Man, this was the business. I've said it before on this here nonsense of a thing but these multi-man tags might be my favourite kind of wrestling match, and New Japan knew how to do them better than anyone. While I'm not entirely sure if this had any inter-promotional slant to it like the WAR/NJ or UWF/NJ feuds (to be honest I don't really know anything of the backstory here), it did have the buckets of heat and hate and piss and vinegar that made those matches so special. It never slowed down for a minute and every single person involved got to look good; those in minor roles, those in major roles, those in any role in between. Sasaki looked like a prodigy and the heir to Masa Saito, Hoshino was over like crazy and punched everybody in the face, Koshinaka ruled as your underdog babyface cracking people in the jaw with hip attacks, Choshu was an amazing big man on campus, Hamaguchi was the perfect ringleader of his lumpy scuzzball circus, literally every person involved brought the goods. And then you had Masa Kurisu, who never just stole the show -- he stole it, set it on fire, pissed over its remains and put the head in anybody who tried to stop him. By christ what a performance. His side were the heels to begin with so you expect them to get heat anyway, but he started as someone being booed by association and by the end people were baying for his blood, even when he came in legally. It might be his career performance. Like, I can see Kurisu not being for everyone. A lot of what he does looks messy and uncooperative. "He makes his opponents earn it" probably won't fly for everyone and so his selling might just look like he's not actually selling at all. But all of that gave this an extra edge, where everything he did looked like it was on the verge of breaking down, like he really wanted to throttle whoever he grabbed by the throat or headbutted in the cheek, and he grabbed literally everyone by the throat and headbutted everyone in the cheek. He'd drag someone to the floor and hammer them with chairs, he'd randomly come in and stomp someone in the neck, he'd slap people as hard as humanly possible and potato the fuck out of everybody. But all of those things had amazing payoffs, like when Koshinaka smashed a full row of chairs over his head or when Hoshino punched him in the nose. The best payoff of them all came right at the end. Kurisu pretty much bullied Sasaki for large parts of the match and revelled greatly in how much people hated him for it. He gave the kid nothing and treated him like a scrub. Then at the end Kurisu tries to stick his nose in again, Sasaki sprints over from his own corner and about takes the wee fella's head off with a dropkick. That Kurisu sold it like he'd been hit by a truck made it look like Sasaki had actually overcome something, and Choshu putting the nail in his coffin with a lariat gave the people the exact result they wanted. Kurisu needed to eat shit for his conduct and they couldn't have delivered on that any better with the finish. Just an awesome match, and like the best of these multi-man tags I could re-watch it in a week and find ten new things to love about it. After the bell Kurisu has to be pulled off his own teammate and staggers around the ring like a drunkard cussing out fans and kicking the ring ropes. Just in case you were wondering.
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