[2016-08-13-NJPW] Katsuyori Shibata vs EVIL

Neat match. No wasted motion as the match pretty much starts as a finishing stretch with Shibata going after EVIL right out of the gate. Shibata's injured shoulder was handled perfectly-in modern New Japan you often get boring limbwork and walking around the ring to waste time. Here you also had limbwork and action outside the ring but it was handled as good as it could've been with EVIL just decimating Shibata's arm with devastating chairshots. A couple of years ago pretty much every Suzuki-gun match would have spots like that with weak, bad looking chairshots, luckily Shibata is a maniac who really lets EVIL nail him as strong as he can. Attempt move-get cut-off is such a staple of New Japan transitions but they avoided it here as much as possible, adding more counters to keep you guessing which one would finally land and smartly building the match around cut-offs-for instance EVIL attempted his Discuss Elbow twice only to finally hit it in the last minute. Ten minutes of exciting smashmouth action. ***1/2