake-out diving headbutt into a forward roll before catching Estrada with a cartwheel crossbody for the easy win. It's a standard enhancement match that was televised, as much as the crowd did appreciate it by the end given this would be one of those infamous MSG showings that people would go back to decades later just for the crowd reaction. Other than that.....skip this one safely. RANK: Forgettable Vs. Eddie Gilbert (25.11.1982) This is Eddie Gilbert pre "Hot Stuff" pre-WCW fame and only 21 years old, probably the oldest major match televised of him. Now Tiger Mask in the US is a bit of a weird one: here's this amazing once in a lifetime huge high-flying prodigy that could work with virtually any act showing up in a company that, let's just face it, didn't respect Jr heavyweights much at all: just look at the list of champions this belt actually had. This is kinda a good example of that given Eddie didn't have much of a rep at this moment and time and these two go first on the card, with a crowd that honestly couldn't give less of a shit and BOO Tiger Mask for showing up or even doing something as simple as a clean break lol. Much like the last crowd, these give no mercy to the two. That being said, this is more or less just a spotshow for Sayama: Gilbert at this point wasn't really much of a big established act, so he's mostly kept to bumping and selling, bar the occasional back and forth: he might get some leg work or a initial advantage, but he isn't given much of anything to do here but be a body to get run over. Mind you Tiger Mask is probably one of the best AT these kind of one-sided matches but still. Eddie looks fine for what he's given and even adds some heelish stuff by getting flustered at consistently getting outsmarted during said spots, teasing a closed fist but never fully committing to the act. The best he gets is a back suplex as Sayama RVD-sells for a near fall. We get a Tombstone into a diving headbutt across the ring, but Gilbert dodges just at the last moment. We get a good corner springboard crossbody and flying forearm by the lad. We also get a weird finish as he lands a apron suplex, but Mask gets the legs for a small package for a successful pin, crowd boo Tiger Mask again for the result lol. You can't win. This was a perfectly fine match with some fairly good elements as a young Gilbert shows his competency in the ring, even if he's mostly just selling here for the champ. It's a routine performance but fairly enjoyable nonetheless with the occasional good back and forth. If you want to see Gorilla Monsoon mark out over Tiger Mask for 10 minutes, I guess this is your best source for that. RANK: Decent Vs. Mr (Masa) Saito (07.12.1982) Real fun sub-5 sprint of a match. Sayama has his fancy spots and kicks while Saito's just a mean fucker who'll just beat you up, no gimmicks needed. Saito bumps around for him at the start with the usual spots before he just unloads with some brawling. Of course Saito still gets outmatched with a perfect top rope moonsault over him and into a Savate kick, but still. Saito throws some good punches before his gameplan becomes shoving Mask out of the ring and keeping him out, but then Mask naturally springs up and over him while he takes a nice prat-fall bump to the outside. Sayama then goes for a pretty incredible pitch-perfect plancha to the outside that was so awesome that the crowd immediately just give standing ovations in response. Saito manages to get in just at the last second, and then is able to get a nasty backdrop off a headlock. He works over with some extra slams and is even able to telegraph a springboard crossbody from the corner as he gets out of the way just in time, which was a cool spot. Saito tries ducking the second time this happens; which allows his opponent to bowl up and over for a great sunset flip for the quick pin. This was fun for what it was, and Saito works as a good enough foil with his gritty style, which is even better when juxtaposed to the overtly fancy style of his opponent. I would've liked to seen these two have a proper feud with longer matches but this'll do. The crowd helps a ton here as they are massively loud for just about every Mask spot thrown in here, and Sayama in response goes for some big risky stuff to get him roaring by the end. RANK: Decent Vs. Joe Martin (Same Day) Yep, this is the same day but filmed alongside the Saito match in bulk. Now I have zero idea who this Joe Martin guy is, but he's pretty much one of those dozens upon dozens of no-name jobbers who had maybe a month or so of training, so we get some really flimsy punches out of him when he tries ambushing Sayama pre-match. We also get some wacky spots, like a inverted Tiger Feint because Martin is too close, as well as some goofy arm work. Sayama is such a cocky shit that he even offers his hand to Martin to take into a hammerlock, which inevitably has Martin taken down back into another key lock. This is as expected pretty non-descript as Martin would get outsmarted, hit the ropes, reset into spot, repeat for three minutes. To be fair, Martin does get SOME offense in.....a few forearms and a single scoop slam which is then immediately no sold, but offense nonetheless. He gets the Mighty Inoue special as Sayama throws out two jumping sentons for the finish in a easy 3 minute squash. Pretty much another filler match with nothing worth checking out. RANK: Forgettable =========== And that's the end of 1982! Bit of a flat end to such a solid year of matches but there's still plenty more to come out of the next year.

Part 2 =========== W/ Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami Vs. Abdullah The Butcher, Baby Face & Dynamite Kid (08.01.1982) It does say a lot that Sayama has went from a undercard lad to now showing up with the bigger draws for this special beginning of year scrum. This does have some good bits out of him as he gets to show off against Baby Face, but the main focus is obviously on the Inoki/Abby feud and so this match just devolves into lots of brawling and cheap shots out of the heel camp. Of course Fuji is the guy who has to eat the most offence given Inoki and Mask certainly aren't, so he's in that really inevitable third-wheel position of having to feed and bump for the bigger acts. He still gets in his licks with him and Kid especially having some real scrappy moments with lots of legit aggression behind them, angry slaps and snappy takedowns. There's some decent heel work as the trio have to use some dirty chokes and double teaming to handle the more dangerous threats; it's definitely a Abby-paced match in that the whole thing looks to be in danger of falling apart at any moment, lots of basic ring-work with the occasional bit where things calm down. Baby Face is earmarked as the weak link very early on, and it doesn't take long for the Jr lads to take him down for a pinfall after a lovely Fuji slingshot into Tiger Mask top rope crossbody for a break-up, before everyone brawls; Abby and co are too busy trying to get to Inoki to stop Baby Face getting pinned off a subsequent brainbuster, as well as Kid being blasted with kicks by Mask and