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I'm a little perplexed at the meager discussion here in comparison to Okada and how it's mainly centered on him as a lower end candidate while people view Okada as a high-end guy. For my money, Shiozaki has been far better than Okada for almost the entirety of his run and is a real highlight in the midst of a scene undergoing heavy stylistic degeneration. I've seen a surprising number of gems from Shiozaki's early years, but 2009-2011 is when he finds his character and his singles/tags opposite Sasaki and Sugiura were reliably high quality. I'm struggling to remember anything memorable he did in 2012, so I'll grant that as a down year, but he follows that up by going to AJPW and having banger after banger with everyone there along with working awesome exchanges in Kobashi's retirement tag. Shiozaki/Nakajima vs. Akiyama/Omori is my 2014 MOTY and the rematch from 2015 is probably the best match I've seen live. My viewing after 2015 is spotty as him jumping back to NOAH really bummed me out and the Suzuki-gun invasion angle made me lose a lot of interest in following Japanese wrestling, but the big matches I've seen vs. Nakajima and Sugiura have lived to the hype. The 2020 Nakajima match is my current MOTD. So, that's nearly 20 years of good stuff dating back to near his debut with multiple MOTY level performances. Doesn't sound at all like a guy who should be struggling to get on a ballot if you're into his style.

I liked this a fair bit even though the 9.4 Cagematch rating still feels like a big head scratcher to me. Interesting watch both to see Danielson try his hand working a NOAH style epic and to see Shiozaki in a long match at a point where he was still figuring out his character. I was dreading that they were gonna work a 90's AJPW tribute match, but was pleasantly surprised to see how they took things in their own direction with Danielson's character work and submissions. Danielson looked more focused and less workratey compared to the US indy stuff I've seen from him. Shiozaki's performance gets slept on here. Even though Danielson was in the driver's seat, Shiozaki still brought some solid selling on his arm and interesting offense. I was impressed by the power demonstrated on the spot where he hooked Danielson's leg mid-suplex. It was also very cool how he switched to his left arm to throw chops. I kind of wondered why he didn't do that in the 2020 Nakajima match, and I guess I got an answer here in that there looked to be a downgrade in his chopping power from doing that. Match is further elevated by a crowd who was into both men and enjoyed seeing them give it their all. A little sad to see all the empty seats when Danielson posed after the match, though.

What the hell. I had no memory of the 1st fall ending like this when I'd seen this before, but you're right. Mistico says "no mas" after Guerrero shoves him back into the ring, the ref tries to push away Guerrero from attacking him, but Guerrero attacks him anyway and gets DQ'd. All time bad finish there. I also like how Mistico goes from Hogan/Michaels tier overselling in the first fall to working these incredibly difficult looking flying counters in the second fall, and then back to selling like death with no middle ground. A good no fluff spotfest but I wouldn't call it a great match.

Watching Lorefice's excellent review of Fujii/Yoshida got me interested in rewatching the match alongside watching Fujii's other matches for the first time. I feel like she has a stronger case than is being presented. It certainly doesn't hurt that I have her debut as a likely top 3 match in a loaded year and the other tags at around ****, but I'd argue her case is strongest in the uniqueness of her work. The incredible technique and speed of her transitions is almost like a different species from any other grappler in wrestling. Her work really just gets better the more you rewatch and rewind for all the little details you pick up. This absolutely beautiful ankle sweep almost demands to be looked at frame-by-frame to appreciate the incredible speed involved. Top tier Han and Tamura matches are kind of similar, but there's also a pro-style leaning to her work that you don't get with their stuff. Fujii's work is less "let's build a pro wrestling match around legit techniques" and more "let's imagine pro wrestling as normally presented is a shoot and let's see what happens if you plop a high level BJJ practitioner into that world."

