Posted August 13, 20223 yr comment_5987888 After an arduous journey battling injury and a trial series of sorts, this was Shiozaki's return to the GHC Heavyweight Title picture. Following a lengthy losing streak, he picked up wins over Manabu Soya and former AXIZ tag team partner and rival Katsuhiko Nakajima to get here. Meanwhile, Kiyomiya looked to prove that he once again belonged at the top of NOAH. Working the first five minutes of a match around a side headlock is an ambitious task, especially by modern standards, but Shiozaki and Kiyomiya succeeded. Every time Shiozaki got back on offense, Kiyomiya was there to bring him back down to the mat. Kiyomiya worked the headlock with intensity and purpose. That continued until Shiozaki escaped, and Kiyomiya took a wild spill into the guardrails. Kiyomiya has added some wicked European uppercuts to his repertoire since I last saw him. One even caught Shiozaki in the nose, which looked grotesque. Kiyomiya was a good foil for Shiozaki's intensity, bringing some much-needed urgency to make this 30-plus-minute match triumph. A highlight was Kiyomiya's beautiful topé con giro over the turnbuckles. One of my biggest complaints about apron moves is the lack of build-up. They're often treated like any other maneuver rather than a potential tide-turner in a match. Where Shiozaki and Kiyomiya got it right is saving the Bloody Sunday off the apron to the floor until the twenty minute mark, which got a relatively big reaction by clap-crowd standards. There are some modern tropes holding this back ever so slightly, namely the occasional no-selling and constant screaming from Kiyomiya. However, they were far from egregious, and Shiozaki and Kiyomiya built up to those brief moments better than the bulk of the so-called epics I've seen this year. This was a great match that showed both the growth of Kiyomiya and the reliability of Shiozaki.
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