Posted October 9, 200816 yr comment_5435088 DVD #6 3/8/85 (taped 3/8) - These matches also appear on Classics 187 Hiro Saito/Umanoseke Ueda vs. Strong Machines - Good brawl in which the Machines busted open Saito and really had him gushing. I'm not clear how he became their enemy but they conveyed some real hatred here. Not enough of an actual match for a nomination (and not a Memphis-level brawl where you don't care about the trappings of an actual match) but a nice change of pace. Kimura/Fujinami vs. Bad News Allen/Kerry Brown - I found this pretty sluggish. Bad News and Brown were imposing, sure, but they didn't have interesting enough offense to make their long control segments engaging. Antonio Inoki vs. David Shultz - Bad match-up. Shultz never did enough to suggest that he'd present a threat to superman Inoki. 3/15/85 (taped 3/15) Saito/Ueda vs. Strong Machines - Again, these guys couldn't go three minutes without breaking into an all-out brawl. Somehow, Ueda got irritated at Saito for not following his instructions and they turned on one another. This seemed like a pretty good angle, but the language barrier made it hard to appreciate fully. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Hacksaw Higgins - A really pleasant surprise. Higgins was a big, rough-looking dude with some brutal suplexes. He brought out the fire in Fujinami, who turned in a strong "chopping down the big guy" performance with lots of leg attacks and movement. They got kind of sloppy but in that good way that made it feel more like a fight. Almost every moment seemed genuinely intense and contested. The spill outside for the double countout felt in character with the match. I'll throw it on the block. Antonio Inoki vs. David Shultz - No better than their encounter on the previous episode. I hope I don't have to see the match-up again.