Best part of this was easily KENTA's initial control segment with him bitch slapping Marufuji and finding ways to disrespect him. Things quickly went downhill from there with Marufuji's dull leg work. He always struck me as a guy more interested in showing off all the moves he could do than actually caring to make it look painful, and that was the case here. After that bit of time killing, the match just becomes a blur of one big move after the other. Could be that I was just in a bad mood from the bad limb work section and KENTA making 0 effort in selling the limb work, but the big moves sequences worked here felt cooperative and struck me as a step down from what they did in the October match. I wanted to scream at the almost total lack of struggle when KENTA hit that top rope falcon arrow. Also, the amount of near falls they did got really silly. Match went way too long and I was begging for them to take it home by the end. It was entertaining watching how the audience bit on every near fall long after I had checked out of the match, though.

The idea of viewing this as a parody of epic AJPW tags was key for me in getting this match after having watched it around the time of the Purotopia 2004 vote and not really understanding the praise. To use Japanese comedy terminology, Saito and Misawa play the tsukkomi role here while Ogawa and Inoue are the boke. That is, Saito and Misawa are the badass bruisers who just wrestle straightforward, while Inoue and Ogawa are their tag team partners who are clearly ranked below and are goofy as shit in everything they do. Though there is some fluidity in the roles, it's the contrast between the straightforward wrestling of the tsukkomi with the goofyness of the boke that makes for a funny as hell match for the first 20 minutes or so. I've had major issues with Ogawa's execution in the 90's AJPW tags/6-mans I've watched recently, but his sometimes iffy strikes fit right in for his role here and his character work was quite funny. Saito was on his best behavior and looked credible trading blows with Misawa. Still, this was clearly the Inoue show with his wonderful antics carrying the bulk of the entertainment. I wasn't disappointed by Misawa in this, but this felt a lot like him sitting back and giving the spotlight to the other guys in the match. I was having such a great time laughing and grinning that I was a little disappointed when the comedy got phased out and they went for a more bomb-focused closing stretch. Looking at it for what it was, though, they did handle the transition away from the comedy work really well. In retrospect, there were even some hints dropped early on at Inoue actually being more competent than he initially appears. It's also kind of heartwarming to see Inoue get a chance to show his stuff after seeing him work comedy his entire career.

I've become a big fan of Shamrock's pre-WWE work. One of the most insanely gifted athletes I've seen in any sport. When he's been involved in some of the greatest matches ever vs. Sano and Suzuki, I'm not sweating that he doesn't have hundreds of *** matches to his name. Anyway, here's a match I came across a few months ago from 1990 in Lou Thesz's promotion where he does really well doing 50's style matwork.

This is one I've seen cited regularly by Flair superfans as an example of him deviating from his formula, but I never got around to watching the whole thing until today as the shine always for some reason turned me off. It's really only after having yesterday watched Jumbo/Kikuchi from 1992 (epic match, BTW) that I think I can articulate why I find the way this starts to be off putting. Basically, contrary to how this match has been hyped up, I feel it actually is a really strong example of Flair sticking to a shine-heat-figure four-comeback formula to the match's detriment. In Jumbo/Kikuchi, it's a massacre from the start and every piece of offense Kikuchi can mount feels like a herculean effort. Here, there's no real suspense found when we get about 9 minutes of Morton effortlessly dominating and Flair doing his lame overacting. If, as Flair's fan's claim, he's portraying a multilayered psychopath character obsessed with keeping his gold, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to go right for the giant target that Morton has over his face right from the start? Even from a purely visual perspective, I don't get why Flair wouldn't have targeted Morton's nose from the start with how flimsy that covering looks. Also, wouldn't Morton's comeback feel far more impactful if we hadn't just witnessed him dominate the match's first half? When Morton's comeback does happen here, it feels flat to me since it's just him trying to get revenge by punching out Flair's nose, like I just saw him already do a few minutes ago. The standard awful 80's finish didn't do anything to help my impression of the match. The best part of the match is definitely Flair's heat segment working over Morton's nose, and I did find it pretty good despite my issues with what came before/after it. I found Morton's selling here a bit overrated compared to Kikuchi in the Jumbo match, but I still thought it was pretty good and especially liked the way he made Flair's chops look brutal. There were still some issues stopping me from getting as into things as I'd like. I've been spoiled by watching a lot of MMA and some puro matches where guys' noses get legit busted open, so it felt weird coming to this and seeing a forehead bladejob right after Flair starts attacking Morton's nose. If they weren't gonna go for legit nose blood, I feel like waiting a bit longer for the forehead blood or even no blood at all would have made things feel less hokey. Also, Flair doing the figure four towards the end of his beatdown hurt the flow of things and felt out of place with the rest of his strategy. No set-up or follow-up on the leg, just a figure four spot because a Flair match needs to have one. The transition back into Morton taking over was not that good. Morton just kind of gets angry and starts no-selling while Flair is chopping away at him, and that apparently means it's time for Flair to start doing his begging off and overselling things.

