Posted December 3, 200816 yr comment_5436180 DVD #13 6/25/82 Hiro Matsuda/Yatsu vs. Isamu Teranishi/Animal Hamaguchi - Good showcase for the young Yatsu. That's about it. Tiger Mask/Fujinami vs. Ultraman/Polaco - Like so many matches from '82, this sort of cruised along in second gear. It wasn't bad, but there was no fire to it, no issue that just had to be solved with some violence. It's just hard to compare this stuff to the highlights from '83-'84 and '86-'87 and think it's exciting. Hogan/Inoki vs. Andre the Giant/El Canek - Canek didn't seem to fit in given that the other three were booked as the biggest forces in the company. So I guess it wasn't surprising that Hogan and Inoki tossed him around a bunch. Andre did a surprisingly graceful flip over the top rope after taking a shot from Hogan. This was just a placeholder, though, to keep some heat on the Andre-Hogan-Inoki nexus. 7/2/82 Tiger Mask vs. El Polaco - Above-average Tiger Mask match. They did some smooth matwork early, with Polaco trying to ground Tiger Mask. He didn't have enough offense to come off as a real threat. Scary moment at the end when Tiger Mask hit a dragon suplex and the ref called for the bell immediately, because Polaco had taken it right on the neck. If I was doing a review of '82, I might include this. But for a best of the decade? No go. Scott McGhee/Andre vs. Hogan/Sakaguchi - Kind of bland with Scott McGhee serving as Andre's handicap of the day and Andre taking a fairly easy pin on Sakaguchi. Inoki/Fujinami vs. El Canek/Dick Murdoch - Again, this was fine but when compared to the Murdoch/Adonis tags from subsequent years, it came off drab.
