Have I perchance mentioned that young Liger was the fucking truth? To be honest I've been cold on him for years and Takada has never been my guy, so if I hadn't been watching all this stuff anyway I'd probably never have checked this out. Fortuitous then, as it was pretty awesome. What I really liked was how they sold their standing in the hierarchy. Yamada was frantic in going to the ropes whenever Takada would apply the legbar, while Takada was much more composed if Yamada managed to lock in a submission. The crowd picked up on it as well and were far more vocal when Yamada was the one in trouble, probably because they bought him submitting early more than they bought it from Takada. By the end they were red hot for everything and a big part of that is Takada's performance, which honestly might be one of the best I've ever seen from him. I thought he was legitimately great in this. He started to get a little more desperate as things went on, showed frustration after Yamada kept getting the ropes, shaking his head like "will this kid just go away already," sold a greater degree of danger for Yamada's holds, gave him more in strike exchanges as the match progressed. Maybe he'd been taking cues from Fujiwara because he really knew when to give and when to take. There's a cool example about midway in after Yamada made the ropes off ANOTHER legbar attempt, and Takada got up and immediately started throwing kicks. He'd kept those in the holster for the first 8-9 minutes so at that point you knew Yamada was getting on his nerves. He might not have been a veteran yet, but this was him in a position of more experienced worker, not necessarily having to carry someone but at least be in the driver's seat, and fair play to him because he was excellent. Yamada was great as scrappy underdog. He held his own in strike exchanges and I liked how he would use things like lariats and dropkicks rather than the pure shoot style strikes of Takada, which if nothing else kept the line between New Japan and UWF halfway in place. Loved the bit where Takada refused to be whipped into the ropes so Yamada clotheslined him in the face a few times, then tried a wild dropkick and crashed hard. He also sold the struggle and the danger of not only holds, but of a few key moves, really in a way that not a lot of wrestlers two years into their career would (or at least not like this). Those legbar examples were obvious but so was the tombstone, where Takada tried it twice in quick succession and Yamada frantically wriggled out both times. Then there was the fight over the chickenwing in the back half where they were channelling Fujinami and Fujiwara, reversing the reversals trying to hook it in. That sort of struggle set up the payoffs for when Takada managed to grab the legbar in the middle of the ring. At that point I thought it was over for sure, and I think maybe the people did too, but Yamada made the ropes and the reaction was incredible. Then when Takada hits the tombstone - after Yamada hit one of his own - it lets him finally hook in that chickenwing. If that's not good build I'm not sure what is. This would've done really well on the 80s set if we had it, but I'm sort of glad we didn't because it's cool knowing things as good as this are still popping up. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. As they say (prolly).
Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura & Shiro Koshinaka v Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Osamu Kido (New Japan, 7/19/86)
This is another one we didn't have available until the last few years. It's bonkers that stuff like this was happening on untelevised house shows. It's also another one to add to the Fujiwara hits collection for 1986. He was so good in this. Early on Koshinaka foolishly tries to step to him and they trade a few slaps, Koshinaka giving no ground and even grinding a forearm across Fujiwara's face, and eventually Fujiwara just stops trading shots and instead bores an increasingly deeper hole in him with every slap Koshinaka throws. When Koshinaka tries a dropkick Fujiwara swats it away like a pesky fly and tags out, above such silliness, but not above laying waste to that boy at a later date (or a later moment on the same date, as it were). Not to be a broken record but god in heaven Fujiwara v Fujinami is a perfect matchup. For their very first exchange Fujiwara backs him into the corner and slaps him. Nothing prompted it, nothing warranted it, Fujiwara just did it because he took the notion to and he is who he is. Fujinami is incredulous and charges him into the opposite corner where he unloads with slaps and kicks that leave Fujiwara curled up on the mat, then he drags Fujiwara into the New Japan corner where all three of them stomp a mudhole in him. I cannot express how amazing this was; a total "do you know who the fuck I am?!" big dog moment from Fujinami. It leads to Fujiwara getting beat on for a minute, but he roars back against Koshinaka - who foolishly went for the slaps again - with the headbutts, chucks him out the ring and points at Fujinami like "get in here, boy." Then Fujinami obliges and Fujiwara casually tags in Maeda. Just a spectacular sequence that makes you wonder what else these guys were doing on house shows that are forever lost to time. Maeda/Fujinami was great again. Quick grappling, Maeda's striking looking lethal, Fujinami having to find ways around it, everything molten hot. I haven't watched the June singles match in 13 years and I'm very hyped about seeing it again. Maeda catching a Kimura kick and drilling him with a capture suplex was another highlight, maybe only topped by the finishing wheel kick that about caved in Koshinaka's face.
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