I interpreted the story as this: Misawa knows going in that there's 3 ways he can approach things. He can try to win by wearing down Jumbo on the mat (definitely not happening), trade bombs with Jumbo (likely not happening), or try to bait Jumbo into making a mistake and knock him out like he did on 5/26 (his most likely route to victory). Misawa manages to gain the upper hand at the start by blitzing Jumbo with his flying offense, but his big match inexperience kicks in when instead of dealing further damage he just tries to contain Jumbo with a front chancery. He ends up getting baited into a grappling match and more or less squanders his early advantage. Realizing it's not working out, he slaps Jumbo on the ropes to try to provoke him. Jumbo is able to keep his composure, though, and gets the better of Misawa after some impact move trading. Towards the end, Jumbo finds he has Misawa deep in the hole and becomes overconfident which, somewhat ironically, finally opens up a path to victory for Misawa. First with him throwing some weak elbows to mock Misawa, leading to Misawa landing his knockout elbow, and then later he misses a dropkick on the ropes. He's tipped himself out of the zone just enough that Misawa is able to regain his footing in the match with his high risk offense, and a small lapse in concentration from Jumbo shortly thereafter leads to the upset. I find the match is really well done in making you want more out of the feud while still functioning as an epic on its own. Lots of credit has to go to the production for the constant close-ups on Misawa's face to catch his great facial expressions. Each close-up told its own story, from the quiet confidence to start, to the look of anguish when Jumbo gains control, to the dizzy blinking when Jumbo starts to go for the finish. Complaints about the middle point dragging look to me like they come from a place of not really paying attention to what was going on. Even when the action turned basic, there was a lot going on in terms of struggling for holds, selling, and advancing the match's story. That sort of calm before the storm also serves to make the stretch run and especially the finishing pin feel all the more satisfying. It's so fun to just watch the reactions of the crowd members here as they progressively realize this isn't going to be an easy Jumbo win and Misawa actually has a shot. Complaints about the match needing a Jumbo flare up also miss what they were going for here. Jumbo is the ace of 10 years with a moveset that partially functions as a reference to the multitudes of legends he's wrestled/trained with, so there's no reason for him to lose his composure against a guy whom he spends the match thinking has no shot at beating him. Misawa's attempt to make Jumbo lose his cool fails, at least initially, but Misawa successfully maintains his own composure and is able to snag the win when the opportunity presents. It's partially a fluke but also not a complete fluke, because Misawa reached that point in the match not through trickery, but through sheer championship-worthy grit against a Jumbo who'd mostly wrestled a smart match. Jumbo losing his cool here would have cheapened both that victory and the later moments in the feud when he finally does let his rage take over. My own big nitpick would be that despite the action being mostly tightly executed, there's two pretty noticeable moments during the surfboard struggle, one right after the other, where Misawa's hand slips but Jumbo keeps pretending that Misawa is holding him anyway. It's something that you can't unsee once you notice it, and it just keeps getting funnier with every subsequent viewing to watch how Jumbo's arm tenses up whilst there's nothing but air fighting back. A different, more general, thing would be that the production's emphasis on close-ups also means there's some pretty noticeable moments of spot calling throughout the match. It's not as bad as John Cena match where you can audibly hear things, but you don't have to look too hard for it either. These sorts of business exposing things give the match a feel of being more rough around the edges compared to what would come later. Though I would still call this a masterpiece, I think I prefer the top tier 6-mans and maybe their 2 other big singles as overall packages.

