A wonderful six man that really displayed the quality of Osaka Pro overall to the Tokyo crowd and how they can be a spiritual successor to the M-Pro multi mans of the last half of the 90’s. The heels worked over Hoshikawa and showed versatility in their attack while the faces were mostly used for shine in Yakushiji and Tsubasa case and stiffness from Hoshikawa. The final six or seven minutes are at a breakneck pace and featuring tons of pair offs and great action with again maintaining a clear face/heel divide with mist and other underhanded tactics being used. Togo was awesome on the heel side as to be expected with his exchanges vs Hoshikawa and the fat ass senton. He also is great with his timing on the spots leading to the crowd really biting on all of his involved nearfalls. Some errant mist gets into Buffalo’s eyes and Hoshikawa wins the match for the faces with a German. The German is a popular finish in Osaka Pro on this night. **** (8)

 

This was a decent 6-man that had Korakuen rocking at times. Hoshikawa showed his versatility in playing the FIP although it wasn't 100% natural. He did pretty well for a big ass-kicker, though. It made sense for the heels to try to work over the opposition's biggest weapon and played into the rivalry between Togo and Hoshikawa but it left the face side looking a bit thin. They had some decent shine spots but looked a bit weak in numbers. The action was pretty good -- as we've come to expect from Osaka Pro -- but it was too short for a main event bout and the finish didn't quite click as Hoshikawa regrouped and recovered too easily from being the man in peril. I wasn't expecting a classic overcoming the odds story (or anything close to it) but I do think if you're going to make FIP something more than time killing you need to work the finish a bit better than that. Not up there with the better Osaka 6-mans of the year.