sent to the outside. Abby also dumps Inoki into chairs but he inevitably doesn't bother selling it much, leading into the second fall after a minute break. The heels take over with the typical heel-cut off sthick, lots of strikes, lots of dirty shit. We get a brief glance at Abby vs Tiger Mask, which while obviously weird as a matchup is....honestly something I'd be morbidly interested in seeing, especially so when Mask is hurling huge kicks and shit and Abby is just no-selling and shaking him off like a absolute monster until Inoki joins in for a double dropkick; super fun bit, probably the highlight out of all of this. The match falls apart after this as Abby brings in SD Jones and Bad News Allen to attack Inoki with a guardrail, ending this in a inevitable DQ. This was pretty much just a regular house-show style NJPW main event, with the only differences being the Jr heavyweights having more of a spotlight despite still being second fiddle to Inoki and co: everyone came in for a bit to do their usual stuff, no one really shone much at all outside of small previews of feuds between the three. I will say that Kid was obviously the best workrate wise out of the three, but Baby Face is enjoyable as he's just this dorky rudo who can't get much done himself and needs his partners to back up him basically all the time, he bumps cartoonish at points and is generally rather entertaining. Everyone else basically did next to nothing; I think Inoki especially did very little outside of some strikes and a dropkick, sold maybe for a minute or so but other than that, nothing. Mask and Fuji are a good pair but don't get a ton to shine with bar the ending spots respectfully. All in all, a pretty forgettable match but if you want a scrappy showing with some random teams put together then this'll fit the bill. RANK: Decent Vs. Halcon 78 (10.01.1982) Halcon is known as one of Sayama's less impressive foils during his NJPW run, more or less sent to job to him endlessly in pretty non-descript matchups. This is their first encounter together. It's definitely one of those "sit in holds" matches for the most part, which is disappointing. Not to say that it is bad or anything; Halcon is surprisingly decent when it comes to working a roadblock-lite style against any flippy stuff and making it at least interesting; but it isn't immensely engaging given it leads to no real endgame. Halcon throws out some Fujiwara armbars alongside double wrist locks, and Sayama matches his pace with a nice Catch Carvat and a pretty damn good Uranage. Halcon goes into more goofy strikes as he lands weird chops that just doesn't look very good at all. Mask bumps well for them but you can really tell how bad they look regardless. Some moments of this feel just disjointed as Halcon throws Mask out of the ring....does nothing and then he comes back in like 10 seconds later with no fanfare, or when Halcon randomly goes for two backdrops in a row because Sayama has to counter the second to do his fancy backflip and dropkick spot. Halcon starts randomly going heel as he throws out some chokes and brawls outside; Halcon seems to attempt to scoop slam him onto the mat but Sayama's basically like "doesn't work for me brother" so they awkwardly drop the spot and go back. He sells...for about 10 seconds before just going in and instantly recovering to snap on a full Nelson. Halcon counts well into a good head/arm lock so I guess it's ok. He tries for a weird backwards facing crossbody that obviously misses. Mask lands a springboard during a sequence that is equally as awkward lol. Last third is a bit strange as they start to not really cooperate or get generally clunky with the other for a minute or so: the rest of the match was mostly smooth if a bit shaky in places, but this felt especially sloppy for some reason. Eventually they get better as Mask slaps on a early usage of a Crossface Chickenwing but it goes nowhere, it's just here as a rest hold. Finish is not the most conventional as Halcon runs away from a dive, gets in and immediately gets hit with shots before Halcon does a terrible delayed tumble to sell before he just gets back up and stands still, then gets caught in a German suplex for the pin. This had the usual Tiger Mask big spots in but the work outside of that was rather poor in places: Halcon isn't very good here and struggles to pace things in a natural way, leading to a lot of really stiff sequences that feel artificial. Maybe it's the language difference, maybe he's just not good in general. Either way I didn't like this very much at all outside of the occasional ok-looking sequence, way too many lulls combined with a real lack of chemistry. RANK: Forgettable W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Bret Hart & Dynamite Kid (22.01.1982) This of course has one of the earliest Bret appearances on the record; remarkably young here at 25 years old. He's teaming with Dynamite given they already had history together down in Stampede. Hoshino looks young as well but he's actually a 20+ year vet who's just about to reach his 40's: he'll go on to be the manager of Makai Club in a campy role much later on in his career and have a weird banger with Gedo in his 60's, watch that shit. Anyway, he's competent in the ring and combines some good comedy with occasional nice spots here and there; he's a solid enough worker given what he's given with in terms of who he's paired up against and works fine as a good hand in these conditions. Naturally the real reason this match exists is to get over the impending Kid/Mask WWF title match just six days later, so they get some heated exchanges. Bret mostly just follows Kid's lead and works basically as his shadow, even incorporating his own headbutts into the mix. While he's certainly not a bad wrestler, he has a long way to go before he even starts reaching his 90's peak as he's rather non-descript and doesn't really have anything to put to the table outside of a limitation of Dynamite Kid without any of the big athletic spots or technical skill to go along with it, and he does have his moments where his youth shines though with some awkwardly done moves, especially with Mask as they lumber around a bit (like he moves way too fast for the rebound cross chop, so Sayama gets no momentum off it because by the time he comes off the ropes, Bret is basically in breathing space-tier close to him). Kid and Mask obviously have the best exchanges here, bounding effortlessly between bit to bit; even if Sayama seems slightly off in places like he's waiting for a cue to go to the next sequence. They work a good narrative as Mask outmatches Kid in-ring, so he has to take things to the outside and use Bret to wear down the guy, pulling out cheap antics to avoid having to scrap fairly. This is put over super strong by him happily bullying Hoshino but literally running for the tag when Mask comes in to face off, it's real simple but works great. There's some definite dodgy Sayama selling as he eats a big beatdown from both men on top of a Bret piledriver, but all it takes is Hoshino breaking up the pin for him to suddenly spring to life with a savate