Skipped the first 15 minutes because life's just too short for that shit. A pretty good bomb throwing match but not much more. Strong example of guys performing the sleight of hand of combining a long run time with lots of laying around/moving in slow motion to force a sense of epicness. Besides some fun Ibushi no selling moments, neither guy's selling or character work stuck out and I couldn't find much of a story besides it just being these dudes hucking bombs. Match is pretty much carried by all the crazy shit Ibushi did in between all the laying around. My favorite parts were the nutty way he landed on his neck off the botched pele kick and him punching out Okada. I continue to be amazed at how much Okada's character work looks to have regressed compared to 2012-2014. It's one thing if he wants to be the cool and stoic ace, but he was still doing a lot of playing to the crowd, so I don't think that's what he's going for. It's just he has the blandest facials and least interesting selling possible. About all he contributed here was a pretty dropkick.

Obviously not the greatest match ever, but I enjoyed it more than any or almost any of the matches from 2010's NJPW getting pimped as the greatest ever, so that's good enough for me. The tagline actually made a lot of sense for me in how the match seemed like it was laid out around on the premise of maximizing every aspect they could in WWE's epic match formula while adding on some fun twists along the way. Very much a self-conscious epic, but one that was upfront about it and didn't insult your intelligence or waste your time. The grappling was a real highlight for how they had such smooth and tight execution and rewarded attention to detail in how they sold. Even Orton's usually boring chinlock looked awesome here. Despite the 45 minute runtime, the match never felt slow or like they were just throwing stuff out there to kill time. Both guys also on-point with their facials with Orton being deliciously evil and Edge looking like he's on the verge of death from how Orton destroyed his neck. I loved all the unique angles we got to see and the fan reaction shots. Even the tributes to other workers felt tastefully done and befitting of their characters, like Orton drawing from his heel mentor by doing the pedigree and Edge responding with the rock bottom in reference to Triple H's babyface rival. The fatigue selling down the stretch was great, too, and they worked hard to make every near fall feel earned. Really cool touch as well how there were no rules broken, including no closed fists, until the very end of the match,

Banger 6-man which you probably wouldn't expect looking at the line-up on the old man side. Dory wrestles kind of like he's Misawa dad, doing forearm smashes and technical throws but while looking old, and it's awesome. I really enjoyed the matwork sequence he and Kikuchi started the match off with Kikuchi besting him until Dory figures him out. Dory downing Kawada with his forearms also felt like an iconic moment. Kobashi and Baba did some of their usual stuff (chop exchanges on the ropes + Kobashi doing his rolling cradle), which would probably get a bigger reaction out of me if I hadn't seen them those exact same sequences in like 4 or 5 other matches, but it was still interesting seeing the monster reactions they got from the crowd for those moments. I wonder if this was their first time working those exchanges? Andre isn't in the match for long, but he really leaves an impression. First, he tags in while holding Kobashi on the ropes for Baba to chop, but Baba refuses to use such underhanded tactics and Andre just begrudgingly lands his own monster chop before entering through the ropes. Then Kikuchi comes in and we get a hilarious spot where he runs straight into Andre's outheld fist while trying to running towards Andre as he's draped on the ropes. Kawada is next and we get the surreal images of him trying to slam Andre while Andre desperately holds onto the ropes, before Kawada settles for stiffing the shit out of him with his kicks. Andre sells big for them and tags out with a look that screams, "fuck this shit I'm out." The rest of the match doesn't quite match the magic of that first half, but Dory is still pretty fun to watch for how he keeps up with Kobashi and Kawada, working exchanges with them. Baba also eats some nastiness from Kawada and it was fun seeing Kawada bodyslam Baba after the unsuccessful attempt on Andre.

