Posted February 26, 200916 yr comment_5437730 Ginnetty 1988 Season, Disc #23 Sky-A NJ Classics matches #2 1.Tony St. Clair vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (10/10) - NJ used St. Clair periodically through much of the decade but never seemed to treat him as a serious threat. Here, he threw lots of uppercuts, kneelifts and hard slaps. Fujiwara took most of them but seemed to be luring St. Clair, because every few minutes, he'd catch a strike and turn it into a submission attempt. Given that dynamic, I was surprised that Fujiwara won kind of suddenly with a roll-up. This was OK but lacked the intensity or cleverness of high-end Fujiwara. 2.Steve Williams & Tony St. Clair vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Osamu Kido (10/19) - They used Fujiwara getting his head rammed into the exposed turnbuckle as a transition spot, which amused me. Williams just seemed lost in NJ. He did some power stuff, a bit of slower grappling, some cheating spots, but he never developed a clear identity and often seemed out of sync. The finish involved some uninteresting stuff between St. Clair and Kido. Just a so-so outing in general. 3.Steve Williams vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (10/27) - They worked the "hard-head" spot well. Not only did Fujiwara invite the turnbuckle shots with an exagerrated gesture, he emphasized the magic of his nogging by rocking Williams with some shots to the same exposed metal. That was the highlight, however. Williams still looked out of sync, and the finish sucked. 4.Perro Aguayo & El Canek vs. Keiji Yamada & Shiro Koshinaka (10/10) - Here's the fun little gem from this disc. Aguayo threw all of his shit with gusto and nailed sentons left and right in this one. He and Canek had good chemistry with Koshinaka, but the best shit came from the Perro/Yamada match-up. Yamada was already so good. All of his moves had snap, he made his opponent's stuff look brutal and he just had a gift for timing his kickouts and comebacks. Aguayo, meanwhile, ripped off these satanic screams every time he hit something big. Good stuff. It goes on the block. 5.Hiro Saito/Riki Choshyu vs. Steve Williams/Steve Casey (10/10) - Williams seemed a little more in his element against the straight-ahead power of Choshu and Saito. But this was a pretty nonchalant win for the natives. 6.Antonio Inoki vs. Bam Bam Bigelow (10/10) - This went about two minutes. It really looked like Bigelow might have forgotten to kick out at the right time.