kick, even if he does stagger around a bit afterwards this is pretty much ignored when he hurls out a huge dropkick and just tags in to his partner. The lead-in to the finish has Bret get knocked around and cheat with some choking, doing a wonderfully safe apron suplex to the outside for a quick brawl. Despite his best efforts to control the match, eventually he goes for one too many bombs as his suplex is countered into a inverse Frankensteiner, which Mask then throws in some slaps to get him into a Victory Star pin for the finish. This was actually pretty good for what was essentially just a tease for bigger matchups to come: the MVP by far is Dynamite Kid, perfectly balancing great work with equal gusto as well; he's just such a grumpy bastard where he's just having a moan at the ref, always throwing cheap shots when he can sneak one in, yelling all the time, it's so much fun. Bret as stated does fine but you can feel the inexperience badly off him despite not having any huge botches. Hoshino is a treat for what he has to do, which is fairly little outside of occasional big bumping and his few spots that he has, he's fine for the role given and gives good color to Sayama when he shows up to save the day with his usual big bombastic sequences....even if he's in more danger than usual to get over the two potential title stealers. solid stuff, definitely worth a watch. RANK: Good Vs. Bret Hart (05.02.1982) You know those matches where it features a wrestler before they becomes famous and you think "wow, no wonder they got where they ended up" yeah this wasn't one of those lol. Bret admittedly had a fair bit of nepotism from his father's rep which got him gigs that he honestly shouldn't have gotten, which isn't a dig at anything but it does rub off badly here in my opinion. Not to say he was bad himself, but he certainly wasn't "title contender" levels either. Bret works a very generic Gaijin heel style that's not very fitting of him at all, though he does do it as cleanly as you would imagine a Bret foreign heel performance to look like. I did like Sayama getting some attitude in response with some skirting of the rules, some delayed rope breaks, etc, never fully going overboard but not taking any shit either. The main issue is that the crowd never truly bites into the match, never truly sees Bret as a actual genuine contender who could steal the title away from Tiger Mask; sure, you get occasional crowd chants for him, but there's never a big burst of heat anywhere here to justify the slow (and believe me, this is SLOW.) pace. Bret has always been a good seller and he in turn really gets over Mask's usual limb work great with his pained screams and whatnot, it's just that his arsenal of moves here are rather bad for a supposed top Jr contender: I get he's a heel, but we've already had multiple lucha wrestlers work the same heel dynamic far better despite having a bigger set of moves to fall back on, as well as obviously Dynamite Kid just outright doing Bret's job better. The action was completely carried by his opponent in that department. The match for me felt listless, never really kicking off proper and always playing it safe with a stop/start pace to it, whenever it got interesting we'd go back to sitting in holds or punch/kick shit. It gets better around about 20 minutes in (which is really saying something about a Bret/Mask match lol) as Sayama hurls out more risky dives, including a great bit where he hops from the apron to the top rope in a instant to land a dropkick when Bret tries running off the ropes to knock him off. The finish has him just land a Butterfly Suplex afterwards for the win, which did feel abrupt despite the big spot before it. But yeah, Bret isn't a bad worker but he is NOWHERE near a position where he can lead a match even halfway: had we gotten 90's Bret here this could've been really quite something, but sadly what we get is a lower-tier version of Sayama's formulaic "roadblock" matches, which he does very good with still despite the conditions, but never really goes into full gear as a result because of the nature of such match structures. Bret just doesn't feel very inclined as a Jr heavyweight, at least not in comparison to someone as lofty as Sayama. Having a mean punch and good fundamentals will only get you so far. Those curious in Bret's early days might get good quality out of this, but for me it would be squeezing blood from a stone. RANK: Decent Vs. Baby Face (09.02.1982) Cut by a minute: this is the case with both official compilations that I sourced for this. Baby Face is one of the more well-known lucha guys around this time, having some terrific matches with a young Gran Hamada. I liked him at the start getting annoyed by a Mask chant before the two go into some quick starting exchanges, which felt tense and well put together. His mat work is mostly focused around working on the legs to unsteady his opponent but he ends up getting knocked around himself after getting countered. A lot of this is most definitely "roadblock" formatted as Mask will escape, throw out some big moves before Face catches up or takes advantage of a counter and slaps on more holds. Not to say the action gets good in places, but that style definitely seems to dominate proceedings. Face mixes it up with some hard slams and occasional dirty work, in particular neat bit where he escapes a cross armbreaker by biting Sayama's leg. Face takes over with some dodges of Sayama's attempts to get the advantage with dives, which he bumps amazingly for when they connect. Face tries for his own dive (which is a terrible top rope splash that doesn't even get close to hitting the mark) which thankfully Sayama just dodges outright rather than try to sell. Bit of a weird bit where Mask tries for a spot (I think the one used for the Bret/Kid finish, reverse Frankensteiner into Victory Star) but kinda flubs the landing, resulting in the two exchanging some improv pin attempts. Face gets a near fall with a good backdrop before Mask gets in with a savate kick and a ok-looking Tiger Feint into baseball slide to the outside. Finish is abrupt as he lands his own backdrop into a Tiger Suplex for the win. This was nowhere near the better matches Face had with Hamada and did feel a bit stilted at points. It's definitely one of Sayama's more grounded affairs, which while he does good enough in typically he's not really adept at it like he will be in the UWF and whatnot. Baby Face has a unique style of alternating between big slams and good submissions, so he does decent enough as a foil here despite the two never really clicking completely; there's definitely a few bits where you can tell they haven't quite figured out what to do next, and there's definitely a styles clash between the two thematically. Alright defence but not particularly great. RANK: Decent W/ Kengo Kimura, Tatsumi Fujinami Vs. Baby Face, Bret Hart & Dynamite Kid (11.02.1982) .....this DRAGGED so much here. This was almost 25 minutes long and it wasn't a quick 25 either. It starts off with a hot start as Mask shows off some usual spots with Baby Face before the heels all get their