MrMoonlight

Amazing tremendous atmosphere in the Dome here. Inoki’s entrance and the whole post match stuff are really moving and the actual match is okay good in its genre. I wouldhave liked to see Frye trying to strike more and Inoki really having to get his takedowns. Some counter spots on the ground are pretty nice, but it’s too short to get a sense of progression that would lead to a potential great match. Must see for Inoki’s entrance and retirement but no rating would make sense for me here.

It’s the kind of match where Kanemoto gets full pleasure out of going against what the audience expects to look badass and nonchalant. The issue is that most of the time it feels a little stupid, illogical, inconsistent… so a lot of strikes are thown, stiff, but it remains quite flat aside from one or two big spots and a multi big kick out finish. So nowhere near a top 30 njpw '98, and another fail for Kanemoto who was on a bad streak but will get back on track with great individual performances later that year.

Big tag match from NJPW, they try their best to have an epic but one of the issue is that Nakanishi is not over at all, Kojima does really good but with inconsistency, Muto sells his leg injury and does pretty good with it and Chono is a really good ring general. The layout is good with a cool background of the new and hungry generation vs a pair of "old" charismatic mega stars, we can easily remember about when Chono & Muto were the young guns against the likes of Fujinami, Choshu…. With that being said, and even if I’m not a big fan of Muto & Chono, Kojima & Nakanishi didn’t have that same touch and charisma the Musketeers had back then, and it’s even more striking as Chono Nwo leader and Muto with long hair and a nice thick beard are really stylish. Anyway, nice match around that dynamic with its flaws but might please those who watns to see more of second tier njpw’s best. 3.5*

A classic, with style. Liger is at his best there, his selling of his arm, his emphasis on his key moves to right then sell big again add somewhat of an epic touch. Otani is as good as always, portraying confidence and despair or a blend of the two at his most effective, but he had a couple of cheap transitions that restarted the build up process toward epic selling Liger was looking for, which is probably what I like the most. Anyway, really great stuff, slightly better than the Otani vs Ultimo from 1/04. 4*

Wow, really great contest, with some highs and lows in term of investments to a solid layout, that end up providing a good pace and balance between nice story and impressive moves, which is what you expect from a good Jr match. It never falls into stupid spots, though it may lack strong transitions between the parts of the match or strong links to get to the counter + big bomb moments. So it’s not full blast high en stuff I’ve seen from Jr, so I’ll only go as far as 4*.