Talk about it here.

1980-09-11
NJPW
Tatsumi Fujinami (c) vs. Tony Rocco
WWF Junior Heavyweight Title Match
Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, Osaka, Japan
Card
★

Pulled out of a tag setting, where he could merely act as a garnish to the main action, Rocco really failed here as a singles competitor. The point of cycling through these foreign challengers for Inoki and Fujinami is for the native Japanese audiences to see “their” guys overcome these formidable opponents. It’s not exactly the same as WWF’s monster of the week formula, but there’s a strong similarity. The key however, is that the challenger appears credible or threatening. I know this wasn’t Rocco’s debut but seeing as he was challenging for the title he needed to either have some real credit built up with the audience already or they needed to establish said credibility early on in the match. The first problem is that he has this portly physique, which starkly contrasts with Fujinami’s trim athletic build, and a smushed up face that looks like a candle that’s been left in the sun too long. So from an aesthetic point of view, he was already struggling. Then the match started and you could tell these two had ZERO chemistry with each other. It was awkward and clumsy and they appeared to blow a few of the early matwork spots. Fujinami switched to taking control and grabbed an arm hold for what felt like forever and that was it, any threat that Rocco could have presented was extinguished. He looked like a chump and then he was being dominated like a chump.
The final stretch had some nicer moments from both men, but it was a classic case of too little too late for me. Neither man had wrapped themselves in glory up to this point and I feel like they were both happy to finish up when Fujinami hit a victory roll for the win. The work was bland, literally a mashup of spots you would have seen in any other New Japan match at this time and it went on way too long at a tick over 20 minutes. Really not much to recommend here at all.

I didn't know much about Tony Rocco, but he looked like a solid old school European grappler, so him versus Fujinami seems like a decent pairing. It's hard to criticize their matwork, as it was clean and solid. However, some of the action came across a bit dull and that is probably why this match is not considered an all time classic, as the fans were really quiet until the final sequence. While well executed, the work was bland and they never took the armwork to the next level, so in hindsight it never meant that much. The last few minutes got some heat, thumbs up for the clean finish after the stalemate.
**3/4