No feeling out here as Takada and Koshinaka started off throwing bombs. I thought that as natural rivals paired at the last minute, they might hint at some uneasiness. But they worked together seamlessly. This match ended up focusing on Mutoh vs. Takada with Takada always cutting off Mutoh's bursts of offense and really punishing him. It featured a restart but they did that screwy thing where they wiped out one shitty ending only to go to another. Still, there was enough action here for it to move on.

Tatsumi Fujinami & Keiji Muto vs. Shiro Koshinaka & Nobuhiko Takada (11/24/86)

 

Interesting to see Kosh & Takada teaming up here since they are rivals and they start this out fast and furious taking out their opponents with quick tags and fast action. Kosh just kills Fujinami with a dropkick, suplexes, and a tombstone piledriver but can’t put him away. Fujinami would eat punishment from Takada before making his own comeback and tagging in Muto who would show some fire but like his mentor he would get punished by the cranky Jr. heavies. Muto would strike back though and had a great slap exchange with Kosh before tagging Fujinami back in who would just dropkick the fuck out of Kosh as revenge for eating one himself earlier. There would be some really fun action between all four men with Muto hitting a beautiful moonsault on Kosh before we get Muto & Takada going to war with each other with them falling to the floor as Takada had him in a leglock for a double countout. The wrestlers want a restart though and get it with Takada just kicking Muto’s ass before the match would break down again into a 4-way brawl on the floor forcing yet another double countout. There was some tremendous action in this match and this should easily move forward.

Strong nomination but the finish hurt the match. The restart didn't help things. Both Phil and I really dug the Takada-Mutoh section where they worked it on the mat and that was the matchup I was least looking forward to. Loved Fujinami getting his ass kicked in the beginning and I thought Takda and Kosh made a really great tag team, almost as good of friends as enemies.

Really solid exciting action. Takada was especially a beast here, laying in some nasty kicks, and having a shockingly great mat exchange with Takada. Fired up Fujinami ruled too, really didn't care for the finish, which will keep this from being top 20ish on a list, but solid nomination for sure.