chance to work him over, but then they just keep going and going with the same formula for way, way too long. Fujinami looked good when it was his turn to knock around the heels but for me this just felt like a longer version of the Kid/Bret tag only without the smoothness of that match and addition of filler segments between the usual stuff you'd come to expect, like random outside brawls and lulls. I guess there's some positives here like the aforementioned start and Fuji's work, even Kid and Bret doing the forward lunge into the turnbuckle is charming enough but there's a lot of stuff that's just there. The heels get the first fall on Kimura with a piledriver and diving headbutt from Kid, and of course that leads into the second fall as they all hone in on the guy. Now as much as I like Kimura, he's not someone you can build a match around, and certainly not this early into his career when he's a plain Jr heavyweight with nothing really going for him. Outside of Bret and Kid fumbling with a double headbutt and hitting themselves by accident as a comedy spot, this entire bit is just a whole lot of...well, nothing. His eventual comeback is also just bad as well, he does a weird corner back kick that barely hits Bret and that allows him to tag in Fuji. This next bit gets a bit better as the lads start some more energised work, including Kid taking a monkey flip from Mask off the outside via the guardrail, which was pretty bonkers to see at the time. The second fall ends with Baby Face getting caught with a second rope superplex from Kimura, who had finally recovered just enough to get the pin. The last five minutes is basically just a repeat of the above, with Kimura having to sell and bump as the heel trio cut him off again. I will say that the crowd loved Tiger eventually getting in and corner Kid before he blasts him with a savate kick mid-dropkick, the proceeding beatdown is decent enough but way too overdue, the fact they keep this going with Fuji as well is ridiculous. THEN Kengo gets in and gets predictively double-teamed again! The lead-in for the finish protects the heels by having Kid miss his diving headbutt to interrupt a Fuji pin, so he hits Bret instead. Fuji gets a quick brainbuster in to finally put this match to a end despite Baby Face breaking it up. This felt like a match paced for essentially kids given the simplistic and repetitive structure, surprise surprise; most of the crowd sounded like children lol. I guess it worked for them given the solid reactions but for me this felt badly inflated and just boring most of the time. No one here was terrible (in fact I'd say most of the performances are fine for what they are, Baby Face is such a treat with his nonsense) but this just kept going and going and going with the same structure, no deviations to be seen. I'm fine with long matches, just not when the match itself essentially repeats the same formula three times over. This screamed of B-tier house show. RANK: Forgettable Vs. Black Man (12.03.1982) Tremendous stuff. Black Man looks like black suit Spider-Man a few years before the concept would be a thing, especially with the similar mask and whatnot. Unlike many of Sayama's opponents who feel more or less like filler villains you'd see show up in a silly kids TV series and then fade into obscurity, Black Man both acts and feels like a actual definitive challenge: someone who can tangibly go toe-to-toe against him both on the mat and in terms of lucha sequences. Seriously, the stuff these two were pulling would be considered impressive today, let alone 40 years ago in a federation that had mostly kept things safe in terms of the Jr division. I know you can describe a lot of Sayama's big matches like this but this was pretty up there. I felt like Sayama also seriously started to step up his grappling work as well, moving into more of his UWF-style with double wrist locks and cross armbreakers, as well as the classic Gotch-special in the side mount headscissors. Of course we still get his signature amazing high-flying work, but he noticeably is making his holds and counters more smarter, like pulling for a heel hook while stuck in a figure-four, using his forearm blade to peel Black away onto his back and the like. The spots are also here but they make sense, being used to push a advantage or counter the other person in doing so, it's not just "hey let's just start jumping around" or anything like that. Mask mostly focuses on Black Man's arm and leg with tons of working holds, and some of their interactions on the mat as they combine lucha with technical stuff are pretty damn good; of course it doesn't go anywhere beyond just being there for offence given they don't have any big submissions between them but it isn't bad by any means. I was shocked how much of this actually took place grounded yet the match doesn't suffer for it whatsoever. The last few minutes go full spot mode as Man flies to the outside with a senton, tries to follow up with a pair of shoulder presses before Mask counters into a really big backdrop to the outside (Black Man keeps a straight back all the way to the end of the move, it's pretty incredible looking) before landing a dive of his own. When he recovers, he lands a big cross chop as well as a good rolling inverted cradle. Black Man tries for one himself, but it gets countered into a big German suplex for the win. Really good match, especially for something that in actuality only lasted 12 minutes; what the two manage to accomplish in that time is pretty great: Black Man is a worthy rival to Tiger Mask, at times even doing better with some of his big bumps and whatnot. Sayama in turn gets to fully show off his best aspects: the result is a very well put together match, and definitely one to search out if you want a great example of a Tiger Mask match actually being interesting on the mat equally as much as on their feet. RANK: Great W/ Kantaro Hoshino Vs. Black Man & Colosso Colosetti (19.03.1982) Mask and Black Man get to have more interactions and they are, as expected, the best pairing here, even if they do repeat some of their spots and sequences from their singles match together. We get some good work between the four overall but it never goes overboard or overtly super impressive, but just about everything here was done smoothly, and Black Man is again a treat with his incredibly modern lucha style while also getting over both of the natives with big bumps of his own. Colosetti is the obvious odd one out: he's good at the comedy segments and is fine as a prat-falling heel but his segments are virtually all just that, his actual offence is very basic and uninspired, lots of clubs to the back and whatnot. I did like the theme of him and Black Man just having zero chemistry and continually hitting the other guy by accident, they did a lot with that dynamic despite it usually being fairly groan-worthy when committed to as a continuous bit. The crowd basically just came to see Tiger Mask do his stuff, and he does indeed do his stuff all here tremendously well with next to no botches. He's over as anything and it's easy to see how even at