Baba's presence continues to be a strong indicator of quality in post-Jumbo 6-mans. I liked how Baba in this match didn't shy away from getting down and dirty with strikes anytime the opportunity arose. The chops he threw against Kobashi were these harsh thudding blows aimed near his neck that had me wincing at points and which Kobashi sold greatly. The greatest hits type spots between them also surface later in the Kobashi doing his rolling cradle, which they successfully milk for a hot nearfall, as well as executing a bodyslam and suplex, which are always cool to see. There was also one neck chop that Baba landed on Misawa while Misawa was running at him that I was shocked Misawa was able to Misawa was able to no-sell, though it looked to be affecting him after he tagged out and was waiting on the apron. The Kawada/Misawa exchanges were really interesting to see Kawada's growth after watching the 6/3/93 and 1/29/94 6-mans recently. In the former match, Misawa effortlessly dominated Kawada but in the latter match, Kawada was able to take advantage of a recent injury to turn Misawa into a FIP. Here, Kawada is working like Misawa's equal without any injury to use as a crutch, and their exchanges look every bit as impressive as you'd expect from seeing these guys at their peak. There was one spot I don't remember see anybody doing before where Misawa hits Kawada with a drop kick, but he ends up being kept up with the ropes and manages to land his own strike to down Misawa on the rebound. Kikuchi is predictably awesome as the plucky underdog and his staggered selling is tremendous even if he doesn't take quite as brutal a beating as you'd see in the Jumbo 6-mans. Still, there were some wonderfully violent moments in Kawada repeatedly throwing him into the guardrails and doing a single leg boston crab from a vertical angle where Kikuchi's foot almost reaches his head. Ouch. Taue works well with Kobashi and Misawa as you'd expect, but I really got a kick out of him working as a poor man's Jumbo opposite Kikuchi. I swear the types of exchanges they did where Kikuchi would fire himself up pounding away with elbows only to get downed by some piece of big man offense were near 1:1 recreates of the exchanges Jumbo did with Kikuchi. Also fun to see Taue trying the sweet brutal bodyslam on Kikuchi that Jumbo used only to get repeatedly motioned by Baba to do it harder. I don't think he did it quite as good as Jumbo but it was an admirable effort.

Epic 6-man that came out of nowhere. I believed that September 1996 was deep into the point where AJPW's big boys were no longer going all out for 6-mans, but I guess the fact of this being Baba's 36th anniversary match gave them a needed push. You know these guys mean business right from the first minute, which sees Kobashi eat a pair of insane backdrops from Kawada that he sells masterfully. Later on, Kobashi gets some payback when he lands a nasty AF overhead belly-to-belly that sees Kawada land on his forehead from a sick angle, leading to Kawada looking slightly out of it the rest of the match. Couldn't tell how much of the selling from these guys was them being legit knocked loopy, which is my favorite kind of selling. As the match progresses, it becomes pretty apparent that Kawada/Kobashi is the main pairing instead of the usual Misawa/Kawada due to Kawada and Kobashi being a few weeks away from their title match. Misawa throws some nasty elbows and works an epic double knockdown spot with Kawada late in the match, but he's surprisingly subdued overall. Baba is awesome here eating a body slam from Honda and and a monster suplex from Kobashi. His chop exchanges with Kobashi are a real highlight and he brings all kinds of great facials throughout the match. Taue spends most of the match in the background, though that seems like an intentional strategic decision as he comes across as a total monster when he becomes more of a factor later in the match against his tired opponents. Loved when his flexed his high flyer skills on Misawa with a buttery smooth dropkick. Honda is obviously the weakest guy in the match, but he still turns in a pretty fun performance going nuts with the headbutts any time he's in the ring.

I really didn't feel this one. The leg work wasn't particularly exciting and Tanahashi's dragon screw continues to not look good. Okada's leg selling alternated between high school play level acting and completely ignoring it. Then they squeeze in an Epic Elbow Exchange because every epic match needs to have one. Stretch run just looked like them running through their greatest hits and not a particularly great rendition of them. The reversals leaned more towards finisher square dance rather than feeling like a gritty struggle for control. The Omega match from next year's show has its flaws but I'd pretty easily take it over this.

https://vk.com/video498684816_456239038 With regards to late 90's gems, this match with Hase rules. Love how these two guys just casually do some of the coolest matwork of the 90's on a random Korakuen undercard match.

