Talk about it here.

Nice little match between two guys whose styles complement each other well.

As much as I couldn't stand Koshinaka in the 80's, his 90's work has impressed me. Love the Ass based offense and the finish was nice.

This was a really poor performance from Koshinaka. Yamazaki came in with a visibly injured hand that it took him 10m to get round to attacking. Kosh didn't adapt to his opponent or his circumstances at all. He just wanted to lazily cycle through his regular shitty moveset.

Other than the good work on the hand, Koshinaka was pretty useless here. I'm fine with him leaving the hand-work in the holster until he was in big trouble and needed to do it, but it was his only good contribution to the match. He's still a shitty seller and everything else here--and this was a perfectly decent match--was due to Yamazaki.

Yamazaki continues to be the hit of the tournament so far to me and is awesome stalking his opponent and pulling out nasty arm submissions from anywhere that look like they can end the match at any point. Koshinaka was actively bad here not focusing on the hand fast enough and using his ass based offense. Koshinaka in general is someone I haven't had much use for in the 90's and this really felt like a match were he prevented it from being good. **1/2

I'm loving Yamazaki this year. This match was really good and Yamazaki again brought a unique feel to it. Koshinaka suddenly going back to the fingers to get out of the German suplex was a mark out moment, really well done, the kind of call back you don't see coming. Yamazaki continues to sell the hand for the rest of the match. Good kicks from Yamazaki, especially that first one to the jaw, and the crowd really exploded when he locked in his first out of nowhere armbar. I was rooting to Yamazaki throughout this.