We may yet get bored of 1986 New Japan. Another day, perhaps

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Kengo Kimura (New Japan, 5/16/86)

There are a few different faces of Fujiwara. One is the elite grappler whose general decorum is befitting of his status, aggressive but fair, tenacious but ultimately sporting. Another is the old master who's happy to mess around a bit, who can still enjoy life even past his prime, satisfied with the legacy he's built, secure in his standing. Both of those Fujiwaras are great, sometimes for similar reasons, sometimes for different ones. But my favourite Fujiwara is the one who's out to watch the world burn. The Fujiwara who sets it alight in the first place, where decorum goes out the window and victory becomes a secondary concern. The Fujiwara who wants to make Choshu's life a misery, to drag him down to Fujiwara's level, even just for the sport of it. This was that Fujiwara, and I don't have a clue what prompted it. He attacks Kimura while the latter is stepping through the ropes and after a minute Kimura is bleeding all over himself. You could tell right away that Fujiwara wasn't arsed about winning this and was more bothered about putting Kimura through hell. Any match against this Fujiwara is a fight and never a fair one. Even more so it's a test, one less about skill and more about character, your mental and physical toughness. How much can you take? How much can you give back? How much does Fujiwara really care so long as he has his fun? Kimura had no choice but to embrace the challenge and basically his first bit of offence was pinning Fujiwara to the mat and grabbing him by the throat. It didn't last long and pretty soon Fujiwara was back headbutting him and showing him how you really choke someone. Fujiwara has one of the meanest chokes ever, and I'm not talking about the guillotine or rear naked sort. He'll just wrap his hand around your trachea like a vice grip, crazy-eyed and frothing at the mouth and maybe a part of you wonders if Kimura shouldn't just live to fight another day. He's a wrestler and this isn't even a wrestling match anymore. Pick your battles and all that. I'm a sucker for a good rock solid Fujiwara cranium spot and this had three great ones. First Kimura smashed a chair over his head and Fujiwara merely took the skeleton of it and passed it to a bystander, then Kimura rammed him head-first into the turnbuckle bolts, the foolishness of it swiftly laughed off. There came a point where Fujiwara was covered in Kimura's blood, a wide, bloody streak of it up the side of his face that resembled the grin of Heath Ledger's Joker. If that isn't a perfect visual then I don't know what is. Kimura sells every legbar like his tibia's about to snap and Fujiwara looks demonic, like a snapped tibia was the least of his intentions. When you think Kimura might have a shot after the piledriver Fujiwara just takes him to the floor again and dumps him over the railing, and it's hard to explain but he did it with a casualness that was sort of remarkable. His body language, physical demeanour, whatever - that one moment pretty much summed up his entire thought process and he communicated it in a way that not many wrestlers could. That he had the cheek to bow to the crowd in the middle of the ring after the bell was the cherry on top. Really one of the great Fujiwara performances. 

Dick Murdoch & Masked Superstar v Akira Maeda & Osamu Kido (New Japan, 12/11/86)

Well if nothing else this little foray in 1986 New Japan has shown that Dick Murdoch was one of the best wrestlers in the world that year (maybe even #2 to Fujiwara). He didn't necessarily do anything spectacular here but the pairing with Maeda was really good. At this point I'd call it a really fun pairing in general. Knowing what we know, Maeda could've stretched him to hell if he really wanted to, but Murdoch comes across as a guy who's never outclassed on the mat during their exchanges. Even as a pretty goofy character he carries himself like he can go, and the crowd buy it and you buy it and like, he's just good at working the mat, you know? He and Superstar isolate Maeda initially and Murdoch is just awesome working the arm with regular holds, really grinding the elbow, twisting it at awkward angles. All of Eadie's stuff looks decent and he's a fine second-in-command, mostly coming in to follow Murdoch's lead without trying to outshine the major players. As the match goes on Murdoch gets more frustrated, more animated, and eventually threatens to deck the ref'. Maeda tries the corner wheel kick on Superstar and misses so Murdoch grabs the leg and wraps it around the post, and obviously you're thinking this is about to get awesome but then Maeda tags out like ten seconds later. It's a shame they never made more of that.