I don't agree that the authority angle has been played up in the same way as Austin/McMahon or Bryan/Triple H. It was made clear from when Triple H made announced Roman/Cody as the official main event that Rock couldn't just use his executive powers to do whatever he wants. It's possible that they're leaving the door open to some kind of power struggle later, but it's not really been explored yet. Rock's actions have been driven by his star power and ego with abuse of executive privileges not really being something he's resorted to. In announcing the tag it wasn't framed as "I'm the boss and you need to do this" but "here's an offer for you."

His stock just keeps rising the more I watch of him. All-time great FIP anytime he was in a 6-man opposite Jumbo for his ability to take the most brutal looking bumps possible, get himself twisted in all kinds of knots, and sell his ass off. Does kind of get disturbing once you start watching the smaller show matches and the handhelds, though, for how you realize the sort of damage he was taking night after night. Also fantastic in regular tags with the Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Can-Am stuff being a great trilogy of matches instead of just one classic match. The singles with Fuchi are super underrated and some of the best matches of 90's AJPW not involving the pillars. Then on top of that you have him reinventing himself for 2000's NOAH run, where he was pretty consistently entertaining even on smaller show matches and had a way of pushing the guys opposite of him to not just coast by.

Here after watching their incredible interactions in the 9/15/1989 6-man, and what a disappointment that this is their only singles match together. Any hope for this being good pretty much got derailed when Tenryu chokes out Fuchi with a guillotine, who then spends several minutes knocked out while Hokuto tries to create a distraction. Not sure if it was legit or they just wanted to give Hokuto some screentime, but it was bad either way. It's not until the last 2 or 3 minutes that this stops feeling like a waste of time when they finally start stiffing each other. Also the great production mostly misses the impact of what looked like a ridiculously stiff brainbuster but makes sure to zoom right in so we can see Fuchi talking to Tenryu during the finishing pin.

I was sure that I'd seen this before, but I didn't remember a thing from it while watching it, which would be weird for a match as good as this one. Definitely belongs in the top tier of 80's 6-mans and a likely point of inspiration for the epic Misawa/Jumbo 6-mans. As has been mentioned, what really makes this one stand out is how everyone gets their own distinct role and their own moments of looking awesome. Baba is a slightly more mobile late 80's Andre, Kawada's a striker, Fuyuki's more of a high flyer, Kimura has the hard head doing headbutts, Tenryu is Tenryu, and Fuchi plays the firey underdog role far better than I could have imagined. Loved how violent Tenryu came across in this and the part with him destroying Fuchi with a chair on the outside seems like the kind of thing that might have inspired 90's Jumbo. The match is loaded with too many great moments to list. One that stuck out to me was the Kawada plancha on Fuchi for how ridiculously smoothly they set up and executed the whole thing. Even with the best, it's often hard to buy into a guy just standing around and catching someone throwing their body at them, so I was really impressed with how believable they made it look despite their relative lack of big match experience. The other one was Fuyuki unloading slaps on Kimura, who completely no sold them before knocking down Fuyuki with a headbutt. That was so funny.

