One of those matches which not a lot of explanation is needed. Will finish top 5 assuredly. So much heat and excellent wrestling, plus a bunch of cool story spots like Ueda sacrificing himself to eliminate Maeda. Can’t say enough about this matches greatness. Slam dunk disc selection

 

NJ v. UWF vol 1 disc 1

Yeah, this was a fabulous match. It will have a shot at the No. 1 spot for me. No debate necessary.

Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Umanosuke Ueda & Kantaro Hoshino vs. Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Osamu Kido, Nobuhiko Takada & Kazuo Yamazaki (03/26/86)

- The crowd is fucking hot for this one. The crowd reaction will put some of those earlier "classics" to shame for sure. The first fifteen minutes before Yamazaki's elimination are pretty great allowing everyone to shine and popping the crowd with some fucking stiff moves. I can forgive the sloppiness of Kimura's elimination due to the whipping that Maeda gave him prior to. I don't really care for the floor-touching stip as the air left the room when Fujiwara and Fujinami were eliminated but the Maeda-Ueda elim was pretty sweet. I knew INoki would be the last man standing but was completely caught off guard by Takada's exit and Kido left defending the UWF name. The best way to describe this match is EPIC. I don't know if it will be my #1 but it was pretty fucking great.

Man what a fucking molten hot crowd and this was what it's all about as this was probably my favorite feud in Japan in the 80's. Maeda offering his hand to Inoki for a handshake and him shaking it was fucking awesome then they started the match with the crowd shitting themselves. The action was fast and furious before the first elimination and then we got some great psychology revolving around the eliminations and the fans just getting hotter and hotter as the match went on. Everyone was on point here hitting their big moves and just beating the shit out of each other as the match went on then you had the eliminations which were surprises for guys leaving too soon and others hanging on longer than you thought especially Ueda & Kido. The last two eliminations were awesome and it was great seeing the mutual respect being shown after the match. Grand slam nomination.