I imagine this will be divisive. They went about 35 minutes and stayed on the mat for the first 25 or so. I thought they killed the time fairly well, working a wide enough variety of holds and showing enough intensity to keep it interesting. But some folks will probably find the body of the match dull. Fujinami popped the crowd with a mid-match scorpion and ultimately put Inoki in the figure four for several minutes (Inoki did his part by selling the leg work well.) That led into a 10-minute build to the finish, which featured some great back-and-forth action and had the crowd going apeshit. I particularly liked it when Inoki ducked Fujinami's enziguiri and hit his own to shift the momentum only to have Fujinami come back and connect with the enziguiri after all. The ending, with Fujinami fighting out of Inoki's octopus hold several times, also worked. Both men showed genuine emotion postmatch in a nice cap to an effective master vs. protege story. Nomination.

 

Match appears on NJ TV 9/20/85 and on NJ Classics 208.

Man this was dull as spit. I liked some of the early matwork, but that endless figure four was just brutal. I thought the ending had a ton of crowd heat, but the execution wasn't great and the finish kind of sucked. No from me.

Man, that was fucking torture getting through that match. Phil and I synched up the TV and early on, Phil was defending the matwork as respectable, blah blah blah. After the 10 minute Figure 4 fight, I think they lost Phil and I was already comatose at that point. Some shitty execution down the stretch including an awkward German and a finish that made no sense to me, but made the crowd go batshit and this is an enthusiastic no. Phil was explaining the required matwork for Lou Thesz reffed matches and I can only say that I hope I never watch this match again.