Exactly what you want from these two. A simple story to start, Shuji suplexes Yuji on the apron fucking up his mid section, giving him a target to hit every cut off spot he needs to keep control, and it also puts a large mountain Okabayashi has to climb to turn things around. Strikes are vicious in this, specially when compared to the rest of the show, this really was on another level. This had 2 suplex no sells by Yuji that would normally take me out of the match, but the fact that he was groggy for like 2 minutes and Ishikawa was still on top - which lead to an awesome struggle for control/test of strength segment - made up for the kind of excess I'm not a fan of. A think the only fault this match had was that it was 3 minutes too long, the final sequence was a little clunky and the crowd felt it. They were able to bring them back for the actual finish though. Awesome main event.

A great main event hoss battle with Ishikawa relentlessly working over Okabayashi's abdomen to the point of him uses it as a defensive tactic. Okabayashi was great working underneath, making strong hot come back, and with his selling even to the point were I was buying a legit mess up with a power bomb attempt as him in so much pain dealing with the abdomen attack from earlier. After that Ishikawa did everything he could to put the match away throwing bomb after bomb but Okabayashi would not stay down leading with Okabayashi getting the win with the top rope splash. Great way to end Day 1 of the carnival.

Great clash of the titans match between two of the best and smartest workers in the world. Shuji working over the abdomen was great and led to some really creative spots like the suplex stomach-first on the apron. You just don't see stuff like that. It seemed that Yuji would make comebacks a bit too easily (like the Fire Thunder on the apron) but he still did a great job selling the accumulated damage. Shuji shutting down the comebacks rather quickly also made things more believable. All in all, one of the best "big man vs. big man" singles matches I've seen in a long while.

****1/2