[2016-05-03-NJPW-Wrestling Dontaku] Tetsuya Naito vs Tomohiro Ishii

This was quite interesting and worked completely different than their matches for the NEVER belt two years ago. Those matches were worked completely in Ishii's style while this one felt like a proper contrast. Some people have a platonic view of japan that's all about the great matches and whatnot so I love the fact that Naito's gotten so over mostly on character work and stalling. I enjoyed his Rush-like control segments early on and the presence of BUSHI and EVIL at ringside added another dynamic to it, the way they'd have one of them pull Ishii's leg to get Naito back in control for instance was very smartly done, of course New Japan's camera men missed it. I liked most of the legwork and the way Naito sold but man Ishii couldn't execute a proper leglock to save his life. The finishing stretch was more focused on brutality than dance counters as I prefer, you had Naito's brutal Dropkick, a couple of Brainbusters, a vicious DDT counter, a Gloria that was about as Vertical Drop as anything Naito's ever done etc. I loved the way Naito used Ishii's own offence against him late in the match and despite the match going so long he was never in *true* danger of losing and put Ishii away pretty convincingly in the end. ***1/4