Posted August 23, 200817 yr comment_5434167 New Japan Pro Wrestling TV (June 3rd & 10th 1983) - Matches can also be found on Classics 143 and 144 1. Tiger Mask vs Kuniaki Kobayashi (2/6) - This was heavily clipped here so it would be worth taking a look at the edition on Classics. But what was here didn't represent the best of their long series. 2. Hulk Hogan vs Antonio Inoki (2/6) - This was the league final, so they were going for something more epic than their earlier match that I nominated. But this struck me as the lesser match. They worked the first 15 minutes mostly on the mat and didn't do enough to distinguish their respective strengths. It wasn't really clear how one one man was trying to beat the other. The ending was cool, with Hogan lariating Inoki off the apron and Inoki selling it as a legit knockout. But the body of the match wasn't interesting enough to be setworthy. 3. Hulk Hogan vs Akira Maeda (30/5) - It was cool to see one of the patron saints of shoot style against the ultimate emblem of American pro style. Hogan didn't look bad trading mat holds with Maeda early. But Maeda wasn't high enough on the food chain to come off as a real threat. I'd like to see a match with Hogan working his NJ style and Maeda in full prickish ace mode, but this wasn't it. It was perfectly entertaining, not really memorable. That said, Hogan showed more nifty offense here and amazingly enough, I think he worked more good matches during this tour than anyone else in the promotion. Weird. The man really was smart about the business and about adapting to various situations. 4. Antonio Inoki, Kengo Kimura & Seiji Sakaguchi vs Big John Studd, El Canek & Andre the Giant (30/5) - This focused on the heat between Andre and Inoki. Crowd was into it, but thsi was pretty short and lacked much notable work. There was another tag match on the disc involving Khan and Kobayashi against Kimura and somebody. It featured some nice brawling and a pissed off Kimura (he had just lost Hamaguchi to Choshu) but nothing setworthy.
