One last visit to 1986 New Japan

Tatsumi Fujinami v Akira Maeda (New Japan, 6/12/86)

This was the match I might've been most looking forward to re-watching when I decided to go back through all of this stuff. It finished #6 on the DVDVR voting and it was my own #7, so it set a high bar. Seeing everything surrounding it again over the last couple weeks, all of the build with them facing off in tags and multi-mans and gauntlet series, I was ready to jump in again. I don't know if you could really call it a singular match in wrestling history, because at the end of the day it's shooter v pro wrestler and there have been plenty of those, but if nothing else it feels special in a way very few of those do. I think they told their story pretty much perfectly. Maeda is a wrecking ball who has a dozen ways to submit you and a hundred ways to knock you out. Fujinami, like all of the New Japan guys, has been hardened over the last six months just by virtue of being in there with the Maedas, Fujiwaras and Takadas of the world. After being put through the trials of UWF, this crop of New Japan wrestlers are all the better for it, a new dimension added to their game, and Fujinami may have come out the other side better than anyone. Maeda is Maeda though, and learning how to fight off a legbar won't be enough to save you. The early parts are pretty even and I loved Fujinami ducking the wheel kick and running Maeda over with the lariat. A sports analogy would be the underdog team playing on home turf, full of energy and scoring early, their gameplan being implemented exactly the way it was laid out on paper. But in a world of sportswashing where sports teams are backed by literal nation states, that gulf between the best (or at least richest) and the rest has never been bigger. Those moments where it looks like David might be able to topple Goliath are fleeting and before long Maeda reminded everyone why he's Goliath. Fujinami sold that first leg kick like a shotgun blast and it was an avenue for Maeda to exploit the rest of the match. It was a constant uphill struggle for Fujinami and he had to maximise every bit of offence he could muster, take advantage of every lapse in Maeda's concentration, while Maeda was a thresher and could shut him down or wrap him up with cold efficiency. There were parts where I would've liked Maeda to go a little bigger, to really attack openings, to maybe lean into the crowd reaction after they'd exploded for a high kick or a suplex rather than drop into a kneebar, but for Maeda the aim of the game was to win and I can't point to anything he did that wasn't in service of that narrative. Fujinami is damn near heroic down the stretch, the desperation German an incredible moment topped only by his kickout from the dragon suplex, and then the finish is...what it is. If the plan was for them to go to a 30 minute draw then they were building the absolute hell out of it, but Fujinami was bleeding like a spigot so it's hard to conclude they were wrong for calling it early, even if Fujinami probably needed to get a few more licks in to make the double TKO plausible. This isn't my favourite match of the year, but it's still a corker, feels like the main event of 1986 New Japan, and a pretty good place to put a cap on this wee project. 

And so, as we did with '87, here is your very official top 15 New Japan matches of 1986 (aka The Year of Yoshiaki):

1. Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Shiro Koshinaka, Kantaro Hoshino & George Takano v Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Nobuhiko Takada, Kazuo Yamazaki & Osamu Kido (9/19/86)
2. Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Kantaro Hoshino & Umanosuke Ueda v Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Nobuhiko Takada, Kazuo Yamazaki & Osamu Kido (3/26/86)
3. Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Kazuo Yamazaki v Keiichi Yamada & Umanosuke Ueda (5/19/86)
4. Tatsumi Fujinami v Akira Maeda (6/12/86)
5. Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Keiichi Yamada (9/23/86)
6. Antonio Inoki v Yoshiaki Fujiwara (2/6/86)
7. Nobuhiko Takada v Keiichi Yamada (7/19/86)
8. Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Shiro Koshinaka, Seiji Sakaguchi & Keiichi Yamada v Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Osamu Kido, Kazuo Yamazaki & Nobuhiko Takada (Gauntlet Match) (5/1/86)
9. Antonio Inoki v Dick Murdoch (6/19/86)
10. Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Kengo Kimura (5/16/86)
11. Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura & Shiro Koshinaka v Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Osamu Kido (7/19/86)
12. Antonio Inoki v Yoshiaki Fujiwara (6/12/86)
13. Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Akira Maeda (2/5/86)
14. Dick Murdoch v Akira Maeda (4/25/86)
15. Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Akira Maeda (1/10/86)