this point he was starting to creep into someone who could potentially rival the heavyweight lads in terms of popularity. The finish is abrupt as Black Man gets hit with a backbreaker that Sayama holds until he taps out; bit weird and out of blue considering right afterwards he grabs Black Man in a front face lock for a few seconds before dropping it. This felt like some serious miscommunication on their behalf, maybe Black Man didn't want to keep going or he didn't want to get pinned clean again and Sayama seen red (as he tends to do given, well, he's a bit of a diva) and tried shooting on him, either way it does drag the match down a bit given how anti-climatic it is. But yeah, alright stuff if you can get into the style. RANK: Decent Vs. Colosso Colosetti (26.03.1982) Perfectly fine showcase match for Mask to get his shit in against someone who doesn't mind getting knocked around. Colosetti is far taller than his usual opponents and he wrestles a more grounded, strike-heavy rudo to make Sayama's eventual comeback look better. He stomps around with clubs and knees, throwing Mask into the barricade outside and whatnot, keeping control until his opponent counters a belly to belly into a arm drag mid-run and a dropkick to send him outside. Sayama follows up with a iffy Tiger Feint that he doesn't get much momentum with. We get more brawling on the outside until they get back in. A butterfly suplex and a flying body block gets him the pin in next to no time at all. As shown by how little highlights there was to mention this was a nothing match with some nice spots but it was obvious everyone was taking a break here. It's a standard filler match with no real stakes or heat, but it shows off Tiger Mask just enough that you can't really complain about it beyond it being, well, a standard filler match. RANK: Forgettable W/ Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami Vs. Don Muraco, Masked Superstar & Steve Wright (30.03.1982) Sadly only 5 minutes of this is on tape, which is a shame given this was used as build-up for the Wright/Mask rematch from the start of the month. Mask teaming with Inoki is a sure-fire sign of how over the lad was at this point despite only a year with the gimmick. Muraco and Superstar are here basically to bump and feed for Sayama while the real interactions come from him and Wright, which as expected are good but nowhere near as good as their future singles outing. I was bugged about Wright just no selling a dropkick and a butterfly suplex and immediately jumping into his own shit, didn't feel very natural at all and kinda indicative of how selfish he could be in terms of just getting his own shit in despite how bad it makes the other person look, which has been reflected by more than a few people. Wright leads the charge for the lesser goons to take over with interference, namely a nice triple backbreaker from Superstar. Of course the lower-card lads eventually let it slip though their fingers after Wright hits Muraco with a dropkick, allowing Fujinami to slip in with a top rope knee drop to take the win off the trio. Obviously the clipping does hurt the judging immensely, but I felt like this was a fairly average showing from everyone seen, with a rare look at a early Demolition Ax in the Superstar moniker. Filler tag all in all. RANK: Decent W/ Kengo Kimura Vs. Black Man & Steve Wright (31.03.1982) Clipped by 4 minutes, mostly between Kimura and Black Man. MUCH better than the trios they had yesterday, helped by the fat being trimmed off and getting a more simplistic structure. Wright and Mask get to show off as they exchange cartwheels and some struggle in holds, with the two showing off their impressive athleticism; Wright is a classical British Catch worker so you get to see that aspect in all of its glory here alongside Sayama, who is familiar with the style from his WoS work and he makes sure to a get over just how dynamic Wright is in terms of being this really tricky wrestler that he can't really get a grip on, good stuff between the two there. Wright also feels more cooperative as he bumps around for a dropkick to the outside and also sells a sleeper by Mask for a good amount of time, trying to knock him off with throws, arm drags, and even a full-on airplane spin, but all of them fail to get the job done against his determined foe. We cut to an amazing sequence between Sayama and Black Man as they just go full tilt, consistently moving between all sorts of flips and spots for about a full minute and a half before Mask tags in Kimura. He gets in and does some decent looking moves before they go into the finish, which has dramatically Mask leap over his partner with a crossbody to Wright, Kimura knocks him out with a dropkick while Mask snaps on a Tiger Suplex for the win. If you want more Steve Wright in your life then this'll definitely fill that void slightly, but I don't think its anything that really stood out immensely well despite the work between him and Sayama being really solid. Black Man also looks as good as usual, but the clipping does hurt Kengo Kimura especially here given nearly all of his involvement was taken out: that being said this was formatted around getting the Mask/Wright title match over in the first place so I imagine he didn't do a ton in the first place. Either way, lot of fun. RANK: Good Vs. Steve Wright (01.04.1982) This is a match that obviously people know is bloody brilliant, so I won't waste a lot of time trying to describe it as such bar the basics and what I feel like are legit issues with this. Wright feels much like his opponent where he's a guy who just stands out in everything I've seen of him: he's far ahead of his time and maybe a bit further than even that given just how advanced his style truly is, combining effortless atheticism with incredible mat-technique. He really exposes Sayama in places here by just how bonkers he takes this mix of styles into play and how that goes into the match itself as Wright effortlessly breaks down Tiger Mask's usual shtick and forces him on the defensive for most of the match. This actually makes the bits where Mask can escape and land his usual big spots far more impactful because of that very fact as opposed to just running over his opponent with them. Wright hones in on the leg of Mask with a bunch of different submissions, each having to be individually either fought out of or escaped with a rope break. Much like the Black Man match there's a ton of downtime on the mat; also much like that match that downtime is remarkably good and not dragged out much whatsoever. They also call back to their tag match together by having the extended sleeper spot, only Wright is the one applying it as opposed to the last time. Sure Wright eats up a lot of time with his own shit, but when he has to bump and sell, he does so pretty well (like he leaps huge for a Butterfly Suplex, and does a incredible Rock-Stunner bump for a dropkick) it's just that he won't make himself look overtly weak, so any sustained offence will inevitably be countered by him. As stated, this makes Sayama's later big flow of offence seem all the more desperate, to