Talk about it here.

Great match, with Fuyuki working really hard and doing all the spots you'd expect from a B-team WAR guy. He wrestles as kind of a low-rent Tenryu here. Hase is consistently good and sells everything Fuyuki dishes out very well to get over the match. Started slow with little heat and really picked up in a big way as the match progressed.

 

I don't know if I need to make a paradigm shift or what, but Fuyuki is very obviously the heel here, yet Hase is the outsider. I'm not sure why they would work the match that way (much like the elimination match just before this where the face/heel alignment seems off).

 

Despite this being a midcard match, it's really wrestled more like a main event in terms of layout and kickout of big moves. Way, way better than I expected.

Man, Fuyuki was totally sandbagging until it was time for the stretch run. Until that superplex, Hase got jack shit. Fuyuki was cutting him off at every turn. It was really beginning to annoy me, but the closing stretch was really heated and epic, with a few inventive spots like Fuyuki basically riding Hase off the turnbuckle like a sled. Good near-falls follow before Hase puts him away with the Northern Lights. This is like the best possible Worldwide/Pro main event, since it's a mid-card bout between two guys you'd never guess would have faced each other--I certainly did a double-take when I saw the pre-match graphic. I'd be interested to see what Fuyuki matches in FMW could be better than this one.

Very good match but it didn't totally click with me due to Fuyuki here not having the charisma and facials that he does in some of his later stuff. I enjoyed seeing him work the mat a bit but Hase did feel pretty outclassed which seemed odd. The final run was dramatic and had an up for grabs feeling to everything. Really solid undercard outing. ***1/2

The early part of this reminded me of things I don't like about Hase such as the way he'd dance while he had someone in a hold, or clap his hands and point to the crowd. That sort of thing is a lot more fun when someone like Kyoko Inoue does it. Hase has never struck me as anything more than adequate on the mat and the kind of guy who'd rather do gymnastics on the mat than actually wrestle. I always find that disappointing since he went to the Olympics as an amateur, but it's part of his charm and charisma that I just don't get. The idea here was that the bigger Fuyuki was looking to bulldoze Hase, but aside from his size, there really wasn't much Fuyuki could do to hurt Hase. Hase, who's never been that convincing seller to begin with, pretty much had to oversell how much jeopardy he was in. Fuyuki had a nice german but not a lot of stuff that could truly put Hase away, and although the crowd got into the stretch run, Hase had way bigger stuff in his holster. Yeah, the point was to work a competitive midcard bout, but matches like this always kind of bother me when the stakes don't match the fight. And without trying to pick on the guy, could his angry shouts be any less guttural? I will endeavor to say something nice about him, though. He had a truly beautiful Northern Lights suplex. That throw was a thing of beautiful. Match plodded along, but the crowd propped it up.

I really didn't feel much here one wau pr the other. If it had been a random match featuing these two and not part of the NJPW/WAR deud, I have to question whether it would have ecen made the set.

 

Fuyuki dominated most of the bout, with Hase just getting enough stuff in to seem competitive. That's understandavle, since this is a WAR card. Whoever said that he worked like Tentyu was right; he looked a lot like him too, at least in this match.

 

What's the story behind Ricky Fuyuki changing his first name to Samson? He certianly wrestled more like a Samso than a Ricky in this bout, even no-selling some of Hase's punches.

 

It was nice to see how the midcard was faring in this feud, but I'm ready for Tenryu-Hash.

I'm with Loss on this one as I felt the outcome was really up in the air and both guys gave a very good performance on this WAR super show.

 

Both guys ham up to the crowd so it was a nice touch to pair them up. I felt each gesture or taunt had some meaning with the interpromotional feud raging. I liked Fuyuki dictating the pace (although it did seem a tad slow at the beginning) because when Hase would take over, his quickness seemed to be the key to breaking thru Fuyuki's punches, dragon sleepers and the like...only to get cutoff and sent back to the mat.

 

Then of course there's the good old time stiff chops, head rattling power bombs & suplexes. Big time main event feel for a mid card match - its pretty great. Another feather in Hase's cap regarding great singles matches and nice to see Fuyuki still could go in '93 as well.