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[1993-04-06-NJPW-Magnitude X] Jushin Liger & El Samurai vs Ultimo Dragon & Norio Honaga


Loss

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  • 1 month later...

Had a really rabid crowd early on that they managed to lose for a while, until Honaga blasted Liger with a great clothesline and woke everyone up, and they started a dive train to the floor. Nice finishing stretch that followed. One of those matches that was worked as a JIP match to be aired as a JIP match where it's obvious. To its credit, the ending stretch is really, really good. Liger and Samurai were having cold years, so Ultimo getting the pin on El Samurai when he was fairly hot was a good decision.

 

Seems like it would build to another Liger/Ultimo match in '93, but if it happened, I'm unaware of it.

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  • 2 years later...

The early matwork portion wasn't overly inspiring but it wasn't bad either, though the early highlights were the bullshit-type stuff. You know you're in for a fun match when Liger flips off his opponents during the intros and Dragon dropkicks him off the apron as soon as the bell rings. Then Liger sends him to the floor and does the Ric Flair groin thrust at him, just to bring this to a new level. Also Honaga being Honaga, biting Samurai's fingers to get out of a chinlock and then actually doing finger work to follow up. Norio may be my favorite lost worker ever--I loved that a guy with his athletic talent (which was comparatively very little) could get by in the NJPW juniors division by being able to do like three advanced moves and the rest of his arsenal is all southern heel cheating. I'll take him over Ultimo any day. Dragon's sort of here but he does his nice moves and Liger and Honaga do a fantastic job of holding all this together while Sammy and Dragon are more along for the ride. Lots of good near-falls mostly built around pin saves, but Liger makes the mistake of doing one more dive onto Honaga and that leaves Dragon alone to take down Samurai.

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  • 1 year later...

Dragon dropkicks Liger outside the ropes at the bell. Liger's strikes and pacing so great, especially for juniors who often don't even pause to breath. Looking forward to him vs. heavies. Samurai/Dragon sequence very smooth, really working in sync with one another. Honaga drapes Samurai over the ropes and goes to work on him with dropping him on the knee, camel clutch, bodyslams. Awesome Liger palm blows on Honaga. I was never too hot for Dragon even when he was touted as something incredible back in the WCW days, but his matwork here is really great and Samurai seems pretty underrated in that regard. Dragon sends Liger to the floor, but quickly rebounds and then Honaga lariat inside and a dive train that sees Dragon tope to the floor, Samurai somersault plancha and Honaga dive. Liger eats a tombstone, spike piledriver and jumping piledriver, but still can't be put away. He hot tags Samurai and they have a little run before Dragon pins Samurai with an Asai moonsault and rana. Would have rather seen Liger eat the pin after all those piledrivers. I enjoyed this.

 

***1/2

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  • 2 months later...

I thought this was good but again suffers from the other quality we have had so far on the set. The opening matwork was fine but things kicked off with the dive sequence and lead into the finish. I am surprised Liger hasn't had that one great match vs. a WAR member since an invasion feud feels like something he would excel in. ***1/4

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  • 1 year later...

This was a good, well-worked match at first. Then Honaga began powerbombing everything that moved on the floor and it became excellent, as now the NJPW side was desperate to escape with its life and the WAR side couldn't believe that NJPW was still fighting after all they'd been through.

 

There was great teamwork between the sides, with a similar dynamic: One member of each team (Liger, Dragon) preferred to win by the rules, while the other (Samurai, Honaga) would take victory any way they could get it. Neither team fought over their differences, though; instead, both teams possessed a keen sense of when each member was needed and made their tags accordingly This was especially true of Dragon and Honaga, whose styles are almost a hundred and eighty degrees apart from each other.

 

Some of the pin saves in the closing stretch were absolutely amazing. Honaga in particular deserves a medal for making so many saves for Dragon in so short a time.

 

Honaga's actually improved as a technical wrestler, as evidenced by his exchanges with both Liger and Honaga early on. Then again, how could he not improve with excellent workers like those two opposite him consistently?

 

The juniors were slow to get into the spirit of the NJPW-WAR feud, but they're sure into it now. As interpromotional feuds go, this has the best in-ring action I've seen, although the North American one are more emotionally compelling because we get to see character work and promos from the sides instead of just isolated matches. NJPW needs more wins, though; regardless of match quality, they've simply taken too many clean losses like this one for this to be considered a truly great feud, at least to this point.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1993-04-06-NJPW-Magnitude X] Jushin Liger & El Samurai vs Ultimo Dragon & Norio Honaga

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