the point that even Wright teasing a full Mexican Stretch gets the crowd pretty heated. I will say there are some clear flaws in this match though: for one, there's not really any big pacing to be found. It's just sorta these two doing a lot of grappling, things pick up a bit, back to standard grappling again. There's no escalation of the stakes, Wright never feels like he's truly trying to turn up the heat here at all, in fact near the end he's just going for standard headlock takeovers and opening Catch sequences instead of, you know, trying to win the match? At least Sayama starts doing more big stuff to try to even the odds, Wright is just content to play around. It adds to the match sure, but it does harm the intensity a fair bit. The other big issue is the crowd: they really weren't feeling this one and I know, they do pick up big in certain places, but while they were clearly impressed they never felt like they did for the Hamada or Black Man matches, never got loud for a sustained amount of time. The match abruptly ending on a fallaway slam (???) by Mask on top of that just felt weird given it obviously wasn't something he did much of ever, but it did at least fit the theme of Sayama having virtually no real answers to Wright's manic grappling. This is definitely still a top-notch showing, but for me it's not the best out of everything I've seen so far, and Wright for me gets way too comfortable showing off despite it looking smooth as butter. RANK: Great Vs Black Tiger (21.04.1982) The first encounter between Tiger Mask vs his infamous Manga heel counterpart, but curiously NOT the first time they've ever faced off. Mark Rocco (the lad behind the mask) had worked with Sayama back in WoS (they had a few matches together but these aren't on Cagematch because WoS matches seem to be their Kryptonite) so the two already had a good familiarity with the other. This match had a fairly simple structure: Tiger Mask brought his high-flying stuff to the table as per standard, but Black Tiger keeps finding ways to drag this out with brawling and occasional spots when needed. He slams Sayama's head into the turnbuckle post early on, and that effects him throughout the match: yep, that's right, Sayama actually sells something for longer than 10 seconds, amazing! Black Tiger in turn focuses on working on the head with strikes and holds, with some dirty shit, namely him consistently hammering in on the back of the head with punches, elbows, all that stuff. This tangibly paid off as when Mask would get a counter or get control back, he'd have to recover for a bit and that kept biting him in the ass as he'd quickly get gobbled up again. This wasn't stupid overdramatic selling either, just simply having Sayama kinda stumble and pause after big pushes was all that was needed, and it really worked to get over how it effected him over the course of the match. I think the crowd were a bit confused here; most Tiger Mask matches up to this point were him going 50/50 with his opponent, incredible athleticism and whatnot, or just him gobbling them up with the latter. Here....Black Tiger just continuously dominates for most of this, with occasional pockets of resistance. Simply put, they aren't used to this kind degree of asskicking. He adds onto this with a nasty Tombstone and just choking the guy out, which gets the lad coughing and spluttering. The two kinda botch a Tombstone counter but eventually recover well. Sayama tries for a diving headbutt afterwards but misses, that alongside a brainbuster puts him well out of commission. He pulls for a German, Tiger Mask counters but eats a low blow for his troubles. The guy is admittedly pissed after this, dropping Black Tiger onto the ropes before just completely losing his composure, slamming the guy into the turnbuckle post before just consistently dropping elbows and knee drops on him off the apron, not even caring about getting back in the ring to win the match inevitably ending in a double count out. This wasn't a amazing match in terms of workrate and the crowd definitely sucked ass, but it is a CRITICAL element of their rivalry as it shows the danger of Black Tiger straight off the bat as well as the effect he has on the usually stoic masked babyface, making him resort to pure manic fury in response to his dirty cheating. There's a lack of flips here, sure, but I think they did well with what they were trying to convey here and for once the holds and strikes tangibly add up to something in the long run. Rocco's Black Tiger is definitely not for everyone given how differently he wrestles as opposed to unmasked, but I got into this well and understood that it wasn't about a battle of equals, but more a battle of different styles: Black Tiger didn't need to outwork Tiger Mask, he just needed to cheat endlessly lol. RANK: Decent W/ Gran Hamada Vs. Les Thornton & Perro Aguayo (30.04.1982) This is built to get Thornton over for his title shot against Tiger Mask, so obviously the structure of this is stewed towards those two.....this'll still be a thing, but not quite in the way they intended it to be, I imagine. Hamada spends a while bumping and selling for the two before Mask comes in and lands a very small assist before tagging out. Thornton is annoyed and demands he come back in, but Sayama is too weakened due to his taped up right leg (considering he'd take a break of absence right after this match and vacate his titles, I think it's safe to say he was legitimately injured: this is only the beginning of a long feud with his knees) and when he gets in at last, they (carefully) work over his bad leg. I thought they made good work of that limitation by having the two go to town on said leg with the best looking stuff possible while also adding drama by having Hamada have to carry the load against two aggressive heels, and he steps up to the mark great here; loved him pulling off Tiger Mask spots to make up for the fact that the other guy couldn't do them, as well as combining his own more grounded style into things, really interesting combination. Aguayo is a good heel as well with his animated facial expressions and manic brawling. I liked the heel duo pulling off old-school antics like switching partners while the ref wasn't looking and the ref just having it in for Hamada whenever he'd try to protest about the cheating or try to tag in was fantastic because the heels would get in to do even MORE nonsense, making the crowd bite hard to see the babyfaces get their due eventually. Eventually Sayama gets in a last-second Enzuigiri with his good leg and we get a solid hot tag from Hamada, who just goes ape-shit with forearms and strikes rather than big flippy stuff. The heel duo try to get him set up for a dive by Aquayo, but he misses and hits his opponent instead. Hamada lands a dive himself, but with Mask injured Aguayo just slaps on a sleeper and waits for the count-out. This was actually pretty good for a regular tag, namely because with Mask injured the dynamics wildly change; Hamada is no longer just the sidekick, he's having to do essentially everything, babysitting his injured partner while the heel