Shinjiro Ohtani v Masao Orihara (WAR, 1/16/94)
Man what the fuck? This was WAR v New Japan at its very best, delivering what might be the most under the radar classic of the entire feud. People who wound up being jaded with the direction of juniors wrestling will often point to that Ohtani/Samurai match from 1996 as an example of what it could've been (or what it SHOULD'VE been, by god! Prolly). It was less about the big moves and nearfalls and more about the strategy and limbwork that actually mattered and whatever. And like, I can get behind that because Ohtani/Samurai rules and lots of current junior heavyweight stuff kinda sucks. But at the same time fuck all that because Ohtani and Orihara TRULY reinvented the wheel two years earlier. This was bonkers. Orihara is such a great hate feud wrestler because he'll potato your skull in and blatantly stamp on your testicles, and pissed off Ohtani is my favourite Ohtani by miles so it's probably no surprise that he fits right in working a Tenryu fed. He spits in Orihara's face right at the beginning and for the next few minutes we get some back and forth niggliness punctuated by headbutts and slaps and mean mugging, two guys who do not like each other making it blatantly obvious. They trade missed elbows drops, do a rope running sequence, hit stereo dropkicks/spinning wheel kicks, and on the surface it's no different than your standard junior heavyweight parity exchange. Except you buy every move here as something that was intended to remove teeth. They never acknowledged the other's athletic prowess with a nod of respect, they got back up and started throwing crowbars or standing on the other's throat or hitting body slams that the other guy had very little say in taking. Then Orihara hits maybe the most insane piledriver I've ever seen. And then Ohtani responds with a completely ludicrous tombstone that Orihara takes on the side of his head like a psychopath. AND THEN Orihara responds to that with yet another piledriver, this time one of those Cactus Jack "snap" variations that about put Ohtani on his neck all Tiger Driver '91 style. I mean I guess the selling was ropey, but it wasn't like your fighting spirit no-sell rubbish and when have you ever seen someone give a shit about a piledriver in Japan anyway? There was at least DELAYED selling, like when Orihara collapsed after hitting the second piledriver like he had nerve damage. I'm willing to believe that the HATE carried them through and maybe this was in actual fact the pinnacle of selling in Japanese wrestling. Ohtani immediately spin kicking Orihara so hard he about caved in his temple was incredible so who even cares about selling a piledriver? Even the leg work in the middle of the match was fine. It probably wasn't ever going to go anywhere, but it was brief and they at least fought over it, and that usually consisted of them trying to pull each other's nose off or kicking each other in the throat. At one point Ohtani, lying supine on the canvas, slapped Orihara so hard I thought his eardrum exploded. The violence continued to escalate into the finishing run and at no point did it feel like they were just running through big nearfalls. There was a struggle over everything and it was all interspersed with nasty striking. None of the flying looked particularly graceful, it was sometimes messy, but it all landed with impact, like two guys trying to use their bodies as scud missiles rather than scoring points for aesthetics. Ohtani looked like he really wanted to take Orihara's head off with that springboard dropkick and Orihara's diving headbutt was just stupid brutal. Orihara moonsaulting off the top rope to the floor and landing on his feet is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. How he never crippled himself is beyond me and of course Ohtani spin kicked him clean in the face as soon as he landed. I'd take this easily over most of the heralded 90s New Japan juniors stuff.
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