Posted July 3, 200817 yr comment_5432627 New Japan Pro Wrestling TV (January 28th & February 4th 1983) 1. Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino vs Carlos Estrada & Black Tiger - Solid tag match but nothing too exciting. 2. Rusher Kimura, Isamu Teranishi & Animal Hamaguchi vs Killer Khan, Riki Choshu & Masa Saito - I thought about nominating this because it's a nice illustration of how smoothly Choshu's Army worked in trios. Saito was the rock, Choshu was the emotional leader and energy guy and Khan was the dirty monster type. Kimura was kind of fun in this too, like a less violent version of crusty, old Tenyru. But the match just kind of petered out instead of building so I can't give it a nod. 3. Antonio Inoki & Tatsumi Fujinami vs Masked Superstar & Marty Jones - Hogan was at ringside for this. It is amazing how over Inoki was, even though he didn't do much in a lot of TV matches. This ended pretty quickly with a run-in by Kimura's crew and an ensuing brawl. Not a memorable match. 4. Hulk Hogan & Seiji Sakaguchi vs Killer Khan & Blackjack Mulligan (3/2) - The Japanese treated Hogan like a big star, even though he was more than a year from superduperstardom with Vince. He actually worked reasonably hard with a running knee and a vertical suplex. Sadly, he might have been the best worker in this match. Mulligan was so plodding and couldn't even compensate with first-rate violence. How he produced Barry Windham is beyond me. 5. Tiger Mask vs Gran Hamada (3/2) - They did a nice monkey flip sequence but there was a lot of crappy matwork for a 10-minute, JIP match. So many Tiger Mask TV matches were pretty blah, despite the big dives. 6. Antonio Inoki & Tatsumi Fujinami vs Riki Choshu & Masa Saito (3/2) - Well, at least this one ended cleanly on one of Inoki's weak-ass enziguris. I hope I'll get to a really good match between these teams, because the crowds were certainly hot enough, and all 4 guys were capable.
