Starting to wonder if Takada made Southern work a gimmick of being clueless or if he just didn't really get this thing. It was amusing to see Yamazaki, who refuses to do handshake and all that sportsmanship respect nonsense in normal matches treat Southern like a total joke and work sequences on the ground by himself. **3/4

JT is by far the worst of the Americans Takada has brought in. It's difficult to bullshit your way through shoot style because if you can't do it properly then it's glaringly obvious, and it's already likely the hardest style in all of wrestling to work, so he really had no chance. At times Yamazaki looks disinterested because he knows he's saddled with an unenviable task and it's pointless to even try and make this compelling. Once or twice it looked like he might've considered taking liberties and just wasting JT, but then he'd reel back. Southern can't really do anything on the mat and his stand up is basically putting a shoddy guard up. Finish was kind of hokey. Maybe the ref' decided to be merciful.

This sucked. JT Southern sucks. Yamazaki cracking him in the legs with kicks and generally not looking happy about being in there were the obvious highlights.