I love both of these guys. Sano in SWS was in that cool bridge phase of his career between the pro style of New Japan and the shoot style of UWFi, where he was working some PWFG shows along with the SWS ones and trying a bunch of cool quasi shoot stuff across both environments. Here my favourite example was a rolling surfboard into a rear naked choke with a bodyscissors. He has Orihara in a facelock and Orihara starts kicking him in the head to get out, so Sano catches one of those kicks and just rips the kid into a brutal kneebar. Orihara is one of the most fun young whippersnappers ever. Every time out he's willing to take a fucking stomping but he'll fire back heroically and he makes the absolute most of his hope spots. They blow an early sequence built around leapfrogs and missed strikes, but you give him the points anyway as he makes up for it by hitting two incredible dives to the floor. His first was a gorgeous flying cross body, then his moonsault obliterated Sano and I'm thinking Orihara had one of the best moonsaults ever. Sano's great at giving him enough to look like he's going places, but all the same this was Sano's match to dominate. Eventually he decapitates Orihara with a spin kick and folds him with a dragon suplex, and 1991 Sano really did have one of the best offensive arsenals in wrestling.
Kenta Kobashi, KENTA & Tamon Honda v Yoshihiro Takayama, Takuma Sano & Go Shiozaki (NOAH, 4/27/08)
Let me tell you, if your idea of great pro wrestling is Big Beefy Fellas hitting each other really hard then this is the match for you. Even more than that, if you're into prolonged chop battles where Big Beefy Fellas try and turn each other's chest purple then you want every second of this opening. Ordinarily I'd have turned it off after 30 seconds but it's been a long time since I watched any late-career Kobashi, or CHOPbashi as he was affectionately referred to back in the 2008. He certainly hits like a bastard. This also had at least some semblance of story behind it, as Go was his protégé for a minute there and I guess now they're on opposite sides of the fence. Go wants to prove a point about how MANLY he is and Kobashi is like "no." I don't know, it was stupid but Kobashi's charisma at least makes it compelling to some degree. Prolly. It also led to a great bit where Takayama came in and told Go to get his shit together so Shiozaki elbowed him in the face, so Takayama elbowed him back, and then they proceeded to elbow each other in the face a few more times. Then they both turned and booted Kobashi in the face as it was all a RUSE. I thought KENTA might've been the most fun guy in this as he was in his element getting chippy with Takayama and Sano. He hit three running corner dropkicks to Takayama that easily could've given the big man another stroke, then later Takayama kneed him in the sternum so hard KENTA flew about eight feet in the air. Sano wasn't involved too much until the end, but he gets to close the match out and it was a nice enough showcase.
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