Posted September 15, 200817 yr comment_5434599 Disc 10 April 20th 1984: 1. Tatsumi Fujinami Special 2. Yoshikai Yatsu vs. Nobuhiko Takada This disc features the first half of the 5-on-5 gauntlet from 4/19. Here's my comment on the whole thing ... Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Isamu Teranishi Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Nobuhiko Takada Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Kengo Kimura Kengo Kimura vs. Animal Hamaguchi Animal Hamaguchi vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara Antonio Inoki vs. Riki Choshu Following Phil's precedent with the 5/1/86 gauntlet, I'm going to treat this as one match. That's really how it's best appreciated anyway. Seiki Gundan opened with Fujinami in hopes of clearing out the lower ranks of Ishin Gundan. Good strategy but Fujinami came out with his hand taped and as the first match went on, Kobayashi attacked it more and more. Fujinami gave him a lot of offense in an exciting contest but overpowered him with a German suplex. Next came Teranishi, who focused on the hand to an even greater degree. Fujinami sold the pain quite well (for example, he couldn't pull off the German he'd used to win the first match.) The injury allowed the lower ranked Teranishi to abuse him far more than expected. Fujinami ultimately showed a lot of fire in rallying to put Teranishi away but you knew he'd be in trouble in his third match. He tried to rush Yatsu and put him away quickly, but sure enough, Yatsu destroyed his hand on the outside. Yatsu then drop kicked Fujinami off the apron every time he tried to get back in the ring. After the countout, Yatsu seemed to have an easy draw in Takada. Not so fast. The youngster turned in a star-making performance in one of the best NJ matches of the year. He emptied his bag of big moves to push Yatsu to the brink and got the fans incredibly behind him after they seemed dubious at first. Yatsu finally finished him with a powerslaw but what a shot of adrenaline. Kimura next took advantage of Yatsu's fatigue in perhaps the weakest match of the challenge. But the veteran Hamaguchi broke Kimura's momentum with some early stalling and then beat him up. That set up a nasty brawl between Hamaguchi and Fujiwara. Ishin Gundan hoped to use Hamaguchi to wear down Inoki before Choshu got to the kingpin. Fujiwara wouldn't allow it. Hamaguchi busted him open, but he fought through it and dragged Choshu's lieutenant outside, where he used his superior sense of positioning to lock Hamaguchi up for the countout. That set up the much-anticipated one-on-one between a fresh Choshu and fresh Inoki. I thought they worked on the mat too much at first, taking the crowd out of the match. But they ultimately fired it up and hit all their big offense. It was good that Inoki let Choshu fight out of the octopus hold once before finishing him. I had never seen that in two years, and it made Choshu look strong in the loss. Taken as a whole, this was a tremendous dramatization of the factional rivalry at the center of the promotion. It featured great ebb and flow, from Fujinami's hand injury to Takada's gutsy breakout to Fujiwara's sacrificial stand. I have to think that if we keep it on the ballot as one match, it will be top 10.