duo just do everything in their power to flip the scales further. Thornton was fine; he's supposed to be a good hand but I didn't see anything to suggest as such from here, just some reasonable heel work and good uppercuts. Aguayo is just so much fun as a eccentric rudo though, his brawling is messy but you can tell he knows what he's doing despite that, gets some big heel heat here with his obnoxious shit. Him with Hamada work really well together, and it's no wonder that the latter would keep bringing Aguayo back for subsequent matches way after the fact. But yeah, a fun match and a breeze to go though. RANK: Good W/ Osamu Kido Vs. Carlos Jose Estrada & Jose Gonzales (21.05.1982) Sayama's second match back after his big injury, and it's more or less another tune-up match for his upcoming title bout: this is the first televised debut of his orange variation of the outfit. This isn't too remarkable outside of having noted scumbag extraordinaire Jose Gonzales (AKA Invader #1) here. Jose Estrada is a bog-standard jobber heel and he obviously doesn't get much of a look-in as Kido works around him easily. Gonzales is also pretty nothing in-ring and a lot of this is just the two bumbling around and making Tiger Mask look good. I thought this was essentially just pantomime for a lot of it: the heel jobbers would bicker, Mask/Kido would outsmart them, they'd complain or argue, he'd do it again, blah blah blah....yeah I get why these matches exist and this certainly isn't "bad" at what it is doing, but it's very uninteresting. I did like Sayama kicking Estrada in the back and him thinking it was Gonzales that did it, that was a engaging bit in a match that frankly had little to bite on. Kido is competent but noticeably middling in control segments. The heel jobbers come undone as Gonzales misses his dive and hits his partner by mistake (sound familiar?) allowing the NJPW natives to get the win with a crossbody and back suplex from Kido. Utterly boring 10 minutes with nothing worth your time unless you like your matches to be paced like 80's WWF D-tier shows, and even then you'd probably get something more than this. Gonzales is a pretty weak wrestler and Estrada is a generic undercard jobber. Sayama looked fine alongside Kido but they noticeably kept things very basic. Immensely skippable. RANK: Forgettable Vs Les Thornton (25.05.1982) Thornton is the NWA Jr champ (five times in fact! ) and Mask is challenging. Thornton had a good rep at the time as one of the more hard-working Jr heavyweights who pretty much won gold wherever he went and someone who compensated for his height with strong workrate. Anyway, the match itself is....well I would say it's disappointing if you view it from a certain angle. You may come into this expecting another Tiger Mask/Steve Wright level of performance given both men come from that British Catch school of wrestling, but this is nowhere near that level of quality, coming across more as a more B-show showcase as Mask spends a good few minutes here doing spots based around his usual formula: do big fancy spot or counter, spring around a bit, opponent stares with googly eyes and goes "damn he's quick" repeat with occasional working hold. Then Thornton goes instead into working ways to slap on a headscissors for a while until Mask counters into a Indian Deathlock but Thornton just kinda no sells afterwards and gets back on the offensive anyway, so that whole bit was kinda pointless. He throws Mask into the turnbuckle post and then a nice apron suplex/scoop slam for a near fall. After a backbreaker he's working more on the back of Mask now and does so until he awkwardly delay-bumps for a arm drag counter. I did like the psychology of Thornton consistently attempting for pins while in a cradle and slowing things down, but the match outside of some good sequences never gets properly going; you can tell that from the rather slow pace as well as the crowd not really being that interested here at all given that fact. Mask slaps on a long headlock before Thornton counters again and takes control. Mask uses his agility with cartwheels and flips to get the match back in his favour, which he does well at despite Thornton botching a bump for his big cartwheel crossbody and Sayama having to REALLY wiggle around for his Tombstone, not even able to get him in correct position properly before just doing the move anyway. That's the finish as well! No real build-up, just Sayama abruptly winning off some regular offence. This match had two good workers in it, but they just didn't click here very well: lots of sitting in holds, not a lot of progression. Thornton felt really bog-standard for a opponent, some good mat-based stuff but very non-descript at the same time with nothing much going for him, didn't really try to stand out for the crowd or put in much effort bar some tricky technical stuff, which I still appreciate but you need more than that to be engaging; especially if you spend most of the match moving at a slow tempo. Sayama puts in a decent performance but didn't really get much to work with here so does suffer slightly as he tends to go into auto-pilot when he's not challenged a whole lot. Mechanically it's not that bad, but it was just the case of bad chemistry that bogged this down. RANK: Decent Vs Black Tiger II (26.05.1982) Black Tiger has the vacated WWF Jr belt after using his dirty antics to beat Gran Hamada in next to no time, now the prodigal son returns for his other title that he never lost proper. The two have a few really energetic early exchanges as they go between holds and flips, with neither getting the advantage. Black uses his more brawling stuff to slow Sayama down into holds to balance things in that regard, but unlike last time where his tactics were shocking and unexpected, this time he isn't so lucky as he gets outsmarted more as his opponent is more than ready to face off. I think the two balance that out well, even if Rocco is a bit sloppy when it comes to the more workrate-paced segments and his selling does get goofy in places where he's just flying all over the place. Matches where the match keeps coin flipping between the two can be hard to do, but I think this is effectively deployed as the crowd are hot for Black Tiger's heat segments and get loud when he eventually gets outmatched with big spots. I also liked Sayama toying with his babyface persona as he would occasionally hint at skirting the rules but never go over the edge; just small hints at his anger pouring out from his usual uber-babyface superhero persona. I thought the Black Tiger cut-offs were done pretty effectively; some like the painful Taue-lite suplex throw into the ropes or him just booting the shit out of Sayama mid leap like he was nothing were old-school but rather brutal at the same time and really pinned down the wide difference in styles between the two. Obviously this pacing isn't going to be for everyone, but I think they made a concerted attempt to make it dynamic and interesting, with little touches like Black trying for pins a lot while in certain holds to wear down the other man, as well as the undercurrent of him