I'm really liking these mid-1990 6-mans for how you can see them doing so much experimentation in the characters and the spots right in front of you. With this one, I found the beginning teases and set-ups for the awesome Misawa/Jumbo confrontation almost as interesting as the confrontation itself. Crowd is great for this since this is the Misawa and Jumbo's first match back since the 6/8 upset and there's clearly a lot of intrigue in what happens. That experimentation also a bit of a negative here as Kikuchi spends the first half or so trying to work 50/50 with Kabuki and Fuchi and it doesn't really work. Things pick up massively when Jumbo wrecks Kikuchi and he gets a brutal FIP section that sees his nose blooded. Up to this point, I'd always thought the Kobashi nose angle in the October 6-man was just a shoot that they went with, but now I wonder if it might have been planned after seeing how well it worked here. People in the thread for the 8/18 6-man saw that as the big coming out party for Kikuchi but this feels like the match where it was actually established how great he was at getting his ass beat. Anyway, Misawa is an awesome hot tag and it never gets old seeing him destroy people with elbows. It's a little weird seeing him elbow Jumbo off the apron without Jumbo losing himself in burning rage, but points like that where they're stills working out the kinks of the formula also serve to make it interesting. On that front, we also get some sections where Taue tries to imitate Misawa, even nailing several dropkicks over the course of the match. Hot stretch run and seeing Kikuchi do a missile dropkick with blood dripping into his mouth was a great visual.

I loved this when it first appeared on the VAP Tiger Mask II set that released something like 10 years ago, and I think I loved it even more rewatching it today. Serves really well both as a high mark of the 80's AJPW 6-man style and an appetizer for what was to come in the 90's. Even though Hara and Misawa are the top guys on their respective teams, the focus on this seems to be more on putting the captains up against the plucky underdogs on the opposing teams. That means Hara/Ishikawa and Misawa/Kawada feel like the main pairings we see in this match, and both carry the same theme of the lower ranked guy getting their moments but still clearly being the lower ranked guy. Misawa looks really good in the Tiger Mask role with mixing high flying offense and stiff kicks. There's also a moment where he seems to accidentally invent the frog splash years before Art Barr. Since it's an 80's match, they keep a fast pace of mostly strike based offense, and that leads to some questionable moments, like when Kawada hits a jumping tombstone on Misawa and, and Misawa gets up just seconds later to catch Kawada's follow-up top rope move. To be fair, Kawada didn't hit the move that cleanly, so it's not the end of the world, but still annoying. The crowd was really interesting for how they were initially dead but the guys seemed to win them over and they got really hot for the stretch run. There's something about the acoustics in Budokan that makes crowd reaction feel so "big" compared to a place like Korakuen.

I put this on just to have something running in the background but they grabbed me pretty quickly with the awesome Akiyama/Fuchi sequence in the beginning and I ended up dropping what I was doing to watch the whole thing. Fuchi is awesome here, looking like he's relishing this as a sadly increasingly rare opportunity to showcase his 6-man tag chops. Watching him stretch the shit out of Akiyama and Kikuchi was the highlight for me. The match is also interesting for being one of the few Misawa/Kawada 6-mans where Kawada is coming in as champ, which leads to Kawada looking a little more confident and Misawa being a little less dismissive of him than usual. We still do get an awesome mic drop moment late in the match, though, with Misawa knocking down Kawada off a single elbow and casually tagging in Akiyama to finish things. Akiyama gives a fun performance as an overmatched young guy and eats a nasty slam from the apron to the outside. Awesome last few minutes with Kawada laying complete destruction to Misawa's team and looking like a badass in the process. Feels like it belongs in the conversation for one of the better Misawa/Kawada 6-mans, though it's understandable why it doesn't get much talk given the quality it survives in isn't that great. I actually have no idea how we even have it when it doesn't look like it aired on TV or was on any comms that I'm aware of.

Loved this one. First 10 minutes or so are almost entirely built around grappling, and it's great. They're nail the little things like Eddie making sure to wrench down big on a headlock or Angle bumping hard on a tackle, but then you also get some neat counters like Eddie hooking the leg to escape from an abdominal stretch. They continued to make things feel hard fought as they transitioned into high risk moves and suplexes. Eddie going for a flash frog splash, missing it, and selling big really helped get across the significance of the move when he finally hit it later in the match. Loved how they also went 14 minutes without throwing a single punch and when Angle finally used one that Eddie made sure to sell the hell out of it. Finish was something that I'd remembered as being great but it ended up being even better than I remembered. Loved Eddie mouthing "oh shit" when he saw Angle make his way back in from outside.

Are you saying Russo wasn't responsible for booking Owen to have entered from the rafters?