Posted October 25, 200816 yr comment_5435365 DVD 3 1/31/86: Akira Maeda vs. Osamu Kido - JIP. Maeda beat the shit out of Kido for most of this until the ref seemed to DQ him for kicking low. This only pissed Maeda off and caused him to beat on Kido more. I'm liking his surly attitude. Tatsumi Fujinami & Kengo Kimura vs. Tony St. Clair & Kevin Von Erich - St. Clair didn't fit in. Whenever it was Kevin against Fujinami or Kimura, the match had great intensity. They did a particualrly nice job getting over the danger of the claw. But when St. Clair tagged in, the match invariably lost steam. He didn't wrestle badly; he just had nothing to do with the plot of the match. So when Kimura pinned him, it seemed beside the point. Antonio Inoki vs. Madd Maxx - I think Madd was the suckier of the Maxxes, so you can imagine how well this went. Lots of poorly applied chinlocks, weak clubbing and other tedium. 2/5/86: Matches also found on NJ Classics 224 and 225 Antonio Inoki & Keichii Yamada vs. Nobuhiko Takada & Osamu Kido - Terrific tag to set off the UWF-NJ war. Everyone played his role well. It's funny that Phil referenced Kikuchi in describing Yamada's performance, because I thought exactly the same thing. Takada was also very good as the UWF young gun who wouldn't back down from Inoki. Easy nomination. Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara - This was JIP on TV, so we want to use the Classics version. But I saw enough to agree with the nomination. They upped the intensity from their January meeting, and I always love a good restart. It was obvious that the crowd was still learning the style, however, because they seemed caught off guard by the ending. I guess they couldn't see Fujiwara's superb drooling. IWGP Tag Team Titles: Tatsumi Fujinami & Kengo Kimura © vs. Kevin & Kerry Von Erich - JIP, and I'd like to check out the full version on Classics. They went back and forth early before Kimura and Fujinami began to attack Kerry's leg. This set up the cool spot of him escaping a figure four by putting the claw on Fujinami's knee. Fujinami crafted a cool escape of his own a few minutes later, as he shifted into Kevin's guard out of a body scissors and hit him with some ground and pound. The match got more chaotic after that. Kerry and Fujinami applied dueling claws. Kevin got the claw on Kimura for awhile. They all brawled on the outside. And sure enough, it ended in a countout. This would've been a great build match but I don't see a blowoff in the match listings. Thus, it feels more like a well-crafted tease. And that makes me not want to nominate it, even though this feud had greatness in it.