being desperate to keep control by any petty means necessary. All of this as a result got the crowd incredibly eager to cheer, even for stuff like a knee drop or Butterfly Suplex. Good apron work as they tease Black Tiger winning again by countout after correctly predicting a Tiger Feint and dodging the dive afterwards, as well as a near fall off a apron brainbuster. They repeat sequences from the last match as Black lands a low blow to counter a suplex counter, but this time Sayama is able to survive long enough to dodge a top rope back elbow, which Rocco sells like he was shot, shit was great. Mask lands his own Tombstone and a sensational moonsault (which was his first time using it, if I recall) for the pin. I thought this was pretty great! Paced real well for the two, lots of action, really built up the bombs for the end and the crowd was hot as anything, especially with the false finish teases. Sure the middle segment is a bit slow in places, but we get some decent action out of it and the two were really on their A-game here as most of it came off seamlessly. All in all, a super solid match and one of the best of the year so far. I get the Black Tiger hate but trust me, this is the PEAK of his work here and immensely enjoyable. RANK: Great Vs. Ultraman (18.06.1982) Ultraman? Yep, NJPW tried getting lightning twice in a bottle by having Mask feud with another franchise mascot in the form of, well, Ultraman. This one is legally distinct though, being a random lucha guy who had the name for a long while. Why isn't this mentioned more given how bonkers a concept it is? Well, the matches weren't particularly good, for one. A lot of this is just the two wangling for working holds and then sitting in them. True, Tiger Mask pulls out the usual tricks, but Ultraman really doesn't seem like a equal in any way, as proven by the fact that he quickly defaults to trying to be a roadblock rather than meeting Sayama pace for pace. It says a lot when I'm halfway into this and the main big thing Ultraman did was a very slow and very contrived top rope arm drag that his opponent just easily kips up in the first place. Sayama feels like he's in autopilot most of the time as he barely sells anything, mostly because there's barely anything to really sell in the first place. Ultraman also has a REALLY basic moveset, going as far as to just repeat moves a few times to pad things out more. There's a bizarre moment where he goes for two neckbreakers in a row before landing a dropkick while Mask is on the mat....for some reason? Then he'd do another when he was standing up just because. There's a real lack of chemistry between the two despite Mask's best attempts to lead like he has done with many other acts of similar calibre. Ultraman also felt like he had bad cardio here as he's heavy breathing by the halfway point and takes multiple outside breathers. This is such the case that he can't even float over for a Tiger DDT, legitimately banging his head off the mat. Ultraman's big move is a superkick, he ends up hitting his opponent stiff in the throat with it, which causes Sayama to gag and cough afterwards. They noticeably have a chat at this point as Ultraman awkwardly holds for a long pin as the ref also moves in to talk things over. We get the debut of the Space Flying Tiger Drop as Mask impressively cartwheels and flips to a dive outside, which was awesome if a bit annoying that such a historically big move would come out of a match like this. He lands a brainbuster, Ultraman hits a back suplex that he botches somehow so that his opponent doesn't even get hit by it, he kinda...overextends too much on his end. Ultraman thinks "damn, gotta do something big" and goes for a corner crossbody; sounds simple, right? We've seen this numerous times before as a spot with Mask either doing it or selling for the thing. Anyway, he completely misses the landing and Sayama refuses to help him after realising how bad a botch it was mid-flight so he just flops to the ground like a piece of crap. Sayama's exasperated shrug to the ref with his hands is priceless, worth the watch alone. He thankfully works on his feet and ends the match quick with a German suplex despite Ultraman trying to kick out and no selling afterwards. Sayama wags his finger almost to mock the guy for trying. But yeah, this was a ambitious project that just didn't pay off whatsoever. Ultraman is not terrible, but he's hopeless in this more high-paced lucha style and his lack of cardio means that things fall apart after the big Mask spot. Ultraman would still have some matches afterwards but this is the end of his NJPW tours after this one, no shocker why. A mess of a match but real entertaining + cool spots at points make this a fun watch if you are game for some nonsense. RANK: Decent W/ Tatsumi Fujinami Vs. El Polaco & Ultraman (25.06.1982) Polaco will have a singles match with Mask soon enough, and Ultraman will get his rematch despite his shoddy performance last time. Sayama has NO respect for Ultraman, this clips right into him socking the lad with a stiff roundhouse and slap. We get a early botch as Polaco can't clear the distance between him and Mask hitting a dropkick quick enough, so he ends up flopping on top of him lol. They make for that with some cool spots as Mask uses his Tiger Feint to counter a Irish Whip into a running elbow, good stuff. Fujinami is mostly fine but nothing really sticks out for him here bar the standard mat-work. Ultraman again is a weird worker that just doesn't seem to gel at all with the pair; he does two neckbreakers to Fujinami, he hits one back but Ultraman no sells and rises before him? It's a interesting logic, to say the least. Mask gets in a good hot tag and beats down Polaco for a bit before he takes over with strikes and a weird Tiger Driver set-up, only he falls into a submission in that position instead; it's certainly unique if a bit baffling. Fujinami gets in to land some hard slaps before leaving, Mask runs down the guy with a cartwheel crossbody before Fuji again shows up to slap some more. The finish was pretty good as Fuji goes for his fancy Prawn roll-up while Sayama sensationally flings over the guy for a big cross chop and dive to the outside. Fuji finishes off Polaco with a brainbuster. Basically the usual Mask/Fuji tag pairings, and it's fine as per usual albeit dragged down a bit due to Ultraman stumbling his way around here, but he's basically given zero legitimacy as the two lads just beat him up for most of their interactions. Polaco is a decent rudo of the week for the pair to run over, he does his job well and can actually tangibly work reliably without having big issues, so he holds this down as best as he can. That said, I really wouldn't be bothered with this, it adds nothing to Mask's resume or really anyone else involved, for that matter. RANK: Forgettable =========== Well that's it for the first 6 months of 1982! Will Tiger Mask be able to handle the return of some old foes from 1981? Will he handle the rampage of Black Tiger and the emergence of the mysterious Tiger Hunter? Will Ultraman actually have a good match for once? Idk